My two favourite places in the world - on the road on a heavily laden bike and on a big tractor... Gillian coaxed me back to the road.

We are learning that one does not only know a country by what it is, but that one understands it even more deeply by what it is not. We are only now understanding puritanical Malaysia in contrast to its louder, freer, more debauchered neighbour, Thailand.
It has been two weeks since the previous blog update, fourteen days and 1200 kilometres in which we have crossed the jungled dragon's back of the Malaysian interior from west to east and pedalled steadily north along the veiled and unspoilt beauty of the east coast to the Thai border at Sungai Kolok. Our journey weaved past the lush rubber and palm oil estates of wealthy Chinese, through small, wealthy Triang where the children are computer game-mad and through snobbish Maran where we stumbled upon the delights and secrets of a night market by locals for locals. We took a sneak peak, sampled the foods and fled, feeling naked in shorts and sleeveless shirts.
Once we hit the coast at Kuantan, the mosques became even more illustrious and the food changed to include exotic seafood fare. We beagn to learn the language - nasi goreng for fried rice and kayam for chicken and air for cold and pannas for hot and bhua-bhuahan for fruit. Throughout Malaysia the smell of Durian lingered like an expression of national pride and finally on the picture-perfect paradise island of Pulau Perhentian Kecil, we sampled our first taste of the putrid fruit, which has the texture of rotting blubber. We paddled around the island, snorkellled off deserted beaches and had an unexpected swim with a pod of five inquisitive black-tip sharks.
We fell in love with Malaysia for its tolerance, allowing churches, bhudist temples and hindu shrines to flank the towering mosques, for peoples's genuine friendliness and their respectful regard of tourists, for the sensory delights of its loud, colourful and authentic day-and-night markets, for the warm, silky, South China Sea and for the Malay obsession with clean cars, judging by the disproportionate number of car wash Cuci Kereta services alontg the way and finally for their morbid fascination with anything of the American Wild West.

Locals warned us to be careful in the south of Thailand for the recent conflict between the Thai government and a minority muslim community who had been fighting for more autonomy. As we cycled further and further north along the Thai east coast we felt tensions lessening until we arrived in Hat Yai after dark and a long, hot head-winded day of cycling in the chaos and carnival atmosphere of the city's annual fair.
In Thailand the towering mosques of Malaysia have made way for glitter of Bhuddist temples and scantilyt dressed girls have replaced the veiled Malay women of the south. We have a sleepless night, our hotel fronting a massage parlour and popular brothel.

The menu is versatile, offering choice as wide as sweet, juicy whole pineapples and less juicy whole fried cockroaches...

The markets are overwhelming. Early in the morning fresh produce markets explode from rickety stalls, creaking with the weight of freshly slaughtered dead-headed chicken and ducks, big and small and silver and red fish and crabs and clams, slithering eels and slimy catfish and bags of coconuts, ginger, red, green and yellow and orange chillies and thousands of types of vegetables which we have never seen before, a sea of green leaves and red tomatoes and giant pineapples and gauvas, orange bananas, bristling red rambutin, pink, scaly dragon fruit and here and there a splash of wet, expensive plump grapes.
In the evenings the day markets make way for hundreds of stalls of snacks and curries and noodles and rice and sosaties of fishballs and crab sticks and chinese sausages and freshly squeezed juices on ice... Eating in Malaysia and Thailand is a hugely social affair. At night everybody comes out and snacks and shares and saunters and chats around the huge, bustling market cauldron - eating is the hub of the big wheel around which civil life revolves...

Paddling around the magical Malay island of Perhentian Kecil revealed deserted beaches, schools of tropical fish, waving palm trees and the horror of barges of garbage anchored offshore. Water pollution and inadequate garbage disposal are only some of the headaches these small and overrun islands are facing.

After a two-day island-getaway and an overdose of other backpackers, who, like us, are hunting after paradise, we hopped back on our bikes, revelling in the freedom from the beaten track - even if at times it is daunting to bike into a foreign town late at night, not having any guide book reference to whether there is a bed for rent in the town and which dark alleys to avoid. We are learning as we go to trust that whatever happens is the right thing to happen...

Paradise - the average water temperature is 27 degrees and the visibility is 25m

A macabre Malay obsession with anything western or wild west. To the left, giant park lights of cacti and below printing on a carton box on a garbage heap.

Durian - Malaysia's most reverred fruit, in its secretive scaly natural state and on the left unveiled in all its potent putridness.

Giant monitor lizards, countless snakes, crabs, giant bull frogs, monkeys and tailles cats keep us company on the long slogs...

Sampling cullinary delights at the Maran night market by locals for locals...

Left, unspoilt east-coast beaches along the way. Below, the jungles of the interior flanking broad, fish-rich, fast flowing rivers

At dusk on the fourth day of our journey, we cycled into sultry Melaka, most coveted geisha of Malaysia, once the sweetheart of the Chinese, then the Portugese, the Dutch and finally the British. The streets are narrow, like cobblestoned Amsterdam, but flanked with mosques, chinese temples and Malay and Chinese eateries. In Jonker Street's night market we get swept along on a tide of Asian and Caucasian tourists, all of us hungry for a piece of Melaka's beauty, all of us ill-satisfied, all of us pouring over her like a swarm of cockroaches.

In the morning Gill and I wake to a rumbling thunderstorm, and from below the pouring eaves witness a glimpse of Melaka's quiet charms. But as soon as the rain stops the tourists swarm in and the city drowns before our eyes. We flee the masses, heading for modest Tampin, settling for the unsung geishas of Malaysia, content that we would at least have them to ourselves...

The sensory pleasure of biking through Asia comes at a price - on the left a sample of day-4 bum-chafe

Travelling by bicycle is slow enough to allow intimacy with the land and its people - driving tropical rain envelopes us, we sweat in the stifling heat, hustle the roaring traffic along with the motorcyclists at traffic lights, am overwhelmed by the putrid smell of Durian at roadside stalls, go deaf from the sharp zing of cicadas in the rubberplantations, feel the road's rough surface beneath our wheels and taste weird and wonderful new delicacies as we drift through everyday Malaysia along the back roads.

Ahhh! And the coffee and tea is thick and sweet and strong with condensmilk... Milo is a Malaysian favourite.

Watermelon is our staple diet - we buy ice cold slices, whole sweet juicy fruit and red juice to stay hydrated during the long, hot days... We are averaging between 80km to 100km a day, our bikes weighing around 45kg to 50kg each.

Below a view of the bridge that links Singapore and Malaysia in the far distance
On the left drive-through style border control on the Singapore side...

And so the journey has started in earnest - we escape the lingering smell of food, exhaust fumes and make our way north out of Singapore.

On the day of our departure, leaving the dubious comfort of Cozy Backpackers in Singpore, eager to hit the open road...

And on our last night in the city we went for a long walk to the esplanade and discovered the dazzle of Singapore and realised that we were living in the city's boiler room...

Taking a power drill to my panier frames, much to the amusement of the neighbouring male shopkeepers...We buy new tyres, inner tubes, spare spokes and chain and a chainbreak for the long journey ahead...

The food markets are astounding - baskets of dried fish and dried shrimp and raw mussels and dried sweet potato and giant ears of rubbery mushrooms and slimy ghurkinish-like vegetables and everywhere the overwhelming smell of boiling trotters...

Tonight we may settle for a more conventional and predictable meal - McDonalds chicken fillets on rice cakes...

We are ill from last night's cullinary skirmish with boiled pig stomach and testicles - this sign next to our backpackers says it all... VERY Yukee...

Delicious Dragon Fruit at 2am - the skin is thick with scaly fronds, the belly of the fruit raspberry-red, heavy with sweet white flesh and subtle kiwi-fruit-like pips

Rambutan which means 'hairy fruit' and tastes like wild lychees

Pigs organ soup - a popular Chinese delicacy and dinner on our first night in Singapore...

Oranges on steroids and travel-battered bike boxes

It is 10 pm. The worst heat of the day has subsided to a comfortable 30 degrees Celsius. Thousands of people flood the streets and local markets, eager for the communion of consumption.

We walk the street - our skins alive with the caress of the sea-muggy air. Every corner you turn brings a different smell - bags of dried fish and shrimp, incense swirling around a group of devotees praying at a temple, sweet watermelon pulp at the sticky juice stands, roasted duck and chicken, fried rice and boiling cauldrons of shrimp soup, steaming pork intestines and Soya sauce and chillies and men's cologne, exhaust fumes and sweat. The broth of life boils high in Asia and one cannot help but fall in love with her clammy, sensual excess.

The local people are kind and look you in the eyes when they speak. Both Gill and I feel at home here - like we can breathe.

Gill and I have dragged our 80kg of bike boxes and cycling kit across hostile London and have finally found a home in a tiny, but airconditioned room at Cozy Corner GuestHouse on North Bridge Road in the heart of Singapore's bustle. It is good to be on the move again and to be in a place where one can afford basic food and lodging without frantic mental conversions of Rands to British Pounds.

For dinner of we treated ourselves to eggs, duck and pig innards and noodle soup for less than two Pounds. Asia, here we come!

And then we had none....

Courtesy of our topless polish barber and a £8 clipper from Tesco's...

We once had hair...