ReifReif für die Insel

Namo tassa kelapa sammarefreshingla

There are days and weeks I don’t feel like writing a lot. I have filled up my first diary now. Still, most of it i find it unworthy to put it out there. Ruminations too abstract, insights too personal, ideas only half-baked, trains of thought ‘too self-conscious’, as my beloved bro refers to my investigating and sometimes overly reflective nature.

It’s times like these that I take refuge in the coconut, and comfort in bowing down to fine grains and salty waters – and distant mermaids. Yogis can do their suryanamaskara. I bow down to kelapas 😉 It helps ground meselif.

Riding with a scooter we stumble across the ‘travelling’ night market several times during our stay. It’s one thing to be lucky, yet another to know how to be grateful, and yet another how to make best use of luck when it strikes.

Recently I take fancy in recording short videos. It’s a convenient shortcut. Sums up what i experience here. Except sounds (as I add music for your convenience and entertainment) and smells (burnt trash, sweaty armpits, fresh frangipani, street dogs, food of course, well you know, the entire asian package…) and temperatures (supermarket fridge A/C, beach sauna, rain-forest worth its name).

Someone’s happy at Telaga Tujuuuuuh (Seven Wells)

   

Now, dear friends, enjoy the video!

   

Follow the Sun

We figure it is wise to follow the advice of the Mrs. Singh at Hotel Lotte, iPoh. Thus, we check-in at the place recommended by her, i.e. Hotel Indah at Lumut and explore the town a bit. The most striking feature of it is the ubiquitous offerings of smelly fish. One of the upcoming days we hop on a ferry over to Pulau Pangkor on a sunshiny morning in order to enjoy beach life and return in the evening.

   

Marina Island (not for everyone)

We explore the island mostly on foot. When we arrive we don’t know what to do. We want to rent a scooter but there is only one option and the guy kinda plays on his monopoly. Too arrogant, too much Chinese biznizman. After about half an hour walk thru the small fisher village we join a group of youngsters from Yemen and a German girl. So we are seven and share one of the countless bus taxis waiting at the port to pick up and lend wheels to the tourists.

   

We go to the west of the island, then mostly walk on foot. All in all, we pay merely RM5 for transportation on the island, not including the ferry tickets. How we managed remains a mystery to me, somehow. We have some food. We take a dip in the ocean. Argghh… it’s so hot, I don’t even wanna get out of the water. The sun dries the skin in 3.5 minutes. Put up the hammock in the shade of Turtle Bay. One time, we get a plate of food that looks like vomit and walk away. After all, there’s a first time for everything. Who knows what happened to it in the end, mayne some stray dog snatched it. Bon appetit ^_^

Difficult to find an open tandas (toilet), sometimes. Either it is closed up or only for muslims or it’s jammed so you better not flush. Anyways, there’s some prob with the waste on the island and in malaysia, in general. People are not educated about the value of nature and about the impact of the environment on physical, emotional and mental health.

Shortly before we leave Pulau Pangkor, I pay for the food and drinks. The lady at the food stall adds two numbers: 12+4 and says ’26’. ‘Nice try,’ I say. Turns out it was unintended. Her kids show up. They apologize. Apologize again. And I am given way too much change. The lady just takes a bundle of ringgit notes and hands it over to me. Either she did not count dat shit or she could not. Right then and there it hits me, you know. The day before we’d had lunch in a small Indian restaurant. We had just arrived in Lumut, still unfamiliar with the surroundings. To cut a long story short: We had looked (and looked) like tourists and been properly ripped off. And now on this island we encounter open-hearted generosity. Hmmm.. or perhaps they both simply bad at maths? Whatever it is, it made me wonder…

Lumututgut

   

How curious it is… this approach to money – as mentioned before, she really just grabbed some banknotes and handed it over to me. The prices, the rip-offs, the gifts… somehow it never adds up. Or maybe it does, but for whom? The people we give our money to, the banks, trusting them to give it back to us when needed?? In daily life, can I be a river, not a dam… by learning from others the value of generosity and experience for myself how great it feels to give, how much more fun it is to give than to take?

This babylonian matrix riddle keeps puzzling me. Please Ajahn Chah, make me smile!

Take money, for example. In the past there wasn’t any paper money. Paper was just paper. What value would it have? Then people decided that silver money was hard to store, so they turned paper into money. And so it serves as money. Maybe someday in the future a new king will arise who doesn’t like paper money. “How about wax droppings? Even though it’s soft, we can stamp it into lumps and suppose it to be money.” We’ll be using wax droppings all over the country, getting into debt all because of wax droppings. Let alone wax droppings, we could take chicken droppings and turn them into money! Nothing else could be money! All our chicken droppings would be cash. We’d be killing one another over chicken droppings.

   

ขอบคุณครับ (Thank You), Luangpor 🙂

East Coast

As mentioned in the post about jetlag we are here to recharge our batteries after the long flight. Another reason is our intention to attend a retreat at Dhamma Malaya which is situated west of Kuantan, reachable by RapidKuantan bus 100. We arrive at Kuantan after a 3.5hrs bus trip from KL station TBS (Terminal Bersepadu Selatan). After we have clarified how to get there we cross the road close to the Central Market which is next to the Hentian Bandar (Town Bus Stop). Well, let’s say we try to cross 😉 It’s a four lane road with a never-ending flow of cars and buses. Over time, we get better at this, even to the point of regarding it as some kind of sport to find the right timing, i.e. the kairos of starting the sprint.

As I had to leave the gas cartridge for my portable gas cooker, i try to find a new one in Kuantan. Alas, no chance. Some things go smoothly. Others are not. Wanting always plays a part. It is the precursor to suffering. That, at least, becomes painstakingly clear. After half a dozen shops and malls I give up on actively looking for a gas cartridge. Would have been a help to cook some water or beans in the jungle, but whatever… does it realy matter? Nope. Once I let go it becomes so obvious how most of the things I think I need are simply things I do not own. Once I own something, the job is done, so to speak. I get, and then I for-get. Isn’t it… an almost too human habit? We all get attached not to things but to the cravings. What follows therefrom is a state of restlessness ever pushing us further into a miserable state of mind dissatisfied with what is actually happening.

So what IS happening?

Today I get up early, at around 6 a.m. and stretch my limbs for about half an hour. I go to the nearby big market (Bazar Besar) to buy some papaya and bananas for breakfast. Joy and I have brekkie in the room and then take the RapidKuantan bus 200 to Teluk Cempedak, the easternmost part of the city.

Teluk Cempedak

Before we reach the beach at Teluk Cempedak we catch sight of McD, KFC, StB, 7/11. We pass all of them and go along the beach and the plastic bridge to arrive at an area called Tongkang Beach. The colourful signs which are fastened to numerous trees carry a clear message: “Private area” and “No Pay No Stay!”, while others are announcing the prices of having a picnic there, using the toilet, littering etc.

There is one sign on Teluk Tangkong that makes perfect sense. ♪♪Forget all worries♪For the rest of the day♪It’s all trouble free, in harmony♪♪

Who puts up these signs?, I think. Curiously, yet somewhat cautiously we venture forth into the dragon’s lair. The first guy we see is a bearded man washing his wild red mane. He looks up and asks: ‘Oh, you must be the couch surfers, right?!’ Without thinking, I respond that yes, we are couch surfers, too. We introduce ourselves and find out that this place is a café. It’s called Sempai Café. The owner comes out and welcomes us to his abode. His name is Thom, and he lives here with MayMay and his two-month old daughter Lya. They are happy to have us here after the retreat. Easy!

We go through the jungle to the other side of Teluk Cempedak and arrive at a beach. No signs here. All empty. Only three boys playing over there. The rest of the beach is one long stretch of white sand. The ocean waves are inviting us to take a dip. After about five or ten minutes, we are visited by a helicopter. He circles above us and then leaves again. Five minutes later he comes back and we have one strange encounter with it. The pilot draws near and hovers just 5 metres above the beach, confronting us, as if inquiring: ‘ Identify yourselves. What are you doing here? How did you get here?’ An awkward situation. The helicopter seems to prepare a landing on that empty beach because of us? Have we done something forbidden? Overlooked a sign?: “No access! Military training ground!” Maybe it was just the coast guard that haveseen me wave to Joy from the sea and thought I need help? Whatever it is, we have no intention of finding out. Instead, we pick up our stuff and vanish back into the jungle, partly enjoying the adrenaline rush while the deafening rotorblades of the helicopter makes verbal communication an almost impossible undertaking.

The helicopter drawing a circle above us before a rapid descent to confront us

We return to Sempai café and tell Thom that we are going to visit again in a fortnight, i.e. after the Goenka retreat. So after two weeks we revisit that place and stay as couch surfers in a tent. And in the course of our stay, it becomes increasingly clear for us how Thom tries to establish a business here while for the Malay people it must feel weird to be asked to pay a Frenchman in order to be allowed to stay at a Malay beach and enjoy a family picnic. Imagine you go to the Danube island in Vienna and some Chinese businessman has recently opened a bar and you come there just like every weekend, and now you’re asked to pay for sitting down and having a picnic with your family. In life and in death, I find it is of utmost importance always to see both sides of the equation.