Casuarina Durian
China Town
The sexy beach
The special lamp
Just got back today. Well, nobody swam in the sea as the wind and water current is very strong. The deluxe rooms we stayed which are facing the sea was getting closer to the sea year by year, caused by erosion. The whole night, the only thing you can hear is the water hitting the beach and the boulders, and guess what, Pulau Bidong was just opposite our rooms. Pulau Bidong, one of the scenic and uninhabited islands off located off Kuala Terengganu, is often remembered as the temporary home of the Vietnamese boat people who fled their war-torn country in the 1970s. Out of the estimated 800,000 Vietnamese who left their country during this period, the biggest proportion, more than a quarter of a million, landed on our shores. Yes, this is the famous island portrayed in the controversial movie Turtle Beach (starring Joan Chen) but no, none of the refugees were murdered by the local fishermen. The UNHCR and International Red Cross was on hand to protect the safety of the refugees, then gazetted as a protected area by the Malaysian government. We were wondering if the waves were strong enough, the next morning, we'd be floating next to Pulau Bidong.
And on Mayday, also Labour's Day, we went for a stroll by the beach. And to my horror, there was a chicken head on a short tree stick, and there was another piece of meat a few metres away.the room I suspected that the two Malays were trying to attract the crabs. But this certainly isn't the right way to catch them. It will slowly pollute the beach. You can call them anything you like, as it was one stupid yet ridiculous way. And the food, they were all halal. Well,the first night we had a pizza, fried rice with keropok lekor, satay and hot spicy paddy chilli sauce, and a plate of fruit rojak, also spicy. The resort was a nice place to hang out, but the rooms were poorly maintained, as the old owner of the resort made the room rates so low that all the lower class people starts coming in. The workers there were INEFFICIENT. One word would explain everything. They only cleared the rooms at about 1.30 pm. And the bathroom was not very the clean. The shower cubical was so small that I kept on knocking the glass doors. There were a few stains here and there, and the room looked so dark. One of the lamp was bulbless, so I had to depend on only 3 dim lights. The lamp shade was made out of rattan, so it blocked like 50% of the light. Instead, I inverted the lamp shade and the room was more like a room.
I stayed in a room alone while my parents stayed in another room. Well, each room only has two beds. The next day, my dad's friend chit-catted with us. Later in the afternoon, we went to town in my dad's friend's car. It was a company car, a Perdana Executive. The leg space at the back was awesome, it was so DAMN BIG. It's kind of like a limousine, and I still remember those old Proton Saga limousines, there were like elongated in length and some were even like broken into half and joint back again, adding some extra black material there. Anyway, the car's acceleration was not all that good. Even though there were only four of us, the car moved as if each of us were a tonne. In fact, we got a free lift. If we were to follow the taxi to town, it would cost 120 ringgit to and fro. Pretty expensive, and in China Town, we ate and visited some shops. One of the shops there sold antics. The old charcoal iron was for sale too. But we did not buy anything, afraid that those things maybe replicas.
Later, we went to a coffee shop, where it was famous for it's iced-drinks. It's kind of like Slurpee, but this is real fruit, so nice and refreshing. We even had some dim sum and a pot of claypot chicken rice. The dim sum was not really good, the Char Siew Pau was filled with so much fats in it. And the Lo Mai Kai was sweet, compared to its original taste, well, maybe that's the Terengganu style.
The keropok Lekor in Terengganu was supposedly better than the ones in Kelantan. The Terengganu one has more fish meat in it, whereas Kelantan's contains more flour. Then we went to this Taman Tamadun Islam, there are actually the replicas of mosques around the world. There were only like one Chinese family there other than us, well, my father's friend said the place is actuallt one of the nicest place in Terengganu. We even visited the place where the Monsun Cup was held, near the river mouth. At night, we had barbaque buffet, also known as "Pasar Malam Night". I have no idea why there called it that way. Anyway, I ate till I was bloated. All the prawns, fish, squids.........et cetera. Uncle Sreward (hope I spelled his name correctly) came by after that. He is a hotelian. He is one of the person in charged of the place. He is new, as his company just bought over that place.I think he's quite an interesting guy. He drank tea with honey with my dad. At 5:57 am, I woke up, earlier than my phone alarm. Good biological clock. =]. It was so freaking cold, I shivered in a warm bath. That night, it rained, and the sound of the sea distured my sleep. At the airport, I was still shivering, like some tiger in North Pole. I didn't t7akebreakfast. And when I reached back home, with was hours from the time I wrote this post, I was dizzy, feeling a bit weird. We flew in firefly, a small little cute shiny firefly. Haha. The plane was new, the seats were like leather. And it is one of the safest plane on Earth. It has this ability to glide on water, not like other jet powered planes, there would just sink like a rock. Simple yet fun holiday.
