DIESEL in our MOTORCYCLE? Disastrous End to Our Malaysian Adventure 🇲🇾

When you’re riding a rental motorcycle in a foreign country, there are some worst-case scenarios that are the stuff of nightmares. Putting bad fuel into your motorcycle is one of these, but even worse than that is suspecting that it might be DIESEL!

It’s the last day of our rental, and this is DEFINITELY not how we wanted to end our great motorcycle journey across East Malaysia…

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Transcript

Marisa: Previously on “Two Up and Overloaded” -

As we made our way back to Kuching, the city where we started our motorcycle journey in East Malaysia, we delved into the rich history and cultures of Malaysia's ethnic Chinese.

But now we were back on the road and only had a couple of days left before we had to bring our KTM 250 Adventure motorcycle back to the rental place. But this next stretch of road was going to take us to an extremely remote corner of the island, an area that is only accessible by boat, an area that is so isolated that we are forced to get unclean petrol.

And suddenly we realized that we may have just destroyed the motorcycle in the process.

[engine cuts] 

Tim: Uh oh.

[engine won't start]

[engine won't start]

Intro: Hey everyone! Nice to have you here. We are Tim, and Marisa Notier. I ride in the front. And I’m in the rear. We travel the world and we pack too much gear. Oh, all the places we’ll go! Through rain and through sleet and through mud and through snow. Oh, all the things we’ll see! We’ve been to a country or two. Or three! Oh, all the fun we’ve had! To have you along, would make us real glad. So give us a like, and hit subscribe to join us along our epic ride.

[This episode is dedicated to Our Join the Journey Patrons]

[Join for as little as $1 a month! See link in the description below.]

Marisa: So after our brief lunch of laksa, of course, well at least that's what I had. Yeah, it's my favorite dish to get in Sarawak. 

Tim: Lots of lots of laksa. 

Marisa: We headed back on the road.

Tim: No, no, no, no, it's okay, it's okay. We'll lose it.

No, no, it's okay. Thank you very much! For the cats. Thank you very much! Nice to meet you! Thank you! Goodbye. Hut, hut, hike.

Marisa: Bye bye!

[Music]

We were headed to an area called Maludam National Park, which a lot of people told us we should definitely go visit. It is a coastal low-lying wetland area that is famous for its unique animals, and it's really remote. You can only get there by taking two ferries to and from the area. It's almost like cut off from the rest of society.

[Music]

Tim: When we got to the ferry and we got on, it was pretty exciting because we went across the river.

[Music]

It was a very wide river, which is good. It was too long to ride the motorcycle across, but there are some really awesome little river crossings on all of the BDRs that we have ridden through back in the States. This is an awesome time to shout out Emmaus Moto Tours, who do just that: take you down these absolutely incredible landscapes where you go through desert lands, mountain passes, there's river crossings. There’s just epic landscape everywhere you can possibly think of. 

Marisa: And you definitely want to go with Emmaus Moto Tours because they will guide you through all of the difficult sections and you'll be with a group of fellow motorcyclists. It is always an amazing time.

Tim: A lot of times, when you're crossing a river, you don't know how deep it is or what the best path is. So when you're with an actual tour guide, they know how to make you not dump into the river, flood your engine, you're in good hands. Just the combination of a trusted tour guide on the BDRs, which are the Backcountry Discovery Routes, that combination is absolutely priceless and flawless. So make sure to check them out at EmmausMotoTours.com.

But once we were on where the road connected to the coast, that kind of strung along, we could immediately tell that it was not just all palm oil. It was really, really pretty. 

Marisa: Yeah, this was the national park. 

Tim: Indeed, and to actually delve deep into the national park, you have to dive pretty far into it. 

Marisa: Yeah, and you have to take a boat. 

Tim: Indeed. We knew that this was the habitat of a lot of horn-billed birds. Rhinoceros hornbird bills, what are they called? 

Marisa: Yeah, rhinoceros hornbills. 

Tim: See, it's not as easy. You looked at me. Everybody was like, why can't you say it? Say it aloud. Rhinoceros horn billed birds, buddy.

Marisa: Maludam National Park is an entirely low-lying, flat peat swamp forest. Although forests like this used to cover much greater areas of Borneo, they've mostly been exploited for timber and palm oil plantations. It's an important habitat for many animals, such as rhinoceros hornbills, stork-billed kingfishers, proboscis monkeys, and this park has the only viable population of red-banded langurs in the world, a type of critically endangered monkey that is only found in Borneo.

Tim: The sun was going down, and we knew we needed to find somewhere to stay for the night. There weren't a whole lot of options, so there was this town of Maludam. 

Marisa: Maludam, yeah.

Tim: And we were hoping that there'd be a string of options there. There turned out to be one.

[Maludam Hotel - 1.6605˙ North 111.0417 East]

Marisa: Good job!

Tim: I pulled the motorcycle up onto the curb, and I kind of did like this Benny Hill thing trying to get it perfect. I nailed it. 

Marisa: You did, eventually. 

Tim: In the end, I got it.

Marisa: Is that still called "nailed it" if it takes 10 minutes? 

Tim: It was like parallel parking with no obstacles in front or behind. There was something behind me, but I just, I didn't want to block the 100% store, and I didn't want to block the stairwell. So I was just being polite. And everyone was watching me, and finally, I was like, you know what? This is going to be good enough.

Marisa: Look at this. This room is huge! Wow. Air conditioner is working. Yay!

[Southeast Asia Journey - Day 140]

Good morning, everyone. It's our last day! 

Tim: It's a scary day. 

Marisa: Why is it scary? 

Tim: Because it's Friday the 13th.

Marisa: Yeah, it's our last day of travel, and we are only 3 hours away from Kuching here in Maludam, which is a tiny, tiny little village. It's kind of on the edge of this national park and also on the coastline here. We had to take a ferry to get here, and we have to take a ferry to get out of here. 

Tim: There's one gas station, and I'm hoping that they have gas or else this is where we live. 

Marisa: "Gas station." 

Tim: This is where we live. 

Marisa: So that's kind of the first order of operation today is to get gas and to get the ferry and get out of here. But actually, before that, we're going to go have some breakfast. 

Tim: Gas ourselves up. 

Marisa: Yeah, I'm feeling very hungry, so let's check this town out.

So the next day we had a very important plan of getting gas right away. 

Tim: Yes, we needed breakfast first, we needed to gas ourselves, and then get gas for the motorcycle because there were no big Petronas or Shells or anything that we saw, and I was getting a little nervous. 

Marisa: This is the one breakfast place in the town and dinner place. It's the one place. 

Tim: It's the one piece. We found the one piece. 

No fish. 

Marisa: Make it flat too.

[Thank you.]

Tim: We’re ready to go. 

So we pulled out of town, which is like a strip mall. 

Marisa: Yeah.

Tim: Hey, dude. Bye, buddy! Bye, mister!

We took a right and got into the gas station, which was this little shed. 

Marisa: It was a left, both lefts. 

Tim: Both lefts? 

Marisa: Yes. 

Tim: It was a right. We had to go back the way we came. We're going to look later and then at the end be like, you have to apologize to the people. 

Marisa: I'm pretty sure it was left. 

Tim: It's a right! 

Marisa: All right.

[It was a right!]

Tim: Gasoline? Gasoline?

Marisa: Petrol?

Tim: The gentleman that was giving us the gas didn't speak English. 

Yes, please.

Marisa: Motorcycle. 

Tim: Motorcycle, no diesel. No diesel.

101% of all motorcycles, they all run off of petrol, but for some reason, this guy was like, "Diesel, right?" And I was like, "No, diesel," and he's like, "Ah, diesel." No diesel. 

Okay. Yeah, we can't have him put diesel in.

Marisa: I know, that'd be bad. Maybe saying diesel a bunch of times is not a good idea. 

Tim: And I was like, "No, gasoline” in Spanish, and then I was like, “No, just regular gas.” 

So... regular gas, right? Regular? Okay.

And I was fairly sure that he knew that the motorcycle wouldn't take diesel, but I was just really concerned because the word was said, and I was like... 

Marisa: Yeah, that was the problem. I think you did a very good job of saying that you didn't want diesel, but because now diesel was brought up and you're on this new fandangled big kind of looking motorcycle, it's an adventure brand, probably something he's never seen before, it just got stuck in our heads. 

Tim: Yeah, he wouldn't, I don't think. 

Marisa: I don't think there's any motorcycles that take diesel. 

Tim: No, but just people are weird. 

Marisa: After that moment, we were a little bit concerned whether it was diesel or not. 

Tim: Well, I said diesel a lot. I was like, "No diesel," you know? And I don't even know if that time I was using "tidak diesel" as much, "tidak" meaning no. 

Okay. 

Long of the short, we got some kind of fluid in our gas tank all the way to the brim. And we gave him a little bit of cash and we left.

Marisa: [How much does it cost?] 

Man: [Twelve.]

Marisa: Thank you.

Tim: All right, get on. Thank you. I think that should be enough to get us out of here.

Not too much further down the road, the bike started acting funny. It was from going into first, into second, into third. First into second was kind of weird, and it just didn't feel like it had a lot of power behind those 250 cc. And anytime we would turn around corners or go over a bump and I had to slow down to anticipate not launching Marisa off the back. But anytime I needed to gun it again, it was just like, [putters out]. It just felt really bad.

Marisa: So by the time we got to the next ferry that was going to take us off of this Maludam National Park area, we were pretty upset because we knew there was something wrong with the motorcycle. 

Tim: We got on the ferry, and we parked it, and it wasn't the joyful ferry ride that we had getting on to this remote section. I was just ultra concerned that I had screwed the bike up on the last day we were going to have it. I didn't know what the guy put in it, I didn't know how old it was, I was just not a happy camper at that moment.

So even if I said, “diesel,” I don't think it should be like… I don't know.

Marisa: This ferry ride was miserable. It felt so long. All I wanted to do was test the motorcycle out, you know, rev it, start it up. Of course, you're on a ferry, you can't do any of that. 

If it makes you feel any better, according to my research, we wouldn't have gotten this far if it was diesel. 

Tim: Yeah? 

Marisa: Yeah. 

It was like this torturous waiting, waiting, waiting to see what is going on. Also, we were in this really remote area, and I was terrified that it just wasn't going to start again.

Tim: And we didn't have cell phone service, we didn't know about a tow truck, like all the worst-case scenarios were going through our heads.

And then here comes the ferry docking, and of course, we're all the way up at the front because that's where all the motorcycles go. And I flipped the switch, and I started it, and it started up. And I was super, super excited.

And then we got off of the ferry, and we started going up the little concrete ramp.

[engine dies]

And 3/4 of the way up, it just died. First gear just couldn't do it.

[engine turning over]

I had to turn it off and on and restart the ignition a whole bunch of times.

[engine turning over, won't start]

[engine turning over]

[engine starts, revving]

Thankfully, it started up again, but now I'm super freaked out. And it was no more fun, no more tourism today. It's a beeline directly towards Tay Motors because we need to get this serviced because this is bad.

Marisa: This was a rental motorcycle, and we had rented it from Kuching from a place called Tay Motors a month ago. We had rented it for a month. It was about due to be back. We still had a few more days left on our rental, but we decided no. There is something wrong, and we didn't know what we had done to it, but we just really needed to take it back as quickly as possible. The other big problem is that this area was so remote there was still no gas station for a very long time. And so we were just going to have to see what this motorcycle could do, if it could get us to the next gas station.

[Music]

Tim: And Marisa, being the co-pilot, put in on Google Maps where the closest gas station was, and I rerouted it in my phone. And sure enough, we got there. 

I was super excited because now in my mind, it's like, all right, now all I need to do is just drain all that bad gas out of the tank. There'll still be some in some lines, but we'll be able to burn through that relatively quickly.

Marisa: All right, we've concluded that draining the tank is not going to happen, so there's only a little bit left anyway, so we're just filling it up and hoping for the best. It might be a while before all that bad gas has been run out of the lines. But I kind of want to know, like right away, if it works. I'm not going to know. Oh man.

Tim: But for some reason, on the KTM 250 Adventure, the gas hoses aren't on just two little clips that you can just take off from the main line and just drain into a plastic bottle or something. It was this insanely overcomplicated way of draining the gas out of the main tank. On the 1190, it's two clips, and you can drain the tank.

And we had about a quarter of a tank in it, and so in my mind, I was like, well, if we put in premium, hopefully that will offset the other lower octane or bad gas, and it will all mix together into this kind of crappy gas, but not awful gas, and burn through that as quickly as possible. Then put more premium in at the next gas station we see and just kind of flush it out of the system. So that's the choice that we made. I filled it up with premium gas, and we got back on the road. 

All right, so I got a full tank now.

Man: Have a nice day!

Marisa: Thank you, you too!

Tim: And I knew for the first couple of miles, or for the first 20 minutes there would still be some gas that was bad. But an hour later, it was still riding not very well.

Marisa: Yeah, I really was hoping that it would immediately be better with that new gas, and of course, that was not the case. It still had all of these problems of just cutting out in the middle of nowhere, or all of a sudden, you don't have any acceleration. And it's just like the engine's on but it's just not doing anything. And then there were times where it would cut out and not want to start again. There was something majorly wrong, and we couldn't figure out what it was. 

Tim: I was super bummed because this was the last day we were going to have the bike, and we just potentially damaged the engine.

We're honest people, obviously, so we were going to tell Tay Motors that the engine was messed up and hopefully not have to pay for an engine rebuild. But just all this was really heavy after having such an amazing time riding around such a beautiful part to maybe botch it all on the last section of it. 

Marisa: This was the last day that we were going to be riding the motorcycle, the last day of our rental, and the motorcycle had been absolutely 100% perfect up until this day, and now we had done something terrible to it.

Tim: So we pulled into Tay Motors.

[Kuching - Malaysia]

And Alicia was there with wide smiles, and you know, it was really cool. And the mechanics and everybody greeted us. We had an amazing tour, it was great. So we told her how amazing it was, and then we told her, I said, "Just as of this afternoon the bike was acting weird going into second gear, third gear, power struggle, etc." I was concerned that we had done something, and not only would I not get my deposit back, but there might be additional costs.

But as soon as I told her about all the issues, she said, "Well, we'll have our guy test ride it, we'll have our guy service it, we'll have an oil change that is due." And the guy took it on a test ride after messing around with it for a little bit, and he said, "Yeah, there's absolutely no issue. I have no idea what you're talking about." 

Marisa: Yes! Oh, what a relief! 

Tim: Right?

Marisa: This motorcycle has been through thick and thin with us. We absolutely loved it. We're going to miss you, Real McCoy. Oh, you've been so good! 

And to be fair, it was a lot better. By the time we got to the city of Kuching, it really was not acting up nearly as much. And that whole last probably 40 minutes it didn't have any problems at all. 

Tim: No, but we just want to be ultra honest. 

Marisa: But I think the mechanic, he looked at everything and he was right. Whatever it was, that bad gas that we had put into the motorcycle, it had run its course, and it was now perfectly fine. 

Back at KTM, yay! 

Tim: That's what I would tell you when I have bad gas, I said, "Just let it run its course, and then it's going to be perfectly fine."

Marisa: So this was the end of our incredible journey all around East Malaysia! From Kuching in Sarawak through Brunei into Sabah, a whole loop of Sabah, and then back through Brunei and to Kuching once again. We went from Kilometer 0 to the tip of Borneo to Semporna, Tawau, through the jungle road all the way back again to Kuching. It was incredible.

And we were so happy to be back. We celebrated that evening with our friend Andi, who is from Kuching, and we went to the beautiful night riverwalk area that has a gorgeous view of the golden government building. 

Tim: So beautiful, huge flag, this awesome bridge, there's little boats floating down the river that are all lit up, and there's musicians playing.

[sape music]

It’s a very modern-day beautiful, stunning city. A very, very good exclamation point to the end of our little journey. Oh, it's a video! 

Everyone: Hello! Hello! Hi. Hi! 

Tim: What is your name? 

Andi: My name is Andi. 

Tim: Andi, he's our good friend. 

Marisa: You made an amazing night for us!

Andi: Ok, thank you. 

Tim: [Thank you, Andi.]

Marisa: And we were sad to be leaving Kuching once again, but this was the end of our time in East Malaysia. And next, we were going to be heading back into Indonesia. But don't worry, we will be back in Malaysia in the future because we are going to be going to West Malaysia. 

Tim: Peninsula Malaysia. 

Marisa: Yes, after Indonesia. 

Tim: It's going to be Malay-zing. Nope, don't like that one. Cut that. 

Marisa: It's going in. 

Tim: All right.

Marisa: Next time - We do a very special video about some of our best experiences with food in East Malaysia. And some of our worst. 

Tim: Just this?

Marisa: But that will all be in the next episode. 

Tim: You see the patty? It's under there somewhere. 

Marisa: Wow. 

So thank you so much for watching this video and I hope you liked it. If you did, please give us a big thumbs up and hit the subscribe button below. And if you've been enjoying this journey, please check us out on Patreon. You can join for as little as a dollar a month. 

Tim: Indeed, and you will get early access to our YouTube videos. They are ad-free and we send out postcards. We just did another postcard blast out to all of our new and old patrons and are able to send back to the States and Canada, Romania, thank you, we love you. We have friends, and we consider them family, all around the world. And we would love to be able to have you along for the ride as well, and to show you our appreciation as we meander around this beautiful part of the world. 

Marisa: That's right. So check out our Patreon page in the link in the description below and thank you so much for riding along with us. 

Tim: Stay safe, everybody. 

Marisa: Bye! 

Tim: Peace.

Marisa: We wanted to call this episode Bad Gas, also known as Tim. 

Tim: But then my feelings got hurt and we talked a lot about it off camera and that how much it hurts me inside. But here it is, a joke at my expense. 

Marisa: Here we are.