Yesterday we arrived in the remote town of Bagan Datoh. It is an old town that was originally settled by Hindu’s from India. The people where friendly but they were very surprised to see tourists as the road stops at Bagan Datoh. It is a dead end town due to the Perak River. We had discussed with the kids all of the cycling options and they chose to cycle into Bagan Datoh and take the risk that we would not be able to get a boat across the river and would therefore have to cycle back 62 km to go around the only river crossing.

Allister spent 2 hours walking around asking about a boat with no luck. When he got back to the hotel he was hot and bothered and had reached a point were he was happy to cycle the extra 62 km. I on the other hand love cycling but hate backtracking. I convinced him to come out for another walk with me to see if we could find someone to help us. As we were walking along the fishermans road an old Chinese man called out to us, asking what we wanted. I walked over to him and asked about a boat across the river. At the time I could not have predicted how involved this process was going to be.

The Chinese man called out to a friend near by and explained to him what we wanted. The friend phoned anther man who must have  jumped on his motorbike straight away because he turned up about 5 minutes later. He then called someone else and so on until we were in a group of about 6 old Chinese men all talking at each other. After about 30 minutes of discussions the original man asked us how much we were willing to pay. Allister offered half of what he and I had discussed earlier. We obviously offered way too much because the 6 men did not have good poker faces. They were delighted at the offer (~$70 AUS). We were told to meet them at their fishing shack at 8am the following morning to catch our boat.

Best adventure so far.

Bike being lifted on a fishing hoist.

Bike being lowered in the boat View from the fishing shack.

Once we reached the other side of the river we had a lovely cycle to Lumut. We then jumped on a much bigger boat for the 20 ride to the Island of Pangkor.