Previously on "Two Up and Overloaded" -
Marisa: Oh my gosh, that was so scary. I'm not a spelunker. As we were exploring Niah Caves in East Malaysia, we discovered that they're not just huge, but they're also very dark and full of creepy creatures such as bats, spiders, cave crickets, and even a snake.
But as we made our way out of the caves and returned to the light, we were ready to get back on our motorcycle and continue our adventure to complete our great loop of East Malaysia on the island of Borneo. But first, we had to get out of the swampy jungle in the Niah Caves National Park, and it was beginning to rain.
Tim: Down the boardwalk again was just absolutely fantastic. This time, it was drizzling a little. It was a little misty.
[Niah National Park - Malaysia]
But that was good because we felt kind of disgusting based on the amount of bat guano that we had breathed in.
Marisa: Kind of? No, we felt completely disgusting. Not just all the sweat from having been in the caves. It had been super hot, no wind or anything. But then yeah, we had gotten literally pooped on by bats. And so we were covered in that because we'd been climbing all over the caves. And so this rain, even though we didn't have rain gear, it was really refreshing.
Tim: It was nice, yeah.
[Music]
Marisa: Well, we still have a two and a half kilometer trek out of here. But hopefully it'll let up soon.
The sun just came out. Whoa!
Tim: Glory, glory, hallelujah.
Marisa: And it smells so good, just all of a sudden, like rich jungle, vibrant, fully oxygenated and crisp, like you can just breathe it in forever.
Tim: What's up, buddy?
We had a strict ferry schedule to try to stick to, to get back across this 20 foot river.
Marisa: No, the ferry left like every 5 minutes?
Tim: 5 seconds! Yeah, it's just like, "Hey man, I'm over here, pick me up." And they're like, "Okay, one second," and then they come. But a lot of people in the last video had said they like the fact that there's not... They went like 20 years ago, and they like the fact that nowadays there's still not a man-made bridge. So I kind of like that. It'd be cool if 20 years from now we went back and there's still that little stupid ferry with the...
Marisa: I like it too. That's true.
Tim: Enough bat poop on us, but I'm not going to poop on the ferry.
Marisa: Yeah.
Tim: There wasn't a bathroom on the ferry.
Marisa: Yay, our boots are there.
Tim: So the rain ceased a little bit when we got back on the bike, which was nice because then we had that little bit of pre-wash, right? And then on the way back to the hotel, we had a little air dry. Because yeah, the last thing I wanted to do was put on my jacket when I was just slimy.
So that was a spectacular day.
Marisa: Yeah, it sure was.
Tim: I mean, we spent all day there. We got there just after it opened at like 8:30 or so, and it's 4:34. Yeah. So we spent...
Marisa: It was a long day.
Tim: Yeah, but it was super awesome! And it was like $4.50 a person to go on this all-day hike through absolute awesomeness. But we touched a bunch of bat guano, so yeah, we need to go home, wash our clothes, take a shower, wash our clothes again, take another shower.
Marisa: But we still needed a proper shower when we got back to that hotel.
Tim: Select temperature, which one? Hot or middle?
Marisa: Middle.
Tim: It’s going to do whatever then.
Marisa: We haven't eaten anything all day, so... And it's 5:40. And it's 5:40, it's dinner time. Oh yeah, we had cookies.
Tim: Guano cookies.
Marisa: Cookies covered with bat dung.
We went out to eat but we were so tired. So we slept amazingly well.
Tim: Now look at me! Ta-da!
Marisa: Good morning everyone. Yesterday was so amazing. We just had the greatest time going through the caves, but I was really, really tired and beat after all those many miles of hiking and trekking and just all of that adventure. I was almost thinking that today I wanted to take a day off and just relax. No days off here, folks! But we decided, you know what? This is going to be a nice ride. We're going just 3 and 1/2 hours away, but it's going to be along the coast, and we're heading to a beach town called Murah. And... Murah? Mukah! Mukah.
I'm feeling much, much better. I think I only have very slight residual sickness and just coming up a little bit out of my lungs and out of my nose, and that's it, though.
Tim: No one needs to hear that.
Marisa: Sorry, too much information. Um, yeah, I'm feeling better. And so we are packing up, and then we're going to head to the ocean. It should be beautiful.
Because during our first time through this region of Borneo, we were in a bit of a rush, we skipped a lot of cool things. But now that we could take our time, we wanted to explore the lesser-known regions of East Malaysia while also delving into the rich history and culture of the Chinese Malaysians.
[Music]
Intro: Hey everyone! Nice to have you here. We are Tim, and Marisa Notier. I ride in the front. And I’m in the rear. We travel the world and we pack too much gear. Oh, all the places we’ll go! Through rain and through sleet and through mud and through snow. Oh, all the things we’ll see! We’ve been to a country or two. Or three! Oh, all the fun we’ve had! To have you along, would make us real glad. So give us a like, and hit subscribe to join us along our epic ride.
[This episode is brought to you by
DynamicMotorcycleAccessories.com]
[Music]
Tim: Sweet and sour chicken, some curry chicken...
Marisa: So every single day, sometime in the afternoon, it is going to rain at this time of year in Borneo.
Tim: Or drizzle a little bit. There's going to be precipitation.
Marisa: So even though it did rain on us, the sun came out again as it always does. These rainstorms are usually really short, and it was beautiful. The greens of the lush forest around us and then the blue, blue skies were really pretty.
Tim: And the road being as good as it was, we were very thankful that up to this point on garbage roads, on construction roads, on all these different obstacles that we've had to take, we've never had a flat tire, which is good.
Marisa: On the island of Borneo.
Tim: On the island of Borneo. And knock on wood, right? Because there's more to come. Never say that stuff out loud. We've had plenty of flat tires on all of our journeys, and sadly, we had left our tire inflator back home. Yes, which is not, you know... You always try to downsize, but whatever you don't bring is the thing you'll need, and whatever you bring you'll end up not needing.
But good thing for us, our good buddies over at Auxito have actually come out with a cool little tire inflator.
Auxito has this A501. There's Marisa in the background. And it's really cool. It's cordless, and so you don't need it to be plugged into your cigarette lighter or anything like that. It's battery-powered, and check this out folks, look how cool this is. Bam.
You can set it to your desired level that you want it to go on. And you just plug it in, throw it on, and it pumps it up really, really quick. And of course, there's a little flashlight on it, right? Because who wouldn't have a flashlight so you can make sure that you can see everything that you're doing?
Marisa: So they also just came out with something that's brand new. It's barely even out yet. It's called the J503 Jump Starter, which is another thing that we definitely should have. Um, so check that out as well.
Tim: I love motorcycle accessories and motorcycle accessory toys, and it's stuff like this that puts a smile on my face. So a huge thank you to our buddies at Auxito. Check them out at www.Auxito.com, and if you use promo code 2upandOverloaded, you can get yourself a little discount.
So it's a cool partnership. We like collaborating with companies that definitely fit right in our wheelhouse, if you will, and this thing's perfect. Awesome, good people, good stuff. Check them out.
Marisa: So we get to the town of Mukah, which really turned out to be a cool little unique town. It had some bizarre quirks to it, and the first thing we noticed was we got into the hotel and there was perhaps the coolest fish I've ever seen in my life.
Tim: It could read minds. I don't think it's from this planet, and it talked back to its home planet giving updates of what happened, sadly, just in this reception area of this hotel. But it was super, super weird. Never seen one of these before, and if I saw it while scuba diving, I'd immediately leave the vicinity because I'd be like, "I don't know what... there's radiation down there. People are dumping toxic chemicals, let's get out." But it was... yeah, I called them Bob.
Marisa: Yep.
And then inside the hotel room, it was very, very colorful. I like their color choice. Unfortunately, there wasn't a window in the hotel room, but you know, sometimes that happens.
Tim: Yup.
Marisa: After we got settled, we decided to go explore the town. Mukah is right on the coast, and it also has this beautiful waterway running through it.
We were walking along the riverfront, and we got our first taste of the Chinese heritage in Malaysia.
[Music]
And we were going to delve more into that Chinese heritage later on.
Tim: We wanted to go shopping for some snacks and stuff, and we walked into a grocery store, and there was some really interesting music going on that I'm not too sure if they knew exactly what all the lyrics were, but... We can't even play the whole song because it was…
Who wants some quail eggs?
I was digging it for what I could.
Marisa: I enjoyed it.
Tim: Craziness, I don't even know what it was.
Marisa: I think it was rap.
Tim: It was just rap. That's how out of touch I am. It's just called rap, Tim. Oh wow, that's... that's weird.
Marisa: It's probably like one of the most popular songs out right now, and everyone in the comments is going to be like, "Jeez, guys, how do you not know this song?"
Tim: They didn't bleep anything out, where if they did though, like it would just have sounded like somebody who's terminally ill. It would have just been, “bleeeeeeeep.”
Marisa: Wow. Hmmm… Maybe not.
Good morning everyone. Welcome to our green and yellow room with no windows.
Tim: It's like a 7Up can in here.
Marisa: Yes. Today's our last...
Tim: Second to last.
Marisa: Second to last day. Our last day to a hotel. Our first time going north, well, northeast, we really wanted to go as quickly as we could and just get to Brunei, get to Sabah. But this time we are taking the more beautiful route along the coast of the South China Sea.
And there's a national park called Maludam, which is our destination tonight. I want to see what that's all about, and there may or may not be some ferries involved. This is a lesser taken route that the locals told us you have to go on. It's really, really cool, and it's way better than going on the highway. So we are excited for that. We're also excited to get out of this room. It's been nice, but without windows I slept until 9:30! I just kept sleeping forever. Gosh.
So yeah, we got to get on the road. It's a long day.
It is all coastal mangrove swamp forests that is a very unique area for specific types of monkeys that only live there. You have to take ferries to get in and out, almost like it's an island. It's kind of separated from the rest of the world in that way. And so we were really excited.
Tim: The rest of the world?
Marisa: The rest of the world, yeah. The rest of the mainland. Yes.
Tim: Like there's a bridge, it's kind of like Asgard.
Marisa: It's in another dimension.
Tim: Yeah, it's a rainbow bridge.
We were getting back into more rain clouds where it drizzled on us. But it's so okay.
Marisa: It was another day, so of course it had to rain again, absolutely.
Tim: On the way north, I had seen this cool Chinese temple that there wasn't a really good place to do a u-turn on. Yeah! And so I knew it was coming up. And as soon as we got into the area where I wanted to scout out for where it was, it got less cloudy and the rain stopped. Then, in all of its magnificence, this huge Chinese temple appeared. Zero people in it.
Marisa: Yeah!
Tim: And yeah, we pulled in and pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.
Marisa: It was amazing!
Wow!
Tim: Yeah.
Marisa: This particular Chinese Buddhist temple is the Yu Lung San Tien En Temple, and it is believed to be one of the largest Buddhist temples in Malaysia. Amazing! A proper Chinese Buddhist temple. Construction began in 2004, and materials were brought mostly from China.
This temple is the perfect example of how much influence Chinese immigrants have had on Malaysian society. In fact, the Chinese are the second-largest ethnic group in Malaysia after the Malay majority, forming 22% of the population. Although Malaysia and China have been trading for many centuries, it was really during the British colonial period that a huge influx of ethnic Chinese moved to Malaysia, subsequently influencing the culture, cuisine, and language here. These days, it's hard to go anywhere in Malaysia where you won't find signs written in Chinese and some Chinese-style food.
[Music]
The type of Chinese Buddhism you see here is called Mahayana Buddhism, or Da Sheng in Chinese, and it contrasts quite a bit with the more Southeast Asian Buddhism that we will see later on in places like Thailand. You can see the prominence of the color red here, which is considered auspicious, as well as the presence of many statues of bodhisattvas or enlightened beings.
Tim: Yeah, we were able to walk freely all by ourselves to check out all these really cool sculptures and like morals on the side?
Marisa: Murals.
Tim: Murals, yeah, that had morals. And yeah, we thought there was nobody there, and we walk into like one of the main structures and there's incense burning and this cool little spiral, bell-shaped but spiral incense thing. It was really cool. And we took off our motorcycle boots because they're not really temple-worthy.
Marisa: No.
Tim: And we walked in, and there was a lady there selling incense and other little knickknacks, and she just hangs out there.
Marisa: She was just the only other person there.
Tim: Yeah.
Marisa: And we discovered the Zodiac Circle.
Tim: I don’t know which one I am.
Marisa: You don't know what you are!
Tim: I don't know my Chinese zodiac. I know my regular zodiac.
Marisa: The Greek one?
Tim: My OGZ. Yeah, I'm a Gemini.
Marisa: Yes, you are.
It's the zodiac! How cool is this? Where am I? Oh, here. You're either a dog or a pig.
Tim: I'm a parrot?
Marisa: Pig. I'm a rat.
Apparently, according to the story, I, the rat, won the race of the zodiac by jumping on the head of the ox. And technically I won because I was at the front, so the ox won the race, but I was in front of the ox. So clever.
Tim: That's Marisa. But yeah, I don't know my Chinese one.
So I looked it up, and it said I was a rooster.
Marisa: We've just learned that Tim is a rooster.
[Tim makes chicken sounds]
But it was wrong.
Tim: That's kaka! It's caca. That's not true. We googled it. I'm a dog. I've always known I'm a dog, I feel like a dog, I'm faithful but moody.
Marisa: Someone who can do math can figure out how old we are.
Tim: This is true. Unless you think we're a century older.
Marisa: 12 years, just 12 years.
Tim: Oh, just 12 years? See, I don't know how any of this works.
Marisa: Or 12 years younger.
Tim: Or 12 years younger. Yeah, yeah.
Marisa: Next time, we go to an area of East Malaysia that was way more isolated than we expected. That forces us to buy some unclean gas which, in turn, does some horrible things to the motorcycle. [engine won't start]
And it's our last day before we have to bring it back to the rental place. But that will all be in the next episode. So thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you liked it. If you did, please give us a big thumbs up and hit the subscribe button below.
Don't forget to join our Patreon page if you really like what we're doing here and our motorcycle travels all over the world. You can join for as little as a dollar a month, and you get to see our videos ad-free, a little bit early, and you can get a postcard sent to you from wherever we are in the world.
Tim: This is true. We just sent out another round, and don't forget to, if you do join Patreon, put in your address. If you are a current Patreon member and you haven't gotten a postcard and you're like, "Oh, I wish I had one," make sure we have your address because it's very important for us to get them out. We just did another round, and so hopefully, you guys start receiving them, and we're excited to have you on board.
We love having you along for the ride here on YouTube. This whole experience is helped funded by viewers like you, so we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Marisa: Thank you so much, and we'll be seeing you next time.
Tim: Stay safe, everybody.
Marisa: Bye!
Tim: Peace.
And BogusM8940, you like some bloopers, so here's a couple extras for you. Enjoy in all of our weirdness and stupidity.
Together: So...
Marisa: Sorry.
Tim: No, go for it.
Together: So we...
Marisa: Tim!
But many times before we have had to.
Tim: Yeah, I like that. Don't put in me picking my nose of a blooper, nothing. All right?
Marisa: We will see.
Tim: What a jerk.
There's going to be precipitation.
Marisa: Yes.
Tim: Across the nation.
Marisa; Yes, somewhere.
Tim: You didn't rhyme.
Marisa; I didn't!
Tim: Nope. Precipitation across the nation, ready for a brand new... beat. I don't know.
Marisa: What rhymes with nation?
Tim: Participation.
Marisa: Participation.
Tim: No, and precipitation.
Marisa: It does, yes.
Tim: And inflation.
Marisa: Yeah, I know. That's all I can think of, but I can't tie in inflation. All right.
Tim: Weigh station.
Marisa: Weigh station! Ooh, all right. Uh...
Tim: Crustacean.
Marisa: Crustacean!
Tim: Nailing it!
