(Daniel) I got up and showered this morning, before packing the rest of my stuff into the Wolf.  I was just filling the trailers water tank when the reporter from last night showed up.  I had completely forgotten about him!  He took some photos and asked a few questions, although I guess that we had discussed most things last night, he also said that he wanted to concentrate on the security issue, and moreover the philosophy that I had applied on the Wolf that a visual deterrent would keep the thieves from trying, as opposed to testing their ingenuity against your devices!

After going through this, I said goodbye to Jeff and Juliet and then entered the throng of traffic that KL seems to suffer from all day every day!  As I drove out of KL, I stopped at at least five petrol stations to buy a map of Malaysia, but each one had sold out, luckily, whilst audibly complaining in the last, someone overheard and gave me his map, which was little old and worn, but certainly had all the places I needed to know on it!  I stopped again at a last petrol station to tighten the brakes one last time as they were still slightly loose and then found to my surprise that I had been traveling the right route all the way anyway, and that I was now heading out to the highway which I needed to get to Kuantan.

As I drove the city turned to suburbs, and then to jungle, which became more and more lush, the greens were amazing, and I remembered a guy that I met telling me that the Amazon rainforest is actually younger than the Malaysian one!   I stopped once for lunch, and again for a drink just outside Kuantan, where I arrived at about 5pm.  The town was quite small and was obviously mostly populated by Muslims, with several large mosques.   As I drove through town I spotted a sign for a leisure boat shop, and followed them to a place just south of the town centre.  As I pulled up outside I noticed something in the drain, and when I took a closer look, couldn’t believe my eyes when a small crocodile ducked under the water!  They were proven right a second later though when the tiny croc returned to grab whatever it was eating when I scared it off!  I walked over to the office and told the Chinese man who came out go greet me, he told me that they had fresh water crocs out on the other side of the river and that they could grow up to 5 feet in length!  And here was I thinking that I would get my engine repaired for some fishing in my inflatable dinghy on the river!?   Anyway, I left my engine with him, and gave him my mobile number to call when it was ready, then headed out of Kuantan towards Cherating, where Aleyna had told me that I would find a nice place to stay for the night.

By the time I got to Cherating it was dark, and I couldn’t really see the resorts from the road, I drove all through the town, and stopped at the last one, the Lagoon Villa Resort.  Inside was a small cosy place with a rickety wooden bridge that led to some chalets on the side of a lagoon.  I pulled up inside the gates and asked a lady at the front if she knew where I could camp for the night, a man came out then and told me that I could camp at this resort, just on the other side of the rickety bridge.  I walked over with him, and agreed that it would be a nice place, but wondered if that flimsy wooden bridge would take the weight of my 4 tonne truck and trailer?  He seemed confident, so I took a run up and drove across to cracking sounds and groaning timbers.  When I returned to look at the bridge, two of the timbers had broken and disappeared into the river below, I wondered about getting back across!

After putting up the roof tent, I walked over the road and bought burger from a stand, while I ate I chatted to the owner about the trip, as he had seen me drive past earlier.  After this I walked back to the Resort, and heard all sorts of animal running around in the dark, I looked around in with my torch, but couldn’t make out what any of them were.  When I got back to the campsite the man from earlier came back over and introduced himself as Zaire, and after a short chat we discovered a shared passion for fishing.  We agreed to go out on his boat the next day, and I went to bed looking forward to a day on the river tomorrow.  During the night I noticed that the temperature here on the East coast is much hotter than the West side, and woke up sweating several times in the night.

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