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.