Day 1 - 4th June 2013 ~ Freeman's Dream Projects

Well, after 2 months of preparation, the day finally came. I woke up on 4:30 am as planned but was quite tired. I have not been sleeping well for the past week plus (preparation for the trip and sundown marathon). It was a tiring journey driving up north in the evening and was too excited to sleep the day before. After everything was done, it suddenly rains. Thank god it was a short one. According to Prem, it is sign of god's blessing. We end up starting on 6am (1 hour behind schedule). We took a few photos before departing from Alor Setar.

Alor Setar Tower


In front of old Kedah Palace

This is where the dream started

Umno fighter plane at the back. We see a lot of these funny paper made "weapon" from PAS and UMNO along the coastal road before Sungai Petani

Another cyclist that we meet before Gurun

Sungai Petani Clock Tower

As we were cycling pass Sungai Petani town, suddenly a cyclist with red shirt approaches fast from back out of no where. As he ride pass us, we have a bit of chat. Apparently the cyclist in red shirt is Chew. He is the legend who took 6 months to cycle from Penang to UK during olympic 2012. Surprisingly he stay in same garden as Prem in Butterworth and interestingly no one from the garden knew that their neighbour actually cycle to UK. We stop and chat by road side without noticing time pass. It s interesting to know that there were initially 5 people on the trip, but eventually only 2 make it. When ask what make him continue the long tough journey? He answered:

"The Heart"

He shared with us his journey from Penang to UK and things to prepare and to avoid during long bike touring. When go on long journey bike touring, we should expect worst condition for staying. In Europe there many sites for people to camp as staying in hotels will be very expensive. Try avoid attention. As for the visas, we must be out of the country before the period expired or else we will be in big trouble. So plan the journey well. Good things or bad things that happen depends on personal karma. He even show me how to secure shoe laces. Eventually, he becomes our temporary tour guide and lead us all the way to Butterworth. He even show us where Paklah (Malaysia former prime minister)'s house. It was quite enjoying and inspirational talking to him. There were a point where we have to cycle through hot sun with not much shades around. I was telling him that it was an unbearable weather, but he said that he has nothing to complain about Malaysia's weather as he had been through the worst. He told me that he had rode in Turkey on ~40 deg C temperature beside desert with no trees on both side. I was totally speechless. When we reach somewhere near Ferry terminal, it is time to seperate and continue on our journey. I wonder what would have been if we departed on time, we might miss the opportunity to meet such a wonderful guy. Maybe it is fated for us to meet up with Mr. Chew or maybe it is like Mark Nepo said:

There is no wrong choice, but discovering of accidental path....

But one thing is for sure, i will never be able to meet such interesting people if i did not embark on this journey. I wonder who will we meet or what will we discover tomorrow?

Chew- who cycle from Penang to UK during 2012

Inspiring to talk to Chew

Since we were only 10km away from ferry terminal, we decided to push all the way to Penang Island on 1pm+. It turn out to be a wrong choice. We were forewarn not to cycle around 12pm till 3pm as the sun is very hot and it will suck the energy out of us very fast. This is especially true when we were cycling on last stretch of highway to the Ferry Terminal. The only thing that i can think of is to quickly reach the destination and sleep.