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.