Travelling Memories.

Singapore is an Island paradise. It is extremely safe and as long as you keep your nose clean, don't chew gum or do drugs, there is so much to do there.

But Singapore is like the Island of Montreal and sooner or later you begin to feel enclosed and you need to get off the island. So, many people head on out to Malaysia next door.
This is what we used do.
What made it even more special was to do it on motorcycles.

My husbands' was the real thing. It was a powerful Honda 400 beauty and mine was a red Yamaha scooter I so enjoyed, because it was automatic.
Once you begin driving it you lose interest driving cars. I drove fast on it but my husband had to drive on low gear with his to stay with me. lol I think I had more fun than he did driving slow.

The weather was always great. Monsoons were soft warm drops of pure heaven falling, purifying your body and soul. You would have to stop to watch a rare monitor lizard cross the street. It was nothing to see gray monkeys along the road in the woods and if you liked morning swims, it might be shared with a 10 foot python also enjoying a morning swim in the same pool.
People with little dogs had to make sure they were secured on a leash or risk being stolen by an owl or other bird of prey.

Across the border in Malaysia we'd end up at Desaru Beach some 1 1/2 hours away.

We loved going there for the beach as it was nicer than Singapores' unless you went to Sentosa Island. The food was good and it had horses to ride and the stories were interesting.

Once over 500 monkeys showed up at the hotel and stayed 2 weeks , helping themselves to food the guests would supply them . Then one night they all just left.

Well then another surprise came when two tigers swam across the ocean from Indonesia.

They reached the Desaru Beach which had a group of Japanese tourists at the time.

Well they thought this was a tourist attraction and fearlessly approached the hungry tigers with their cameras clicking away.

The tigers decided they were something too good to pass up and attacked.

I did not hear if any one died but apart from the tragedy, it seemed funny people would not

pay attention to the fact that tigers are wild animals and would never be set free to roam around tourists. The fact they swam an ocean to get there was another miraculous feat.

So After Desaru, you scooted along getting drunk on the wave upon wave of palm trees covering the countryside.
Once the palm oil trees finished

there were the rubber trees they used to make gum and other things.

and the durian which smelled horrible but was full of vitamins and treasured by the locals

and jack fruit trees. This was the first time I tasted such an excellent fruit.
It was very quiet there and unless you woke up early, hardly a soul was seen in and around the little bamboo huts.

The mornings you would see people come out and start a fire outside in a metal container to make breakfast and to wash up. There would be chickens walking around and this is when I began to admire the roosters who sported the most beautiful feathers. I swore that when I got home I would get me a rooster like that and I did but he wasn't very appreciated by the neighbors so I had to bring him back to the farmer. lol

We would come to a small town where they had little outdoor boutiques . To get to them you had to walk on a stony walkway uphill, only to walk into a very tall Buddha sitting hidden, against a very green mountain. He was sitting in total solitude and peace and it was here I fell in love with a totally different world from what I knew and came from.

Then we found another interesting thing. Beans...... which they called stink beans.lolStinky beans or 'petai' served with plain white rice. They were very healthy beans to eat but gave you bad persipiration and a strong urine smell. The beans contained sucrose frustose and glucose and fiber giving you lots of energy.

It alleviated depression because of its tryptophan content, a protein which turns into serotonin

There was ageless time here, tucked away from a modern hectic world.
This was a mystical, strange and wild place.
There is a Udumbara flower that blooms only once in three thousand years and it bloomed in Korea and Malaca, Malaysia recently. The Malay (Chinese) also said that the Buddha was seen to move its lips and bat its eyes and it was captured on many iphones and you tubed.

Some thought this was a blessing from heaven and others thought this was an act of demons entering Buddha making him move his mouth eyes and chest as if he was breathing.

Many people would come out to talk about how much they wanted change in Malaysia.
They wanted big buildings, cars and lots of business. They wanted.... things.
The same things, we have no place to throw away today, as a throw away society.

I would look at them almost with tears in my eyes because they did not see the beauty and treasure surrounding them . They did not see the great life they lived.
Many a dying soul would love to live the life they lived.
In the dirt, it was simple, clean and sacred.

If all of this was destroyed, then what would they have exchanged it for? Cement? Coldness of the mind and spirit?
Here if they had no food, the forest provided but in the city they would be forced to steal and the penalty for this was the cutting off of hands.
Here they had freedom and in a city, every thing is scrutinized and criticized by ugly words of people, who may know and understand nothing themselves.

Where would the innocent children play in the city?
It is here that you envy the innocence in the eyes of the children because our childrens' innocence is stolen from them by TV, toys teaching of sex and makeup etc....

They can't sit and play with frogs or hermit crabs and chase chickens or even eat rice full of ants and tell you thank you. This is good.
They can't enjoy cooking by a fire consisting of things they picked up in the woods.

To just play by yourself quietly enjoying the feel and smells of life around you is something our kids do not have to explore anymore and then we ask why so many of our kids suffer from ADD etc..
We force people to live an un natural life.
Would our society know how to survive without a corner superstores' supplies?

Well the kids in Malaysia might be able to, learning from their parents, how to make do with what they did have. provided by God.

I envied them this lifestyle and then....... rode off into the sunset.


Have a great Day!