A few weeks ago, just before bed, Mike and I walked into the dark kitchen together while talking. I flipped on the light and a house gecko the size of a hotdog leapt through the air past our heads while I screamed. It’s so funny how geckos freak out when they’re surprised. I keep running into them unexpectedly and if I scream (which I usually do), they either fall from the ceiling, jump from the wall, or run in a panic across the floor. I always feel bad if they fall from the ceiling…
Well, we’ve been here in Malaysia for 8 months now. The time has gone by very fast. Since my last post, we’ve continued to explore and settle even more into our home along the equator. Some days when I’m swimming outside in our pool, or walking down a steamy jungle trail, I still can’t believe we live here in such a faraway, exotic place.
First, let me record some recent happenings:
The kids started karate. Our Sensei, Raj, is awesome and works so well with our kids. He started off coming to our house once a week. Now, the kids meet him down in our apartment gym for group lessons. I love seeing them practice and we’re excited to watch their progress.
I’ve started tennis lessons. I haven’t played since my early college days and it’s been so good to get into the game again. I love that our apartment has courts and my coach meets me there for practice. Life is very convenient and easy here! I’ve also found a few people that live near me who also play so it’s been fun to play a few games here and there.
A few weeks ago, Mike and I decided to check out a local elephant sanctuary about an hour away. Since COVID, a lot of the interactive activities there have stopped, but we were still able to feed the elephants, pet their fuzzy trunks, and even see a baby elephant up-close. One scary thing that happened while we were there though: As we were walking along the path, a giant snake – black with green/pink shine- popped out 10 feet in front of us and aggressively slithered across the road, disappearing into the forest. I couldn’t believe how fast and furious it moved! I didn’t have time to focus on what kind of snake it was or take a picture or anything - it just popped out, scrambled in front of us, and it was gone. Once again, we saw that Malaysia does not play around! You seriously never know WHAT is going to pop out of the jungle…
2 weeks ago, we took a fun trip with friends to a local beach called Pantai Biru (Blue Beach). The water is shallow for as far as you care to walk out, so the whole place is like a giant, warm bathtub -safe and fun for the whole family. After swimming for a few hours, our 14-year old friend Garrett , who is much like a big brother to our kids (we sit by him each Sunday at church and the kids love him), led the boys on an adventure into the nearby mangrove trees lining the shore. I joined them to discover an entertaining new sport we named “mangrunting” or “mangranging.” In order to mangrange properly, you must climb across the interwoven, sometimes bouncy mangrove branches without touching the ground. Bending and crawling, grappling and maneuvering, high and low across the tangle of branches – The boys were in heaven. As for me, I don’t think I’ve climbed a tree like that for 20 years. It was fun!
After exhausting our mangrange skills across an entire bundle
of mangroves, we switched to crab hunting. After catching a few and depositing
them into a watery hole dug by the boys, I was helping my son corner the next
target, when the little critter clamped hard onto my finger, instantly
releasing its appendage. Boy did it
sting! I tried to detach it but the claw was so firmly pinched that it would
not budge. How can it do that when it’s not even connected to the crab’s body?
I had to run back to camp to see if Mike could pull apart the pinchers with his
brawny strength. But not until I took a picture first.
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A couple days ago, a crazy storm descended on our apartment. The rain and wind were so heavy and the lightening seemed to be crashing right on top of us. I walked out on the balcony to watch for a bit and was shocked to see hail bouncing off the railing. Hail in Malaysia?? I looked it up and apparently it does happen a few times a year. A bit later, I walked into the bathroom to drop something off and as I left, an enormous crash of thunder rattled the house and I experienced something I never have before. I heard the bathroom window wiggle and squirm with electricity! Like the buzzing electricity was trying to get in! After that, we had the kids gather far away from any windows, into the middle of the living room and wait out the storm, which left as quickly as it came.
Okay, now it’s time time to tell you about our Spring Break vacation last week and what a WILD adventure it was – half-filled with interesting, fun discoveries, the other half with shocks and unpleasant weirdness.
So, here’s the story:
Our destination was an island called Perhentian Kecil, known for its excellent scuba diving. We spent 2 days driving to the port town of Kuala Besut. When we finally arrived, we had to wait for our boat to arrive, so we ate lunch in the port town and while Mike and the boys got drinks, I took the girls to a little park by the bay. There were a group of about 10 young boys there, laughing and talking in Malay under a pavilion. They kept pointing at me and the girls, obviously talking about us. I waved at them with a smile and they all waved back excitedly, patting each other’s back and shouting “Oh!!!” A bit later, I was showing my youngest a giant grasshopper that had flown into a coconut tree and all the boys were laughing and talking about “Kelapa” which is coconut, obviously laughing at the fact that I was showing her the coconuts as if they were some amazing wonder. I tried to remember some Malay and said, “Tak kelapa, ada Pepijak” Which (I hope) means, “not coconut, there is a bug.” Then they all repeated, “no coconut!! No coconut!!” and I said “Ada Pepijak - Panggil ‘bug’ dalam ingres” (there’s a bug, it’s called “bug” in English). The tallest boy, trying to figuring out what I was saying repeated “BUG!” Then they all kept saying “Kelapa – bug!” like the word for “coconut” in English was “bug.” Oh well, I just laughed along… A little while after Mike and the boys had returned, the group of Malay boys surprised us when each of them mounted adult-sized motorbikes and rumbled away. They had to be like 10 years old! I waved at them as they left and the smiles on their faces as they waved back were positively beaming, haha.
At last, our ferry arrived, so we loaded our baggage onto the small speed boat and took the 40 minute ride to Perhentian Kecil Island. When we got there, we saw just how small the island was – probably not even a mile long. Just a little turquoise bay, a short stretch of beach (called Coral Beach) and a row of shops and small-scale hotels. Our resort came into view instantly as it was the closest to the dock. The collection of chalets (small wooden cabins propped up on stilts to avoid flooding) looked beautiful nestled up on the hill among the rainforest trees and vines. We would have a beautiful view of the ocean - This was going to be so fun!
We all exited the ferry and walked our luggage up the steep ramp to our resort. After checking in at the front office, we were led to our chalet. We walked along an elevated boardwalk, surrounded by tropical plants and trees to our little wood cabin chalet, number 501. It looked so cozy! The attendant handed us our key and wished us well. We opened the door.
We looked around. Okay…Hmm…Well, okay…The room was poorly lit and had odd pockets of space here and there which meant the walls hid many dark mysterious corners and holes. The lights that were present were dull.
The interior was wood, which was chipped, cracked, and stained. The drapes were dirty. There were thick layers of dust throughout the room - you could smell it swirling thick in the air as we turned on the fan. While the brochure we picked up at the front lobby showed a shiny, bright room boasting cable television, the actual T.V. in our room didn’t even turn on. But alas, at least the sheets were clean, and there was air conditioning. Also, we were relived to find as we turned on the shower in the bathroom, that the water was hot and stayed hot consistently (at previous hotels we’ve visited here, that wasn’t so).
Okay, we thought, not great, but we’ve had worse (at the already-mentioned previous hotels). We were going to try to make this work.
So, we unpacked our bags and went back outside to explore the private beach that our resort provided us. A wooden staircase led down to the water. On our dissension, we were startled by the movement of a small monitor lizard chomping on some garbage a few feet away – a foreshadow of what would come in the following days.
The water was beautiful and clear. We took turns using our snorkeling masks and saw many gorgeously colored fish and even some coral right near shore. There were rainbow colored parrot fish, vivid green fish with bright purple fins, yellow striped fish, and cute little blue fish that kept nipping at my arms when I stayed still for a few moments. It was awesome!
After swimming, we took the kids back to our chalet and showered. Mike and the boys went to find us food for dinner. While they were gone, I kept hearing a peculiar sound around our room. Clicking noises – lots of them. I almost didn’t want to know what they were because I had my suspicions. But I decided to follow the clicks to see what I’d find. I heard them in one of the walls where there were dark discolorations in the wood. I gently moved my hand along one of these discolorations and it cracked instantly, so that I could see what was inside. I looked in and saw hundreds of wriggling bugs squirming jam packed together, clicking loudly. EWWWWWWW! What were they??? My first thought was termites. I looked them up on the internet and yes, that seemed to match. But how many were there? Were they wiggling just under the surface of ALL the walls in this cabin? There were certainly discolorations in the wood all around the cabin. Could we sleep hearing their little clicks surrounding us? I google searched termite problems at our resort and found a review talking about how termites left wood shavings on their bed at night, but that this was a “first world problem” so they dealt with it. Well maybe this was to be expected in a jungle resort then. Maybe it wasn’t a big deal and we could deal with it. At least termites weren’t harmful to humans and at least the ones in our room weren’t making messes on our bed (at least that I could see). As I was pondering these things, the power suddenly went out in our cabin and it was pitch black. “Hey, what’s happening?” said the girls who were playing on their kindles oblivious to their mom’s discoveries. I walked back towards them in the darkness and slammed my foot into the invisible step towards their beds. “YOUCH!!!” Grabbing my throbbing foot, I told the girls through gritted teeth all would be okay, and suddenly the lights came back on.
When Mike came back, I quietly told him about the infestation so the kids didn’t hear. I also told him about the power outage. It was late and the kids were hungry and tired. He talked to the management who said we could have another room the next day, so we decided one night with termites couldn’t be so bad.
We ate dinner outside at the table and chairs on our patio as to not attract more bugs indoors. Shortly, it began to rain- a heavy, Malaysian monsoon-type rain, so we quickly finished our food and got ready for bed indoors.
Our youngest went to bed instantly and we nestled her in a makeshift bed made of two comfy chairs and layers of blankets.
As we were getting the other 3 to bed, however, I moved toward the TV with another blanket and from out of one of the dark, mysterious corners, the biggest spider I’ve ever seen indoors came flashing out. It moved lightning fast as if it was roller blading up the wall, rather than crawling. Instantly the kids were gasping and jumping into a corner. The first words any of us heard was from our spider expert son, who said, “That’s a banana spider! It’s one of the most venomous spiders in the world!” Not a good thing to hear at this moment.
The spider stopped on the ceiling, waited a moment, and then began gliding all over the room again at alarming speed, while we shrieked and held our breath.
“It’s moving toward my baby!” said our 5-year old. “No it’s not, our baby is safe,” I reassured her, but inside I was like “AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!” Finally it seemed to find a cozy place near the curtains where it stayed put.
Mike and I looked at each other
“Should we move to the new room tonight?”
“Yes. We should.”
So in the night, in the heavy downpour, while I packed and the kids crouched on the bed, our good daddy moved all our suitcases and belongings into the new room down the resort neighborhood.
The new room was still dirty, but it was bigger and it didn’t have termites or a giant spider (that we could see), unfortunately we discovered the next day however, that this new room didn’t have even a drop of hot shower water, but I guess you win some, you lose some. (By the way, I took a picture of that giant spider and posted it on a spider identification group that I’m apart of and found that it was a harmless huntsman spider which was SUPER relieving to hear. That whole “most venomous spider” comment by a certain little boy of mine really had me freaking out …)
In the morning, we went to breakfast table and saw that the table cloth had been used by several others and not cleaned. The next morning, it looked the exact same – the same table cloth, AH! Haha. The power had continued to go out every 2 hours each day, which meant the air conditioning popped on and off, heating up the room. After 2 sweaty nights of this, Mike had had enough (that man does not like humidity) and we decided to switch hotels altogether.
The new hotel was packed between other shops and hotels and boy was it so much better than our first chalets on the jungle-y hill. While Mike and I had to be in 2 separate, unconnected rooms, they were so clean, well lit, and had no creepy dark corners filled with dust and unknown creatures inside. Also the showers had hot water which was amazing. On the downside: The power still went out, but only 3 times a day and you just had to remember to switch the AC back on after it happened. Apparently power outages were an island-wide thing because all of Perhentian power works off generators, so that couldn’t be avoided.
The only bug problems we encountered in this new hotel were lots of mosquitoes, some black/red ants in the bathroom and also…
So one night, I stayed up late reading Harry Potter after the girls had fallen asleep. As I was reading on the bed, I saw from the corner of my eye something big and black move across the floor. I looked up from my book and saw the biggest cockroach I’d ever seen – imagine what a jungle cockroach would like like - the kind that are in all the movies, you know, that are enormous and fly. It starting darting away from my view. “Oh no you don’t!” I said aloud as I slammed my Harry Potter book down on it. After a few good smacks it was dead. Ick!
Okay, so aside from all the hotel fiascos, we did enjoy our trip! (And you know me, I sort of like the adventure of fiascos anyway-as long as there are no serious injuries involved). The beach there was absolutely gorgeous. Mike and I both took turns doing a refresher course on scuba diving while we were there, while the other stayed with the kids. Then the next day, we took turns going on a second dive. We both got to dive among beautiful coral reefs and saw huge, beautiful fish of all colors. We also saw sting rays, clown fish dancing in anemone, puffer fish, and scorpion fish – one of the most toxic fish in the ocean (and you can barely recognize them with how camouflaged they are –yikes).
It was funny, before going diving, my dive guide was explaining all the different creatures we might see. I asked him if anything was venomous. He replied, “EVERYTHING is venomous.” Okay…Needless to say, I was sure not to touch a thing while I was underwater.
My first dive was a little nerve wracking. It had been 10 years since my last dive and there was A LOT I didn’t remember. The refresher course felt very brief to me and before I knew it, I was pulling on my vest and we were riding on a boat into the ocean. My entry into the water was very rough. After dropping backwards from the boat, I was so eager to float that I kicked myself into some sort of back flip underwater before surfacing. After chilling out a bit, me, my guide, and one other guy getting his refresher descended about 15 feet underwater. There on the sandy ocean floor, we practiced skills like taking our breathing apparatus out, letting it go, and finding it again, letting water into our goggles and blowing it out, and finding the perfect buoyancy. After we passed our skills, we explored the nearby corals filled with so many beautiful fish big and small.
My second dive, I was much more comfortable entering the water and simply fell back and relaxed until I naturally floated upright – much better. This time, we dove about 60 feet to a 3-ship wreck. On the way down and all outside the ships, I was engulfed by enormous schools of fish. It was so amazing floating in the middle of a swirling fish tornado!
Mike dived about 2 years ago while he was traveling in Africa, so he was a bit more comfortable than I had initially been. His two dives were in corals and he loved seeing so many different kinds of fish.
Another day, I took the boys on a snorkeling trip where we saw sea turtles, explored another gorgeous coral world, and then finally – black tip reef sharks! At first, we didn’t see any sharks, but thanks to our awesome guide, Captain Joe, we spotted 3 or 4 swimming fast along the reef.
In between scuba diving and eating meals at the local restaurants, we were swimming in the crystal clear ocean, snorkeling, and playing at the beach. There were beautiful shells there and the water was the perfect temperature.
Another interesting thing about the island was how many monitor lizards there were lounging around. On my way back to the hotel from my second dive, there was an E-NOR-MOUS one blocking my path with a giant wad of raw meat in its mouth. A smaller lizard sat at its side. They both stared at me. I decided to jump a fence to short cut through the neighboring restaurant rather than walk through those guys. I did stop behind the restaurant wall to look down on them while they continued to eat garbage though.
One morning as our whole family was walking along the beach, a couple local guys were chasing a big monitor lizard around their restaurant seating. They each held long, heavy poles and were running around swinging hard at the giant, laughing as if they were playing a fun sport. Their poles thudded against the ground as the lizard darted under chairs, around trees, and in circles trying to avoid their blows. In its panicked escape it bolted right past us fleeing into the jungle. I didn’t even know they could run that fast.
On the night before we left, we heard there was a fire show on Long Beach, which was on the other side of the island, so at 8:30pm, we took the kids and hiked the trail through the jungle to the other side. It took about 20 minutes. The trail had faint lights overhead and a lot of it wound alongside houses and rundown resorts, while the rest ran through jungle. It was beautifully eerie walking through the trees at night. The stars were crisp and bright. As we walked through the hotel portions, we saw Perhentian Island Rock Geckos – plump and colorful all along the buildings. They are amazingly big, have neat markings, and from what I’ve looked up, rare (only found on the island I think). So that was cool!
When we reached the other side of the island, we walked along the waves and found the fire show. Kids who looked like they were around 8 or 10 were spinning fire sticks in the air. There were adults too, doing all sorts of neat tricks, while we all watched. It was awesome. The night wind from the ocean and the fire dancing made for a pretty special memory with our little family. (The walk back got extremely sweaty carrying the girls however).
On our last day, we all went to the beach one more time for a final swim. We said goodbye to Captain Joe and our friends at the scuba shop as we walked to the ferry. We waved goodbye to the island as our boat sped back to the port town.
The van ride home felt so comfortable. It was seriously the quickest 6 ½ hour drive of our lives. Mike and I determined that it was because we were all subconsciously relieved to have a safe, secure area, free from heat and bugs. Except, that wasn’t quite true…On the way home, I kept noticing ants inside the van, along the dashboard. Not until we made our first pit stop did I understand why. When I opened the van door to get out, there was an explosion of ants inside the door hinge. Hundreds of ants were pouring out of it and into the van. I jumped out and started swiping them away. They fell off and starting climbing up my legs and more kept appearing out of the side of the door. It took me several minutes to swish most of them off. I guess wherever Mike had parked the van while at Kuala Besut must’ve been on an ant hill and while we were vacationing on the island, the whole colony decided to crawl up into hinge of the passenger door, so that with every pit stop we made, and every time I opened the door again, more came running out in all directions.
Yep, so that was our trip. Super cool and a little crazy… One thing is certain: Now we can say we know what it’s like to stay at a hotel in the middle of the jungle and it was definitely an adventure!
