M'sian man spends 2 hours helping S'porean man, 24, fix bike after tyres punctured during Johor cycling trip

A Singaporean man's overnight cycling experience in Malaysia would have gone south if not for a few helpful locals.

One even sacrificed a family dinner just to help him out.

Recounting the experience in an Instagram post, Joel Liu, 24, reflected on the kindness he was met with.

Tyre puncture

He had embarked on a cycling trip from Singapore to Malaysia, when his bicycle's tyres punctured twice at Kota Tinggi, Johor.

With no solution to fix them and no campsite to stay the night, he approached a convenience store in a kampong (village) three kilometres away on foot.

There he met Faz, a man who somehow "knows everyone in the kampung," Liu quipped.

Offering his guest a seat, Faz called a family friend, who was in turn able to secure a spot in the campsite for Liu for the night.

In the next clip of the video, another local from the kampung, Isa, arrived at the store.

Upon hearing of Liu's predicament, he offered his assistance to fix his tyres with homemade solutions, even making multiple trips home on his own motorcycle to retrieve more tools.

What started as a chance encounter soon turned into a two-hour fixer-upper, with snippets from the clip showing the sky turning dark in the background.

Liu's bicycle turned out to be unfixable, leaving him stranded seven kilometres away from the campsite.

A ride away

But just as the situation turned grim, Isa offered Liu a ride to the campsite in his van, saving him the long walk in the darkness.

The pair even stopped by a local burger stall, where Liu was treated to dinner.

It was then that he found out Isa had missed his family's dinner.

"It's okay, I'll just eat the leftovers later," was Isa's only response.

Not strangers anymore

The fleeting encounter that night seemingly left Liu in awe of the kindness shown by two strangers he might never meet again.

"We often think of people living in developing areas as having less," he reflected at the end of the clip.

"But that day I honestly felt like I was the one missing out on something."

"What does he have that I don’t?" he asked rhetorically in the caption.

"I don’t think i’ve ever spent 2 hours helping a stranger fix anything. Is it just that he has time on his hands? I don’t think so. He literally delayed his family dinner to help me fix my bike. What does he have that I don’t?"

Top images via injaee/Instagram