Burkas and Bikinis

This time the speedboat became entirely airborne before it dropped hard onto the oncoming wave.  The German woman’s wooden seat broke in two and the gunnel bit her back, throwing her crosswise to her knees in the bottom of the boat with a cry of outraged pain.  The craft continued to leap and twist, powered by twin 150 Mercury outboards that seemed as unburdened by the weight of us twelve tourists as our young skipper appeared unconcerned with our distress.

Sun, sand and surf and Ingrid

Ingrid reached out to help the whimpering woman to the cushions on the opposite side,then wrapped an arm around her to comfort her.  Eventually the captain moderated his speed, and the barks of pain from the German became less frequent as we made our way across the rolling South China Sea to the island of Perhentian Kecil.

The guidebook says this: “The Perhentian Islands are tropical paradise.  Full stop. “

Actually that writer stopped too soon.

The Perhentian Islands are indeed paradisiacal.  The wonderful shades of blue of the skies and the ocean, the breaking waves, the green and dense jungle covering the mountain slopes, the hot days and evenings cooled by the ocean breezes.  It’s the kind of place you see on “Survivor” stories, one of which was filmed nearby.

In fact on our first night here, a beer at a beach-side restaurant helped me to the conclusion that from time to time all the events of the moment hum sweetly together and create a wonderful harmony of the spirit.  The susurration of the surf washing our feet from time to time as it broke in tiny bubbles beneath our table and the reggae sounds trickling in from the bar down the beach seemed in fine consonance with the dancing light from the tiki torches along the sand.  

Awesome body surfing adds meaning to the day.

Then, to improve the shining moment, the moon rose full above the neighbouring island just as the sun set behind us.  A fat moon closer to the earth than it has been in 18 years, round and bright and perfect and playing its light through the clouds let us stretch our legs in a moment of languorous pleasure we will not soon forget.

 This is the tropical paradise the guidebook writer exulted.  Here’s what she left out.

The trash.

Normally the white cap signifies a "haji,"

Every chalet and guesthouse along the beach produces a prodigious amount of trash and copious sewage.  And they have no way to manage it.  This has in no way inhibited the pace of development, and there are buildings going up everywhere with a wonderfully cavalier attitude:  “Beelding codes?  We don’t need no steenking beelding codes.”

New development is entirely unconstrained by concerns about drainage.  The area between chalets fills with stagnant water above which floats the miasma of sewage, and through which glide monitor lizards up to two meters long, and fat, well fed rats.  

The wonderful big tides that bring us such great body surfing also bring in a daily load of flotsam that then sits along the high water mark, undisturbed by rake or barrow.  The beach carries trash streaks and every business owner remains fully focussed on maximizing profit: it is free market enterprise in its full glory unfettered by rule or regulation.  And it is more than a little stinky.

So the ocean is beautiful.  The climate is perfect. The food is relatively inexpensive and tasty and nutritious.  The young international backpacking women outnumber the men very considerably, and the bikinis are sexy and a welcome relief from the burkas.  

The body surfing is the best we’ve ever encountered.  But this place – like so much of Malaysia – suffers from some kind of compulsive developmental rictus, capitalism on crack.  Garret Harding’s Tragedy of the Commons was seldom far from my thoughts.

And you will notice that I got bikinis and burkas into the same sentence.