There’s far too much fish in this town!

This is crazy, I thought to myself. I was hungry and I would have killed for a nice cup of cold ice-blended coffee and a nice plate of spaghetti bolognaise. But the only thing this bloody town had was keropok lekor or fish paste thing (FPT) stalls. And there was lots of it. (I and my friends tried coming up with a more fitting name for it. We ended up calling it “things that make the roofs of our mouths hurt like a bitch.” Suffice to say, this name is too long.) Each side of the road there were FPT stalls and not one single Starbucks. Not even a CoffeeBean outlet (yikes). You know you’re a city person when you crave over-priced coffee.

The town was Cherating and I was there with my friends, Fillit and Sardine.

I’ve known Fillit for 5 years now and while this may have Elton John written all over it, we hit it off right from the get-go. I like to call him the black version of me. The brudda from anotha mutha. We’ve been through a lot together, good and bad (hello little cretin of madness!), yet till this day we remain a solid duo. Just ask our lecturers. I’m sure they will have some nice things to say about us. I’ve known Sardine for sometime now but it was a Hi! and Bye! relationship in college with the occasional, “Man, this college sucks,” talk. So it was nice to talk to her about things I wouldn’t have even thought about when we were college. At the end of the trip, I think we can call safely upgrade our status to good friends as opposed to college mates. Lizards, anyone?

The blackest coffee I’ve ever drank in my life. And that was the worst spaghetti I’ve ever had in my life.

Given that we’re true blue city slickers, it really showed wherever we went. I looked every bit like a tourist—right down to the three-quarter pants and benign smile—while the other two were more or less touristy-looking. Since we abandoned our humility back in KL, we went about town like we were rock stars. Everywhere we went people would give us funny looks, not sure as to how to treat us. We spoke impeccable English (well, just me, tee hee!) but when I and Fillit opened our mouths to speak in Malay, the locals would speak to us nicer.

I’m not really a beach-lovin’ person on account of me being slightly phobic about water. But put me at the foot of a really tall mountain and give me a tiny flask of water and off I’ll go to the peak. The scenery at Cherating, however, was simply majestic. Blue water could be seen for miles while the sand was fine and soft to walk on. The only thing that tarnished the experience was the amount of litter strewn everywhere. Empty cigarette packets and even a discarded slipper were seen. People can be so fucking stupid.

If only all mornings could look like this.

At night, looking up to the stars whilst getting bitten, scratched, and prodded by various insects was quite an enjoyable experience. Stargazing, seemingly a rather frivolous and neck-hurting affair, can be very compelling, soothing even. In our case, we literally talked about everything under the moon. While we couldn’t see each other's face, you could feel our respective feelings. Whenever we saw a shooting star we would make a wish, praying, hoping, that our wishes may come true. I don’t know about the other two but I really did make wishes. What you want in life and when you can’t get it will always drive you nuts. Sometimes even paranoid. But if you’re patient enough, who knows, you might just have your wish realised.

While the other two used this trip to get away from work and all its shittiness, my reasons were purely to have fun and be away from my computer, books and my other comforts. You could say that I wanted to reboot my mind. I did just that, and boy do I feel so much better now. So, to my best bud Fillit and Sardine, it was one of the most relaxing outings of mine and here’s to the next trip.

Let’s just lay off the fish, shall we?

This is Chris, signing off.

PS: There’s no tmas in Chris!

PPS: My heart goes out to those who lost their lives in the Virginia Tech incident. R.I.P