An Unforgettable Experience

One day, I was idly flipping through the pages of my alphabet book, when an old photo fell out. I clicked my tongue in annoyance because it was a very disorganised way to keep photos. As it turned out, it was a photo of the Kuen Cheng Co-Ed School Special Needs Society on an outing.

A wave of nostalgia swept over me. It almost seemed as if it were only yesterday that we were standing at the jetty of Port Kay headed for Crab Island, our second visit there...

The refreshing sea breeze blew against our faces as we boarded the boat. It was an open boat this time, with an extremely powerful motor, but no karaoke facilities. We sat ourselves down and prepared to enjoy the long ride through the mangroves which could be clearly viewed from the boat.

After a long time, we arrived at a concrete jetty. The ticket collector bade everyone get out but Xiao Ming was unusually observant; he noticed that it was not Crab Island, but the Village of Lima River. We started to panic. Were we being kidnapped by pirates? But no. It turned out we had boarded a tour boat of sorts, and this village was part of the itinerary.

We followed expectantly behind as the tour guide led us to a large pile of rotten fish mixed with prawns, crabs, and rubbish. “This is a belacan factory,” she proclaimed. Behind the pile of fish was a deserted hut with a dusty wooden device in a corner.

Our next stop was to see processed jellyfish. The tour guide said, “These jellyfish are exported to America and Hong Kong, old people who eat them, will have shiny eyes.” We attempted to inquire further, but the tour guide hung fast to the only sentence she knew, and repeated it like a broken record.

On the way back to the boat, we all stopped to buy dubious-looking home-made chilled drinks at the jetty. Again, Xiao Ming saved the day. In a dark, foreboding voice meant to scare us, he said, “Woe to you, who drinketh of unclean water, for you shall have travellers’ diarrhoea.”

We changed our minds.

Lunch was at Pulau Ketam. We wanted to support the quieter restaurant. This upset the tour guide. She acquired a loudhaler and shouted “very good, very good!” into it in an attempt to show us what we were missing. But we paid her no heed.

After a truly delicious lunch, it was time to go back to the boat. As if by some magic, the number of people on the boat had doubled. We had no place to sit. Cursing the tour operator under our breath we found some standing room at the side.

Suddenly the tour guide gave out a shrill-high pitched laughter akin to that of a turkey. Then she began to dance and sing a Hokkien song into the loudhaler, as if to make up for the lack of karaoke facilities. She danced up and down the boat, shouting into people’s faces through her loudhaler.

I watched with interest at first. But when several old ladies stuck their fingers in their ears and brandished their umbrellas at her back, I started to laugh. The others hadn’t noticed anything unusual, but they laughed with me anyway.

Xiao Ming, as usual, took it to extremes. He giggled, and chortled, and guffawed, and bent over and slapped the floor. When he had laughed until he was red in the face, he stopped and asked me what the joke was.

I burst out in laughter and it began all over again. With all this excitement going on, time passed quickly and we were back at Port Kay before we knew it. As we disembarked, I remarked to Xiao Ming that it was truly an unforgettable experience.