Day 1: Singapore to Batu Pahat (165km)

The lot of us started of early on Thursday morning. We met at Serangoon Stadium at about 0530hrs and left around 10minutes later. For this trip, we will be covering the most distance on day 1 and day 4 with about 160km to clear.
Among the 5 of us, 3 were using racers and the other 2 using hybrids with 700cc wheels.

We only took about an hour to reach the checkpoint that morning probably due to the adrenaline and excitement of this trip.

Serangoon Stadium

When we reached the checkpoint, we tried to go through as pedestrains but were told to use the motorcycle lane instead. The new checkpoint is annoying since its upslope and has lots of turns here and there. Worse, there are drain covers that road wheels will slip into. Clearing this section was very slow, taking almost an hour to get through the JB side.

Once through, we hugged the coast heading towards Skudai and had breakfast somewhere along Danga Bay.
Cycling along the road to Skudai, we were making good progress and decided to enter a Pineapple Museum but it was closed.

Pineapple Museum

We continued on towards Pontian where we had our lunch break. People are still quite segregated by race in Malaysia and the people were probably curious why some chinese guys and a sikh are eating at a malay joint.

Back on the road again and my tire punctured less than an hour away from Batu Pahat. Zhe Yin developed serious cramps at this point and I stayed with him while the rest looked for our contact in Batu Pahat.
We eventually met up with Darrent the Batu Pahat contact and he led us to his spare house in Bukit Banang where we would put up for the night and on Saturday night. Was about 1810hrs by the time we arrived.