Go East, Young Man! :: Part I

Passionate Cows on the Beach

The East Coast has always fascinated me in many ways -- the lifestyle, the dialect, the food and of course, the ladies too. Reading TMA Bustaman's fine blog on all things 'Ganu brings back memories of my first trip there more than three decades ago.

It was 1971 and I was in Form Four at a residential school in Ipoh then. Form Four was considered as the honeymoon period of secondary schooling, after swotting hard for your LCE (now SRP) the previous year where I earned my gawky glasses and while waiting to furiously hit the books again for your MCE (now SPM) the following year. No, I didn't get good grades for MCE, just thicker glasses. Back to the story, I just thought that I'd push the honeymoon part a bit further by spending my mid-term (now semester) holidays in the East Coast.

As students of a fully-residential school, we were given warrant tickets for group travel by train back to our hometowns. I told my north-bound group leader that I would be smuggling myself to the East Coast so that he could cook up a convincing excuse should there be a head count. But I doubted train ticket inspectors ever counted heads when students from schools all over the country travel on the same day.

So I found myself travelling south to Kuala Lumpur and subsequently east with fellow students from Pahang, Trengganu and Kelantan. Whenever the ticket inspector passed by, I tried to look as innocently stupid as I could. Those gawky glasses helped a lot too. I had been learning the Kelantanese dialect from a close friend, Yusuf Ahmad, while at school. In return, I taught him the Northern dialect. We would switch from dialect to dialect and corrected each other as we went along.

The train ride went without a hitch and we finally got off at Kota Bharu, Kelantan where I would spend the first half of the two-week holiday. I stayed at Nasser Backer's (real name: Mohd Nasir bin Abu Bakar) house in Nilam Puri. His father, the late Senator Abu Bakar Hamzah, was then an ustaz at the Nilam Puri College. It was here that I got to know Nasser's sister, a frail but otherwise very pretty girl who was suffering from leukemia. The poor girl succumbed to her illness and passed away the following year.

I had my first culture shock when I slipped out for a cigarette one day. The Chinese shopkeeper was wearing a sarong and spoke perfect Kelantanese! He asked me where I came from and without hesistation, I answered, "Nee-ley Poo-ri!" And that has been my standard answer whenever anyone asks where in Kelantan am I from ever since. Of course, I'd correct the statement at the end of the conversation by saying that I'm actually from, "Soo-nga Ptanee, Kdoh."

At the end of my stay there, Nasser took me to the famous Pantai Cinta Berahi (now Pantai Cahaya Bulan). Obviously it wasn't tourist season as the whole beach was dotted (I mean big dots!) with cowdung. Not exactly the kind of setting that would invoke Cinta Berahi (passionate love)! It was like walking through a minefield; side stepping here and there to avoid them before you could reach the cleaner part of the beach, which was already too close to the sea. Not wanting to wet my shoes or immerse them in fresh blobs of manure, we went to visit the KB town centre instead.

The whole Abu Bakar family had been very gracious hosts for the whole week I was there. After thanking everyone I boarded the bus to Trengganu. Next stop: Seberang Takir!