Cherating Lessons

After my refreshing snorkeling adventure, I was cool and comfortable. After 15 minutes at Muda's eating my banana sandwich, I was soaked with sweat. The scary thing is I was getting accustomed to the "I am so hot and sweaty I think I am going to turn into a steaming puddle" feeling. To this day, two and a half years later, I don't have air conditioning in my car or in my apartment. A week or two of the summer can get pretty uncomfortable, but the rest of the time, I just accept the fact that I am really hot. It's as though my body reached a point in Malaysia where it broke through some heat barrier, and it never went back. That's not to say I don't get hot and sweaty. It just doesn't seem to bother me like it did prior to Malaysia.

So, after my banana sandwich, I walked back to my chalet to take a cold shower and decompress. I was a little worried because I had told the manager that I would only be there for one night. Since checkouts are normally at noon and it was now well past 1:00, I was worried they may have rented out my chalet. I should have known I was worrying for nothing. I was in Cherating on Cherating time! Upon my return, I found a sign on the manager's door saying he would be back around 3:00. As I carefully walked around the chickens in front of his chalet, I made a mental note to stop by at 3 or 3:30 to pay my 25 ringgits for the night.

I stopped to pet two of the guesthouse cats who were lounging in the walkway on the way to my hut. Sitting on the steps of the chalet across from mine was an older, white woman with red hair who I had seen come from the main house at the back of the property earlier. I said hello and asked if she was the owner, knowing that the placed was owned by an Edinburgh woman (just like my Gammy was). The red-headed woman was not the owner, but was good friends with her. Apparently, the owner and her husband had moved back to Scotland a year and a half before when she got pregnant. The red-headed woman (whose name I also forget so I will call her Red) was quite fascinating. Red was French. Her husband, whose nationality I do not know, worked in Russia so he only came back on the weekend. Red had lived in Cherating for 13 years. She had just bought a place in Kuala Lumpur because she said that "13 years was a long time to live like you are on a constant holiday". Her son, who was originally from Santa Barbara but now lived in Japan with his Japanese wife and their children, was visiting and staying at the guest house. Talk about world travellers! Umm, yeah, I'm from Maryland...The end. It was neat though. It kind of shrunk the world for me. Just a bit though.

When I went into my chalet to take a long overdue cold shower, I heard a rustling noise in the bathroom. I peered in with a tiny bit of apprehension. The bathroom looked darker than before since it received a lot of natural light from the plexiglass middle section of the ceiling. I heard some more rustling and looked up at the ceiling. Much to my surprise, I came face to scaley foot with a very large lizard that was lying across the entire length of the bathroom ceiling on the plexiglass section. After jumping back and letting out an almost inaudible gurgle of terror, I realized that the lizard was on the other side of the plexiglass and not floating in mid air. Then it just became cool. I stuck my head out the window to tell the two Dutch girls next door about it. They had seen it earlier on the main part of my roof. As I was heading back to the bathroom to take a picture of my lizard friend, there was a big clatter and a thud. The lizard had fallen off and run away. I really felt like I was in the jungle.

That was part of the charm of Cherating. On one side of the street, there was the South China Sea. There were horseshoe crabs, jelly fish, coral reefs, and sand crabs. On the other side of the street, there were the mangrove rivers with big four foot lizards, poisonous snakes, monkeys, and river crabs. On the sea side, the air was thin, fresh, and rejuvenating. On the river side, the air was thick, dank, and seeped with stagnant life. Maybe that is why I liked Cherating so much. It spoke to the Gemini in me. The two distinct sides of my personality. I spent an equal amount of time on each side of the street, and I loved them both. Just as I have learned to love both sides of me. Thanks for the lesson, Cherating.

Snake Island Snorkelling-Cherating Day 4 August 3, 2007

That's right. Day four. Wasn't I only going to stay a couple of days and move on to experience other unknown adventures? I just couldn't seem to leave this place so I continue to experience unknown adventures in Cherating instead. Today's adventure started with Snake Island.


This was the first day in almost four weeks that I had actually set an alarm. I didn't want to miss snorkelling, and it had sounded as though they would wait for me if I didn't show up at 9 AM. That was worse then them leaving without me. I would rather feel abandoned then guilty. So I was determined to be there at 9, and I was there at 9. The rest of the village was sound asleep, but I was at the beach and ready to go on time. As I walked up towards the beach, I heard someone say hello. It was Nazri, our snorkel guide, sitting alone on the patio of a restaurant on the beach which turned out to be his sister's (I think everyone in this little village is related to each other somehow). I don't know why I was so stressed out about arriving on time. I had forgotten that Malaysian time is different than US time. In Malaysia, 9:00 means sometime before 10:00.



We were sitting on the patio for a while waiting for the rest of the party. Finally, Nazri's phone rang. Two of the four people were not coming. After a while longer, the other two hadn't shown up. I told Nazri he did not have to take me if they didn't show up because I was just tagging along. He said he would take me anyway because he had promised. I was struck by the ease of that rule. He didn't seem to wrestle with it, even knowing he would not make any money. It was his rule. If he promised to do something, he would do it. When I commented on this, he said that is how it was in the village. You give your word, you keep it. I haven't always been very good at that. I often try to figure out how to get out of doing something I said I would do. I thought, if I just accepted Cherating's rule "you give your word, you keep it", I would save so much energy. I decided to try that. I think I lasted 3 days, 9 hours, and 17 minutes after I got home. At least I tried...

Nazri went to gather the snorkelling party who were staying at my former chalet, Ranting. Of course, Nazri knew where they were staying because everyone in Cherating seemed to know everything that goes on in their little village. At least Nazri did. When I showed up at 9, he had said that he didn't think I was coming because someone had checkout of the Payung Guesthouse at 6 AM that morning. So either everyone know everything or I had a stalker. I really think it was the former. It reminded me of Mom back in St. Michaels. Nothing happens there that she doesn't know about. Anyway, back to the beach. Nazri came back from Ranting with all four people of the party. It was one man from Kuala Lumpur and three women, who I believe were his cousins, from Sabah. Sabah is part of the island half of Malaysia. Unfortunately, I can't remember their names, but the people were all very nice.



It was about a 5-10 minute boat ride to Snake Island. We were in one of those small fiberglass boats with an outboard motor, but it went fast and floated high on the wake. It had been a really long time since I had been on a small, fast boat like that. I loved it. It was so loud I could barely hear Nazri screaming touristy things behind me. The wind blew so strongly against my face that, if I hadn't had a natural smile on my face, the wind would would have forced one. I tried to take video and pictures but we were going too fast and jumping too much. I loved every second of it.

As we approached Snake Island, we saw that there was another group of snorkellers there from Club Med. We sputtered past their beautiful yacht in our little "ghetto boat". I know those Club Medders were jealous. We docked the boat on the beach (the yacht had to be anchored out farther from the island-hah!) and unloaded our gear. The island was lovely. It had just a small beachy area, but it had these huge rocks that were all worn smooth by the tides. They were each an abstract sculpture on their own. Together, they were a song. A silent symphony of the waves of water washing over them day after day, washing away their jagged edges and softening them for the world. Looking at them, I could hear it. I loved those rocks.

Once on shore, we walked to the top of the island (which is not high) and came down into another cove where no one else was. It was beautiful. The water there was also not crystal clear, but it was clearer than on Cherating Beach. We put our stuff down on a little ledge above the cove. I lingered on the ledge taking in the beautiful scenery while the rest of the party went down to the water to start snorkeling. When I looked down at them, I noticed that they were all snorkelling fully clothed. I figured this was a cultural thing so I wasn't sure what the appropriate thing to do was. Do I swim fully clothed as well so as not to offend anyone or is it ok for me to swim in my bathing suit? For guidance, I turned to my trusty guide who I am now beginning to consider a friend. Nazri said it was fine for me to swim in my bathing suit and pointed out that most of the Club Med swimmers were in swimsuits. He explained that the rest of our party "just weren't international". This meant that I was "international". Me! International! I swam in my "international" bathing suit.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I am terrified of sharks. Prior to the trip and even in the boat, I had repeatedly asked about sharks. I was repeatedly told there were no sharks. Muda had told me the day before that there were no sharks in the sea also so I was fairly confident that there were no sharks. I say only "fairly confident" because we are talking about the girl who is convinced that there are sharks as far up the Chesapeake Bay as the Bay Bridge. Lacking a significant fear of sharks made snorkelling much more enjoyable. I swam around looking at pretty fish, diving down to look at coral, and just generally pretending I was a mermaid. It was pretty and water is my element. I swam back to shore when I heard Nazri calling me back. He told me he didn't want me to swim out too far. I told him I wouldn't, but either way, I was a good swimmer so I would be fine. Then he pulled the shark card. That's right. Shark card. He tells me there are sharks further out from shore. I thought he was joking with me, but he said he wasn't. I said "Saya tidak suka" which translates into "I no like". Well, the other four people thought that was hilarious. While I was so happy that I could amuse them with my vast knowledge of their language, I was extremely distraught by the new turn of shark events. After a short interrogation, Nazri promised he was not just saying that to keep me from swimming out too far. Instead of swimming out, I decided to swim around to the other cove and snorkel around the reef instead. Stupid sharks.

When I came back to our cove, Nazri said he would swim around the island with me, but we needed to stay close to the rocks because there were sharks in the water bigger than me. He told me not to be afraid. Little did he know that I had already formulated a plan to drag his little body between me and any toothy shark I saw. We made it around the island without any shark encounters. It was a small island so it wasn't nearly as difficult as it sounds. It was pretty though. Upon our return to our cove, we found the rest of the party sitting in the shallow water. I sat with them and talked a little bit. The man spoke very good English. Two of the women spoke English fairly well, and the third woman didn't speak much at all. They gave me a few tips on my Malay, and the man suggested I visit the island of Pulau Kapas. He said he would give me a name of a man who would give me good deals on everything. I couldn't believe I was networking in Malaysia when the idea of doing it in the US makes me break out into hives. I never made it to Pulau Kapas, but it was generous of the man to recommend it.

Nazri was taking the same group on a river tour that afternoon. He asked them if I could tag along, and they graciously agreed. We climbed on our little boat to head back to Cherating. Once on shore, we parted ways, agreeing to meet at 4:00 at the river dock. I walked over to Muda's for a banana sandwich and a Coke where I met another local who gave me another Malay lesson. It had been a fulfilling morning, and I was looking forward to my afternoon river adventure.