(Daniel) One thing about Fie, my host, that I don’t think I have made clear enough before now is that he drinks. I don’t mean whiskey or spirits, I mean Fie drinks beer. I woke up at 7.30 this morning to find Fie outside the tent having already removed the axle from the trailer again. He stood there with a beer in one hand, and cigarette in the other standing over an open bucket of petrol that he had been using to clean the nuts from the leaf springs. I woke up and had a shower in the black plastic walled bathroom, which was basically a hole over a cliff. After this I found Fie outside in the car waiting for me. I jumped in and we started towards Ipoh.

I had no idea where this Ipoh was, and only knew that this is where you can find the Land River graveyard of Malaysia. It turned out that the drive would take over an hour, and just to be safe, Fie stopped to buy a crate of beer. He opened the first one as we drove off into the mountains, laughing and repeating the words “people fuel!” We drove at a manic pace down the winding mountain roads, and after an hour and wearing down several millimetres of fingernails on the dash, we arrived in Ipoh. First we pulled into a workshop, the man inside seemed to know Fie, and they had a good chat before taking the axle out of the back and having a good look at it.

Meanwhile I called Atec in KL, and asked him to talk to Fie about the plan. Fie spoke with him for a while and then passed me the phone. Atec said that we would cut off the old spindles, and then buy a new axle which we would cut the ends off, and then weld and pin these in place. The effect should be that we have an axle which although heavier, would be infinitely stronger than the old one. The brakes on the new hubs would be hydraulic instead of cable operated, and I started to put some thought into how we could make this work.

The man, who seemed to be the owner of the place placed the axle on some blocks and then used an oxy-acetylene torch to cut the spindles off either end. Then we measured and remeasured the axle before loading it into the owner’s very clean series land rover, and driving together to a huge scrap yard. Inside there were stacks of land rovers, and huge piles of parts, most of them looked like land rover parts, but some were from larger vehicles, and I even saw a scrap 109 Forward control with a gun mounted on the top!

After a short tour, I found myself in front of a yard full of vehicles, some of which looked fairly serviceable. There were two Indian men inside, and they came out to greet us. after a quick conversation with my hosts, the Indian men brought out a huge axle, with a massive differential in the centre. This was a 109 rear axle, I was just about to ask the price, when the two Indian men lifted it up and put it into the back of our vehicle. I panicked, not even knowing the price of the part! I stopped them, and asked to inspect it properly, and what the price was. Fie told me to trust him, and that the price was 600RM, about what we had expected. I tried to take a closer look at the axle, but again the Indian men lifted it up and put it into the back of the Land Rover.

After leaving the scrap yard, the workshop boss drove us back to his premises, there he prepared the oxy for cutting this axle. We measured again, and cut as much of the new axle off as possible, then cleaned it down and trimmed it to the right size. He could keep the diff housing, but I doubt that it had much use now! By now it was lunchtime, so we drove to a restaurant close to the workshop with the parts in the boot.

Over a lunch of duck with soup and rice, Fie and I discussed the brake system again, he couldn’t seem to understand that the cable system had a regulator built into it, and that we didn’t need a new one, as he tried to design more and more complicated systems for brakes tied into the vehicles own system. The very fact that he could think of creating such a radical system shows how far the modifications in Cameron go, to the point of literally creating vehicles and machines to do any job, out of scrap parts. This kind of “out of the box” thinking would be valuable in big design companies, I told Fie that he should set up a company in the UK or America, and call it ModiFie! He told me that he had a family now, and that everything had changed! I could see that Fie had been a real tearaway in his younger years. I drew some pictures for him, and we agreed to look again at the design when the axle was fitted, but to buy a new brake master cylinder, and reservoir as these would almost certainly be required. At the same time we could pick up some new internal cylinders for the hubs, as these would probably be in poor condition.

When we finished the duck, a man pulled up in a car, obviously an old friend of Fie, he parked and then bought some fruit, which we ate while the others caught up in Chinese. After eating, Fie opened his 5th beer of the day, while we drove to another workshop, this time in an industrial estate. These are some of the sides of a country that people don’t see when on the tourist trail. I know that it doesn’t sound amazing to be traipsing around workshops and local towns, but for someone interested in the anthropological side of travel, and the way that people really live in all walks of life, as I am. From this shop floor to the villages and hilltribes in the mountains and the modern capital cities, this is the kind of experience which I value just as much as visiting the amazing sites of these countries.

The two men working in the machine shop came over, and Fie explained our predicament. The boss told us that they were too busy, but we managed to persuade him to put the other jobs on hold, so that they could prioritise our axle. They worked for several hours, first welding the corners of the old axle, so that it would be a snug fit inside the new one. Then they forced the old axle into place, and welded it in. Meanwhile Fie and I sat watching, while the rain that had started outside made such a noise that we couldn’t even talk anymore! Fie drank another four beers, while the two men drilled out the axle, and then welded pins in place to give the new axle extra strength. I could see while it was coming together that this axle would be much stronger than the previous one, and wondered what would break next instead, possibly a leaf spring, or perhaps the trailers a-frame chassis would now be the weakest point!?

Once the work was finished, we discussed the price. I know it sounds a bit odd to discuss the price afterwards, but I have noticed that this is the way which things are done here. It seems that the idea is to put the responsibility on the other person so that they will do the honourable thing, and give you a good price, however I knew that we had put ourselves at a disadvantage here by asking them to stop their other jobs. He asked for 350, and Fie bartered them down to 300, but i had hoped to pay 200. No matter really as we are still talking about £40 here at the worst way!

Now the work was finished, we packed up the complete axle, and headed back in the car while Fie opened his umpteenth beer of the day, we stopped at a parts shop to buy the brake components we had discussed earlier. And then drove back onto the highway and into the hills and highlands of Cameron.

As we entered the hills, which had no street lights, chatting about how much beer Fie drinks and my now debilitating fear of imminent death, we turned a corner and saw an animal moving at the side of the road. I couldn’t see what it was, but it had obviously been hit by a car, Fie stopped and reversed back so that the animal was in his headlights. He seemed to get very exited, and told me that this was a Mangol. We got out and I walked over to look at the creature, it was a bit like a Mongoose, but bigger, with a body not unlike a monkey, but a face more like a cat. As I looked at it, the animal started to move, and managed to raise itself onto one side, it looked like it had been stunned rather than badly injured, and was now coming around. I could see that it’s face was almost that of a racoon or skunk, and just as I was pondering this, Fie, who had been rummaging in the boot of the car, emerged from behind me, lifted one of the huge new hubs from the axle and simply said “can eat.” Before he bludgeoned the creature to death with the heavy lump of metal. When Fie picked up the Mangol it began to shake, and so he swung it by the tail and smashed it into the ground. This seemed to stop the death throws, and he threw the limp body into the boot of the car along with the hub and axle.

On the way back to the workshop, Fie told me that we could eat this in the Jungle tonight, and then tomorrow we could continue through the rainforest to finish the route from the Charity drive to the hill tribe villages. I was completely up for it, including the road-kill dinner. When we arrived back, Thomas had already prepared their vehicle for the trip. I checked out the Wolf and made sure that all my winching stuff was in order. Once we had spent about 30 minutes preparing, the rain started to come down hard, and so we drove in convoy to the entrance into the rainforest, and into the mud and ruts of the jungle at 10pm in the pouring rain.

The track was wet and slippery, with deep ruts that were impossible to gauge in the dark, even with all 12 of the wolfs front lights beaming in every direction! But my newly gained experience of the jungles of Malaysia really paid off as my momentum carried me through obstacle after obstacle. We stopped again at the same spot that we had eaten dinner a few days before and seen the big cat tracks. We quickly set up camp, putting fluorescent lamps around, and lighting flares to keep the mosquitoes and flies away. After this we went to find firewood, I found a good size dead tree still standing just off the tracks. We cut it down, and then I dragged it back to camp. Luckily I was wearing a thick top and gloves, as the trunk had been overtaken by termites, who were now swarming all over it, trying to find out what on earth just happened and who to bite! I quickly cut the tree into logs and started to make fires with them. We made one fire at each end of the camp, and Fie and I went to wash in the river then, while Thomas started to make dinner.

Someone had left huge pipes in the river, where the tack had been built up over the top, presumably to stop the river washing the track away completely. Fie and I spotted these pipes through the brush, and walked through them. About half way was a huge spider which I took a photo of. On the other side was a pool that looked like a good spot for fishing. We walked back to the camp, where the dinner was ready. Omelette with tomato, Noodles with Anchovies and chilli and some fried vegetables. We sat and ate, while the bugs in the area started to move in to get close to the lights. I took photos of some of the more interesting ones, and caught an amazing colourful Cicada, which continued to make its call even in my hand.

After eating, we took a walk around the area, and then sat and drank a few beers over a discussion about how to get passed the tree tomorrow. One by one, we crawled off to bed.

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