To Here And There: Sal and Gary's first border crossing

Hello Hello Hello

After watching Tobey Maguire's Spiderman, I am suddenly in the mood of writing :P

(photo has no connection whatsoever with this article)

Ok here goes. After long talks, we decided to go ahead with the plan of taking Gary out for his first border crossing. (Gary is technically a 'he' cause he belongs to Sal. It'll be weird otherwise :P )

The chosen date was 24th of May 2013 and the destination was Betong, Thailand for a few reason:

It was the easiest and nearest route
Sal had experience of crossing this border before
Most importantly, this date coincide with a charity ride organized by our friend from Singapore

We started our journey around 3:++ am. We had some information about the schedule by our Singaporean friend so we hoped to join them along the way. Plus it was Sal's first night journey on her bike so we wanted to take it easy on the road.

The journey started with our first refueling at R&R Damansara along NKVE.

Me and my half-drowsy face. Sal's all excited though.

Next stop is R&R Tapah for Subuh prayer and then we proceed to the next stop. We had bypassed the Singaporean group at R&R Tanjung Malim earlier so I am sure we will be able to regroup with them at their next stop in R&R Sg Perak.

And whaddaya know..... we did :)

They consisted of a couple of BMWs (including the new BMW R1200GS water-cooled which at that particular date, had yet to be launched in Malaysia) and STOG (Singapore Tenere Owners Group).

That's a lot of Teneres...

Medusa and Gary trying to join the crowd

The Singaporean bikers carried the donation on their bike and stuffed some in their panniers

The group then split into two whereby the majority rode to the border shortly after we arrived. The remaining left later.

Last fuel stop before we entered the border was Petronas Pengkalan Hulu

Check out Ebrahim's GSA all loaded with donations

Sal has been smiling all the way from Puchong :P

We then regrouped with the rest at the border and it was like a 'mini bike week' with over 40 bikes at the Thailand Immigration. It took us quite a while for everybody to clear up all the border-crossing-formality.

After all was cleared, we went to one of the Masjid to present the donations.

After that, we checked in to the hotel. Later in the evening, we went to an orphanage. Majority of the orphans were from the Prostitution in Thailand. It really saddens me to see the kids :(

It was then free and easy for everyone. To cut things short, we stayed there for one night because tomorrow, we headed to Ipoh for a wedding whereas some of our Singaporean friends proceed to Hat Yai.