Did you take your dysentery tablets with you?
UPDATE: It's not everyday you find two posts with the word 'isthmus' in it! Spot the serendipity at Newty's lastest post!
Over the weekend, edified by our bourgeois and deeply satisfying continental breakfasts at La Bodega, me and a gentleman friend (GF) decided to make the most of a sunny day and drive out of town.
Port Dickson was decided on as the destination, being not too ambitious (only 1.5 hours drive), and next to the sea (good for land-locked KL-ites). It did my heart good to smell the sea air, but I'm sad to report there was a stench around the edges that wasn't there when I was a wee brat on family vacation.
How places denegerate and fall into disrepair! Worse than this was the overall sensation of pollution. If anywhere would benefit from one of those magic Captain Planet makeovers (where he sucks up all the trash and slime stuff with his superpowers) it's PD. I felt like one of those lost children who enjoys playing at a rubbish dump or exploring a sewer, only to contract the bloody flux the day after.
Walking along the shore, GF spotted a sort of island whose isthmus (this is the part which connects the island to the shore, like a little bridge of land. Cool word, do you say? It's courtesy of GF) was next to a drain that was spewing some grey liquid into the sea. GF expresses strong desire to explore island. Wanting to appear game, I follow, despite grave misgivings about stepping into muddy stream of god-knows-what that is coming out of the drain.
Island is magnificently ugly. After much coaxing from GF, I walk through mangrove roots and feel like Frodo in the Forbidden Forest.
But we come out the other side to some rocky outcrop and then we see a hawk! An honest-to-goodness wild hawk making slow, graceful circles in the free sky.
On the rocky outcrop is also this fascinating pile of... rubbish!
Such an artfully arranged pile it is that one wonders if some strange trash-worshipping pixies come here at night and make a party and special commemorative sculpture! Seriously, I have seen installations in artschool that could not compare to it. Notice that coconuts only line the periphery of the arrangement.
GF once again uses his smarts and guesses that each time the tide comes in, the island is submerged. And when the tide goes out, this pile of rubbish gets left behind always at the same spot on the island.
Fascinating! But all this talk about the island being submerged makes me nervous. We go back through the mangrove forest to discover that the water has indeed risen and the isthmus is now underwater! Shore now seems quite far away. Panic, but hike up shorts like a good un' and wade across slimy seawater, trying to not imagine germs that are inching their way through one's skin and into one's body. We make it okay, but this is how far it was! (Those are GF's sensible island-exploring shoes)
Afterwards my Frodo-mojo is worn out and GF takes me for drinks at a nice resort. More walking on beach and frivolous banter, a dubious dinner at some roadside gerai that makes GF sick in the stomach the next day.
Then we go home. I also fall sick (I think they will leave out Port Dickson on the Visit Malaysia 2007 list). But it was worth it! Even big girls need playtime. Thank you, GF. I leave you with this portrait of Betta as a Vietnamese boat refugee:
7 comments:
oh la la chica, seems like you had lots of fun in the sun with your gentleman friend ;-)
Sad state of things in PD though (haven't been there in ages); guess we're all somewhat responsible for that.
Still, hope you'll have lotsa good days ahead of ya (and your GF too) *wink*
hullo mistah. How's your monday? It was heaps of fun. Funny how fun feels guilty these days - it's like, if I'm not working, I'm sinning.
Lord, who CLEARLY needs to disinherit from W.O.R.K?
xxx. hope you doing well. Lotsa new stuff on ur blog. Me like-ee v. much. Are you in worship of work too?
I'm in worship of sheep, I mean, sleep.
But i know so well about this whole work ethic thing.
It's like I'd feel super-duper guilty for slacking off every now and then, or when I have to do the laundry or tidy up the mess I'd make in my apartment. Seriously, I need to start thinking of finding a separate studio for working lah B (though I don't think I can afford it - at all).
TC, Ms. B & GF 2.
Mangroves! I like. And I can't see any pic of the hawk. Where, WHERE? We won't believe you until we see it.
Newtie
I do not lie! We were too busy gawking, by the time we fumbled for the camera it was away. Twas the noble quality of its flight that gave it away, also the wing span.
This may be the beginning of a new legend - in manner of loch nessie. The Sang Helang of PD. Eh? Eh?
Isn't there already a story involving a Sang Helang? Gee, I dunno. What would he/she do? Guardian of the isthmus? Maybe he once had a lover who fell under a curse and turned into an isthmus, and he into a hawk, and the only time they can see each other now is when the tide goes out.
The movie would star Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Lols sometimes I just love the way you think.
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