Thursday, August 27, 2015

Visiting Sibu Island

Aseania Resort is one of the resorts owned by the larger group Sari Pacifica which has several resorts sprinkled over the Malaysian Islands and the nearest one is on Sibu Island which you could almost see from the beaches of Besar Island. Unlike Aseania which has seen almost no turnover in manager or staff in 7 years there has been more turnover on Sari Pacifica Sibu over the year's so occasionally Jasbeer will be called to Sibu to help out so when he made his most recent 2 day trip there I was lucky enough to go along and continue my island hopping. We took a boat directly there that was nearly an hour ride on water so choppy that the waves splashing up were sometimes as high as the roof of the boat. So of course I was loving it and standing in the back at the open air part enjoying the waves and not caring that I was becoming covered with seawater. The only tricky thing was trying to drink my can of tiger without adding beer spills to the seawater stains now covering me.
Over the last few weeks I've been spoiled at Aseania so I couldn't help but make comparisons (i.e. the staff at Sibu are nice but can't match the incredible warmth of the always smiling staff at Aseania, or how the rooms are nice beautiful rooms but I prefer the wooden charm of the ones on Pulao Besar). Comparisons aside Sari Pacifica Sibu is a huge resort on a beautiful island that has a giant pool, great beaches and on a clear day you have a stunning view of the nearby Tinggi Island, now if only the didn't illuminate the many fountains with garish multicoloured almost Christmas-ey lights at night then the view would be even better! It was weird being there as a guest meaning I didn't have any hours at the snorkel rental shack or have anything to do but relax. How many luxury resorts can I stay at before I lose my budget backpacker status? Hopefully the fact I'm averaging $5/day in Malaysia lets me keep that status!
On our first day Jasbeer decided to take a boat around the island to visit a friend of his who runs a nearby resort and of course I was more than ready to see more of the island. We took the boat from the jetty on the other side of the island this time where I got to see the terrible government planning in action. The government built this giant jetty that cost millions of dollars on a part of the island where about 20 locals live (who never use the jetty) however there are no connecting paths from the jetty to the three Sibu resorts so each had to build their own jetty as the million dollar one goes to waste. We reached Rimba Resort that was fairly close and it was such a different environment from Sari Pacifica. It was much smaller with charming wooden huts crowding around the beach and the vibe was much more island resort than luxury resort - plus they seemed to have tons of expat volunteer/staff there. It was hard not to fall in love with the place and even harder harder to not love after 4 gin and tonics with Jasbeer and his friend while watching the sunset. The rest of the stay was much less eventful, I'd relax and read or swim while the boss did work things and in the evening we drank scotch so old it would be legally old enough to drink itself if it were back in Canada.
After the short stay we took a boat to some small jetty place south of Mersing with nothing there except a giant KFC and then at Mersing we parted ways as I returned to Aseania with a bag full of Chinese dumplings from Jasbeers favourite Chinese dumpling place. That night instead of going to the restaurant for dinner I pigged out on them instead - big mistake,the next day EVERY staff member kept asking why I missed dinner and if I was okay and why I wasn't at dinner. As every staff here is Muslim I don't think they would have appreciated me eating my very not halal pork dumplings around them.
Things I've done: been mistaken as an owner about a dozen times, mistaken as a travel writer twice and as an Australian five times (that part I really don't understand).
Lesson learned: Try and learn what someone does for a living within seconds of meeting them. By doing this you will avoid talking with a guest about how useless and biased guidebooks have become, then a week later opening an ebook guidebook for the first time and seeing that the author has the same name, nationality, and appearance as that one person. 90% sure it was the author. OOPS!

Monday, August 10, 2015

Selfies on Pulau Besar

I feel I've settled in well here at Aseania and I find myself having grown comfortable here and wanting to stay a full month or more. There are some slow days and then other days where it feels like I'm constantly doing stuff. John, the main guy who handles the snorkel shack/beach bar has been great to hang out with and on his day off he asked me if I wanted to go jungle trekking, a question met immediately with a hell yes. There's a path that goes through the jungle from the resort side of the island to the deserted side. The trek was pretty fun and since I'm becoming gym deprived I was thrilled with the 80 degree angles of the path and we were rewarded with a remote, somewhat rocky, beach. Because I'm apparently a sadist my favourite part was that the mosquitos swarmed poor John and left me alone. After days and days of sitting at the snorkel shack with the sandflies swarming me and ignoring him, it felt like it was finally his turn. It was also a good experience because since then I've been able to give a bunch of guests information. On jungle trekking and I'll usually look then up and down and if they're fit I'll say it's about 30-35 min, if they are older or less fit I now say an hour.

Spend my days "working" here
Some days here feel pretty slow and then other days might feel pretty jam packed and the jungle trekking day was one of them. In the afternoon  I was at the beach bar that was deserted and Eewyn shows up out of nowhere hurriedly telling me to close the place 'now NOW! ' and to meet her at the jetty asap. Since there was almost no guests that day a group of the staff and myself went out on the boat for an impromptu sunset island hopping tour. We stopped at a few places and Eewyn and Ieka would take selfies (and even tried giving me a selfie lesson), the guys would fish, and John and I would go snorkeling. On the way back I saw my first Malaysian sunset. Every day so far the horizon had a line of clouds blocking the sunset but that day out on the water we had an incredible sunset with the sun having turned into this giant pink ball of fire. As we neared Pulau Besar the driver of the boat decided to have some fun since there were no tourists on board and ended up doing circles so fast the boat was tilting sideways and us on board were shrieking with laughter while holding on as tight as possible . That jam packed day ended up with Eewyn, Ieka, Ucciel, and Farhan fishing out in the jetty, hanging out, and some ukulele music made an appearance. Thankfully the few times they had me throw a line out I caught nothing. The squid were probably scared away by the sound of the girls screaming - never seen such severe reactions to a cat brushing up against them.

Island hopping with the crew

Since I arrived here I've seen some pretty cool things, the night on the jetty we saw a giant turtle nearly 2m long and John had also told me that large dugongs lived in the area. He tried to draw me a picture but I still had no clue what it was. Then a few days later I was hanging out with some guests on the beach bar when someone shouted "dugong!" And sure enough there was a giant manatee about 2 feet away from the shoreline. Another fascinating thing has been watching the delivery of diesel. While fuel deliveries might not sound too exciting it's pretty fascinating here. The barrels are too heavy to carry off the boat and up the stairs so the boat pulls up, pitches a couples dozen barrels in the sea, then a bunch of staff plunge into the water and swim up to the barrels and push then to shore and roll then up the beach. It's quite the operation and it's hilarious seeing one guy jokingly belly flop onto a barrel and the two guys near him deciding to pile on top of him.

It seems a large number of our current guests are Chinese and I've come to the conclusion that I'd like to be a middle aged Chinese man.  While the younger Chinese crowds spend endless hours taking selfies,the middle aged Chinese men are having fun tossing back beers and glass after glass of whiskey and in the case of the recent guests who were friends of Jasbeers they might be found drinking and sharing their whiskey with Canadian volunteers. I'd take that lifestyle over selfies any day. I've had to restrain myself from having selfie interventions with some guests, the worst case hands down was the newlywed couple dressed up in full wedding attire with TWO professional photographers and even with 2 professionals at their beck and call, out comes the selfie stick. I might have tried to intervene at that point had I not been on the floor hiding behind the counter laughing my ass off. By the end of this trip I will know all about Asian selfie habits.

Beautiful chalets at Aseania (yes I'm staying in one!)

What I've learned: I've learned I will never have a career as a server. I finally figured out the reason I can't carry trays to save my life is that I have a bizarrely bouncy walk.

Things I've done: jungle trekking to the other side of the Island, island hopping, snorkeling, learned how to make Kopi tarik, fell in love with the drink milo (though I still can't figure out what it is...), seen giant sea turtles and manatees, finally starting mixing drinks behind the bar too.