Back from the East Coast

After a short but intense 4 day drive up to Malaysia, we are back in the safe comfortable confines of home as of yesterday.

Covering a total of 1909.5km in this short 4 days, is really quite something. The journey took us across the main range to the town of Kuantan on the east coast. From there, it was northwards as far as Kuala Terengganu before the return leg home. Along the way, we soaked up the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of what the East Coast had to offer and I must say it was really quite an adventure.

With us, we are always covering a wide range of activity and this trip was no different. We stopped at a drop of a hat, at the slightest indication that a place was interesting and off-beat enough. We bought Lemang and Satar from road side stalls and consumed these in a picnic by the beach at Kemasik. We probed and came across a fishing jetty in Kemaman where fishing boats berthed to off load their catch of the day. There was also the eccentric old Malay gentlemen who showed us a conch shell with the animal still in it, this among drying starfish and shell sculptures.

During our stay in Cherating, we had the chance to visit a turtle hatchery and hold one of those small creatures in between our thumb and index fingers, while it squirmed to escape. There we came face to face with the Green Turtle in all its majesty. How anyone can harm these majestic creatures is beyond us.

Our second stop in Rantau Abang saw us putting up at a quaint little place called Awang's. It was clean and had basic amenities but the most important of all, it was a step away from the beach. The beach there stretched both north and south as far as the eye could see. Waves crashing on the sand created a fine mist that blanketed the coast. The sand, though not fine and powdery, was coated with arches of sea shells. Due to the unique gradient of the beach, incoming waves from the South China sea broke and dumped on the steeply sloping beach. The undertow was severe and one could very easily get swept away if one was not careful.

But it is precisely this gradient that made Rantau Abang one of the hottest spots for the annual egg-laying by the sea turtles. Through drastically reduced in number and having fewer pristine spots for laying eggs, the turtles have still be known to come back and if one is lucky, have the opportunity to witness this magical event. Unfortunately, the sky did not smile on us and dumped about 4-5 hours worth of rain come evening. This effectively ended any plans on our end to scour the beaches and chance upon an egg laying turtle.
The return journey was an adventure by itself with us wanting to take a different route from the one we travelled up from. This entailed going further north to within 50km of Kota Bharu before coming down through highways 4 and 8, passing through Gua Musang and Kuala Lipis before finally joining the NS highway at Bentong, near KL.

The return journey took us longer longer than expected at about 14 hours of driving, including a couple of rest and dinner stops. This exciting journey home saw us coming into contact with logging trucks hauling enormous sawn tree trunks along narrow, wet and undulating precipitous routes through the mountains. It was a continual drive with one's heart in the mouth as drivers jostled to overtake these slow moving behemoths. The highlight had to be the time when Fran exclaimed "Elephant!!" True enough, by the highway in a clearing of Taman Negara, a male elephant was taking a dip in a mud pool just a couple of hundred metres from the main road. It was a beautiful sight and warranted a U-turn and an unplanned stop of about 10-15 minutes to admire this amazing creature in the dimming light.

We arrived at the ungodly hour of 0300 hrs on 1 May 2007, having left in the evening of 27 April. It was a good trip and will remain in our memories for time to come. This is almost the anniversary of our last mega-trip to Ao Nang, end April 2006.

See here for a photographic account of our trip. Enjoy it as we did.