Roadtrip to Kuantan – Day 3

Heylo all,

Does the title sound familiar? I totally understand that “Erm, errrr/ ain?” look on your face now. I have been so lousy and not shared the final day of the Kuantan trip with you guys at all. And somehow, this fact has been on my mind for so long and I just cannot seem to write more of my Sri Lankan vacation until am done with this one. Let me be fair and provide some context here for what did on Day 1 and Day 2.

This was the highlight of the trip for me because we got a chance to visit a Batik cottage industry there. I am not sure if I can call it an industry because there were just 4 people working there and it was a family consisting of father, son and couple of young guys who were helping them. And you know what we did? You know? You know?

We made a little handkerchief for ourselves! K and I have safely tucked them away and we definitely don’t plan to use them. Frame them, maybe!

I think I will let the pictures do the talking in this post. Umm, majorly, I mean. Grrrr, I noticed that deflated bubble, you people!

When we entered the cottage, we were greeted by a spacious hall with very few batik clothes on display and there was no one around. Like, not a soul. After exploring for about 20 mins, a slightly elder gentleman who seemed very kind and helpful came to us and introduced himself as the owner of the place. We did not even ask him to show us around. He just asked us to follow him for a small tour. As we entered the backyard, we were greeted by hundreds of these -

and some more!

I told you!

Alright, I’ll spare you. But I was just so awed at those moulds. There were so many of them. They shared that they had discarded many recently and so they had few moulds at that point in time. Those moulds had some really intricate patterns !

Our guide and showman, the son of the owner stepped in to show us along. He cut the cloth into squares,

got ready with the gloves and a smile,

dipped the mould of a pretty flower into hot molten wax,

pressed it so skillfully against the 4 cut squares,

added another mould that said “Kuantan”, below the flower

and fielded the umpteen doubts that we students had, so patiently.

Then came the big moment. Each of us was given a brush and asked to dip it in hot molten wax and write our names above the flower. Ofcourse, I raised my hand and went to do it first. Here’s K doing his bit

There was this small little stove, pretty small for the dimension of the fabric they were working with, where they were melting wax. It looked like a kitchen stove and the wax was just the size of a huge block of butter.

Once the wax is in the molten form, they use the specialized tools with varied tips to create patterns on the fabric. I found this entire process so creative. The tools reminded me of calligraphy nibs as well.

I get hyperactive when I see pens, pencils, paper, nibs, plain fabric – the whole thought of filling it up with whatever you feel like enthralls me like crazy! And imagine them doing it everyday – so lucky-licious!

Once they are done with the wax imprinting, they let it set in a bit, dip it in a solution ( I forgot the composition) and they set it out for drying. This according to them is crucial for the stage when the colour seeps in, in the appropriate places. They had a lot of patterns out for drying.

Let us now go back to our little masterpieces. So we had basically imprinted the patterns using the seals on the cloth. Thye did not put it out for drying as these were more of keepsakes. The owner of the place and his son immersed them in a solution cum dye and presto!

However, the wax pattern still stuck and the dye obviously did not get underneath that. This was intentional because we wanted the patterns to be white against a blue background. In order to get rid of the wax and let the colour set in, they dunked the hankies into a boiling brothy thingy that was a mix of some chemicals as well.

After that, they submerged it in cold water and let hang out to dry

While our precious ones were drying, we went for another tour of the sale area.

I have seen men in batik shirts but it was cool to see how they were made right from conception to final product! You can see O getting into the patterns. K admired everything at a distance, totally unwilling to try any of them.

They did not have a lot on sale that day. The owner shared that they were recently back from an exhibition where they sold a lot of their fabric at wholesale prices and in bulk to garment makers. This family basically makes only yards of batik cloth and have one tailor who makes traditional outfits out of this fabric in small quantities. But their main business is selling the cloth itself to other garment companies who convert them into bed spreads, outfits etc.

L and I got ourselves big batik pouches. The boys toyed around with shirts, sometimes pretending to be interested but never considering buying any. We let them be and went to check on our dearies. There they were all sunny and dry and waiting to be tucked away in our pockets.

We thanked them all profusely for the lovely experience. I totally love visiting arty places. Design excites me. And something like this inspires me. Imagine a small family of 4 churning out yards and yards of fabric. When asked if they are happy doing this, the owner said that it meant everything to him but he wasn’t sure if his son feels the same way. We could feel the tinge of sadness in his voice when he said how everyone is going away from traditional forms of art, into the cities and then get caught up with life. He said it bothered him to even think of an art disappearing from the face of earth only because people do not appreciate it enough to pursue it. I found my voice in him when he said all that. While art is something that is ubiquitous, the traditional forms need a lot of reinforcement and perseverance on part of man to survive. And there is so much beauty and inspiration in these forms that one cannot imagine any form to just dwindle away.

We wished them well and promised to come back to visit them when we visit Kuantan again.

We set off on the road trip back to our resort, all the while clicking away.

I love the happiness I experience when I upload our little memories for my desktop as wallpapers. I always used to ogle at the resplendent images on default in any PC. Going on these roadtrips fills my cup of happiness to the brim and we are really thankful to be able to appreciate the beauty in every little grain of sand in such proximity.

Road trips – So fun. So good!

With that, I wind up the Kuantan road trip series. And now, I can peacefully resume my Sri Lanka tales. Phew. Feel 5 pounds lighter.

Road trip to Kuantan (Pahanga) – Day 1

Ah my dear folks,

So, I am on a high. All that road trip and some amazing sights left me just content and happy. No, seriously, why haven’t I done more of such long road trips?

The nothingness of the expanse makes you feel amazing, seriously. You don’t always need picturesque sights. No, not always. To drive along fields and random greenery is so stimulating.

Before I start digressing too much, let me regale you with our 3 day trip to Kuantan in Malaysia by car. So, the lucky chaps were O, L, K and K (K and K would be my better half and me). It would be unjust to not tell you a li’l about O and L considering we have been doing these trips for a while now over long weekends and we have been like family.

So, that is Kuantan along the east coast.

O is a Spanish guy who was my better half’s batchmate during MBA. So, they both hit off very well and we are now family. O loves to travel much to the delight of my better half who looooves to travel as well and now me (all of my earlier travels were within India for either research conferences or small family vacations) and so all this is refreshingly new for me. He also loves food much to the delight of my better half and now me. So, you know how it is. We pretty much share our love for travel, food, new cultures and sight-seeing. You get the drift.

Meet L. L is a Malay lady who is also O’s fiance. She works as a para legal professional. She loves travelling as well. She also loves food much to my comfort because I need a lady with good appetite to divert attention from my plate coz’ I eat a lot. So, we have been friends owing to our better halves and have found quite a few things we both enjoy doing – for e.g. books and travel. Now, THAT is a LOT, right?

And then, there is K and K. We both were like kids during the travel but lets not dwell too much on that for now.

The last time we travelled was to Penang (I’ll write about it as well sometime soon) during Chinese New Year for 4 days and we’d been a riot ! So, we were reallllly looking forward to this trip mainly coz’ I have never heard of this place before, it was my first long road trip, the company and mostly because I hadn’t heard of Kuantan being a very big tourist spot except for few beaches.

 

What with Google churning out such images, I knew there’d be like lot of beaches.

 I’m not a very beach person if the beach is the commercial types (if you know what I mean) not coz’ I don’t like people but because I can’t appreciate all the beauty in the same way as I could if it were to be less crowded. But I am open to recreation anywhere so I really didn’t have any complaints.

After some smart packing (now, that’s a first for me coz’ I usually pack the entire wardrobe and as soon as you open my tightly packed bag there will be a mini-market inside) and some hustle bustle because we had to leave directly from work on thursday afternoon, we left for office with 2 backpacks and one Nikon DSLR.

Fast forward to afternoon. I met up with my better half at his workplace where O works as well. And L joined in too. We were waiting for O to join us at the lobby of Marina Bay Sands Skypark. At the lobby, there were some cute Chinese girls playing some really melodious tunes and while I clapped in joy, the other guests looked at me amused wondering which entertainment was better. During this meet-up, I managed to cup my thumb when I dug my hand into the bagpack for some tissues and realized that the tube of a cream had caused the cut. And as though my cut was just what the hotel authorities needed, they started warning the guests not to touch the Italian glass as it could be dangerous and cause deep cuts. Talk of blessing in disguise ! And all this while, I mentally made a note that this wasn’t smart packing and who had I been kidding?! Have I told you all that I am accident prone? At the start of a trip, I either trip down the steps to the bus and land on my bottom or hit my hand against a door or something. Pretty much always, seriously.

So, well, finally O came over and then we left for Johor Bahru which is the nearest Malaysian city to Singapore. We took a cab to the immigration checkpoint. So, we cleared the customs and immigration at S’pore and Malaysia and then left to the place where we picked up our car and whee! We started our journey into Malaysia.

What was supposed to start off at 2:00 P.M. on 5th April started at 4:30 P.M. but we were really way too relieved to repent the loss of time and happy to start the drive and use as much of daylight as posible when we were driving a distance of more than 500 kms.

The journey was a chatty one and we kept talking each others’ head off, sharing tales of Malaysia with L telling us a bit about different places, my better half asking some questions, me watching outside the window hoping for fireflies and O occassionally checking on us with his “you all ok at the back” and joining in the banter when the traffic was less and the road became visible. Well, with long weekends, it does get quite busy what with everyone suddenly wanting to go to Malaysia.

All along the drive, we felt so deliriously happy to see so many trees. Really, Malaysia is so green. We felt so good that the trees were so plush and the land hadn’t been cleared or whatsoever. I even started ranting in my head as to how much of all the global warming and CO2 has been saved by this greenery and became even more optimistic that we all really have hope. Palms, some random shrubs and lots of dense bushes and hills that were totally covered in green – wow ! We never took pictures on our way but we sure took a lot on our way back and I’ll share them in the subsequent parts about my travel.

After a long long drive that included one stop for dinner where I managed to find vegetarian red bean buns and some drink and some rice and some greens (My tummy is often called the Municipal tank), I felt good. So did the rest. O bought some crackers and Red Bull to keep him up for the late night driving that was to ensue and we set off again. Oh, did I mention the yummy Crunch icecreams?

Post-dinner and dessert, the chats became less with K and K dozing off occassionally and then popping their heads up to see if we were at Kuantan and see the GPS to know how far we were. Well, we also listened to some awesome music throughout the journey and it stuck in our heads. We sang and even danced inside our car and we must have managed to invoke the Rain Gods with all this that it started raining heavily. So, we decided to only listen and not sing much so that poor O didn’t have to undergo all this.

Well, after some circling around the same U-turns and shouting in glee everytime we saw Swiss Garden Resort signs coz’ that was where we were staying and we were so overjoyed to know we were nearby, we finally reached the resort. Ah yay ! We did it, we did it !

We parked the car (well, technically O did while we unparked ourselves from our seats) and checked in at 3:00 A.M. on the 6th of April. Absolutely thrilled about unwinding for the long weekend, Kand K cuddled off to sleep.

I leave you with a view from our room.

Don’t forget to check out the sea view. The photo doesn’t do justice because I clicked it coz’ we could feel the fresh air.

p.s. We had an amazing time and loads to share.We made trips to a cottage industry as well. More tales and more photos to follow in subsequent parts