Beautiful Island (PART 1)

A couple of years back, Aunty, Penarik and myself had just chowed down on some most righteous Bak Kut Teh somewhere along Jln Ipoh when we decided that at some point in the near future, we should head to Klang to sample the pork delicacies in that part of the world. After all, Klang has a reputation for being the birth place of that most omnidelicious of all pork dishes and the spring onion on top of the soup is that Klang is by the sea! We could see the ocean AND eat some fine swine.

We finished our tea as we stroked our full bellies, pretending to schedule an actual time to go when it occurred to me that we should just go to Klang right there and then... you know, for shits and giggles. It was midnight and nothing would be open by the time we got there, but at least we could check out the geography of the place and most importantly, see the ocean. We hopped into Penarik's fancy Volvo and headed off to the promised land.

Its funny how Malaysian roads don't have signs saying "OCEAN", so we didn't really know where to go, but I remembered that there are signs for Pulau Indah (Beautiful Island) and next to the name is a wee caricature of a sailboat. Perfect. It didn't say "OCEAN", but it had a wee sailboat AND it was an island. There MUST be some body of water next to it.

It felt like we were going on holiday! The music was good, the company was better, and the roads were like buttah. 45 minutes of Pulau Indah roadsign following later, we hit a bridge that started carrying us across what I assume to be the Klang River and gosh darnit, we were excited. The road kept going and so did we. The ocean was at the end of it, we could smell it.

Technically, we were right. The ocean WAS at the end of the road, but before you could get to the proverbial end, you had to go through customs and security at Westport... the newest and most high tech container terminal of the Port Klang system. There was no ocean. Just floodlit orange streets, trailers blazing down the highway, and stacks and stacks and stacks of containers. The giant cranes that unload the ships could be seen in the background and there was no way that we were going to get through customs.

Instead of giving up, we asked for directions to the ocean from a confused convenience store dude and he said that there is a beach but we had to cut through the nearby kampong. 3 point turn, 2 km of backtracking, and 15 minutes of village navigating later, we found a signboard saying "ANGLER'S RESORT... 15KM ->". This was it! The road that lay before us was a shy dirt one, and it was dark as night all around us. We figured that the dirt road was the product of roadworks and that the asphalt would kick in soon, so we said what the fruck and got on it.

Penarik was worried about his fancy Volvo on the rough dirt, so we drove at about 10km/h (he was really worried). The headlights illuminated our path and it was beautiful. We could tell we were near the ocean and also that we were on giant sand flats. Nocturnal birds jumped out of the way of the car, and actually it was all very scary, but at the same time... and I use this word alot... beautiful. It was so nice to be in KL and we oohed and aahed at the limited view we had around us. Snatches of ponds could be seen, the occasional signboard for bait, and after about 20 minutes, another signboard saying "ANGLER'S RESORT... 12KM ->". Fuck. All that time and we had only covered 3 KM? We did the math and it wasn't looking good because it was nearly 3am by now and we still had to make our way back in the slow, fancy Volvo. At that rate, we'd only get back to KL the next month. Which is a great thing, except that Aunty had work and Penarik and myself had college. Bloody shit.

We turned around, rued the moment, and vowed to come back here at some point in our lives.

TBC (which means "To Be Continued", not "To Be Chinese")