Malaysia Pg 4

Tuesday 8th

David woke at 8.30 and myself at 8.45 so we seemed to be settling into a nice little time pattern that allowed us to have breakfast before the restaurant shut. Phew! After that we rather idled around taking ocean photos until the archery opened at 11am for the ‘adult’ session. The 3 silly boys were there again but we just accepted it – what else can you do? David was ahead by as many as 3 games, including getting a lovely bullseye at one point, but as time passed we were drawn with only 1 game to go. Anyway, he pulled ahead again on the last game and took out the win. Well done David!

We’d had a rather unexpected spectator during the session for a while, as along came a reasonably sized lizard who meandered along searching for grubs in the grass. Now if anyone was brave or silly, it was that lizard. But thankfully nobody took a pot shot at him!

As I’ve said, we were totally accustomed to the lizards by now and took absolutely no notice of them at all other than to accept that they were there. However, as we were walking back to our room we saw what must have been a new family to the resort. There was a mother, father and a small boy of about 4 years old. They were walking along when the mother saw a lizard. She stopped in her tracks as she let out a horrified shriek while she hopped from one foot to the other. Then, with barely time to draw breath she shoved her son right next to the lizard so that she could take a photo of him with it. That amused us both no end. Something that terrified her, yet she shoved her little boy within about 6 inches of it without a second thought!

Reaching our room, we grabbed our bathers and then went for lunch, after which we walked to the Zen pool. We read our books for ages; perhaps a sign that we’d settled into this lifestyle of doing practically nothing. We are usually so active and busy, so I’m sure this change of pace did us the world of good. During this time a family with children arrived and settled in. As I said before, this area was supposed to be for adults only, but they were a good bit better behaved than the adults the day before!

Grey clouds were amassing in the sky so we gathered up our things and walked through the jungle path back up to the main area. Promptly after this there was quite a thunder storm, and the lifeguard closed the pool. We presume this was because of the risk of lightning striking the water. I got some photos of the rain bouncing off the pool water. None prize winning! But I did like the reflections of the sun loungers in the wet floor.

There wasn’t a lot else happening so we went back to our room. David transferred photos from the cameras onto the laptop and the backup drive while I read my ‘fluffy nonsense’ book, and then it was time for dinner. The families with children were always allowed to go in first to eat, and there was a long table full of unattended early teens, including our 3, 11 year old boys from archery and we ended up sitting near them. Oh boy were they loud! Knowing they’d been there longer than us we just waited patiently, with our fingers mentally in our ears, until they finally finished eating and went away. Phew!

Tonight’s show was named ‘Music Factory’ and was very good. The whole show was continuous with each new act coming on slightly before the last one finished. And each act was G.O.s dressed as famous singing stars. We had Elvis, Tina Turner, the Bee Gees, Katy Perry, Johnny Cash, Elton John and the list goes on and on. During the thank yous at the end we were told that the costume designer had made 230 costumes for that show! They do the same show each Tuesday so it wasn’t just for that one show, but even so, the costumes were always very, very good!

After the show we decided to stay for a drink but the night’s music was incredibly loud! I love loud music, but this was distorting, and we tried to ‘chat’ with Sasha then Manu, the assistant dining manager, but it was only possible to gesticulate, so conversation in its true form was a pipe dream. We returned to our room, drank coffee and read until bed time.

Wednesday 9th

Our baby’s 32nd birthday, so we sent him a text wishing him a happy day and assuring him we would sort out his gift on our return (seeing as there was nowhere to have bought him a gift while we were away).

We had breakfast and took the train to the Zen area. I had fun on the way trying to take photos where David was still but the background was flying by. The hardest part about that was that it was a pretty bumpy trip so trying to keep my own and David’s bounces in time was quite a feat!

Once we arrived at Zen, we found that the toilets were out of order. Not just one of them. The entire block! Now that’s definitely not Zen!!!

Walking along the little beach we found some tracks in the sand and pondered upon them. Now if this was a lizard I would not want to meet it in a dark alley. Nor even a well-lit one! It had to measure a good 4 feet from one side of the tracks to the other and I was tempted to begin scanning the nearby greenery for fear that a full-sized dinosaur was about to lurch out at us!

We decided that the archery was dinosaur free, and at least closer to bathroom facilities than the locked ones at the Zen pool, so waited for the next train back that dropped us almost exactly in time for the 11am archery session. My bow didn’t have a name so we christened it ‘Artemis’ and it must have liked that name because I beat David by 7 games to 0. I also got my first bullseye. I was very happy with that.

Then at 11.20am herds of folk arrived to play archery so we were fairly unceremoniously asked by the G.O. to leave. We’d expected to be asked to share, not to get the royal boot, so that was a bit of a surprise! We scuttled back to the Zen to read.

We decided we would be brave and have lunch there. Or perhaps I should more rightly say that David talked me into it against my better judgement. And what followed was another dodgy tummy! David seemed alright this time but it was no fun because the toilets were still out of order! We wandered the beach, in my case with my right foot on the left of me, and my left foot on the right!!! Then we explored the rocks right out to the absolute tip of the promontory and took photos of rock puddles. We saw a really tiny private beach around an outcrop of rock which would have been lovely under better circumstances.

Then we hung around for a read and swim, but it seems I was particularly tasty to the mosquitoes that day and I got bitten – a lot! We took the next train back, made good use of the very welcome loos near the pool, and had a drink at the bar.

We chatted to Zaidal, one of the gorgeous G.O.s who we had met and loved at the Bali Club Med. We told him about the tracks in the sand and he told us they were from turtles. Truly? *That* size? Apparently so! And he told us that they come up on the beach between the main area and our room, mostly between midnight and 2am. He also said that you mustn’t use flash photography because then they wouldn’t lay their eggs.

We went back to our room, and showered and changed for dinner with the theme ‘Asian night’. I didn’t have a lot of clothing suitable for that, seeing as we couldn’t find out the themes before we went, but did my best. David had a lovely bright Hawaiian shirt, so he looked great. I was most surprised to be told I looked more appropriately dressed than some G.O.s! We also took our tripods. You’ll see why 😉

The meal was OK. We were starting to be ready for decent home-cooked meals again. And, after avoiding them completely so far, I began to eye up the desserts and have a taste.

Tonight’s show was mostly the aerial acts, with the show entitled ‘Indian Circus’ and it was absolutely brilliant! Here come *lots* of photos…

Hanging your whole body weight on those chains has got to hurt!!!

And Andy again on the ‘silks’…

And Daniel, Sasha’s dance and performance partner.

And as if that wasn’t enough, afterwards was a Malay Lion Dance. This absolutely had our jaws hitting the ground. These performers (from off-site) were truly incredible! [I’ll be bad and make this a really long page to end the day on one page. There’s more than just Lion Dancing still to come!]

How on earth did they achieve this move? There are 2 guys in that costume; when the lion stands up, one is on the other’s shoulders, but how did they reach downwards?

These acrobats worked behind one another in the lion costume in the usual ‘one standing, one bent over’ way to start with, but then suddenly the front person jumped up so that he was standing on the ‘back end’s’ shoulders this meant the lion was standing around 12 feet tall. Then, they were leaping not only forwards, but at times backwards as well, between these metal posts with just flat circles of steel on top to land on! We were both stunned speechless during this half hour performance. Their bravery and foot dexterity defied belief!

Just as the show finished and as they were packing up, it began to rain gently. We had a drink and I asked for a mai tai rather than their suggested cocktails. That was the best move I’d made to date because this one was at last a really nice drink, and even had a cherry on top!

So, thanks to our information from Zaidal about the turtles, at midnight we went and waited on the beach! Knowing the size of what we were expecting to suddenly come out of the water towards us in the dark was rather unnerving, but I knew that they would be slow and not dangerous. Zaidal had told us not to use flash, which is why our tripods were essential. We stood there in the dark as our eyes slowly, slowly became accustomed and we could make out the waves under the moonlight. And standing there soon became a pain, so David went and found a sun lounger and trundled it to where we were set up. We sat together, sideways on the lounger, and that was much more comfortable as we waited, wondering how stupid we were to be sitting there in the dark as the time passed. Then the sky filled with cloud and the almost-full moon disappeared.

Having wondered if the light of the moon was putting the turtles off, we were now more hopeful but, by 1am there was nothing. However, quite an impressive lightning show had begun so we changed the settings on the cameras and began battling one another for who could get the best lightning shot! An hour just flew by and we enjoyed ourselves so much! Many of the lightning flashes were just vaguely up in the sky behind the clouds, but then one would flash brightly down to the ocean (well, South China Sea actually!) and there would be an “Oh no!” or a “Yes! Got it!” from one or both of us.

The clouds grew more ominous and there was a huge finale around 2am with a mighty crash of thunder and we thought we’d better remove ourselves, as quietly as we could creep along the creaky wooden walkways, to the safety of our room. We had a coffee and then climbed into bed.

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