Welcome to Kelantan

So a while back on Deepavali weekend I went to Kelantan for no reason whatsoever other than to get out of dodge.

It was Mien's idea in the first place. Together with Davina they both coerced me to come for the trip, even though I was quite 50/50 about the whole idea for very stupid reasons, one of which was The KL-ite Fear of PAS.

Now for the benefit of those of you who aren't residents of Malaysia, the majority of the States in Malaysia are controlled by the ruling government. However, a few of the States, such as Kelantan, are controlled by the opposition party - PAS - who are the pro-Islamic party. If you Wiki Kelantan, you'll find out more about this and, as you can imagine, this filled me with a bit of fear with regards to the trip.

For starters, I live in KL which is supposed to be the most liberal of all the States yet I can throw a rock anywhere and probably find a Muslim resident who would look down at my lifestyle, especiallly my Western mode of thinking, so the thought of going to a State that appeared to be more oppressive than the State I was living in did fill me with some trepidation.

Trepidation that proved to be unfounded.

Mien booked overnight tickets on a train for us. I hadn't been on a train in a while, so the thought of pimpin' off in a carriage was kinda cool. However, it was a 12 hour ride (give or take an hour) so we had to figure out something to occupy the time which involved (a) playing with Davina's silicone booby pads, (b) shooting a random short film and (c) chit-chatting till we all got tired and fell asleep.

Well, at least Mien and Davina fell asleep. I'd always had trouble falling asleep in these bunks due to my height and the fact that there's no storage space for luggage so to keep your bags safe you've got to keep them in the bunk with you.

Even on the ride there, though, I was a bit nervous - the majority of the train was filled with Kelantanese Malays, some of them even passing the time reading religious passages and there I was, hanging out with two Chinese girls whilst throwing silicone tits at a window.

We arrived in Kelantan the next morning where Mien's mom came to pick us up and before we even went to their house we made a stop at a Buddhist temple to have some nasi kerabu for breakfast.

The nasi kerabu was out of this world. I'm not usually a fan of the stuff, but this one I could keep eating non-stop, it was so damn good. And the kicker? It only cost RM1. One solid buck, that's it. My canned drink cost RM1.50, for God's sake!

And the fact that we were at a Buddhist temple with an absolutely gorgeous Buddha statue made me realize how wrong all my thoughts were about Kelantan.

Excuse me for my ignorance, all you Kelantanese that read this, but the thought of beautiful Buddhist temples in an orthodox Islamic State was hard to wrap my head around. And after breakfast, Mien brought us to even more Buddhist temples, each one very beautiful and incredibly Thai (Kelantan's on the border, non-Malaysians). So Thai in fact, that every time we drove in to check out one of the temples it felt like we just went through a Stargate and ended up in Thailand.

And the surrounding areas were just beautiful. Huge palm trees looming above us, fresh coconut milk to cool off to on a hot day, pure bliss.

After the visits to the Buddhist temples we went back to Mien's to rest for a bit before taking a walk around the kampung in Mien's hood, where padi fields still exist and some of the houses are still made of wood. The village people were friendly and we passed by the bridge pictured above that had a whole Huck' Finn feel to it. After that Mien went to a relative's wedding and Davina and I went out for dinner at a small Thai restaurant. Verdict? Better than any overpriced Thai joint in the city, that's for sure.

The next morning we woke up before dawn to go see the sun rise by the beach. At first we thought we wouldn't be able to see the sun come up over the horizon due to the large rain clouds. We then discovered this was a blessing as the sun rise looked like this:

Mien and Davina were the first to jump in.

I followed shortly after I kept my camera safe. I hadn't been in the water in a long time, especially in the sea, for two reasons. Firstly, I hadn't been on holiday in a long time. Secondly, I was very self conscious of my huge belly. Fortunately, I'd been losing weight over the months before this trip so I wasn't too worried. Unfortunately, I discovered a new reason to not get in the water - jellyfish.

I waded through the long shallow end till we got to somewhere deep enough to warrant swimming, and literally only swam a few strokes before I felt a stinging in my foot.

"Ow," I said.

I kept trying to swim, thinking my foot grazed something sharp on the sea bed, but it started stinging even more.

"Ow... ow... ow... OWWWW...!"

I then hopped back to shore. And stared at what looked like a disturbing rash, red and swollen, with a definite thin trail going across my foot. Mien was adamant that there's never been any sightings of jellyfish on Kelantan shores, and if it was a jellyfish, I was the first in Kelantan to be stung by one.

And before you ask, nobody had any pee in them to test out the theory on soothing jellyfish stings.

The ladies put me in the car and we drove off to find the nearest 24 hour clinic, which was in town. When we got there, we discovered that whilst it was open, the doctor just left. Thankfully, my foot got better and the swelling went down so instead we went for breakfast - nasi berlauk.

The sambal was to die for.

The next visit was pretty cool considering I had worked on 15Malaysia - it was the market where Amir Muhammad shot "The Tree" for the project with PAS leader Nik Aziz.

Agriculture is one of the main industries in Kelantan and here you can see why. However, there was one thing I discovered that didn't put a smile on Mien and Davina's face.

Turtle eggs.

For those not in the know, turtle eggs are a delicacy found only on the east coast of Malaysia. At night, when the turtle comes to shore to lay eggs, the eggs are stolen right from the whole under the turtles' punanny. To eat the eggs (which look like sunken ping-pong balls), one pokes a hole and sucks out the contents.

One can't find turtle eggs as often and as openly as you could back in the day for obvious wildlife conservation reasons, but you still find them every once in a while. My mom had actually asked me to pick some up for her, but considering I was travelling with an activist and an animal-rescuing environmentalist, I knew this wasn't going to happen. The second they saw the eggs they both turned to me and yelled, "don't even think about buying these for your mom! We'll kill you!"

They may look petite, but there's fire in them ladies.

All that aside, however, it was here that I realized something else - whilst many would have you believe that women are living in constant prejudice under the rules of Islam in this State, the majority of the sellers here are women.

As Baki pointed out to me after seeing this pic, these flowers are used for a ritual known as 'mandi bunga sial', whereupon one is cleansed in water soaked in various flowers to dispel bad luck and practiced amongst many different Asian cultures. Some here in Malaysia would have you believe that doing so is wrong for Muslims as it is not a proper Islamic practice and taken from different cultures.

Well, as the pic above and the rest of the blog suggests, Nik Aziz doesn't seem to have an issue with different cultures, be it mandi bunga or Buddhist temples.

And that was the main thing I discovered - though we may think of the PAS states as dogmatic and orthodox, they are by their nature much more tolerant than most in KL.  If there's one thing I discovered on this trip it's this - don't believe the hype. Throughout the whole way there and for most of my time there I was dreading some form of random religious persecution, some pious man or woman giving me shit for something or other, lecturing me, bringing down God's thunder and lightning, very very frightening EEK!

But it never happened. Never ever. They're a lot more tolerant, a lot more laid back and a lot more open. I'm sure they could tell without me opening my mouth that I wasn't from Kelantan and I had always thought that I'd be looked upon with disgust - "Hey, look, it's one of them Malays from KL, the ones that live in a world of sin. Fucker should be stoned with hefty rocks." Instead everywhere we went we were greeted with absolute hospitality and it felt honest and genuine. When I spoke to Mien's father he didn't have a single complaint living in Kelantan as a Chinese Malaysian. In fact, he loved it.

That's the thing, you see - all the different cultures treat each other with respect and treat each other's customs with respect. And sure, this was all seen with the rose tinted glasses of someone visiting Kelantan properly for the first time (I'd been there before when I was younger, but don't remember much) but whenever I check with others that I know who are from there or been there, they all say the same thing - don't believe the hype.

So please, don't believe the hype and please do visit the place. Because, as this post and the video below hopefully proves, Kelantan Rocks.

(Incidentally, if you open up the vid on YouTube itself for some reason all the 'Related Videos' are apparently of Kelantan chicks sucking cock. Either the sex life in Kelantan is healthy, or 'awek Kelantan' is the Malay fantasy equivalent of 'Catholic school girl').