I'll say it upfront.
If cycling is not your thing, don't bother with Pengerang.
What started off as a daytrip to recce an off-the-beaten track option for our informal Bike Club, turned out to be a day spent waiting for Bumboats to take us to and from this little sleepy district at the southern tip of Johor. You see, unlike Ubin, which has the boatmen uncles doing a roaring trade ferrying wide-eyed urbanites to and from our only rural paradise, not many people visit Pengerang. At least that was what we thought when we waited an hour for the requisite number of 12 passengers to gather before our boat could make its way out of Changi Point ferry terminal.
But when we finally got to
ulu Tanjong Pengelih jetty at noon, after a bumpy 50min ride on an intoxicating, diesel-smelling boat, our cab driver advised us to be back at the pier to catch our watery ride back to the Mainland at 2.30pm.
Yes. But why?
Because, as it turned out, a whole clan of Singaporeans and Malaysians had descended on Pengerang over the weekend to attend some big wedding. And at three, they were expected to leave via Bumboat
en masse. So looking at the pathetic frequency in which the boats called at Tanjong Pengelih jetty, and if the both of us wanted to arrive back on the Mainland in time for work on Monday, we had better get our butts back here on time.
OK. Duly noted. And so we were whisked to a seafood lunch at Sungei Rengit, 18km away, in this really retro-looking, bone-shaker of a taxi. I figured cyclists would usually do this distance to the kampong town of Sungei Rengit if they bothered to lug their bikes with them. But since we didn't have our own set of wheels this time, we had to contend with the air-conditioned ride through thankfully flat terrain, snaking along the coast, past non-descript kampungs and mosques, to our lunchdate with crabs at Good Luck Seafood restaurant. There was also no bike-rental shop in sight. Certainly not within the environs of the jetty which would have made it convenient.
Good Luck Seafood restaurant. A place where our driver said Fiona Xie came to visit and eat last year. Fiona Xie, that pretty little tanned vixen, in Sungei Rengit sweating over chilli crab? We looked at each other incredulously. But the food was great. Simple, cheap and maybe because we were hungry, tasted better than the usual suspects you order from the lousy restaurants back home.
Sungei Rengit is so small, you could cover the whole mega-Kampong in 45mins, flat. And because we didn't really have the time to explore every nook and cranny on foot, it looked superficially uninteresting. I would have loved to have a murky cup of Malaysian
kopi-o in a runned-down shophouse or something but that was not to be. Because we made the ultimate mistake of getting the cabbie to take us to the Desaru Fruit farm 28km away.
I had wanted to see if the route was do-able on bike. And I am happy to report that it is not. Not only is the road to Desaru a typical bumpy B-road with undulating hillocks and what-nots, the farm was a place of bad-tasting durians and lonely bananas. We paid 20 Ringgit for a small child's head of a
Mao Shan Wang (Cat Hill King variety) fruit, assured that it was of the finest quality by the crooked vendor, only to discover that the texture of the seemingly golden-yellow seeds were akin to unripe Jackfruit left to dessicate in the fridge. Hard and tasteless. Ptui! In the interest of personal safety in a foreign land, I did not throw the empty shells at the head of that stupid con-man.
But as time was ticking away, we had to make our way back to the jetty. And when we got there at alittle past 3pm, there was already an army of chatty S'poreans, old folk, young folk, kids in tow, plastic bags aplenty, waiting for the bumboats to take them home. We were late. Damn!
Anyway, we spent the next 2.5 hours, camped on the uncomfortable seats of the new (but dilapidated) Tg Pergelih Jetty complex, looking forlornly out to sea. Hoping to catch a glimpse of the next, nearly extinct, bumboat to take us away. The last boat leaves Changi with its full complement of passengers at 4pm. And so by 3pm, I don' t think many people from the Mainland would be visiting Pengerang in the late afternoon. That, of course, translated to an increasingly impatient group of wedding merry-makers waiting at the jetty because the bumboat arrivals were so few and far between. Whenever a boat appeared, I swear the crowd cheered.
So, was it a bad trip? A waste of time and money? I think not. If you look on the bright side that is. The company was great. I had the chance to see what a potentially nice ride a trip on mountain bike to Sungei Rengit could be. And lunch was yummy. Pengerang has to be enjoyed from a pedaling perspective. Not from the air-conditioned comfort of a taxi (which by the way was damn expensive!)
But I wouldn't be on a Bumboat in a hurry.
Not for the next month or so anyway before Ubin beckons again.
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