Shoe String Budget R/c: Road trip from to Rantua Panjang Thailand border-Day 1 Johor to Kulua Terengganu

5 days.
1785.7km.
162.5L of petrol.

A while back, I got "retrenched". That gave me the free time to accomplish my dream of driving to the Thai Border and back. I was planning on visiting the Border at perlis, but the other half did not have the time required for such a long trip. Moreover, I had always wanted to "complete" the Malaysia Federal Route 3, from the start to the end.

Having decided on the duration of the trip, I planned my stops and decided on these cities.

The plan:

Day 1: Drive from Johor Bahru to Kuala Terengganu
Day 2: Go Kota Bharu for lunch, visit the Rantau Panjang Immigration complex., then reach Cameron Highlands.
Day 3: R&R at Cameron Highlands
Day 4: Visit Ipoh for lunch, then make my way back to Kluang for the night.
Day 5: Back to Johor Bahru.

Having decided on the locations and hotels, I needed to settle the transport.

There was no way I was going to do the trip on my car because I am not prepared to lose it. My motto is to never bring what you cannot afford to lose. Moreover, I wanted something that may blend in better with the east coast traffic. So...I rented a Toyota Camry. This proved to be the right choice (on day 2).

On the day of travel, I picked up the other half from her place and left my precious at my regular car park lot at home.

We went to JB via Bus 160 to collect the rental Camry at The Puteri Pacific Hotel (Hawk Car). It wasn't my first time renting from Hawk Car, so it was almost like a regular routine to collecting the car. There was no chance of getting lost. As usual, lugging all the stuff wasn't too easy, so Taxi from Johor Sentral Terminal to:

I was pleasantly surprised when Hawk Car gave me a 2.4L Camry with full electric and leather seat.

You see, the previous times when I rented from them, I was always given the 2.0L version. On one of those occasions, the Camry even came without leather seats!

Handsome car with 90k km on the clock. In Camry speak, this has only just completed the run in.

Due to the massive jam at causeway, the trip started a little late, 1.5 hours later than I expected.

Did the usual stuff- buy water, buy biscuit...etc- and by the time I finally got on the journey proper, it was already early afternoon, with 550km of travel ahead.

After some driving and circling, we finally reached Mersing for lunch at 2pm. 2 hours later than I expected.

A quick lunch and off we were gone. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I took a wrong turn on route 3 and ended up in Endau.

Beautiful mistake because this allowed us to have a little durian before we move on. You see, the first time I did a road trip, I went hungry for most days because I was always circling around for the "perfect food". What I realised later on was that on such a trip with uncertainty of when is the next meal, you will rather eat too much than not eat. So....

And we moved on...stopped as the coast side for some photo taking. The beauty of Federal Route 3 is that you get the drive beside the sea at certain stretch before and after Kuantan. This is one of those "trunk road" the runs beside route 3 and often lead to a dead end. In this instance, this road led to a collapsed road that had blend in with the beach.

Rained. Lost our way. More rain. Minor ponding. Jam near Kuantan. etc etc. By the time we got to the state of Terengganu, the sun had already set.

This was at Chukai, probably about 150km from Kuala Terengganu. It wasn't my first time at Chukai and the previous time when I drove around there at night, it was horrible. Dark roads with no lights. Dim Camry headlights. Blinding lights from incoming traffic. It was horrid. So I was really worried at this point. Doing 50km in such condition is really about as tiring as driving for 3-4 hours in daylight.

However, my worries proved to be unfound. The road to Kuala Terengganu got wider and better. On many sections of the roads, we were actually driving on dual lane carriageway with centre-divider and street lamps. Pleasant surprise.

Just when everything was going well, it rained again. Rain was massively heavy. The poor condition of the rental car wiper meant that I lose almost all visibility to light reflection each time the wiper swept. It got so bad that I had to slow down to a crawl at 30-40km/hr. By then, it was already 10pm and I still had not had dinner!

Da Bao Mcdonald's and settle dinner while driving.

The night view along the oil refinery stretch at Dungun or Peka area was absolutely astonishing.

Another hour or so and we finally reached Kuala Terengganu.

Reached hotel at 11.30pm. About 4 hours later than I had planned.

Day 1: 12 hours on the road. Travelled 553.5km. Averaged 11.8km/L. The fuel consumption is really no different from the 2.0L camry AND the 5 speed gearbox is really quick as compared to the 4 speed on the 2.0L.