Having finished the longest day of the race to date (558 km) and completing couple of very fast sessions, Avi and I were headed back to the hotel a little past 4pm. Typical to our “Road Runner” mode (nick name given to Team Saxena by the other contestants), we were zipping by other cars when Dionysus smiled on us.

As we made a turn towards Kanchanaburi (of The Bridge Over River Kwai fame), we were mesmerized by the glorious smell of BBQ wafting through the air.. (BBQ smell much like a smile or a wave is a universal expression).  It also helps to have lived for 20 years in Texas where BBQ is a religion and Texans think God created fire to help us BBQ.

Realizing we had at least an hour before we need to check in the Master Time Control, we did a quick U-turn and entered into a world of culinary experience unparalleled for my eyes and palette.

Here’s a quick tour visiting and sampling food with the local vendors including drinking coke right out of a plastic bag!! We also had to resort to aggressive miming to identify/verify what we wanted to sample as we didn’t want to get our meats confused… after all dogs, cats and pigs all have four feet.

After tasting a variety of local dishes, we topped if off with what appeared to be something that Lady Gaga’s hairdresser sold off to the Thai.  It looked like hair from a tonsured head and was rather colorful green-pink-blonde that I could only picture on top of the great poet Lady Gaga’s head.

Curious brothers that we are, we shelled out 20 Bhats (about 60 cents) and I tore into the plastic bag while fighting visions of licking Lady Gaga’s bald pate.  It is safe to say that is is the best damn cotton candy aka Buddi ke Baal I have had in my life.  Highly recommend it.. got same back for my room and plan to enjoy it as I soak once again in Epsom salt laced bath water.

A note on hygiene:
To play it safe, we applied Purell Hand Sanitizer on our hands.  However Avi pointed out that it was AFTER we ate all that stuff so we promptly squirted a few shots of Purell down our gullets for safe measure. Three hours later I am glad to report all’s good.

The journey continues as we get ready to race around The Bridge over River Kwai tomorrow, the mid point of our 24 day endurance race.

Trang to Khao Lak. 463 kms

It was one of the more busy days as the route headed for Khao Lak on the island of Phucket. Our first stop was coffee at the cleverly named “Cabbages & Condoms” cafe, where the story goes the owner of the café used to back in the day go about handing condoms to the Thai population to control the AIDS epidemic. He would also hand out cabbage to men as it is apparently suppresses libido (end of cabbage soup for me now..)

We drove a long day and took part in two Regularity tests – for rookies like us, tackling an average-speed test with a secret finishing point was a new experience.  The other test was a closed-road Test-section which was another hillclimb which corkscrewed up the side of a mountain with thick green vegetation of banana trees on each side. All this shook up the leaderboard. Avi and I did extremely well on both the tests especially given we had never ever done a regularity. We would have ended up very high on the leaderboard with a flat 3:00 on the speed section but for coming in too hot at the finish line which resulted in a 1:00 penalty.

Ovearall, we are gradually climbing our way back on the leader board to make up for the large time penalty we got on Day 2 for getting into the ditch. Avi and I analyzed our daily results for the past 9 days and have realized that we can easily be a top five contender in our class out of the 70 cars.. provide we kept out of rookie penalties and also have a car prepped better so that can take some of the beating.. Some of these guys have spent north of $300,000 building up their cars compared to the 1/3^rd or less we spent on our little orange contender.

After the regularity section, we crossed the Sarasin Bridge onto Phuket. A double run over a “gradiently challenging” road was a great thrill, before we stopped for a short coffee halt to reset the adrenaline sensor and then wrapped the testing route through the forest to Khao Lak appropriately called “Phucket Up and Over”.

The next day was another rest day.  However, we spent a good part of it taking care of the car at a local mechanic shop.

Got multiple issues fixed such as steering wobble/alignment, broken door handle, fluids check, and had them look at the rumble in the transmission. Despite various attempts they were unable to fix it and we are now stuck with a car that drives well but has the ominous rumble from the gear box-transmission shaft area.. While attempting to diagnose the problem, we met this rather interesting chap who had a T-shirt with the picture of Colonel Sanders and the words “Original Bastard” emblazoned across it..

it gave us some much needed laughter on a rather tense day as we were babying the car back to full health. Going to get the ERA mechanics look at it tomorrow.. getting a bit worried and have started praying to the car Gods..

We also took the time later in the day to take in the beauty of the place and also enjoy yet another amazing authentic Thai dinner in a dive of a place.. these Thais sure know how to cook and their sauces are just from another world.. enjoy some of our culinary experiences in form of these pictures..

Georgetown, Malaysia. Rest Day.

On Day 5 we zoomed into the island of Penang after crossing the longest bridge in Asia.. a 20km long gargantuan span where we put the Datsun to a speed test and went over 170.. in the process we overtook pretty much the entire field many of whom I am sure were shaking their fists at this pair of newbies.

We then rolled into Eastern and Oriental Hotel, an 1875 colonial heritage hotel that is an oasis of opulence, calm and above all was air-conditioned and dust free!

The term ‘rest day’ is a bit misleading as much of the day is spent fixing up the car and if you are lucky, fixing yourself up. To quote one of the participants, the entire garage looked like a refugee camp of well to do folks down on their hands and knees coddling and in some cases, beating up their machines.

Given we were one of the first ones to arrive, we had the hotel manager arrange for a local garage to meet us and haul away the car for a series of repairs/patch ups. These included: dismantling and cleaning the brakes, fixing the front right brake squeal (courtesy of the mud from the rolling into the ditch incident), repairing faulty emergency flashers, replacing seat cushions, adding an extra radiator fan to help with cooling, fixing broken door handle, topping off fluids, replacing blown front headlight, fixing oil leaks at the differential and under the distributor.

Standard stuff to expect after you beat up a 44 year old machine extensively for 5 days straight. Some of the other contestants had more serious issues and one of them had a gearbox and a mechanic flown in from Belgium for his VW Karmann Ghia.. talk about dedication.. makes our rat episode look small although we used brute force and determination to beat that rodent. In fact, in memory of the rat conquest, we have been considering naming our car Datsun Donatello.. views?

After handing over the car to the garage, we made it back to the hotel in the evening and I promptly dove into a tub bath using some of the hotel provided Epsom salt. Proven cure for sore everything. After the bath, we decided to recee the city for our mission the next day.

Ended up getting a great low cost Indian-Malay fusion meal at hotel Jaya and then had our first massage which deserves a separate entry… time permitting I shall post that tonight.

I woke up early on rest day determined to get a classic straight razor shave and top it up with a mani and a pedi (never had one in my life). Was driven by how I Iooked the night before.. could have easily be confused for a newly released POW after the Tet offensive.

I promptly called up our butler (yes we have a dedicated one in this fru fru hotel by the sea) and asked for an English speaking guide and car which arrived as scheduled. Avi and I then set out looking for shave, pedi and mani.. Avi had this distinct amused look on his face which mimed “mani, pedi? really?” but I decided to ignore it.

We drove up to one of those Asian barbershops with the red and white barber pole spinning in front. (A quick history lesson for the uninitiated: The look and colors of the barber pole are linked to bloodletting, with red representing blood and white representing the bandages used to stem the bleeding. The pole itself is said to symbolize the stick that a patient squeezed to make the veins in his arm stand out more prominently for the procedure. It is a legacy of a (thankfully) long-gone era when people went to barbers not just for a haircut or shave but also for bloodletting and other medical procedures)

As I made my way into the seat with this bloody history in mind, I was greeted by a recently transplanted Nepali kid who looked no more than 15. With visions of a bloody face and Nike child labor articles in mind, I did a quick shift into Hindi to verify two things: asked him if he was older than 18 (he seemed offended but confirmed he was), then asked him if he has done any straight razor shaves before.

Now he was positively offended and went about demonstrating how and why the government of Malaysia gave him a “barber visa” (I am guessing that). He was masterful to say the least and threw in a spectacular head and neck massage at the end. During the 20 minute nirvana I managed to find out a lot about him.. that he arrived three months ago form rural Nepal, makes MR900 (<$300) a month including room and board, and that he misses home.

The results were spectacular. My face felt like a baby’s butt.. soft, smooth and eminently touchable. I decided to give into some self-indulgence and kept feeling my face and thinking of babies while trying to keep my mind from drifting into different types of smooth surfaces.. had to check and chide myself a few times. As I was working away these asinine thoughts from my evil twin with bad inner voices, disaster struck. My cheeks that were the epitome of a baby’s butt suddenly started morphing… they still felt like a baby’s butt but one with a severe case of diaper rash!!

A quick replay and I realized the blotchy redness had to do with this lotion my Nepali barber applied at the end… it smelled like something from Scheherazade’s kit in 1,000 Arabian nights and stung like a mother. I realized he went crazy with the lotion after I handed him RM 20 for the shave and then threw in a tip for RM100 to ease his homesickness. As a measure of appreciation, the poor young man decided to splash on an entire bottle of Scheherazade’s version of Old Spice on my face leading to the rapid reddening. Taking quick evasive action, I ordered a few wet towels to wipe my face down and it quickly averted a facial farce.

Having conquered Shaving, Avi and I then went in search for Mani and Pedi and asked the driver to take us to the best Chinese nail spa in town.

He promptly drove us to this place that looked pretty legit. I popped open the door and asked if they would do mani and pedi for two guys. The look from the spa owner and the patrons (all chinese women) quickly gave me an indication that I should bolt and avoid one of the scenes from a Hong Kong production featuring Jackie Chan with a mob chasing him down the streets.

Having survived that experience, I decided to skip the streets of Georgetown and ask for a mani and pedi in the safe confines of our five star hotel. Figured they were bound of have these services for both sexes. Once again, the look from the Spa manager and her polite explanation of “we don’t yet offer those services” told me that should abandon the mani and pedi search at least here in Malaysia. So, with a heavy and unfulfilled heart, I am leaving Malaysia and looking ahead longingly to Thailand for some action.

We leave Malaysia tomorrow (Day 7) for the Thailand frontier. In addition to the 130 drivers and navigators, there are 18 crews on this event who got some well deserved rest. They have been working tirelessly setting up race circuits, manning passage and time controls and in some cases, fixing up people. On that front, we got the news from the couple who were in a rather bad crash and are being treated in Singapore. Rabia, the lady has had an operation to have her broken arm pinned, and Daniel has had a thorough check over after breaking a couple of ribs. Both are expected to make full recovery.

Looking forward to the drive and race into Thailand tomorrow and into what is supposed to be a charming Thai welcome at the Rua Rasada Resort, at Trang.  Feels good to complete 2,000km or a quarter of the race. Feels even better that the car held up and we are holding on to a respectable top third position overall.  It is still a long race with many more interesting moments and ranking changes to come.

Cameron Highlands to Kota Bharu. 440 kms

A rather bland day racing wise.. The recent devastating monsoon floods in Malaysia swept away our racetrack, the ferry slipways that we were to ship our cars across, and parts of the countryside. Made for an insipid day for racing but allowed time to take in the stunning scenery as we made it to Kota Bharu in 7 hours.   The first picture of the notice from the organizer says it all..

After a very misty start we had to skip the short hill climb test through the tea plantations of the Camerons due to the said floods. Was the right call by the organizers as the 3.5km track had steep drop and parts of the hillside were washed away. We then began the descent to the Kelantan River valley for morning coffee plus a couple of interesting new additions as we made it to Kota Bharu.

Checked into the Grand River view hotel.. they win the award for “truth in advertising” for the river was the size of a frickin Asian Amazon.. about a kilometer wide at least (check out the view from my room).

Avi and I had time to take in some local delicacies and reveled in the particularly tasty Roti Canai.. sublime stuff! Finally we stopped over in a local mall where they did not have any clothes that fit a 6’ 3” Indian built like a line backer..

Eventful day.., what was to be a very pleasant morning drive turned into somewhat of a driver’s ed course at Schlitterbahn water park. It rained until noon and gave a new challenge and dimension to our rally and endurance race sections. Unfortunately one of the Bentley’s could not get enough grip and went off the road.. Driver and co-driver broke wrist and ribs and were airlifted to Singapore.. they are doing fine considering all else.

Later in the day we had a planned Rally race through a plantation with low trees so plenty of good visibility racing. However, the morning rain had turned that 7.8km rally section into what can best be described as a dirt bike racing tracks. The front runners (we were still holding on to our good start) got on to the track and had a blast racing through the mud (see attached GoPro video).

Unfortunately about 3/4^th of the way in, one of the vintage cars had slid off the road into a ditch. We were asked to slow down as we passed them and as soon as we did, we caught the ditch on the other side of the road and down we went sliding off the road. This was followed by three other cars behind us meeting the same fate which resulted in us getting a 25min penalty on the score-card which dropped us at the end of Day 2 to the top 40%  of the pack overall.. a good drop from the scorching Day 1 we put together from Singapore to Desaru.

Good news is we are still in the race and both Saxena Brothers and their car is holding up quite well..