Advertisement
Published: September 7th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Yes I do realize that my dates are pretty messed up, but I think this is the close to the correct time piriod along the trip. (if nothing else the dates organize which order they show up in my blog) I have a most severe case of blog lag & some messing up on dates is due to that, the the rest of the messing up is due to the fact that we never really knew which day it was along the trip anyways so a lot of my diary entries remain unmarked. I think that the most incredible mess up job we had was on our flight from San Francisco to Singapore. At one point the plane landed in a place called Taipi, & the flight attendants told us that yes we did have to get off the plane. So once we were in the airport we looked at each other & said "which country is Taipi in? I've never heard of it, have you? Maybe we are in China. So...what day is it? & for heavens sake what time is anyways? Our tickets don't say anything about landing in Taipi so how are we supposed to get to
Cherating
big lizard Singapore?" Ok so it was like a really stupid thing to get messed up about...but it made for a really awesome outer body experience. We just followed the crowd from our plane with no concept of which corner of the world we were on, not having any idea of if it was day or night...hopefully it was a once in a life time experience.
So anyways & whatever blah blah blah, I do know that the next link of my story begins in the morning after the last blog entry. So at that time we hopped on a local bus for 3.60 RMB, bound for Cherating & more then happy to be leaving Kuantan. The folks on the bus were really friendly to us & we started to think that staying in the city probably would not have been so bad after all. Thankfully, going to Cherating turned out to be the the best thing we could have done. I really needed a little time to recover & start to get excited about traveling again. Cherating is a small community geared toward laid back tourists. We got an adorable little hut complete with a fridge. For almost about 5
days I read in the hammock, sat on the beautiful sand beach, bobbed around in the South China Sea until sunset & generally bummed around. Some days I got up, got ready for the day, went back to bed to sleep for a few hours, got up again, sprawled in the hammock for a couple hours, wandered down to a nearby stall for something to eat... Sleeping & eating rather became the theme & monotony of my life. There were a couple of meals that I was able to eat without any trouble so that in itself was refreshing. It was also a good time for Megan because she had the opportunity to go into a nearby town a couple of times to satisfy her desire to explore, I never did get jealous of her experiences though (yes I know, I am lazy right down to the core). I also spent 2 days making a large batik. It was a wonderful relaxing/fun time for me. I drew a 4 foot long gecko in pencil then I spent 3 1/2 hours drawing the picture with wax. It was so much fun! I got my money's worth out of the deal because
Cherating
ahhh, this is the life... I sure used a lot of wax! I spent another 6 hours putting in the dye, I was slow but I enjoyed just fooling around with it. It is by no means a master piece but I am still looking forward to hanging it on my wall one day. Then there was one day that Megan dropped our room key in the ocean (yes we ended up finding it!!), then we got our passports wet, & to top it off I ate some miserable meat for dinner. The "beef" was so weird that I was asking Megan if they eat dogs in Malaysia, really wacky. So I guess not all days can be completely blissfull after all. Our time there in Cherating was quite uneventful other then there was one evening when Megan announced that she had seen something run into my side of the bed. On closer inspection it turned out to be a large cockroach & so the chase began. Megan, the cockroach & I dashed around our small room & the beast did come out of hiding at one point but for some reason unknown to me I jumped backwards instead of onto the bug so that
Cherating
on the beach was really frusterating for both of us. We ended tucking our mosquitoe net in under our bed to ensure that the cockroach couldn't get in to snuggle with us. Then there was the dark night when I ran to the out house & stepped on a frog. Maybe it is blown up in my mind because I was half asleep at the time of the encounter never the less I can still hear the disparing groan/croke/sob of a really sad frog. I didn't get rid of my frog hibijibies until we left. We would have liked to have a more "Malaysian" experience rather then to stay in a place that caters to tourists but it was still a good use of our time, I think, due to the circumstances.
When it was time for us to be on our way again I found a neighbour couple from Holland who promised to wake us up at 6 am so we could catch an early bus. So early next morning with our packs on our backs & a tin cup of oatmeal in our hands we were hiking down the road again, this time in the dark. We had been told
Cherating
...& then the rain came down that a local bus would pass by every half hour starting at 5:45am. So we sat on the side of the road from 6:40-7:25 - no luck. In desparation we decided that if we saw a woman driving by we we would try hitch hiking into town because we needed to get to our bus from Kuantan to Singapore. G.. was watching over us because a taxi came by & took us into town for 10 RM which was even better then taking a bus because we were dropped off right where we wanted to be (the bus would have dropped us off a 1/2 hour walk away from that bus station). I approached the Singapore boarder with a great deal of trepidation due to the condition of my passport. Sure enough, they looked dubiously at my warped passport, each stamp mearly a smudge that has soaked through 4 pages & inquired "& so where is your Malaysian entry stamp Madam?" "aaahhh, ahem...well...I think it's that one there maybe..." I'm certainly glad that I have a Heavenly Father that looks after me...after a few phone calls we were both accepted into Singapore! I often look back on the way things
happened & it is so cool how everything worked out for us.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.122s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0575s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb