Driving in Malaysia

My first experience driving in Malaysia was painful - driving rain, pitch darkness, limited visibility. I didn't know where I was going, my GPS was out, and I was getting dazzled by lights from incoming vehicles. I have driven in Australia around kangaroo and cattle zones, so the warnings to beware of the cattle were nothing special, but the warnings to watch for elephants really had me a little worried. I decided it must have been a joke.

I found out a little later that Johor has a significant population of elephants and they do sometimes cross the roads there, so if you see a warning about crossing elephants, take it seriously. I have no doubt an elephant would make a mess of your car, but riding a motorcycle, I'd probably have to have my body surgically removed from the elephant, even if I survived and this just doesn't sound pleasant at all.

The weather in the period I have been in Malaysia (mid to late February) has been quite wet, but reliably so. You can pretty much guarantee that mornings and early afternoons will be cloudless or a little overcast, but will not rain. There is a rain period from about 3pm through to about 7 or 8pm when it clears up and, as a friend told me (and I didn't really believe him) if it is not raining at about 9pm then the night will be clear of rain for some time. There can also be a midnight rain period that lasts until just before dawn.

The ultra-violet is severe here, like it is in Australia, but the sunlight is a little less bright, so you don't quite expect it. I have had some excellent sunburn just riding around in the mornings with normal jackets and gloves on. One day, I went for a long ride to a local beach (about 2 hours return) and on the trip out my sleeves blew out leaving an inch gap between my shirt and gloves. This resulted in a wonderful red wrist band that was sore for days. I also got a lot of sunburn on my neck due to the high UV and lack of cover on this area.

I have made a lot of use of these tubes of fabric that are placed over your head under the helmet and pulled down to cover the neck. They are also really useful for keeping dust out of your nose and mouth. This is not a big problem in Australia, but Malaysia has a lot of particulate debris on the roads from dust and dirt to grit and pulverised bits of plant and leaf. It is easy to inhale this on the road, so having a cloth over your mouth and nose will save you a lot of unsavoury experiences.

As for roads, the major highways are pretty well maintained and the speed limits are set at 110kph when you are outside a city limit and at 90kph when you are close to a city. Sometimes if the highway takes you through a city, it might drop down to 70kph (or even 50kph) when there is entering or exiting traffic.

I was told by other riders in the area as a motorcycle, I would have no problems travelling at 130 or 140kph in the 110kph zones and at first, I didn't really believe this. After being hassled by scooters sitting on my arse at 100kph in a 90kph zone and watching some of the larger bikes fly past me while I was doing 120kph in a 110kph zone, I decided to crank it up (safely). On a specific stretch from Kuala Lumpur to Johor Bahru, I had the bike up to 140kph in a 110kph zone and a police car passed me (much faster) waving and smiling. I have been able to get the bike up to in excess of 160kph in a 110kph zone with no trouble at all and the roads are good enough to handle it. However, note that the legal limit it signed well and you take a risk exceeding that limit.

The smaller roads will not handle this speed and you would be crazy to try. Both the state of the roads and the amount of slow traffic would be prohibitive at best and deadly at worst. Many of the country roads into the jungle areas are not signposted with tight corners and you find even at 80kph (in an 80kph zone) it can be difficult negotiating these corners as they come up on you from out of nowhere with no warning. Additionally, some of these old roads have some wicked dips in them and I got airborne on one doing 60kph which had me a bit worried. There is also no way to overtake if you get stuck behind a slow moving vehicle on these roads and it is often very dangerous to try.

On the larger roads, there is a shoulder that becomes a default motorcycle lane for the scooters and smaller bikes. For most cars, they expect that all motorcycles should be in this non-lane, but the edge of the road is not a place to be doing much more than 100kph and I would consider that speed in that lane is dangerous. That section of the road is not maintained as well as the main road, and there is often debris over it, like gravel, branches, and road-kill. I started trying to stick with all the others in the left lane, but as soon as you are on a big bike and travelling faster than 100kph, it is almost suicidal to stay there. You are also in a big blind spot for many normal road scenarios.

It is also expected that you as a motorcycle will relinquish your lane to anything larger than you if it approaches at speed behind you, even if you have nowhere to go. It is expected you will pull over to the left and the vehicle will pass very close with no indicator on your right. The vehicle behind will sometimes flash lights or use their own indicators to urge you out of the way. As a courtesy, in Australia, you stay left unless overtaking, but in Malaysia even if the right lane is clear, you will need to pull to the left while in the left lane to give another vehicle space to get past you. It doesn't matter if the right lane is vacant and they could move into the right lane to get around you; you, as a motorcycle, are expected to get out of the way to anything larger behind you.

Staying to the left is also useful for the toll plaza that seem to arrive randomly as far as I can see. When I got into Malaysia from Singapore, I had to get a "Touch and Go" card for USD$34 (which I found out later was a lot more than it needed to be). This card is used at the toll points for cars, but the only toll point I have had to use it with for a motorcycle was the one when I entered Malaysia from Singapore. Every other toll point has a small motorcycle lane at the far left just large enough for a motorcycle to move through.

Some of these motorcycle toll lanes are simply a small lane right next to the car lanes with no toll gate. Others are intricate weaving lanes that move around the toll area, with motorcycle parking and different single lanes disappearing off into other directions. There were even a few that had an over and under pass area for motorcycles. I always took the direct route as I was never sure where the other routes led. The idea, though, is to keep your speed down and that is why they are designed to be quite narrow and meander around the place.

Night time riding can be quite dangerous because the roads are not well lit and their seems to be no courtesy about turning down the high beam for oncoming vehicles. I was told that there is a general courtesy to turn high beam down, but that the lights themselves are often not adjusted to focus on the road properly and many focus high, which looks like high beam glaring in your face rather than being focused on the road. Regardless, in rain this can be devastating and I have refrained from driving at night since that first night ride to Mersing.