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Saturday, 21st January, Mizam Guesthouse, Teluk Nipah, Palau Pangkor, Malaysia 8:57pm

So we escaped Penang. It was a rush and a whir of buses and ferries, and we made everything at the last minute (and I mean last minute! Both the bus to Lumut and the ferry to Pangkor were held in order for us to run and buy tickets, so we made them both with seconds to spare). But it was worth it. Pangkor is incredible. It’s a beautiful mix of jungle that goes right up to the coast (interrupted only by the coastal road). We saw three Ebola monkeys by the side of the road .
We got a lift to the ferry from Penang with Rozali, the guy who drove us to Ferringhi the day before. He was really nice, and told us that if we wanted to save money, we could cross on the ferry ourselves and walk to the bus station, which was about two hundred metres from the ferry terminal. We agreed to do this, and it was sooo easy to do by ourselves, and we ended up saving about 60 Ringgit (about $20) because the bus ticket was cheaper than we expected as well. A woman slapped the bus as it was passing to get it to stop for us, so we just managed to get on. It took about four hours to get to Lumut, which is the mainland town opposite Pangkor Island. As we crossed, they were playing a pirate copy of “King Kong;” the colour was really washed out, and it wasn’t the best quality. The girl beside me starting chatting to me, just basic stuff about where I was from and where I was going. Oh yeah, that’s right. When we were in Penang, a guy from Brisbane thought we were English. It’s become more and more clear that Perthies have a slightly different accent to Easterners (which I’m very proud of). We’ve often been mistaken for English or New Zealand, or been told that our Aussie accents are really soft. I guess we’ve been away for awhile now, though, so I’m sure if we were plunked in with a bunch of Aussies we’d slip into stronger accents again.
So we arrived in Pangkor Town and jumped into a taxi (after discovering that no bank accepts our bankcard, so now we have to live off 21 Ringgit for the whole of tomorrow [about $7] before we can do an over-the-counter bank exchange on Monday back in town). We came straight to Taluk Nipah beach, apparently the best on the island, and chose accommodation away from the main street. So no beachfront waste-of-money this time, but rather a 40 Ringitt bungalow-type affair about two minutes walk from the beach, with a verandah that looks straight out into thick jungle. We love it. There’s only cold water, but in this humid climate, the cold water comes as a relief. Our room is also twice as big as Penang, and it’s got aircon and a TV that only has one channel, but that channel’s controlled by the main TV, so we requested to have the footy on and are now watching Everton .vs. Arsenal as I write.
Oh, and there are really weird birds here called Hornbills, who look like Toucans but without the colour, and with something that resembles a third half of a beak on top of their bills.
So we wandered the two streets that make up Taluk Nipah, and ate dinner in one of the five restaurants. No alcohol here though! Only cans of Carlsberg to be bought from the mini-mart for a not very low price. It is a Muslim country though, but it would be nice if booze were more readily available! As we ate, a skinny little black kitten started yowling at my feet. There was a couple opposite us who kept staring at us as we chatted and ate. Finally the man said “just feed it!” in a friendly way. I had been talking to the cat, debating whether to give it food or not. James told me not to because the cat was annoying, but I argued that it was just starving, and it relied on food from us to survive. So I fed it a couple of bits of chicken. We chatted to the couple for awhile, nothing too exciting. She was American, he was English, but they lived in Mandurah. Methinks they were Internet. They seemed to be doing a lot of travel, but working inconsistently. He worked as a contract high school teacher (and tried to only do six-month contracts at a time), and she was a hairdresser. Their next adventure was to move to Adelaide to look after a sheep farm with thirty sheep for three months. He was going to teach at the same time. It was all very strange. Anyway, then the mankiest, skankiest, most terribly injured cat ever came on the scene. It was a big ginger Tom, with an earring in one ear, and all the fur down one half of his body missing, the flesh raw and exposed. He was bloody and stomach-churning, and he got dangerously close to us with his septic body about to rub against our legs, and although we all sympathised with the poor thing we quickly jumped and urged it to find somewhere else to rub its oozing wound. We weren’t sure what had caused the injury, perhaps abuse, perhaps just being scalded somehow, or even perhaps being hit by a bike or a car. The English man thought a dog had tried to eat the cat. I think this was a bit dramatic. It was awful though, made worse by the fact that under no circumstances would I have touched it to help it, although were we at home we would have taken it to a vet. I felt bad feeling this way, but it was just so gross, and I don’t think it was in any pain because he was moving fine and he wasn’t meowing. The guy who worked in the restaurant kept trying to shoo the Tom away, until eventually it retreated under the tablecloth of a buffet table.
Then we headed down to the beach to watch the sunset, but it was blocked by a large island just off the coast. Still we let the waves splash at our feet, and had to jump up and back at one time. James bought a beer and he drank it as the sun fell down. Then we bought ice-creams and headed back to our hotel to watch the football.
Which is where we are now. But forget Pangkor for a moment, and let me take you back. Back, back to the day following the Bridge over the River Kwai incident. Because I haven’t finished talking about Kanchanaburi, and we have two more major sights that I need to discuss. 1) The Tigers, and 2) Hellfire Pass.
The day of the tigers was an ambitious one. We’d decided to hire a scooter and drive out to see the tigers and Hellfire Pass, so that we could do it all in the one day. So we woke around 10, wandered over to the reception of our bungalow home, paid our deposit and jumped on the scooter. Easy. Only it wasn’t a scooter like we thought it would be. It was more a motorbike, that required balance and gear changing and actual training and skill. James went about two metres and opted out. I tried, and barely got one metre before opting out as well. We got our deposit back, and jumped in a taxi and went into town. Our company in the taxi was a woman who was travelling with her young son (a bright, talkative kid with heaps of personality). She seemed like she was on the verge of tears all the time, but I think it might have just been her watery-eyed way. In town, we booked a tiger tour for 3:30, did some internet stuff, then jumped in the tuk-tuk. There was a Dutch couple already in the tuk-tuk, and I momentarily thought it might just be the four of us. But, of course, the tuk-tuk was filled quickly with other tourists as we made the rounds picking them all up. We chatted with the Dutch couple (Simon and Daphne) for most of the trip, after Simon helped us solve a Maths problem we were half-assedly trying to work out.
The tigers refers to a temple about forty-five minutes out of Kanchanaburi, where monks operate a tiger sanctuary. You can have your photo taken with some tigers, and then wander around the grounds looking at other animals who have found refuge there (mostly deers and pigs and a few buffalo). The photos are taken in a canyon, and everybody pays 100 Baht to be taken around. You give the camera to one worker, and another takes you by the hand and leads you from tiger to tiger (there are about ten in total, most roaming free). You sit or kneel or lean down (or lean on!) the tiger, and they snap your photo. I went in before James, and I was a little nervous because they are wild animals after all (look at Seigfreid and Roy!), but the keepers were keeping them occupied with treats. The tiger felt bony and gritty, but still soft. It was all quite surreal, really, to think that you’re actually stroking a tiger! The third photo was with a tiger on a ledge, and this was the most bizarre experience. The monk indicated to me that I should lie down on the tiger, and rest my chin on his back. I hesitated, and just leaned down on him a little. The second photo, I sank a little lower. The tiger didn’t seem bothered. So the third photo, I rested my chin on my hands, practically lying on top of him. The tiger was too preoccupied licking his paws to be bothered. And I can assure that my leaning on him was the lightest leaning I’ve ever leant in my life. I might look relaxed, but every photo hides the muscles, wound to a point where I could spring quickly away from the jaws of the tiger if need be. But I didn’t need to. He was a lovely big pussycat. James got a great photo of him patting a tiger as, unbeknownst to him, another sneaks up behind him. Well, it wasn’t sneaking, it was just moving around.
After the tigers, we saw the tiger cubs. There were four, and the keepers just grabbed them, then let them loose, warning us to be careful because they like to sneak up from behind and they can bite hard despite their baby appearance. But the cubs were too interested in destroying each other to bother with us. They pounced and fought and wrestled non-stop for about half an hour, running in circles in a small garden filled with grass (plenty of place to hide for surprise attacks on one another). The Dutch guy, Simon, got a nip on his hand from one, but nothing serious. James got to pat one, and he said it felt like a welcome mat. The other tigers were softer.
We got a lift back to our resort with Simon and Daphne, the Dutch couple. James and I went for a swim when we got back, though. It was pitch black, and I thought about the huge water snake we’d seen in the lake the day before. I stupidly said “I hope that snake isn’t in here,” and then we got so paranoid about swimming in the dark that we only stayed in for about five or ten minutes! There were loads of frogs bouncing around the edges of the pool as well, which was exciting, but also potential attraction to snake, so we decided we were refreshed enough. We ended up eating dinner and having drinks with Simon and Daphne, chatting about anything and everything, but I ended up so exhausted (and it suddenly came over quite cold!). So we went to bed around 11pm.
Oh, that’s what I forgot to mention. Before booking the tigers, we also booked a private taxi for the next day, to take us to Hellfire Pass and then straight to the bus terminal, since I had to be back in Bangkok for a 6:30 dental appointment (to replace that filling I lost in Vietnam). So the morning after the tigers we had to wake up fairly early to go meet our taxi. Hiring the vehicle ended up being cheaper and more convenient than doing a tour, we just didn’t get all the excess crap like a bamboo rafting trip and an elephant ride, which we weren’t interested in doing anyway. So we had a “non air-conditioned” vehicle, which turned out to be freezingly air-conditioned because it was an open-air tuk-tuk!! It took us about an hour to get out there (at one stage I got really nervous when I noticed the driver was doing almost 140km/h), but it was free to enter, and we spent a good two hours there. The museum was of a really high quality, and was clearly sponsored by the Australian Government because it had an obvious Australian bias. Hellfire Pass, by the way, was a canyon that was carved out of a hill by hand, for the railway track to pass through. Solid rock cut, exploded and moved by 1000s of PoW’s. about 20% died, and it is an incredible feat of manpower and a moving indication of the slavery that the PoW’s and the locals endured under the Japanese and Korean soldiers. The experience was extremely moving; we got headphones that talked about the conditions the PoW’s endured, and the work they were forced to do, with many surviving PoW’s commenting on their experience. It was horrific thing to see, knowing the conditions they had to go through in order to create the canyon, but also something worth admiring and respecting, as an example of the strength and valiant nature of the men. Weary Dunlop was involved in the medical care of the soldiers, and there was a plaque on the wall in his memory, as well as a handwritten letter from his great-nieces and nephews, reading “To My Uncle Weary Dunlop.” It’s hard to explain the atmosphere in Hellfire Pass. Eerily still, completely silent, I dragged my hand along the rock thinking about the men cutting this rock by hand. We were lucky to be there so early, as well. We got the whole pass to ourselves, without hundreds of tourists ruining the atmosphere. We got to really think about the history of the place, and take our time over everything.
After the pass, we went and had some lunch, then jumped onto the bus to Bangkok. We arrived in Bangkok at around 4, got our awful room, I complained, then we gave up, I went to the dentist. It was a weird experience! The facilities were fantastic, and the secretary remembered me from when I made my appointment and too happily, I felt said “Sawaidee Kah Angela!!”. Then my dentist spoke very good English, but when I said “Sawaidee Kah” as I walked in, she thought I spoke Thai. I laughed and quickly explained that Sawaidee Kah was all I knew. Then I was in the chair, and she covered my face with a rag so that only my mouth was accessible. I started to panic a little then, wondering what the hell was going to happen that I wasn’t supposed to see. But she asked if everything was okay, and I asked to not have my face covered, and she laughed and quickly removed it. She explained that Thai people are very shy, and like to have their face covered when they are worked on. I told her that in Australia, we watch the whole time. It was surprising how horrible it felt not being able to see what was going on!! So she started drilling, and when I jumped, she ran to get a needle. I yelped and said I’d be good and I didn’t need a needle, so I just gripped the armchairs and told myself that the weird, sweet pain of having a tooth drilled isn’t pain. I kept reminding myself “This isn’t pain, think of Jenn and her knee, that’s pain! Think of working for 16 hours in sweltering heat without a break, smashing rocks non-stop, that’s pain! This is just a tooth.” It sounds lame, but it helped me get through without a needle, by just reminding myself that it wasn’t pain, it was discomfort, nothing more.
After the tooth was filled (in a procedure involving lots of instruments I’ve never seen before, but that were overall unpainful and efficient), we went and got some dinner (I could only chew on one side of my mouth, though), watched “Keeping Mum” then went to back to our cigarette choked room to get three hours of sleep troubled by dreams of Ebola before flying to Penang the next morning! But all this you know, so I shall leave it here for now. Arsenal are losing. But there’s still time. We hold hope.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2006 at 10:38 pm and is filed under Travel, Malaysia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.