After our breakfast of champions, porridge, we returned to the port to pick up the 194 then the R152 both follow the coast. The roads were very quiet, only a few passing cars and scooters.

Heading out to sea

Off to our right the sea, the tide was out exposing mud flats, not somewhere you would swim or sunbathe. A lot of people were fishing off any of the rocky areas.

Mud flats and the view back to Kuala Perlis

The cycling was flat, the only hill was man made, a large bridge we crossed over. After 20 km we left even the R152 and were on single track roads then gravel roads. Along the gravel road was the first time for a very long time we felt as though we were in the middle of nowhere, not a soul to be seen.

The road started like this

Then became this

And a stretch of this

We even got back to everyone greeting us and waving, not saying hello but good morning (around 60% of the population speak English) or afternoon. A car even stopped and a family got out for a photograph, they were on holiday from China with their Malaysian friend, even giving us a sweet breakfast bread to take with us (we ate it at lunchtime).

Stopped for a picture

Eating that sweet bread

Inland there were always irrigation channels and huge rice fields stretching into the distance. We had to regularly make detours to cross the channels, there was usually a village at the crossing along with several moored boats when you looked towards the seaward side

View from our highest point on the bridge

There were huge clouds of dragonflies we kept cycling though, very difficult to photograph, we tried, and also made a small movie of them if you follow this link. https://youtu.be/Hp8bNJ3Wy3Y

At around 50 km the final 5 km into town was along the main dual carriageway, there was a large shoulder to cycle down. 50 km of fabulous cycling though is an excellent day in anyone’s books (or blogs). We are stopping at the Dota Hotel, clean rooms but small. Here a record was broken, it hit 46.8 °C as we cycled the last stretch.

It is not in the centre of town but is only a very short walk to a lot of restaurants and Alor Star Mall, a large modern air conditioning shopping centre where we shopped for snacks and also ate a reasonable meal.

The Strava route today.