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Monday 9th April 2007 - Trincap, Malaysia

(Daniel)Wow, I felt bad when I woke up this morning, it had been a long night, and now I was being woken by someone stacking clothes on me! I lifted my head up to see a young lady walking away, she picked up some more clothes and then turned back towards me. She walked all the way up to me, and then jumped! She hadn’t known that I was there, and had been happily stacking clothes on top of me as I slept! I could see that she was equally surprised to see a foreigner, or Gwai Loh! I introduced myself, and explained that Fie had helped me last night, and that he had invited me to stay. She told me that she was Fie’s sister, and called herself Helen, but of course that was a nickname.

There was a baby in a cot, which turned out to be Fie’s son, and I could see from the wedding photos around that he was married. Fie that is, not the baby! I tried to look as corpus mentis as possible, as the other members of Fie’s family appeared one by one. Hi mother, on seeing me had a fit and quickly started to prepare a huge breakfast. When it was ready I went through to the kitchen, to find that everyone had a plate, I had about three, and that I had a knife and fork next to my plate, instead of chopsticks! I told her that I can use chopsticks, and she changed my them for me! We sat down and ate Chicken soup, rice, sweet rice, and some fried white bait. This was washed down with a kind of fermented milk drink, barely palatable, but probably an acquired taste!

After eating I got a call from Aleyna, who was still in town. It turned out that they had also had a long ordeal, with 6 punctures in the jungle! Their journey had been 12 hours, with families and road cars dragged through jungle mud and serious terrain! I told Aleyna that we would come and meet her in town, Fie had to go to work, but Thomas drove me into town then. After a few minutes driving around, we spotted Aleyna outside a Chinese cafe.

Aleyna told me about all of the stories from yesterday, I told her about my own ordeal, and she decided to help me by staying with me for the day while we repaired the axle. Her suggestion was that I weld the old axle, and then drive with it to KL, where Atec and the boys from the Land Rover club could fix it properly by modifying a Land Rover Axle or similar.

After a snack at the cafe, we drove together to Fie’s workshop, where he had already removed the axle, and was looking at it hard to see the best way top weld the spindle back in place. I took the opportunity to show Aleyna Fie’s super modified 300bhp Nissan powered 110 pickup. She was most impressed. We also spotted a small water leak on Aleyna’s car, which the boys fixed for free. In exchange I saw that Aleyna gave Fie a bunch of DVD’s of the XMen and LROM exploits over the years. Once Aleyna's car was finished, we drove back to his house, where we had some food, while Fie welded the axle in the farm workshop. When the axle was finished and Fie was satisfied that it would hold, we drove back to his workshop where we refitted it to the trailer.

Another broken axle problem

Fie's 300bhp Nissan Turbo in his Landie

Fie Grinding the Spindle

Fie Looks Confused

No High tech here!

We still had the problem of taking the trailer off it’s perch ontop of Fie’s recovery trailer. I decided to remove the recovery trailers wheels, and use the winch, and a pulley block, slowly lower the 1.2 tonne trailer backwards using the worm drive on the Wolfs Superwinch Husky. We fitted the winch cable to the front of the trailer, and then passed it through the pulley block, and attached this to Fies car located in front of the trailer, then released the winch cable from my vehicle which was located behind the trailer.

The Trailer on the Trailer!

Our solution to getting the trailer off

Slowly winching the trailer down

Some Minor adjustments

The idea worked and eventually we got the trailer back on the ground. Once the wheels were down, we lifted it and turned it around, where we fitted the jockey wheel. Just as we turned around to sit down and relax, a loud cracking sound came from the trailer and it dropped on one side about five inches. On inspection, the weld had broken already, and now the wheel sat jammed in the arch. I laughed it off, and patted Fie on the back. This kind of frustration is not unusual with the trailer!

Something funny

Oh, they're laughing at my expression!

Now no-ones laughing as the axle snaps again

Leave it there for now I think

I made the decision then to stay in Cameron, and fabricate a new axle, consulting along the way with Atec via telephone. I thanked Aleyna for her help, and told her to go back to KL, as she must have been tired! Thomas and I then went to town to buy some beer and food, so that we could have a BBQ at the workshop. I stopped at the ATM, only to find that the bank had stopped my card again! They do this all the bloody time, thinking that someone has cloned my card. Luckily I managed to get someone in England and not India on the phone, they were able to switch the card back on again. Meanwhile Thomas was in a shop buying chicken and sausages for the BBQ, after he had finished we jumped back in the car and drove at light-speed back to the workshop.

When we arrived a few others from the off roading had come up to take a look at the trailer and to help themselves to beer and food! We sat up cooking until late, and with all the boys around it wasn’t long before we were misbehaving! Fie brought out his airgun, made from a fire extinguisher. With it he shot the rats that came into the workshop from the farm. I tried it and was surprised at the kick which it had! I told them about my Bullet proof jacket, and ended up getting it from the car. We decided to try it, so I got the spear gun, and set it to maximum force. Then I put the jacket around some boxes of Chillies which had just been packed on the farm. We shot it, and the box did get damaged, but surprisingly the jacket had not been penetrated!

After eating the BBQ of chicken and crab sticks, the other guys left, and Fie and I stayed up late talking about ideas to repair the axle, and somehow having a very fluid conversation, despite neither of us being able to speak the others language! I am not sure when the idea got in my head, but suddenly I had a very strong feeling that I would like to complete the route to the Asly villages that I had been unable to complete due to the wolf size. Rather than laugh off the idea, Fie seemed to like it, and we made arrangements to try again if we had time. We would either remove the roofrack in advance, or take the chainsaw and my shovels and dig out enough to fit. The latter was my favourite, especially in this inebriated state! I put up the rooftent at about 3am, and climbed into bed, while Fie slept in the workshop.

 

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