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Published: September 19th 2010
I have found paradise. This puts me in a slight quandary now, I enjoy writing my travel blogs and telling you guys about all the amazing things I get to see and do on this extended-for-life holiday of mine, but do I want to give away where paradise is and see it ruined?
Ok, I'll try to tell you all about it while still keeping it secret. If you can work out where I'm talking about then your hard work will be rewarded, but it better not be teeming with drunk Brits and topless tanners when I come back next year!
Paradise is officially on the east coast of Malaysia. It's a tiny island, just six kilometres from the mainland, and totally overshadowed by its hyped up neighbours. It only gets busy when hoards of cavorting Malaysian families come to jump around in the sea fully clothed and life-jacketed during the school holidays. The rest of the time it is blissfully peaceful and I have been supremely happy staying here for the past month.
From the moment I arrived here - following an eight hour overnight bus journey, three hours sleeping on a concrete bench in a darkened
bus station, and a fifteen minute speedboat ride - the weariness of travelling melted away. My body molded into a sun lounger, and a smile spread across my face. My toes sank into the powdery sand, white as a freshly laundered shirt, and I exhaled a sigh of contentment. The heat of the midday sun, high in a deep blue sky, was scattered by the draping branches of coconut palms. The brilliant turquoise sea, flat as glass, caressed the shore and lulled me into a much needed nap.
A couple of weeks in and not only had I settled fully into my little cabin, I felt like I'd been accepted as a member of the KBC 'family', and even done a stint as a member of staff! Whenever I think about when I will have to leave I measure in weeks rather than days. Maybe next week I'll move on, I say, or possibly the week after. It is getting dangerously close to the date of my flight to Australia now and I have no idea how I'm going to pack my bag and get on a boat out of this place, luckily I still have another few days
to put off that moment.
Being in paradise is a very laid back lifestyle so I don't have a huge amount to report, instead I'll make you jealous with a typical day in my life:
9am-ish: wake up, put on my bikini and beach dress and wander over to the restaurant. Say hello to Henny, Benoit, Ella and the other long term guests and grab a cup of tea (long gone are the days when I ask Natasha or Dan to make it for me). Chat for an hour or two while ripping apart a typical Malay breakfast of Roti Canai - delicious pancake-like flat bread dipped in curry. (I have recently learned how to make this and spent a morning in the kitchen concocting curry and frying roti for all my friends here.)
Somewhere around midday: drag myself away from my second cup of tea to go for a swim or a snorkel. The water can sometimes be refreshingly cool, other times it's like stepping into a giant bath. Just below the surface there is a teeming world of rainbow-coloured fish that gather around me, accompanying me as I drift with the current over waving
Looking across to the neighboring island
I've swum to this island on a rare energetic dayforests of sea anemones with their inquisitive resident clown fish families peeking out to say hello. Vivid purple anemones contrast with the pale coral. I do a pirohette, scanning the sun dappled water for black-tip reef sharks, moray eels and jellyfish that may wish to scare me out of my happy little underwater world.
Sometimes I flop into the water directly outside the chalets and just lie on my back meditating on how peaceful and wonderful life is here. Other days I have mustered energy and enthusiasm for long swims across to adjacent islands or beaches. One day I even trekked for an hour through the steep jungley interior to get to a secluded cove on the other side of the island where I snorkelled with huge shoals of tiny fish darting all around me. Along the way we saw delicately thin and beautifully green tree vipers and heard big monitor lizards prowling in the dense undergrowth. In true Frankie-style I did this trek in my flip flops and had an interesting time abseiling down the last cliff-like section of the path and tiptoeing through seething lines of ants (in the end Gustavo proved a true gentleman and carried me
over the ants rather than listen to my girly squeals any longer).
Mid-afternoon: one can easily have too much excitement and exercise in one go, so next I settle into a hammock for a read and a snooze, dozing until the sun sinks low enough to bake me and wake me.
In the late afternoon I try to force myself to do some yoga on the decking under a huge, spreading tree, this probably only happens three days a week. The rest of the time we all run into the sea for another cool down, playing games with the kids from the neighbouring resort or just chatting in the water. Or if a storm passes over the island we leap around in the waves whipped up by the powerful wind and feel alive from the stinging rain pounding on our heads.
5:30pm: unfortunately paradise is not quite perfect. This is officially mosquito time, the cue for everyone to scatter to their chalets. I cautiously open the door to my bathroom and survey the floor and walls for uninvited guests. Some days I do battle with spiders the size of my hand, spraying them with a hose until they
succumb to the drainage pipe. Other nights I throw missiles at a lepan (a vicious biting centipede/millipede thing), forcing it to scutter off through a crack in the wall. The ants and the cockroaches I leave to get on with their business while I get on with mine. I have learned the hard way to keep my biscuits in a metal tin, the only way to outwit the pesky jungle rats that are always fighting on my roof over snacks confiscated from less initiated guests.
6:30pm: After a cold shower and a liberal coating of DEET I'm ready to settle into a comfy chair on the verandah with a drink and a good book and wait for the evening show to start. Better than TV, nature has been broadcasting its best shows for us over the past few weeks, wowing us with ever more impressive sunsets.
Which light display will nature bestow on us tonight: Will the sun sink as a glowing orange ball behind the misty hills or will it paint the scattered clouds an impossible-to-reproduce hot neon pink? Or will towering clouds over the mainland block the sun out entirely, illuminated like a soft, yellow, puffy duvet
backlit by sheet lightening and streaked by forks of light that wiggle like fibre optic worms across the sky? Regardless of the weather, the coastline is a fascinating backdrop that I cannot draw my eye away from. Every evening as dusk descends the mainland has been lit up with fireworks announcing the end of the days fasting. These accumulated in the past few days into endless displays popping and fizzing in the night sky all along the coastline as far as the eye can see as the Hari Raya celebrations go on long into the night.
8pm: Dinner time! Oh dear, I appear to have got myself a reputation out here for loving my food, now where would they get an idea like that from?! I mentioned to the staff here a while ago my ambition to do a cookery course in every country I visit in SE Asia. The next day when my order came to the front of the pile I was ushered into the kitchen and set to work by Khalid, the reluctant but talented chef at KBC. Over the following days and weeks I have been instructed in how to make Malaysian coconut curry, Sweet
and Sour Sauce, Sambal, Roti Cani, to name a few of the dishes I have sampled here. I have also learnt the secret ingredients to the best banana pancakes ever! For my part in these cross-cultural exchanges I joined forces with Kayan, the chalet owner, to create industrial portions of apple crumble and custard one appropriately cold and stormy evening.
Evening into night: sedate evenings chatting and playing sevens or jenga, sitting on the veranda staring out to sea drinking hot chocolate, can spontaneously turn into party nights at the spin of an i-pod dial or the breaking open of a bottle of spirits. Everything to hand becomes a musical instrument and jam sessions break out with bongos, mouth harps, spoons, guitars, hands slapped against tables and lighters tapped against glasses as we sing Bob Marley anthems, once even led by a professional singer! The wooden boards of the restaurant become the stage for salsa lessons and crazy spinning dances.
And so draws to a close another day in paradise. After another nine hours sleep I wake up and start it all over again, and I'm nowhere near getting bored of this life!
Paradise is...a powder white
beach, a bright blue sky reflected in a crystal clear ocean, a hammock gently swinging in the breeze under a vivid green coconut palm, an ice blended chocolate and a plate of roti canai, a good book, lovely friends, a skype connection ten minutes walk away, and 1001 beautiful sunsets!
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Henny
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Hey dear, really love your blog. And the photos are amazing. Miss you lots. Wish I were there with you in our own little paradise. Lots of love.