Textbook sleepy beach town

Lord of the Flies

In Cherating, I slum it for 5 nights. There is nothing to do, and it is glorious. I have my own little Malayan treehouse and did I mention there were bunnies?!

My bel de jour is Mark, my neighbour and fellow countryman, full of comforting, earthy Britishisms I haven't heard in a long time: pardon the pun; different kettle of fish; love you and leave you; and always a pleasure, never a chore. He has also fallen pray to the silent but deadly charms of Cherating, and has managed to rack up 8 nights there. He shows me the beach on the first day, and comparing it to other beaches, uses the word "desolate" twice, and favourably. This man should not be allowed to write guidebooks. Another beach, another huge jellyfish washed ashore. I'm desperate to touch it, but then Mark will have to pee on me, and I don't know him well enough yet.


Perspective, innit.

Later, I clamber over some rocks and find an even desolater beach, and while I'm sitting there, alone, writing about what a great beach this would be to kill yourself on, I'm interrupted by the waiter from breakfast. We both accuse the other of gatecrashing the others private thinking spot and a friendship is born. I tell him about last night's free room, and the kindness of strangers, but he doesn't seem surprised. In Cherating, this kind of behaviour is quite normal, as I'm to see over the next few days. Juan himself is super friendly and chatty. He digs a hole in the sand to uncover a rock to take my picture through, shows me some bracelets he spent the previous day making, and while he's tying one around my wrist, I ask how long it took to make.

"I dunno, I was so fcuking stoned!" It's then I notice his pupils are pinpricks. No matter. Any one who takes off their t-shirt for you to sit on, then brings takeaway Chinese and beers for a beach picnic, is all right in my book. He even picks up litter other people have left behind.


Juan. Peace pipe out of shot.

He chides me for not taking better care of my hair. Last night's shampooing has dislodged a thousand flakes of burnt scalp, and I feel it only right and proper to submit the evidence here.


On a side note, isn't my hair a dreadful colour?

Later still, I play cards with Mark, games I have forgotten how to play and games I haven't played since sixth form, including the longest continuous round of Shithead I have ever had without someone being called off to a psychology class or an oboe lesson. I like Mark because he doesn't try to tell me who or what I am, like some others have, or ascribe any false qualities to me. There is no attempt to get the measure of me. He's also kind to crazed monkeys. Yet even he, after barely two days in my company, in also in agreement that I talk too much. Why is south east Asia full of such bad listeners?


Mark has a flaky scalp too.


You know what all this nature needs? Branding.

Another day, Mark and I do an ATM run to Kuantan, the nearest one-horse town, full of MegaMalls flogging pirate DVDs and a delicious Indian restaurant, in which Mark crushes all my expectations by trying to get the measure of me based on the length of my middle and ring fingers. I tell him how disappointed I am in him. But apparently some things are impossible not to notice, like the way I look down, into my solar plexus, whenever I am thinking about something, as opposed to up and out like most people do. But surely all the answers lie within...?!

Crisis: all these people I've met and analysed and judged and turned into 140 word caricatures of themselves - have they all been thinking about and jumping to conclusions about me? Are they writing anonymous Phileas Fogg-style travelogue/blogs about the freaks they meet on the road too?

My solar plexus fails me. We are not in control.