Road trip: Singapore to HatYai on a 150cc motorcycle

On 1st September, I left Singapore with two other riders on a road trip towards Koh Samui.

Qing Feng and I went up on Honda CBF150 while Vanga rode on his BMW R1100 GS.

In the end, we decided not to head up to Koh Samui because of the long riding involved and the physical toll on our bodies  cruising at only 100km/h.

Our route ended up looking like this.

Day 1: Singapore to Ipoh

Day 2: Ipoh to HatYai

Day 3: R&R in HatYai

Day 4: HatYai to Ipoh
Day 5: Ipoh to Fraser Hill to Malacca

Day 6: Malacca to Singapore

Day 1 was pretty mundane as we were just pushing the 500+km to Ipoh before sunset. Things got off to a bad start as I got lost while riding to meet up the rest at Tuas. Not even out of Singapore and I already horlan.

 We stayed at the Paragon City Hotel which is in a pretty dead part of town. There was a titty bar in the hotel, but it was just tv screens showing videos of Coyote Ugly bar in Thailand.

Day 2 was a little more interesting. Only a mere 330+km to our destination made for a relaxed ride.

The Thai immigration at Sadao is pretty corrupt. Pretty much everyone, locals and foreigners alike had to pay an "entry fee" of about 1RM to the immigration officers and customs folks.

Thankfully, Vanga was there to guide us through the process. Basically, you park your bike at the side, get your passport stamped at the immigration counter. Head farther in to settle your customs clearance for "importing" your vehicle. Of course, you will need to buy insurance back in Malaysia before you can get clearance. We bought ours in Changlun town.

Sadao looked like some wild west border town. Sandy, dusty and seemingly lawless. It was definitely an eye opener for me. I guess this is only in the small towns, doubt the immigration officers will dare to this in bigger towns.
Barely 20km into Sadao, the BMW run into some technical difficulties with the front brake. The caliper was somewhat seized and rubbing against the brake discs.

Upon reaching HatYai, we found a big bike repair shop called SAK SIRIBIGBIKE to get the BMW fixed up before going to Red Planet Hotel where we spent the next 2 days.

We tried finding the HatYai Municipal Park after checking in but could not find it. We ended up at the Wat HatYai Nai instead.

Day 4 was the best day of the trip so far.
We headed up to HatYai Municipal park which was seriously steep and winding! I was only in gear 2 all the way up to the summit. The view as you can see is spectacular.

Apparently, you're not allowed to ride your bikes up to the top of the park where the statue is. However, we were so busy riding up we did not notice the security guard trying to stop us :p Thankfully, he was nice and allowed us to take some photos before coming back down.

After the nice winding roads back down, we heading straight for Ipoh. This time, we stayed at Hotel Lucky nearer to the city centre to enjoy the night life. We took a 2.5km walk to Jalan Lau Ek Ching and checked out Bricks and Barrels. Really cheap because of the exchange rate and the service was great too.

Day 5: Ipoh to Fraser Hill to Malacca

Views were awesome on the way up, roads were damn awesome and it was so cooling at the summit. My altimeter showed the altitude as 1168m above sea level. The clean cool air made me feel like I was in Switzerland all over again.

We got caught in a storm on the way to Malacca and it was damn scary. Ominous dark clouds overhead, rain pouring down so hard we could barely see ahead. 

Day 6 was nothing spectacular. Left Malacca at 10am and reached back to Singapore at 2pm.