Singapore - Muar (273km)

You know how you see those reality shows and you think they are just doing the dramas for entertaining viewing?  Well I felt like i was in the middle of one at 7.30 Weds morning.  We are finally packed up at our Singapore hotel and ready to pedal out into the great unknown!!  One last thing to do - take our malaria pills it doesn't matter that we should have started them 3 days ago or that we haven't had breakfast yet - it should be fine!!  Ya reckon??  First Mick goes - I feel sick :{  then sam is sick :{ :{ then mick is sick and again and again.  You can just imagine the voiceover Will the Thomas family ever leave or will they be forced to spend more nights in expensive hotels.  Well a bottle of coke and a couple of biscuits later she was all good and we were off with no regrets - just a bit hungry.  But it was okay as DT got a flatty about 5km up the road so we had plenty of time for breakfast!!  The third one he had changed in 3days!!  Not what we imagined.

Everything since then has been plain sailing.  We have been so impressed with the vehicles on the road and feel much safer cycling here than in NZ - now I know what all those tourists complain about (NZ roads).  We have finally got down to the budget part of the holiday which has been interesting but definitely character building!  We have assigned the boys jobs - Tourleader who wears the Taonga and decides on stops and food.  Mapman - who checks out the maps and Garmin and Budget boy - This is the prized position as they get the final say on how much food we get and the level of hotel we stay in.  They are all doing brilliantly and it is a bit of a comp to see who can save the most.  Except for Mick he is Mr now now now!

As far as the countryside goes it is great for cycling as it's flat, but not much to look at, just banana and coconut palms with very few publicservices.  There is a huge gap between wealthy and poor.  But one amazing thing we noticed was the amount of car washes there were. Even in the poorest towns, then we noticed (amazingly) that all the cars are spotless.  I hate to think what they would think of skip of a car!!  It is pretty funny cycling throught he villages (Kampungs) and everyone calls out, people stop us in thestreet and ask us where we are from, some people even drove passed today taking pictures of the boys!!  One little girl called out to us 'hello friends'.  Everyone speaks about 3 different languages which puts us a bit to shame especially when I responded Selamat Pagi to her - which is fine as it means Good morning - unfortunately it was 6 oclock at night!  You live and learn!

Chinese new year here at the moment so that is pretty exciting, hopefully if we can stay awake after 8pm we can soak up a bit of the atmosphere.

Lots of love to you all and thanks for the feedback we love hearing from you.  Sorry I can't reply to your comments.  But it just doesn't seem to work for me i've tried about 3 times and I always bomb out.
xxxxx
The touring Thomas'