A Ride to FELCRA...

What a beautiful morning it is today with the temp- eratures very tolerant and the skies partially clear. We set to go to LUMUT or somewhere near LUMUT but on the way we discovered my friend's bicycle was behaving funny.

We decided to take an exper- imental route hoping to cover as much distance as we can to punish our muscles and Abdel's stomach which is bigger than mine. Here is where we ended up .... in a village called FELCRA.

It's a well organized settlement and for us coming from Africa and knowing the true meaning of what a village is, this was just nice. First Check on the road to the village. This kind of roads they call them Kampong road meaning village roads. The grass by the road sides is well manicured and the palm plantations just make you smile all the way.

My Chadian friend was telling me that this qualifies to be a Highway in his country. In my country too this is by far a road of high standards.

The beauty of this route lies in the vegetation along the road. Palm plantations, Banana Plantations, natural forest and the green grass all purifying the air. I can tell you the air is just clean even your nose will be smiling while breathing.its rare to see my Chadian friend smile at nothing but today he was just beaming from ear to ear. Look at his amazed face.

Because of all these the ride was smooth and like we were cycling on a flat road. we didn't feel the exhaustion because our senses of tiredness were pre-occupied by the beauty of nature. God is Great.

The path is mainly up hill as we approached our unknown destination. Amazing, my Chadian friend can sweat at nothing. Even breathing makes him sweat hahahahha, but today he was not even shading a single drop of sweat. He was enjoying as much as I was. We could see one or two people in the palm plantations once in a while, one or two cars passed us the entire ride. you can imagine how clean the air is no cars no people only healthy trees and two Africans.

As we arrived at the manned security gate we were amazed by the security guard who welcomed us in good English. I was itching to put my average knowledge of Malay language into practice but i had no chance. This man was up-to it and we gave a chance to practice his English. It was nice. Coincidentally The security man we met has a brother working in My country Zimbabwe and has been there for nearly 2 years. He couldn't hide his joy in meeting a Zimbabwean in a Malaysian village. It rare i can tell you this. He gave us a brief but full history of the village and let us through to and wished us well. I wonder why most Africans say Malaysians are not welcoming. My Chadian friend can testify, we have had great receptions everywhere we go, people waving at us on bicycles and young kids mobbing at us. its a great feeling to be welcome.

We entered the village and believe me its not anywhere near a village you imagine. Well structured, well built, well organized houses, well kept grass and roadsides. Not even a single piece of garbage did we witness along the roads. Its a clean village and the people were wonderful. All of them smiling at us and waving. This is when we met our new friend, the young ever smiling guy who gave us a tour of the village. We cycled from one end to the other, and explored all corners.

Abdel was ecstatic about the Mosque. Its a marvel in the middle of the village. He was saying if it was in his home land it would be a land mark. after riding for well over an hour around the village we decided it was enough and we turned our backs on the village. BUT we had another surprise, our second friend, we call him abang. A cycling enthusiast like us but he is more professional. He attacked us from behind. With the speed he approached us we knew what to expect. We knew even before he can near to us that he was a good cyclist, his bike was four or five times more expensive than ours and he was in full cycling kit. We exchanged greetings. THEN he took us for a ride which was an experience for my Chadian friend. Off road, through the thick palm plantations, across pools of mud and dirty water, make shift bridges and a dirty road. Hahahaha it was fun for me having taken part in a more challenging race weeks before but it was scary for Abdel who had his first experience through a Malaysian Palm Plantation on a bike with a stranger. Before we knew it we were back in our own territory. The short ride summed up our wonderful day and believe me, we enjoyed every bit. For those of you who have never seen what a tired Chadian look like, here is a tired Abdel at his house seconds after arriving. Another day ......... another ride, next stop LUMUT 60 Km from home to the BEACH ....... Watch this space for trips around Perak.