Sorry about the massive delay, just couldn't be arsed posting this from my island hideaway...
Was noice...
Here's what I 've been thinking whilst lying on the beach...
I am currently here – (actually this is a lie - I left this morning)
www.tunabay.com.my
The place is stuffed to breaking point with sandy beaches, coral reefs, charmingly rustic wooden abodes and ugly, hairy, old whiteys from strange dark corners of Europe where sexual congress with cattle is still acceptable, and from whom Marlboro red and sunburn smoke billows almost constantly.
It’s also very sunny; in fact there has been more constant sunshine here in the last hour than England has had since the week before you were born. Consequently I am no longer what the Pantone colour chart describes as dirty yellow/ paste, I am now more a light attack of bhuna diarrhoea brown, which is I suppose an improvement.
The Pope stole my Bikini
There are many activities to occupy the time; canoeing to one of any number of secluded coves inhabited by strangely beautiful fish and friendly looking turtles, sunbathing, catching a water taxi (which in is reality is no grander than a fella with a dingy and an outboard Suzuki motor) to the island opposite that looms large like a Malvern Hill adrift in a sea of iridescent turquoise, sunbathing, bobbing about on a lilo until the sun turns your skin to a blazing red mat of pain, sunbathing, eating at the resort restaurant/ café where you can sample any number of exotic dishes from chicken nuggets on a banana leaf to spicy tom yum soup in a bowl on a banana leaf, sunbathing, taking an ill prepared and foolhardy stroll through the jungle, hurdling ants the size of dachshunds and futilely attempting to spot the audible but distinctly surreptitious monkeys that wait patiently for you to collapse from heat stroke and nervous exhaustion from marching for as much as 20 minutes which causes a tremendous sense of fear that you will never again see civilisation, forever lost in the dense canopy of lush bountiful vegetation that constantly threatens to engulf the island entirely, with only power of market forces keeping it at bay, sunbathing, snorkelling and more sunbathing.
Twilight shot from our chalet (pronounced SHALL-LET)
Flying jellyfish, attack!
I’m a bit hit and miss with the snorkelling; first day I snorkelled with such ferocious intensity that I literally fried my back skin off. Subsequently I was laid up on my front in my sand encrusted bed that sits gracelessly in my basic chalet for a week as I ruefully waited for my back to grow new skin, whilst jettisoning the old in vile distended withering strips that clung to me constantly, causing irritation whilst helpfully reminding me that I only had myself to blame.
My second attempt at snorkelling, when the condition of my back would probably not scare the whinging brats of children on the beach into extensive and expensive middle-aged psychoanalysis was also met with disaster when I slashed my foot on some vicious coral causing an inch long gaping wound which I was informed I should clean as quickly as possible because, ‘a friend of a friend did the same thing in Sydney, he didn’t get it treated and then his foot fell off’. I have many pairs of Converse, so losing a foot would be a disaster. Since then I’ve been unable to snorkel without a crushing sense of foreboding, ever more acutely so at the prospect of a snorkel around ‘Shark Point’, where I was told by a smiling local the sharks ‘have yet to bite anyone’.
Apparently the sharks are only a foot long; one end is stuffed with razor sharp teeth and the rest has enough space for a foot.
Legs and lungs
Never having been a sunbather, I am somewhat bewildered by the activity; it appears to be no more sophisticated than lying out in the sun and cooking your flesh.
I am certain that I am missing out on some of the subtler points of this apparently tremendously popular pursuit. What I really don’t get is that when I have previously taken time off work and been asked what I did during that time off I have been honest and replied, ‘Nothing, laid around, played videogames’, which is met with gaping mouthed horror that I could so recklessly ‘waste’ such a precious amount of time; whereas if I tell people I spent a couple of weeks laying on a beach in the sun, doing nothing, I can guarantee the response will be a universal coo of ‘Lovely, I’m so jealous.’.
Nonsense of course; at least at home I get to do nothing whilst generating a vacuous sense of achievement through the completion of GTA 4, Assassins Creed, Bio-Shock, Portal etc…
What day is it?
The truth is it is phenomenally relaxing here. So much so that seeing as how I wasn’t exactly stressed when I got here I have found myself dredging all kinds of previously suppressed tensions and worries from my subconscious to fill the void.
For most folks I’d imagine who have been foolish enough to set their lives up in such a way that it’s crammed full with screaming, attention seeking, ungrateful brats, negative equity-stalking mortgages, drizzle and rubbish TV would see two weeks on a tropical island resort as a tremendous relief from the excruciatingly boring and soul destroying remaining weeks of the year, then I guess the relaxing element is probably ideal.
Although I suspect that the individual in question would take 4 or 5 days to ‘decompress’ and recover from jet lag and then the final 3 or 4 days would be taken up with pre-return to work anxiety because you just know that despite your boss saying they have everything covered, there will be a big pile of work that’s been generated from the minute you left, waiting for you. This in sum total only leaves maybe 6 days of actual quality relaxation time – and that’s if you haven’t got kids with you.
Obligatory sunset shot...
Saturday, I think.
I often try to imagine what the local Malay people who both live and work on these islands must make of the constant procession of typically white tourists who occupy the beaches with a more advanced innate instinct than the nervously scuttling crabs who go about their sandy duties with a sense of propriety that is wholly lacking in these Western interlopers. I suspect the locals like the money tourism generates, but not the tourists themselves, especially those you see desperately trying to ingratiate themselves so they can return home and brag to their friends about their unique socialising skills and new found friendships with those nameless diligent youngsters that served them and smiled tolerantly at their weak jokes and banal observations on island life for their money. I keep it professional, and all I ask in return is the same. I’m just another customer not a moment for them of life affirmation.
Surely the locals know that it is fantastically beautiful here, literally picture post card perfect. Or do they just become immune to it, like I do as I walk round the Bullring for the fiftieth time on another cram-packed Saturday shopping trip to Brum?
I bet if you dropped one of the guys here onto the streets of Redditch, Worcester, Solihull or Evesham they would be struck dumb at the beauty of the pedestrianised shopping areas and cloned rows of Boots, WHSmiths, Etam, Evans and Woolworths.
But more then that, I’m certain they would be unable to resist falling in love with the people. Those unpretentious, unaffected, gentle folk with their subdued charm and delightful sense of community that shuffle along with their customary big coats and deep-rooted porcelain white skin, just going about their days, persevering as they eke out a living in their ages old traditional shop work and office jobs.
An encounter at a coffee shop in the country’s capital has confirmed this to be at least partly true, “I want to visit England” the young Malay man said as he passed us our English Breakfast Tea (proper tea), “So I can become as white as you are”.
Lords of Tesco
Of course the irony is that living in a city that is increasingly polluted, over populated, hyper commercialised, strangled by an ineffective congested road network and haemorrhaging more and greater gleaming space-aged shopping malls (they’re universally much nicer than our shopping centres) then there are people to shop in, all selling things you can’t really afford and wanting to leave all this behind and travel to “where you are from”; he is already as white as we are.
Mind you, if the young man in question has a South East Asian girlfriend he is again already on his way. Like a Midlands art college, the common room areas here are occupied by gangly Whitey McWhite dudes with their mostly diminutive ‘not in their league’ SE Asian girlfriends. I’m sure that race has nothing to do with it for any of these young men, and each relationship is pure and wholesome… but then again I haven’t seen any gangly SE Asian fellas with ‘not in their league’ Whitey McWhite lady friends, at all. Maybe they just don’t holiday here?
Cock rock... (or, cock on a rock, rock on cock, funny rock looks like a cock)
What?
In the month I have been here there has only been two lots of noisy bastards, the first was a group of British back-packers who should all be killed immediately - scum that they were, shouting down the beach, getting pissed and playing loud music - wankers. I hate them. The second and more surprising was a family of CANADIANS. I know, right? CANADIANS. They were unbelievably loud and annoying, shouting ALL THE FUCKING TIME. The kids shouted, the dad shouted, the mother looked on... April, if you've read this far please explain yourself.
The arse end of the back of beyond the middle of nowheresville.
We’ve both read a stack of books since we left; personally I’ve read more books in the past 2 months than I’ve read in total in the past 4 or 5 years. I was expecting that I’d have found some greater insight into the human condition and finally gained an inch of the depth that has previously eluded me so with such a lot of book bashing like the intellectuals have, but alas I’m still a shallow fucker.
We’ve also watched all five seasons of The Wire in its entirety. This for me has almost been the highlight of the trip… almost.
