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Published: September 2nd 2012
In the morning, we stand next to the freeway trying to flag down a car to take us to Marang. After a few minutes, another foreigner couple arrives, backpacks and all, at the bus stop on the other side. After we give each other the evil eye, an unspoken competition starts of who'll manage to secure a ride first. At least we're not going in the same direction. I remember well the old local ladies in Montenegro sneaking in front and stealing my rides. Eventually, a car stops for us. The friendly man, who we can't communicate much with due to language issues, drops us off at the bus station in Kemaman, where we take a local bus to Marang. The reason we went there is to catch a boat to Pulau Kapas. From the harbour, we can see the island in close distance. The wonky boat takes only about 15 minutes to get there.
When we land at Pulau Kapas, we are greeted by numerous sunseekers sitting at the beach bar, staring at our disembarking as though it's the most interesting thing that's happened all day. The Kapas Beach Chalets seems to be the cheapest option, so we take
their last hut (or so we are told) after a quick talk to the unfriendly owner/manager/whatever, a big lady of indeterminate origin. After having a quick look around, we realize that the options are indeed very limited, as there are only a handful of places to stay on the three beaches, which are connected by wooden walkways. The only eateries are all operated by the guesthouses, and the prices are 2.5-4 times what we would pay on the mainland, less than 15 minutes away by boat. Fried rice for RM8? Come on! Roti canai for RM3? Really? Teh tarik for RM4? Fuck that! And to add insult to injury, the quality is also significantly lower than on the mainland, as we're about to find out.
After a few hours, we start getting slightly bored, as the only thing to do seems to be to laze around on the beach or on the verandah of our A-frame chalet. I can't, for the life of me, understand the tanorexic whities baking in the midday sun. It's around 35°C, the sun is burning down like no tomorrow, and there is quite the number of palefaces roasting on the beach like a bunch
of turkeys. Don't they know that you get skin cancer from that? That it makes your skin age and your DNA mutate? That it makes you look goofy after a while? Can somebody explain that to me, please?
We take a dip in the warm water, which marks my official return to Malaysian waters after the fateful jellyfish sting three years ago. One thing that is very unusual for me to see is the amount of tourist families with kids. All of them have two children, no exception, and most of them are either from France or the Netherlands. Maybe in a way it's nice of them to take their kids 'travelling', if you can call it that, to places that are a bit more exotic and untouched than Mallorca, Southern France and the Canary Islands. But as to me, I'm not necessarily keen on travelling to faraway places and having a boatload of spoiled, blond brats with their overly concerned procreators disturb my peace of mind. I can have that all year round at home, if I want to.
At KBC, we just don't fit in. We don't 'party' at night, we don't drink copious amounts of
overpriced beer and vodka-red bull, we don't engage in karaoke with the other dull honkeys who behave like a bunch of twats on crystal meth. We stick out like a sore thumb, and the Dutch owner definitely takes a disliking to us after we ask him when dinner starts. He says at seven, so we order a drink and sit around to wait until he's ready to take our order. When at seven, all those people start flooding in, ordering their food, we get kind of nervous, as we are hungry (and I get easily pissed off when I'm hungry and have to wait for too long for my food) and have been waiting for quite a while to order. The kitchen is very understaffed anyway, so it'll take a lot of time for them to prepare the orders that were placed before ours. Fortunately, the guy remembers us eventually, and we get their boring, uninspired fare shortly afterwards. It feels as though they use the argument "You're on an island, dude, relax" to justify their own laziness and can't-be-fucked attitude.
So far on this trip, J. has been attracting misfortune like a black person in Bavaria, and I've
been affected by it passively. On day 1, she gets bitten by mosquitoes. On day 2, her multiple bites get infected. On day 3, water retention causes her feet and ankles to swell up, resulting in what the Australian Pharma Industry delightfully calls 'Cankles'. On day 4, she gets mosquito bites on her cankles. On day 5, those bites get infected. When on day 6, before going to bed, she says "Oh no! My undies cut into my buttocks!", I can't take it anymore: "Fucking hell, Honey! Can you please, on top of everything else, try not to get cut by your own fucking undies? Please?" Thus ends this night.
***
The following day, we discover that there is indeed another thing to do on our little tropical paradise. There is one short hike that cuts through the centre of the island and ends at a bay in the North. We embark on this mini-adventure, armoured with suncreen and Deet. The mosquito repellent doesn't really do its job, unfortunately. Shortly after we enter the jungle, we are eaten alive by the mozzies. They must have been particularly starved that day, most likely nobody has
dared to do this little trek in a while. I didn't bother wearing proper shoes, only thongs, which might have been a foolish decision. It doesn't take long for my feet to be covered in red spots that itch like a mofo.
The jungle is very similar to the one in Taman Negara National Park, which doesn't come as a surprise, seeing it's only a few hours away. Everything we come across seems to be oversized; we see fat centipedes, humongous butterflies, large-leafed bushes and gigantic trees. After about an hour of semi-demanding hiking, we reach the bay on the other side of the island. It feels completely deserted, although the rubbish in a small nearby cave seems to indicate that people camp here every now and then. We enjoy the castaway feeling for a bit, rehydrate, then head back.
To cool down from the sweaty hike, we go for another swim. After seeing mysterious things on the bottom of the ocean, I get my snorkelling gear. What I discover isn't all that spectacular, but still nice to look at. There are swarms of colourful fishes, coral that's mostly bleached, sea cucumbers, sponges and rocks.
Interestingly, on
Pulau Kapas, everybody is so laid-back and easy-going. Or at least that's how they like to portray themselves. Laid-back. In actuality, it's all fake, and the minute they get off the plane back in their home country, they're gonna be the same old stuck-up, stereotypical, boring white people. But while on the island in Malaysia, they're 'laid-back'. A more fitting description would be pretentious and haughty. I enjoy it very much when I see the facade of a bedreadlocked, blond Frenchie crumble when he has to wait for 15 minutes to place his order, as the owner of the little beach café is busy bidding farewell to some other guests. All of a sudden, the wannabe-rastaman has lost his cool and his humour, and starts berating the owner for not attending to him and his hippie-pant companions earlier. Human failure at its best. Probably takes him a good few hours until he's back to pretending he's an avid surfer who 'practically lives on the beach'.
So this place is basically like a little European village transferred to a tropical beach. The owners are white, all the guests are white, only the workers (who'da thunk it?) are Malaysian. You can't
expect the good and quick service of Malay, Chinese and Indian restaurants. The food you get is overpriced and disappointing, and all that just to be on an island, sit around and have a bit of a swim and snorkel? Fuck that. After two nights we take the first boat back to Marang.
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Sam D.
non-member comment
Thanks
Thank you for writing an honest blog. It is so much better to read a travel account where someone speaks his mind, whether you agree with it or not. Otherwise it feels like you are just wasting your time reading someones travel accounts. I like your observations of people. Pretty good.