stuck...Stuck...STUCK!

No...I didn't stick my tongue to a flagpole on a triple dog dare. But I was very stuck nonetheless -- stuck on the smaller of Malaysia's Perhentian Islands in the South China Sea.

I left Singapore in search of these undeveloped islands of paradise. My plan was to chill on a low-key beach for my last full week of SE Asia travel. Palau Kecil, the island I was on, delivered in spaids. It was the perfect spot for some one-on-one time with me. The island is tiny. It has no roads, and no motor vehicles -- not even a single motorbike. There isn't even a pier or dock anywhere on the island. The small boats that ferry tourists (and all supplies) over from the mainland stop once the boat is in about 1.5 meters of the translucent aqua waters, and you must jump overboard and wade ashore from there (no small task with my THREE overstuffed bags!).

I found a cute, simple little bungalow to rent. The island has no central plumbing, and no electricity. My place had a generator that ran at various hours (it always seemed to be off more often than it was on). And there was even a small room off the dining deck that had a few computers and a satellite Internet connection. If the stars aligned just right, you could get in to use a computer when both the generators were on and the satellite was up.

I arrived early the morning of St. Patrick's Day, and after checking into my bungalow and hitting the beach with my book for most of the afternoon, I decided to pop into the biggest bar on the beach for a sun-downer (happy hour) beer -- green, if they were getting into the holiday spirit. Surprisingly, I was told the entire islands was out of all beer and spirits! Malaysia is a Muslim country so drinking is not a practice of the locals on the mainland, and the island bars and resorts do their best to get shipments, but the deliveries are erratic. There were some mopey Irish tourists on the island that March 17!!

As the days passed, I really got into the laid back, simple island life. If a hotel wanted to promote a special dinner menu or dance night at their bar, etc., they'd send a staff person walking on the beach handing out flyers that had been hand written (no Kinko's here!). While most places just threw their trash on the side of their property and did a burning every morning, cans were recycled, and every two days, this little guy would pull up in a little boat and walk the beach collecting every business' cans. By the time he walked back to his boat in the shore waters, his bundle of cans was enormous (see photo)! At lunch, rather than stray dogs, you might get stray goats, and mangy ones at that, nosing into your lap begging for handouts. This was definitely the unplugged life, and it was a splendid way to wind down five months of go-go-go travels.

And then I tried to leave.

The storm began around 3am with lightening and thunder so fierce I expected the four shabby walls of my little bungalow to unhinge from one another and fall to the ground leaving me to get soaked in the torrents of rain that were pelting down. The rain and thunder was still strong when I drug myself out of bed in the morning. I ran over to the dining deck for breakfast and actually thought about how this is so perfect -- a rainy day that would make it easy to say goodbye and head back to the mainland for my overnight bus to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's very metropolitan capital city. I relaxed at the table with a book and went back to my room to pack up my bags. OH...my bags! None of them are waterproof, and it was still raining hard. I did my best to wrap things in plastic and headed over to the dining deck to check out.

It was at check out that I first had a local say to me, "You really think you're going to get off the island today?" It hadn't dawned on me that the small 15-passenger ferry boats probably couldn't make it to the mainland in this weather....oh crap! But no worries...so I can't leave at noon as planned, but surely the weather would lift in time for the final 4pm ferry trip...right? Wrong! It got worse! And I even let some people talk me into walking on a jungle path across to the other side of the island where the surf is always calmer. The jungle walk about killed me. The muddy path went up and over a hill to get to the other side, and in the pouring rain, and with my THREE extremely heavy, not-water-proof bags, it was painful! I slipped and fell once getting everything super muddy. I was a mess. And on the other side it was more of the same -- panicked tourists huddling under restaurant decks with wet luggage watching the sea churn under a dark ominous sky as they clutched soggy plane, train and bus tickets that were soon to expire.

By the time I threw in the towel, all lodging was booked save for one waaaaay overpriced room at the very end of the beach. I hauled all of my soaked luggage down there and took it (Doesn't anyone in Malaysia need a job? PORTERS, people...I would have tipped ANY AMOUNT on that day to have had some help!). I used the space in the costly room to lay out all of my wet belongings in hopes they'd dry a bit before being packed up to try again for the 8am ferry the following morning. And thankfully that ferry did, in fact, run! Unfortunately, it took 2 hours to complete the 45 minute trip, so I missed yet another pre-paid bus reservation to Kuala Lumpur, but I did finally make it back to the mainland and on a bus through the beautiful, lush jungles of Malaysia...just in time to arrive in Kuala Lumpur for, that's right kids, another big bad rainstorm!

Almost dry now!
Mere