2up and overloaded - adv motorcycle travel podcast by Tim and Marisa Notier

Welcome to the very first episode of the 2Up and Overloaded Podcast.

Welcome to Our Audio Adventure!

Of all the places we have traveled to, the mysterious island of Borneo holds an extraordinarily special place in our hearts. With its diverse blend of cultures, and incredible array of natural landscapes filled with unique wildlife, we couldn’t be more excited to share with you our top 10 places to visit on this breathtaking island - The Best of Borneo!

Welcome to our very special episode all about food in Malaysia! Having traveled the entirety of East Malaysia from Kilometer Zero all the way to the Tip of Borneo and down to Tawau, we have eaten all sorts of incredible, unusual, and exotic dishes, including one that we found repulsive. And we’ll show you all of it in this video!

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!

One thing that we’ve discovered while be in Malaysia is that Malaysians are an extremely diverse group of people. Besides the ethnic Malay, Indian, and indigenous Dayak groups, Chinese immigrants have had a huge impact on the country.

Malaysia may be amazing, but it also has a dark side.

This cave in Sarawak, East Malaysia isn’t just a cave, it’s an enormous cave! And more than being even just an enormous cave, it’s an archeological site with some of the oldest modern human remains in Southeast Asia.

One thing you find a lot of when traveling around Southeast Asia is people. As one of the most densely populated regions of the world, we did not expect to come across a long stretch of beach without a house, a piece of garbage, or even a single person on it.

Our first time crossing into Brunei was a rained-out disaster. But this time the sun is out, Marisa is feeling better after her sickness, and we are ready to experience Brunei and its world-renowned bridge for all it’s worth.

No gas, no food, no towns, no hotels. Pure jungle.

They call them “water villages” or “kampung air” in Malay, but I call them “fantasy floating villages” because they remind me of fantastical cultures of people that live completely off of the ocean. But these people are real, and there’s more than 50,000 of them in Malaysia, with an estimated 10,000 water houses built on stilts over the water.

“Avoid ALL unnecessary travel to Semporna, Malaysia,” states the UK travel warning. Pirates, kidnappings, beheadings of the tourists… unfortunately, these are the things that Semporna is infamous for. And yet, thousands of tourists descend up its streets, and travel to the shores of its islands every year to experience the magical sights that make Semporna what it is.

Have you ever heard of ? Well, after watching this video, you won’t forget it. I call it the Grand Canyon of Southeast Asia, even though it’s not a canyon at all, but when we went there, it was that same jaw-dropping feeling of overlooking a spectacular natural wonder that is one-of-a-kind, found nowhere else on earth. It’s that feeling of being small in an awe-inspiring, huge world. Bliss amidst breathtaking beauty.

Believe it or not, some people actually take their side mirrors off of their motorcycles when coming to Asia. Is it because of the crazy traffic, or because there are simply different rules of the road? And does that mean that mirrors are completely useless or even a hindrance in certain situations?

Some monkeys are nice, like the proboscis monkeys of the island of Borneo. But some monkeys like the macaques… well, let’s just say they are the evil ones.

We were always told not to feed the wildlife, especially human food. But when we visited the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Reserve, and we saw that they were feeding the proboscis monkeys there “pancakes,” we began to wonder how ethical this place actually was.

I hit a bump, then the motorcycle died. It was unexpected for sure, but when riding around the island of Borneo, I’ve come to expect the unexpected.

The scars of war cut deep. Even the landscape of one of the most remote and undeveloped islands on earth has been shaped by the destructive power of mankind. In World War II, when Japan sought control over the island of Borneo, they waged a military campaign against the British and Dutch there called the Battle for Borneo. And it was brutal.

The Tip to Tip Route of East Malaysia – an epic ride of 1300 kilometers (820 miles) from the eastern edge of the island of Borneo to its most northwestern point. And we were about to complete this incredible feat that few people ever have the opportunity to do, riding our KTM 250 Adventure two up from one end of the Tip to Tip Route to the other. And what awaited us at the end of this ride was one of the most shocking and impressive sights we’ve ever seen! 

Could this be the greatest experience to be had in Malaysia? 

For Tim and I, diving into the ocean is like arriving on a distant planet – it’s full of strange and exotic creatures that are completely unknown to us, some of which can be quite dangerous. So as we found ourselves on the shores of the Sulu Sea, one of the most biodiverse expanses of ocean on earth, we were apprehensive to go into the waters where there were spiky and bizarre marine creatures living just below the surface. 

As we rode our KTM 250 Adventure motorcycle through East Malaysia, there was one thing that we kept seeing everywhere – palm oil. These recognizable tropical trees are grown everywhere here, and the fruits are sold for their versatile oil which is used in tons of products across the globe, including foods, cosmetics, and of course, oils. It is a whopping $7.5 billion USD industry for Malaysia, and it has brought a new source of wealth to the country. But it is also a very controversial industry because of all the rainforest deforestation that it has caused.

It’s the Sea to Sky Challenge of Borneo – riding from the seaside city of Kota Kinabalu to the highest point you can go by road on the island, a town on the slopes of Mount Kinabalu at an altitude of 1900 meters (6200 feet). It’s an impressive feat to accomplish, and considering that we are on the equator here, going from tropics to a sub-alpine climate is a crazy, stark change of elevation that took our breath away (literally). 

For 2 Americans coming from the Midwest, exploring East Malaysia on a motorcycle has been a dream come true. And we are finally getting into the heart of some of the most stunning sights of Borneo, including the island’s tallest peat, Mount Kinabalu. But along the way we stop at something that we just randomly discovered on the map, a waterfall called Mahua Falls.

As we continued our journey riding a motorcycle through East Malaysia, we thought we had gotten through the worst of the rain in Brunei and Sarawak. But once we crossed into the Malaysian state of Sabah and headed to the big city of Kota Kinabalu, we realized that Mother Nature was not done with us yet.

We’ve always used a phone as our GPS navigation system when traveling on a motorcycle. And usually everything works out great. But today, we discovered that we’d made a big mistake with our phone, and it’s now dead. And suddenly we realize how vulnerable and lost we are without it.

Everyone knows that one of the worst parts of riding a motorcycle is riding through rain. But because we would be crossing into one of the hottest countries on earth, Brunei, I made a terrible decision with my rain gear that turned our wet day of riding from something bad into something horrific. 

We came to East Malaysia to find hidden gems, but we didn’t think we’d stumble upon this beautiful beach on our second day on the road. 

TODAY we begin our great East Malaysian odyssey – from Tip to Tip and along the Pan-Borneo Highway stretching all the way from Kilometer 0 to the other end of the island in Tawau. We’ll be riding over 2,150 miles (3,500 kilometers), touching the beaches of three different seas, through some of the thickest jungles of Southeast Asia, and to the highest mountain of Borneo.