Secret Solo Trip: Day 03

As it turns out, I think I am no true introvert. Think about it, which introvert would be able to say hi to random people?

On the first day I asked a guy in Teluk Intan where I should head to next. He said Manjung. I got lost along the way and ended up in Lumut. While visiting the leaning tower, I asked the ticket booth guy for fun things to do around Teluk Intan. Besides suggesting that I tried the river cruise – which I surprisingly enjoyed – he invited me to come back after closing time to view the clock mechanisms which have to be manually winded, and which were off limits to the public.

In Lumut I talked to a lady who recommended that I try Restoran D’Warisan, and I half regretted that I was alone because because there was so many lauk to sample but there was only my small tank to fill. No one could think of anywhere to go after Lumut, so I thought, heck, let’s go get cendol in Taiping. I mean I lived in Lenggong so Kuala Kangsar and Ipoh are kinda familiar, but I had only been to Taiping twice – once when 2 of my kids got into an accident, and again with Le Tour last time. Both times were in and out, and I practically had never been to Taiping. While queuing up for cendol I talked to the uncle behind me and he paid for the cendol.

I had no idea where to go next, but I saw “Burmese Pool” on roadsigns. The name intrigued me somewhat, so I went to check it out. Of course I couldn’t help myself when I saw how pretty the water was. While splashing about, I talked to a track-star-turned-police-cadet, but she couldn’t think of another option besides Bukit Merah. I mean Bukit Merah is plenty cool, but a waterpark would be quite pishang if you’re on your own. Another guy recommended that I checked out Kuala Gula.

Kuala Gula was a little disappointing, to be honest. It was a small fishing town, but there was nothing much to see. The folks there are serious fishermen rather than those catering to tourists, and they seemed not to know what to do with me, vice versa. In truth it was a little eerie for a lone girl to step into a little fishing warehouse where several men were leisurely going about their business – this was at the end of the day and I guess there wasn’t anything much to do. A thought did come to me that if they raped and/or murdered me, I am pretty much off the grid at the moment and no one would know until quite long. Only Lil Sis and Mr. Atheist knew about my wanderlusting, and Mr. Atheist doesn’t really give a damn. But they were faultless folks; one of them talked kindly with me while the others grinned in amusement at this clearly city girl who had randomly wandered into their midst.

I had planned to spend the night there, but there wasn’t any suitable accommodation so after a dinner at a floating restaurant – nothing to boast about, really, except that it is a floating restaurant – I headed back to Taiping. The receptionist of the motel suggested that I gave the ATV a go. She also recommended the nasi lemak at Bukit Drummond – which I mistakenly heard as Bukit Doraemon – but as Google said that it was permanently closed, her morning counterpart suggested that I went to the Casual Market for breakfast instead.

One Malaysia.

Casual Market was marvellous, quite reminiscent of Ipoh’s New Hollywood, except that it is bigger. It is tacitly divided into a Chinese and a Malay section. As the selection at the Malay section was dismal, I got a char kwey teow at the Chinese section, but as the Chinese section was bustling, I brought it to a table in the Malay section. A lady at a drinks booth refused to sell me nescafe tarik because I’d bought food from the Chinese section. The judgemental little incident almost upset me, but her friend quickly intervened and made me a nice cup. Luckily the nescafe tarik, char kwey teow, and a red bean bun I had bought were all delicious so the morning was saved.

The offending meal.

ATV-ing was really quite cool, but what made it was the fact that I’d piggybacked on a very sporting group that acted like I was part of their little gang. They also invited me to lunch afterwards, but I had to part ways as I wanted to go to Grik. Why did I want to go to Grik? Because I spoke with the guide of the ATV who suggested that I check out this place overlooking the K2 sisters – that’s Kenderung and Kerunai for non-hikers – called Denai Kabus. I mean what’s in Grik anyway? But as soon as he made that suggestion, my mind was made.

So that’s how I ended up here tonight – last night, I guess, by the time I post this. Run by a retired education officer Cikgu Termizi, the place is gorgeous, more friendly to powils – that’s 4WDs for you – and without any connection whatsoever. The moment I arrived I begged the receptionist to let me use her phone – how she has connection I have no idea – to let Lil Sis know that I’m safe and to ask her to cover up with Mother.

Despite its downsides, the place was almost fully booked. They had no chalet left for me, but they had tents that I could hire. I was gratified that my packing the sleeping bag and headlamp turned out to be visionary. The whole staff, including Cikgu Termizi, was both impressed and aghast that they had a lone female guest who simply walked in and had to put up in a tent. They really quite fussed over me, bringing me lamps without my asking and giving me kuih. When they passed by my tent, they would enquire if everything was okay. Cikgu Termizi and a few of his staff, on different occasions, assured me that they had a staff on standby sleeping in a little room nearby my tent and that I could knock on the door if I needed anything.

My little camp. The offered to set it in the little hut, and knowing that that’s more secure in case it rained, I didn’t turn it down.

Honestly, it has been refreshing seeing how everyone reacted to my travelling alone. Besides being impressed, there is also that protectiveness and something akin to tenderness in their interaction as soon as they learned that I was on my own. I am happy and thankful about this, but I am also amused at the thought that had Mr. Atheist been with me – I did ask him – folks wouldn’t have been this indulgent, especially if they learned that we weren’t a young married couple.

Another thought was – this whole journey has been a series of serendipitous discovery and joy and I really wish Lil Sis was here. She would have loved this so much. But I have no doubt that if we were together this journey would have turned out differently. How different I can’t really say – maybe we’ll Google more, maybe we’ll talk to different people, maybe we’ll make reservations – but definitely different. But it doesn’t matter – wherever I’ve gone on this journey, I would gladly go again with her.

Tomorrow is my last day of the journey. In the morning I might take another ATV ride – just to see the view around here – and then I have to rush home to get my booster shot. I was hoping to research the way home – I wanted to see if I could stick to my resolution to eschew highways, but the booster shot is kinda limiting my window there – but there is no internet here haha. Welp screw it, I guess, I’ll find a way to make it work cause I’m not gonna leave before I experience this place properly.

The open house

It turns out that I really don’t quite live in ‘real’ life, do I?

So I went to a cousin’s open house yesterday. I don’t even know why I went, except for such a crushing sense of wrongness if I didn’t. So I dragged my ass off and went.

Incidentally, if you’re gonna do an open house, do it like he did – he’d prepared some main dish, but it’s a potluck that goes on ’till late’. So like the number of guests remained stable at all times, but there were always new people dropping in with new food. So you don’t have to suffer that age-old anxiety of hosts: what if we ran out of food?

Anyway, my cousin is an extreme extrovert and he has like a thousand friends, a lot of which are mutuals from other places so like everybody just kinda knows everybody. Except me, of course. Nobody knew who I was, and I didn’t know who they were, and I wasn’t interested to. I mean, not that I’m snobbish (though I may appear that way) – it’s just that after these small talks we’re not very likely to see each other again and I’m really fine just sitting here observing everything just leave me alone.

And like, just leave me alone because, in order to have small talks, you have to have a normal life. But my life…

I’m 30. (Okay, I’m not, and people give me such grief for saying I’m 30 when I’m not yet but really what difference does it make?)

Belajar lagi ke dah kerja? Yes, fuck this question the most. Fuck it fuckity it and its variations even more than that stupid bila nak kahwin? What the hell am I in this world? Because I can’t talk about being a business development executive (you know, because I don’t know what that job really means), I tried telling people yesterday that I was a teacher. Which was really stupid of me because people will inevitably ask oh mengajar dekat mana? If I was a better liar I might have been able to spin a better tale or just pretended that my program was still ongoing, but yeah… Basically I just looked like a fraud. What do you do? I’m a teacher. Oh, where do you teach? I don’t. It doesn’t fly.

Then if you don’t talk about that, what else do you talk about? Well, some people tried to sembang with me about Malaysia and I just went errrrk. I mean, though physically I’m here, I’m not really here, am I? I don’t know anything about Malaysia, not current events, not politics, not sports, not even tv shows and celebs. I probably know more about Elizabethan England than the world I’m actually living in right now.

A little later a bunch of my cousins arrived. They’re all a bit surprised to see me there, because everyone thought I was still in Lenggong. They found it incredulous that I’ve been here half a year and none of them had heard anything. And they’re like on weekends buat apa? And I’m like duduk rumah je and nobody understood what a bliss it is to just be alone and lost to the world.

Even coming to the open house – except me, nobody bloody came alone. One girl dragged her little niece just so that she didn’t come alone. My host-cousin, who happened to know Ms. Married (actually he’s met all the Misses Married, Martyr, and Ph.D), asked why I didn’t bring Ms. Married along. Then you’d have someone to talk to. I only smiled. He didn’t know how glad I was Ms. Married didn’t come.

During raya I found some tweets from Ms. Married. They’re addressed anonymously, complete with the passive-aggressive tag you-know-who-you-are, but I think they were for me. I might be completely off the mark here, but whatever, you put those public things out there and I was in a sensitive state and they hurt me. Basically, those tweets, if they were for me, were a rant by Ms. Married, an extrovert, condemning how an introvert like me would retreat into myself in the current time when I’m confused and unsure about everything. She accused me (if it was me she meant in those tweets) of not appreciating human relationship enough and that I have thrown her away.

To be fair, I guess she does have a point to some of the things she said, but for some others, I felt like she wrote those things because she could not understand how I could make different life choices from here. Like not wanting to get married. And here we run aground to my perspective that thinks that since she has fucked up her life by getting married, she wants everyone around her to marry, too, so that she isn’t the only one who is fucked. But maybe that’s just my prejudice, I don’t know.

So how did I respond to the tweets? In the classic I’ll-pretend-I-didn’t-see-them. Because what else can I do? Any attempt at talking it out would be seen as further excuses rather than explanation. And anyway she isn’t actually interested in anything that isn’t about her. Which, probably could also be said about me, but at least I’m trying to not impose myself upon others. But of course that means I haven’t been saying anything at all in the group chat, and maybe I’m a little over-sensitive but I feel like she hasn’t said anything either for a very long time when she usually would instigate a convo of some sort every 3 or 4 days. And you know what they say about relationships – they die the moment you stop talking and we certainly have stopped talking. It has been a few years since we really talked (noted somewhere on this blog), and now we have stopped talking. Period.

Am I glad that I have lost them? Despite what Ms. Married might think, no, I actually feel sorry about it. I’m glad for the peace and quiet, but I’m sorry to see a friendship of 10-odd years fizzle into inability to understand one another. We’ve always known that each of us was widely different. People used to marvel how we could even stand each other, much less be friends. Turns out, in the end, we couldn’t.