Homeward, by Way of the Stomach

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe last morning of a holiday always has a slightly guilty air about it. Nobody announces that it’s over, but everyone is already folding things in their heads, and the view from the balcony starts to look like something you’re being asked to return.

Breakfast first, because I’m not leaving on an empty stomach. The spread was decent. Hotel buffets tend to blur into one long tray of scrambled eggs, and I’ve stopped pretending otherwise. The nasi dagang was the exception, properly good and worth the trip to the counter twice. I went back a second time and I’m not sorry.

Then a final lap of the resort with the 360 camera, which I’d been meaning to do all weekend and had somehow put off until the last possible moment. That’s very much my style. The place is hilly. Not charmingly undulating, actually hilly, the sort of gradient that makes you wonder whether the architect had ever met a guest carrying a breakfast’s worth of rice. The camera, being 360, records everything, including the man holding it pausing to admire views that were mostly an excuse to catch his breath.

Packing went smoothly enough, and we were out before noon. I consider leaving a hotel before noon a genuine achievement. Other people run marathons.

The first stop came quickly: keropok lekor. I had told myself, quite firmly, that I’d hold back for lunch. That resolve lasted roughly as long as it took to smell them frying. A road trip on this side of the country without keropok lekor is simply an inefficient way of getting home.

The proper stop was Temerloh, for lunch at Go’ Bang Maju Tol. Anita had her patin tempoyak, which she’d been quietly looking forward to all morning, and it showed. Tempoyak divides people, and I think that’s rather the point of it. My mee rebus udang was excellent, generous with the prawns and with a gravy that made a convincing case for slowing down. Of the two dishes, mine was the safer choice. I’d argue it was also the right one, though I wouldn’t argue it at the table.

Then into Temerloh town to charge the car. This is still a new ritual for us, and I’m undecided whether I find it tedious or rather civilised. A charging stop forces a pause you’d never otherwise take. On a full stomach, it’s hard to object too strongly to being told to sit still for a while.

The return leg delivered the jam around Karak, as reliably as the weather. There is something almost reassuring about it. If the Karak traffic ever cleared, I’d assume something had gone badly wrong elsewhere.

Home around half six. Bags dropped, shoes off, and the particular silence of a house that has been waiting for you. Nothing much happened for the rest of the evening, which was exactly the plan.

It was a nice break. Not a grand one, nor a life-changing one, just a few days of good food, steep paths and nowhere urgent to be. These days, that’s the sort I’ve come to prefer.

Breakfast Club, East Coast Edition

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSunday began the way Sundays ought to, slowly and without apology. No alarms, no rounds, no particular reason to be anywhere at any specific minute. The sea outside the villa was already up and about, but it seemed happy to let us lie in.

Eventually we stirred ourselves and drove into Kuantan for breakfast with the MRSM friends. The venue was Nasi Lemak Lerek, conveniently close to the house of one of the group, which is the sort of local knowledge no guidebook can quite replicate. The food was very good, and the company better still. There is a particular ease that comes with friends who knew you before you had any idea who you were going to be. Conversation picks up exactly where it left off, sometimes decades earlier, and nobody needs reminding of the plot.

Most of them were heading back to KL after the meal, so the farewells came with full stomachs. We, rather smugly, had another night in Cherating.

First, though, the car needed charging, a ritual now as natural as checking the weather. Then came the seaside drive back, taken at a leisurely pace with frequent and entirely justified stops. Fruit from a roadside stall, roti paung still warm, putu and keropok lekor. The back seat began to resemble a small travelling market, and the car smelt faintly and wonderfully of fried fish crackers.

Along the way we stopped at Holiday Villa. We used to stay there many times when Idlan and Irfan were toddlers, often with Anita’s parents. Walking around, I was pleased to find it still well maintained, the gardens tidy, the sea exactly where we had left it. Places like that hold memories rather patiently. You return years later and find them waiting, a little older, a little quieter, but intact. Small feet on the sand, grandparents in the shade, the endless negotiation of naps. It was good to be reminded.

Back at our resort, we arrived in time for the F1. A quick late lunch at the café overlooking the sea, then settled in for the race. This year the Bahrain Grand Prix was held in Malaysia, bringing Formula 1 back to Sepang, which felt like a homecoming of sorts. The weather, being Malaysian, insisted on making a contribution, and rain delayed the start. There is a certain poetry in waiting for cars capable of three hundred kilometres an hour to be held up by a cloud.

The race eventually finished, just in time for a walk on the beach. The tide was out, the light was going gold, and the sand was firm underfoot. We did not talk much. There was no need.

Dinner was at the stalls just outside the resort, simple and satisfying, with plastic chairs, good food and the hum of other people’s weekends around us. It was the right ending to a day that had asked very little of us and given back a great deal.

We slept well. Properly, deeply well, the way you only manage near the sea.

The Long Way to the Sea

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe day started at six with a ward round, at an hour when the corridors are still yawning and the coffee has not yet decided whether to help. It was an early start even by recent standards, but there was a reason for the haste. The rest of the day had plans, and they were not inclined to wait.

From there I headed to Pudu to meet the photography crowd for the Kelby Walk. Ripi was leading again, with the easy authority of someone who knows exactly which alley has the best light and which has the best kopi. All the usual suspects were there, cameras slung, arguing amiably about lenses and pretending not to compare kit. Pudu obliged with its usual texture, all peeling paint and morning bustle. I could not stay long, which felt a little like leaving a party just as the good conversation begins, but the east coast was calling, and it does not call quietly.

We left by eleven. The drive to Cherating is long enough that you settle into it, the city thinning out and the hills taking over. Temerloh provided our first charging stop, and with it a pleasant interlude of stretching legs and watching the percentage climb with the patience of a kettle you are trying not to stare at.

The final stretch took us past Lynas, which I can report is not exactly scenic. Industrial in the most sincere sense of the word. One does not drive towards the beach expecting a rare earth processing plant, but here we were, and here it was, unbothered by our opinions.

We reached Royale Chulan by four. The villa turned out to have an extra room, which was a welcome surprise, if slightly puzzling, as though the place had been expecting guests we had forgotten to invite. We settled in, took a quick walk around the resort, and let the sea air do its gentle work of persuading us that we were, at least briefly, on holiday.

The rest was short-lived. By evening we were driving to Kuantan for the wedding dinner of Aya’s daughter. Aya was a classmate from MRSM Terendak, and there is something quietly remarkable about watching the children of school friends get married. It does sharpen one’s sense of time. The dinner was warm and generous, full of faces and familiar laughter, and we enjoyed it thoroughly.

Afterwards came another round of charging in town before the drive back to the resort. Forty minutes or so, along a road that was not in great condition and seemed to regard street lighting as an optional extra. I drove with the concentration of someone reading small print in a dim room, and the car, to its credit, did not complain.

When we finally arrived, I made it as far as the balcony. The plan was to sit down for a moment before changing. The moment, as it turned out, became the rest of the night. I fell asleep there, still dressed for the wedding, the sea somewhere out in the dark doing what seas do.

A long day, by any measure. But a good one, from a dawn in the wards to the waves at midnight.

Charged and Trimmed

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSome days you can feel coming before they arrive. I woke this morning with that particular awareness, the sense of a diary that had been filled in by someone with great ambition and very little regard for the person who would have to live it. A busy day, then. Best to get on with it.

The morning clinic was a long one. Not unpleasant, simply long, the sort where the waiting room never quite empties and each conversation leads politely into the next. By the time it eased off, the morning had been thoroughly used up, with nothing left over for the luxury of a proper pause.

The afternoon brought a stem cell infusion, which is quieter and slower than it sounds, a matter of patience and careful watching. There is something steadying about it. The clock moves at its own pace, and for a while you move with it, whether you like it or not.

Somewhere in the background, the weekend had been assembling itself. Tomorrow we head for Cherating, by way of Kuantan, where Aya’s daughter is getting married. A wedding has a way of rearranging everyone’s priorities, and ours were duly rearranged. Plans were made, clothes considered, and the question of the drive itself came up, as it now inevitably does.

Which is how the evening began with a trip to Bangsar in search of somewhere to charge the car. Owning an EV, I am learning, adds a new layer to any journey. You no longer simply go somewhere. You go somewhere via somewhere else, with one eye on the battery percentage and the other on a map of charging points. It is not a burden exactly, more a new habit forming, like checking your pockets for keys before shutting the door.

While the car took its fill, I took the opportunity to have a haircut. There is a pleasing efficiency in two things being topped up and tidied at the same time. The barber worked with quiet focus, and I left looking marginally more presentable for a wedding, which seemed only fair given the effort everyone else would be making.

Home again, and the day was not quite finished with me. There was an online meeting with the team in Kota Bharu who are organising the ASM next year. Planning something a year ahead has its own strange gravity. Dates, venues and programmes all feel slightly hypothetical, until suddenly they are not. The team were enthusiastic and organised, which is the best combination one can hope for, and we ended with that pleasant sense of things beginning to take shape.

By the time the screen went dark it was late, and the house had settled around me. The car was charged, my hair was shorter, and the plans for both this weekend and next year were rather further along than they had been this morning.

A packed day, as predicted. There is a certain satisfaction in a forecast that turns out to be accurate, even when the forecast was mostly for exhaustion. Tomorrow, the east coast. Tonight, a little rest, and perhaps a last look at the packing list.

Cuti-Cuti Malaysia

Irfan running around in front of the chalet at Bukit Merah ResortIt was another breeze driving into UMMC this morning despite the downpour. I wished that the school holiday is every week at this rate. Cut down my driving time from close to an hour to half of that, despite leaving home later. I'm certainly not complaining. This story about holidays brought back memories about my own previous breaks, not the freebies the pharmaceutical companies give for 'meetings', but the one I fork out money for with the family on tow.

There is a trend forming. I used to hate going for holidays in Malaysia as a Malay. The experiences certainly has not been kind. June 2006, during a quick break to Port Dickson, we stopped over for lunch at one of the five-star hotels. Drove the car into the driveway at the main entrance, stopped over to drop my two boys, my wife Anita and my mother-in-law. The two doormen just stood there while my mother-in-law clamber off, and my wife dragging down my boys. They did not even bat an eyelid. Another car pulled over behind us with a Mat Salleh couple in slippers. Usian Bolt would have cringed at the speed the two stooges raced to open their door. To add insult to injury, they even picked up the luggage and opened the door for them. My mother-in-law being a Mak Datin did not take it lightly. She was livid. We didn't bother staying, we promptly left for another joint.

There was another incident in a hotel in Penang, sponsored by a pharmaceutical company. I went to check in with the rest of the party, mainly Chinese doctors (my family was not with me). I noticed that they were eager to serve me first but probably changed their mind when I opened my mouth. They must have thought that I was a Middle Eastern type, until I started speaking in proper Penang accent!

By last year, it has gone a lot better. Maybe because the flock of foreigners with cash were thinning out. I have to mention two places that looked after us very well despite being Malaysians. I actually wrote on Kementerian website to give kudos to the two venues. They were Bukit Merah Resort and Eastern Pavillion in Cherating. The Gurney in Penang was also excellent. We were not asking for much, just to be treated fairly. Try this. Stand in front of the counter in a hotel lobby, next to a Mat Salleh. Who will person behind the counter serve first? I can bet RM50 that it's not going to be you, unless you happen to be a Leng Chai or something! If the Ministry want to make the Cuti-cuti Malaysia a success, they have to address these issues. It may appear small, but these are the things that can spoil a good holiday!

For those going cuti-cuti Malaysia, props to all of you. I might be heading to Putrajaya one of these weekends. The Pullman Hotel certainly look nice on the website.

Cherating