Tunku Johor Motorcycle ride.

Late again! we are at Yong Peng!

After Crystal's birthday, we travel south towards yong peng, about 100km away from Malacca.

Believe it or not, this is Leo's house. we stayed with him again!
it has been a long time that Sam has not met up with her school mates, having 4 children now!

Mike, always on a look out on our blog, finally we got the chance to meet him!

catching up with the familiar faces again.

My mother in law, brother/sister in law, nieces and nephews.

We stayed in JB for a week. just to test trail on the feeling of getting used back to home. at the same time, we need to organize a little 'welcome' of our return to Singapore's birthday.

At last, i get to meet up with my buddies. though they made Sam and i waited for 1 hour by the highway but it's worth the wait. we are still on our trip and they came to meet us.

Delighted! thanks for the great dinner!

left to right:

Kelvin Tong, Panther Poh, Rebekah Chua, Katherine Koh, Patrick Ho, Sam Leong, Uncle Lim and Xiong.

I managed to have a coffee with the Johor biker's group. Then, they invited Sam and I to a Gala dinner in JB. the plan is:

meet at Danga bay with our Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan bin Muhammad Archibald, got to share our story with him. It was our very first approach with the royal family of Johor. Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan is a humble person. We shared over many things about countries to countries.

It is very unusual of Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan to go out without much escort. This time, it seems to be like a secret and private ride. Usually he will have uniformed police escort.

Six of us rode to the event hall. We could feel that the cars on the road are moving to the side as Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan rode near to them with the roaring Harley.

When we started to zoomed off from a red-turned-green- light, ride on and a car came out of a slit road from the left, looking from behind, i can only tell myself: oh SHTI, at that speed that they were riding, i don't think the Harley will have an ABS to stop in time. At that critical moment, Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan chose to bang into the big plastic barrier instead of braking (which i do not think it is the best solution). The impact caused his crashbar to dent but he still rode on. Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan kept his cool and continue riding slowly to get back the momentum. If this would happened to any Singaporean, we will get out of our bike and 'F' that reckless driver or to make a fuss over it.

1 of his bodyguard went to give verbal warning to the reckless driver that failed to gave way.

It was a grand entrance for us. there were about 100 big bikes lined up along the building and everyone was waiting for us for the event and dinner to start. They reserved a center among the row of bikers for Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan's Harley. I was looking around for a place to park. Then, Mr Din, our friend from Johor Bikers club that co-ordinated this outing, said he would park for us. Sam and I came down and he rode our bike, Hope Too, onto a special platform. Oh no, Hope Too is the star of tonight's show. I told Hope Too:

hey, stop shining around. put some mud on your face. Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan is here. He should be the brightest star tonight.

It was a biker's Gala dinner and the organization invited Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan. At the same time, I gave a little presentation to the bikers around, spreading the news of hope.

Sam and I were also invited to have dinner with Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan at a special table. I was scared as my table manners were very bad. I'm very hungry but i ate very minimal to avoid embarrassment with Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan sitting on my right, trying to refill my dish every time when it is empty.

The charity organization that was involved were also intrested in our trip. We spent the rest of the night chatting to them.

Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan and Che' Puan went back earlier with their escort. We still stay around to catch a breath with the close encounter with the royal family.

Thank you Din for organizing this outing. Din is also riding a cool Africa Twin in Johor.

this is Din's bike. We don't see any singaporean putting on the big singapore flag on our bike. why? we served national service and when we come out of the society, we ask back: what have 'they' given us? shame shame.

We forgot to take pictures with Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan and Che' Puan until when they are about to leave.

Honorable Y.M. Tunku Hassan on my right and Sam on my left.

Article from the government website call overseas singaporean.

look at this!

we are in.

http://www.overseassingaporean.sg/cms/index.php/portal/sgfeatures/sgfeatures_features/sgfeatures_features_feats_deeds/riding_on_a_dream/

http://www.overseassingaporean.sg/cms/index.php/portal/sgfeatures/sgfeatures_features/sgfeatures_features_feats_deeds/riding_on_a_dream

why do we live for?

very touching. we cried.

think about it...

Goh Mia Chun at WIT conference.

Long live the romance of travel from WebInTravel on Vimeo.

http://www.webintravel.com/news/wit-day-two--igniting-the-romance-of-travel-on-a-wednesday-morning_698

visiting Malacca from a different view

It was a gathering for Samantha. 3 of her best friend came to Malacca to celebrate Crystal's birthday and at the same time, giving us a big hello after 2 and half years.

Malacca is situated about 2 hours away from Singapore as we always consider it as an 'easy to go' or 'not challenging' biking destination. After going round the world and now that we are back in this city, the whole perspective changed. This city became so colorful.

Next to Samantha is Leo, where we visited and stayed with him when we were in City of New York (USA, 2009).

Crystal's chicken rice shop.

at last, Sam is able to make up and dress sexy for the first time after 2 and half years. (above)

if not, this is how we looked like (below picture) in one of the country we visited, Pakistan. Our traveling suit.

Sam being dolled up during Crystal birthday. (picture below)

Sam being not dolled up during the trip. (below picture taken in Alaska, USA 2009)

We spend good times with Crystal.

Old building in Malacca. Was it Portuguese?
Old fort.
Very unique road sign with arabic, Bahasa Malay and english translation.

nice drawing we saw.
The above are real shoes made for the ancient chinese women where their feet were being tied up and not to grow more than 3 inches. In those times it was considered beautiful. This shop is one of the very last shop in the world to custom make these shoes.

Malacca also has a mix culture of race and religion.
An Islam building being a neighbor with a Taoist temple, in harmony.

This garden is built for a toilet in a tourist district.
It looked like an entrance of a resort but it is a public toilet.
a tomb stone as a decoration.

well, thats the public toilet i am referring to. the most beautiful toilet in Malaysia.

Crystal and her boyfriend brought us to eat our all time favorite food: bak kut teh.
See the mosque by the beach? this is the view from Crystal's apartment in Malacca.

chinese new year in singapore.

chinese new year in singapore

the first chinese new year during our trip we had was in india. feb 2008 where we were in a wierd city.

the second chinese new year we had was in Chile where we had a little steamboat with some other Canadian Chinese in the backpacker's hostel. (2009)

the third chinese new year we had was in Australia where we stayed with a few Malaysian friends and we celebrated a great chinese new year, (2010)

and today, after the hard work we did from August 2010 till today, all about trying to survive in Singapore, trying to set up my business from zero, trying to meet up with friends (which we did not), trying to be 'feeling home'; it's about this chinese new year.

we worked hard from day 1 since we came back. we neglected many friends even when we came back because the $ and greed had overtook love.

i did realized that because if $ did not overtook love, we had been seeing all my friends that we missed during our RTW.

Everyone is busy for this chinese new year. we spend alot of $ on unnecessary things like cookies and decoration. Actually, we felt that it has becoming more and more meaningless.

I start to look around, have we forgotten the needy?

I remembered the old lady staying with is son. She always collects old drink cans from rubbish bins. I knew where she lived and decided to gave some of our goodies to her. Guess, i am the first person after so many years of her life visiting her during chinese new year.

If everyone would be noticing and observing around our neighborhood for the needys, these people would be much happier with you around.

blog singapore

Sorry guys. i know it's a little disappointing. i want to tell you the last part of our trip where we ride with Honorable Tunku Hassan of Johor and the bikers night with him.

It's near Chinese New Year corner, 3rd of February for this year. I'm rushing for a few landscape jobs.

I got tired when I got home at 11pm. it would be a blessing if i can reach home at 8pm daily.

Waking up at 7am is a torture to me. It seems like 7 hours of sleep is never enough.

Where is my time with Samantha?

Where is my time with my friends?

There are still many friends that we wanted to meet after we come back to Singapore for the last 5 months.

We really regretted that one of our trip supporter, Hii Chun Hui, had passed away. We did not get a chance to meet up with him after we come back. he is a year younger than me.

why?

Is building up my business really that important?

Someone told me:

now you just started my business, it's already something positive that you have landscape jobs on hand. Being busy is a good thing, better than nothing. Else you have to work for somebody. It's always the most difficult at the start of the business.

Is that so important? what we are concerned now is that what we want in our life?

what good do we do to the society by being so busy?

what about our loved ones?

For those that are not in Singapore, let me introduce the popular Singapore Dream to you which is the 5C:

Cash

Credit Card

Condo

Car

Country Club membership

It arose as a popular joke based on certain truths attesting to the unstated Singaporean cultural ethos of materialistic obsession and aspiration to achieve these things in order to impress others, both socially, economically and sociologically. - extracted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_C's_of_Singapore

Let us get out of this rat race first.

We want to publish a book: base on the inspiration we got from the 30 months trip.

I need a sleep now......

How we got our bike out of the Malaysia customs.

From 29 november 2010 posting:

So now… we are at risk. We paid him 3 million rupiah, we leave Indonesia and he could retain the bike in Indonesia for sale or even ship to other countries. We do not have any proof.

16 July 2010, the bike is supposed to arrived in Malaysia. We called that Orchid Shipping contact number given to us… it was not Orchid Shipping. It was not a correct number.

Oh no…

When we reached to shore of Malaysia, we knew that we were home. Everything looked so familiar. Never in our 2 and half years, we would feel so confident on what is ahead of us.

Hope Too is behind us. We took a few big boxes with us to Malaysia. With our full riding gear on, I have to move 2 aluminium cases, 1 red bag, 1 tank bag and that excludes our own helmet and riding gear. Look at the picture. If there is a trolley, it would be an easy job.

Entering the Malaysian custom, we feel the smell. The local custom officers were very stern about Indonesians coming into Malaysia. We felt the difference. As I entered the land of Malaysia, I wanted to get a white card, an immigration card to be filled up but the office is in a mess because I was the only one on the ferry that needed this card. The wait was about 30 minutes for the officers to get me a card as I requested if not, they will as me to enter Malaysia without the card, then I would have big issue when I exit Malaysia.

Port Klang is very new to us. Local said that the nearest budget hotel is walking distance. Yes, I walked for 45 minutes with my full gear and certainly lost some fluid from my body. First time ever, we stayed in a Malaysia hotel! We felt so homely!

Dinner was served by Chinese; Hotel was handed by Indian; Custom office was controlled by Malay. This is Malaysia!

We had our first bak kut teh (pork rib soup) and set for the night.

The next morning, we phoned that ‘Orchid Shipping’ and it happened to be a household number! No such number for shipping agency! The moment of cheated came to me.

THOSE OFFICERS MUST HAD CHEATED US! THEY TOOK OUR MONEY AND KEPT THE BIKE!

We quickly went to the address given by the taxi. Luckily the office exists! There is still Hope Too.

Sam videoed down the process of Hope Too being unloaded and suddenly the security officer came and raised his voice on us: blah blah blah.

He was certainly rude and bossy. We have to kept our humble, knowing that our motive here is just to get Hope Too out. Look at the video.

After the bike landed, we found that Hope Too was vandalized with some spray marks. Maybe they are too friendly. They tattooed their boat name onto Hope Too. Oh no, Hope Too was molested on boat when we were not around. I was angry but have to keep cool.

It was the first time that the port officer handed a Singapore registered motorcycle from Indonesia to Malaysia. He didn’t know what to do. We have to follow him to talk to his boss. We have to tell his boss what to do too but at the same time, respect his authority. His boss was very nice, giving us his name card, saying that if we have any problem, just call him. He was really a boss.

Here we go, we came back to Malaysia without having a stamp on our carnet (CPD).

Along the way from Port Klang to Malacca, we met a singapore bike and happened that he was Sam, a senior biker that I knew I him 10 years ago. He was the first Singaporean biker that we met.

Sam and I were so excited to reach Malacca. When we reached Crystal’s chicken rice shop, we knew that we made it.