Cycle Touring Malaysia - Mersing to Kuala Rompin
We arrived in Kuala Rompin at 10:30am after getting on the road by 6am, the hour or so before the sun came up felt like bonus time, as if we were given a 20km head start! The fact that the road was mostly flat also helped 🙂
The first impression of the town was similar to the others we’ve seen along the way, pretty run down and dirty. There was one hotel we found on the main road for RM60/night (about AU$20) called the Sri Rompin Hotel, the sign on the front of the building was falling apart and the rooms weren’t much better.
We’ve talked from time to time about doing everything on the cheap cheap, and sometimes even agree to stay at the cheapest place in the next town, but after cycling for several hours, feeling exhausted, dirty and drenched in sweat there just isn’t a price we won’t pay for a clean room with aircon, a comfortable bed and a hot shower (within reason of course!).
So following that thought, we went in search of better accommodation and with the help of our trusty Sygic GPS App we found the Rompin Beach Resort. Despite the name we didn’t get our hopes up since we haven’t seen anything over here yet that we’d define as a “resort”, but it actually turned out to be pretty decent, we got the deluxe room for RM190 (about AU$60), the regular price is RM238 but we managed to haggle them down because we’ll be leaving tomorrow before the included breakfast.
The room looks like it’s been recently renovated with a couple exceptions, the TV is an old small tube tv with a rabbit ears aerial that barely picks up two channels, and the ceiling looks a bit mouldy, but other than that it is furnished nicely and has everything we want, and even opens up onto the swimming pool. Oh and we just found out they sell alcohol in the resort lounge but only after 5pm, so we’ve set our alarm!
Also our plans have changed, originally we were going to cycle all the way up the east coast of Malaysia and fly from Kuala Terengganu into Thailand. But now we’ll only be cyling as far as Kuantan about 200km south of Kuala Terengganu and flying west to Kuala Lumpur which we’ve heard is a bit more westerner friendly and has heaps to see and do.
Mar 26, 2013
