Kuala Terengganu

A three hour bus ride took me to Kuala Terengganu. I'd booked into the Ping Anchorage Backpackers, cited by the Lonely Planet as the "number one spot in town" for budget travellers. I would have to doubt their judgement on this one. The place is completely unmanned - you collect your keys from a shop downstairs then go up a floor, unlock a padlocked grille and enter the echoing bare concrete hallways of the 'hostel'. It had a rather prison-like air and my room, though big, was scarcely better. A massively stained dark green carpet covered the floor, curling up at the edges and joins. The room smelled dank and the 'hot' shower provided a trickle of cold water which after ten minutes had just about wet me. Within minutes of arrival I had decided to move to somewhere else in the morning.

So after a good enough night's sleep, broken abrubtly in the pre-dawn by the call to prayer from the mosque which I'd admired on the corner last night, I checked into the Seri Malaysia hotel, reminding myself that the huge cost of the move was actually less than twenty pounds. Friday isn't a good day to be exploring an East coast town in the off-season. Everything was closed. The tour operators told me that there were no other travellers to make up groups with so any hopes I had of visiting Tasik Kenyir or travelling up the rivers nearby were quickly dashed. Saturday wasn't any better - even the steps up to the top of the small hill overlooking the town were closed, as was Redang island, course. Pathetically, I stayed in my rather nice hotel room watching National Geographic channel until checkout time, knowing that the afternoon would be long enough. By the afternoon I'd even lost interest in taking the ferry across the river to the village where fishing boats are reportedly still made by hand. No doubt the boat-builders would not be working on the weekend either. I took a look at the markets and mosque and sat by the waterfront watching a team of cleaners and sweepers clearing a small stretch of sand by chucking the rubbish back into the river. Waiting for my evening flight back to KL, the day stretched out forever.

The beach on the East side of town was very pleasant though, so I strolled along, as slowly as possible. Had a paddle, had a cold drink. Kite sellers had set up stalls along the beach and a few people were flying kites. As soon as I reached the busier stretch of beach I was greeted by young grinning lads sitting around on motorbikes. I wasn't in the mood for chatting to these Met Rumpets, being leered at and asked inane questions such as "where you going?" and "where you come from?"(both of which I repeatedly answered "there" with a point in the appropriate direction). I'll usually talk to anyone, especially if I've got nine hours to kill, but their pushy arrogance and mocking laughter made me just want to push them off their little 125cc pedestals.

Luckily, there was plenty of good food in Kuala Terengganu. Chinatown offered lots of choices as well as beer and friendly service, and at a Malay stall I tried nasi kerabu goreng which was pretty good, though not as delicious as its unfried counterpart. The lady running this stall was sweet and delighted by my few words of Malay, even showing them off to her friends. I sat at her stall sipping lime juice for as long as my bladder would let me. I'd run out of things to read on the Friday and was forced to consider writing a novel instead. Luckily there were some newspapers around.

Eventually it was time to leave and I realised that I had been counting the hours for so long that I wasn't actually expecting such a time to come. There's nothing wrong with the place, but I had obviously been somewhat over-optimistic about the opportunities for seeing the area even just a week or two into the monsoon season.

Oh yes. It rained a lot.