(written by Nancy)

We decided to take another day in Kota Tinggi to go out to see the Kota Tinggi waterfall and make sure Dave was fully recovered from his cold.  The waterfall area is about 15k out of the city and we left the hotel about 8:30 so had a pretty quiet ride out there.  There were quite a few rubber tree plantations along the way.  Unfortunately I had a flat tire on the way –first one of the trip!  Good thing it happened on a day we did not have our bags.  Dave thought it was ironic to get a flat near a rubber tree plantation – I think the cold must still be affecting his head.

The falls were a bit funny – not quite the natural wonder that we were expecting.  At the bottom of the falls there was pool area with a water slide and some cafe areas.  We locked up our bikes and walked a short way up some stairs to another falls and pool area – no swimming allowed there though as the water was too deep.  I wouldn’t call it overly scenic.  There were only a couple of people there in addition to us so it felt pretty deserted.  We did get asked to pose for pictures with a couple of other visitors – Dave thinks it’s because we look like bike touring rock stars, or something!

As we got ready to leave it looked like it was going to start raining so we stopped at the cafe to wait it out.  There was an advertisement for mooncakes, something we heard about while we were in Singapore so we thought we’d give it a try.  Mooncakes are part of the Mooncake or Mid-Autumn Festival, a primarily Chinese festival that originally celebrated the end of harvest.  I think the official day is not until the middle of September but they apparently start selling mooncakes about a month before the festival starts.  We got a mixed nut mooncake to share – it was quite tasty, very dense inside.

The storm clouds passed us without any rain so we headed back into Kota Tinggi, taking a different route so we made a bit of a loop.  About 3k from town I got another flat tire – arrgh.  We pumped it up in hopes that we could make it back to the hotel and try to figure out what was going on.  We just made it back without having to stop again.  Other than the flat tires the ride was nice – quiet roads and interesting scenery.  I’d skip the falls if we were to do it again though.  (Dave patched the tires back at the hotel – hope everything goes well tomorrow).

We had lunch over at the hawker stalls just behind our hotel.  Good food – a variety of dishes that you could choose from with steamed rice.  Our server was a very cute young lady who was very friendly and explained each dish to us.  The grand total for 2 big plates of food was A$3.09 – hard to beat that kind of deal.

We had a restful afternoon in the air-conditioned hotel room watching bad English movies on TV and then headed out for dinner.  We played the bad tourist tonight and went to the local Pizza Hut.  I don’t think we have been to a Pizza Hut in over 10 years and the pizza is as bad as I remember!  The menu had a few options on it that I don’t think you’d find at many Pizza Hut’s in the US or Australia, and they also had satays and a special Ramadan menu.  Being Malaysia, there was no wine or beer on offer.  It was an experience anyway!

Tomorrow the plan is to ride to Mersing which is back over on the East Coast.  It is a little fishing village that is the main jumping off point for various islands off the coast.  Not sure yet if we will do any island hopping – we’ll see how it looks when we get up there.  I’m a bit reluctant to leave this nice hotel that we have – I expect we won’t have accommodation this nice at this kind of price for a while!

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