Kemayman

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.Kemaman, Malaysia
Sunday April 5th, 2009
We were docked at an industrial gas platform, refinery and major port of this tiny area of Malaysia. The tour guide who was brought in from Kuala Lumpur for the day to provide services for the more than 1000 tourist coming to town had been there 2 years ago and she could not believe the difference= OIL makes: traffic, cars, parallel parking, commerce, booths, boutiques, stores, dance and music performances.
As we disembarked a troupe of women and men dancers were entertaining on a platform outside the ship and there were about 10 covered stalls of silk, batik, straw, jewellery and other goodies. The town provided the air conditioned buses with fringed curtains and guides both ways! - remember that in Semarang the bus only brought us to the batik factory and left us stranded. Once in beautiful downtown Chukai *(Kemaman in Malasian) we were entertained by a dance troupe and an Asian dancing lion then each given a bouquet of plastic flowers and hearts; there was a cultural show inside the market building and a few snakes for our additional pleasure. We walked around the market and a few streets and Terry generously forced me to buy very cheaply a top and overtop to wear on Formal nights with black pants; I wore it last night and received many compliments!
• Cukai means taxes, because the town is at the mouth of the Kemaman River and the town’s role was to collect taxes from boat owners who wanted to go upstream.
While in Kemaman, I learned about EAR CANDLING: it is a process by which a therapist burns a stem of burnable material doused in an aromatic compound in ones ear (one at a time) to get rid of excess wax and transfer the medicinal properties of said aromatic compound to the head and therefore the body- no, we did not try.
Some paid 129US $ to go to the beach with the ships tour and it rained all morning.

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