I had a break, there is why.

Lately, you surely noticed that the activity on the website has been very low. The reason is that I took a break. It was not in the plan as I wanted to come back to France without taking any plane. Two reasons for this break are:

• I spent nearly 3 years without coming back to France. I needed to see my family and friends.
• Indonesia has been hard physically and mentally as I had to keep going everyday even though I was sick at least 2 days a week, due to the heat and the sun and the humidity.

I spent quite a lot of time thinking about this decision but it was the most reasonable one. So I started to look for people on Couchsurfing and Warmshower who could host me and especially my bike in Singapore when I will be back to France. Adrian, a Spanish teacher living in Singapore with his wife Ying has been the first one to reply positively. I’m lucky as he became directly a friend and we have plans of cycling together in the futur…

With Adrian and Ying! Thank you guys for being awesome!

So I dropped my bike at his place then went on a holiday in Thailand with Amy, it was awesome, then flew back to France to make a surprise to my family. Only two friends knew that I was coming back and none of my parents could imagine that I was going to be back for the end of year celebrations.

Back to France

When I arrived in France, my friend Chris came to pick me up at the airport and we drew to my parent’s house. No one was there. We went for breaky in my hometown and it was weird to see this place again. Nothing had really changed. We tried again a bit later… still nothing. We went golfing and came back in the afternoon, still nothing. I spent the night at Chris and the day after we tried again. My dad was here! Then my mum came and finally my sister with her boyfriend that I didn’t know yet as they met each other 2 weeks after I left 3 years ago. I finally skyped my second sister who is living in Tours and my mother appeared in the frame of the camera. Every one reacted pretty strongly! I could not believe it. It’s great to feel loved and I felt a bit guilty to have left for so long. I recorded the moments they saw me to make a video. You’ll see that in my next video!

I was supposed to stay for a month and finally stayed for almost 2 and a half months in France. It was so good to be back and being able to relax without being stressed of finding new clients or a way to get a bit of money to sustain myself.

I flew back to Singapore on the 1st of March and went to Adrian’s house. I found my bike again and the first night Ying got the idea to go for dinner by bicycle. It was good to be back on the wheels.

What’s next? Still thinking…

I have to admit it’s been hard to come back to nomad life. After three years travelling all around, I kind of aim now to a more settled life where travels will be for work and not longer than 6 months in a row. I think, my plan for after this bike trip will be to create a visual agency based on travel photography and to make my new website www.thenomadwolf.com grow bigger.

For now I’m back on the road, the first day was tough as I got sunburnt and had a heat stroke. I lost all my physical condition but in a week I should be able to hit 100km a day again. As well, being alone all day start to be a bit difficult. That’s what I wanted 3 years ago but I definitely evolved on this point and I need and want now to share my experiences with someone else.

The trip is still on!

Follow the green road to reach the border Singapore / Malaysia by bicycle

trip distance: 63.49

time: 3h41
total distance by bicycle: 9784km

I started earlier than the day before. It was around 8.30am and surprisingly, the weather was great! Meaning cloudy and not too warm. The road is hilly but it’s alright. The traffic is great as they are careful of me. Since yesterday, there is more and more thumbs up and cheers coming to me, that’s my best fuel to be honest. I don’t eat much as I have lot of energy stored in my body from France. After 2 hours riding, i bumped into Jonas from Germany, he is bike touring as well. He started from Vietnam and now cycling towards Singapore where he will take a flight to New Zealand. That’s the first time I see someone with a mountain bike rather than a bike touring and it seems to work well for him!

On the road I often listen to podcasts and today I heard two “Planet Money” episodes about applying economics to dating and about bees sent to California for pollinating almond trees. They do that because the almond business became huge and the bees population is getting lower. You should definitely listen to this podcast if you like shorts stories:

 I also listened to a Tim Ferris podcast with John Crowley. He is such a brilliant human who discovered solutions to heal his two children touched by a rare genetic disease that was supposed to be fatal. He inspired me a lot for being able to find solutions instead of being spectator and fatalist. You can listen to this podcast here:

The Tim Ferris Show with John Crowley

Later on, I was having a rest under a bus stop because the heat started to be very important at around 1pm and a bunch of young local workers from the plant nursery on the opposite side of the road came to wait their bus. Malaysian is similar to Indonesian so we tried to speak together but a few words are different and something I was able to ask in Indonesia was hard to say here. They all took a picture of me at the same time and as I had my camera in hands I took a picture of them illustrating exactly what it is to be a white person in a area where there is no tourists. Their first question was what my religion is and they didn’t understand why I didn’t plan to go to the Mecca on my trip as they were all muslims and this is the trip of a lifetime.

Being the only tourist around.

I lost all my stamina and physical condition since I haven’t been cycling for almost 3 months and over ate for those 3 months in France. I decided this time to not push my body too much. I don’t have any visa problems in Malaysia as I can stay here for 90 days and it will only take me between 15 and 20 to cross the entire country. At 3.30pm it’s too hot outside to keep going so I decide to stop for the day.