Teluk Melano 1

i willing to let go my msn, friendster, facebook, badminton, limteh and cocking for 2 days 1 night. and i joint the trip to

Teluk Melano!!

where is this? i never heard of this place until i involved in the pipeline design project for this village recently. and my supervisor suggested to make a trip there to do ground survey and part of vacation for me lar. hehe

i only know tanjung datu before this but not teluk melano. teluk melano is located almost at the tail of sarawak. closing to indonesia border already. i think whenever we fly on plane from kuching to kl, if look down from the plane, can see it. it is a beach side village facing south china sea.

this trip made up of 7 people. my supervisor mr wee, my colleague wong, 2 swak energy engineers, a new zealander ang moh from Samling Timber company mr martin and mr charlie from a private company doing water filtration and disinfection system.

before the trip i could expect something the same with my trip to Kampung Simpol for community service in seremban last year. i mean the village living style and communication.

a 2hours and 15minutes boat ride from sematan jetty to the beach of teluk melano on a fishing boat or the 'kotak chun'.

well, this teluk melano villagers are majority malays. and to my surprise, they are the first malay kampung to do pepper plantation. alright acceptable. although they live by the beach but they dont depend on sea resources for living, they go fishing once a while for own food but not to sell.

we reached there in the afternoon around 230pm on friday. damn hot. moving all the stuff from the big boat to the small boat and transfer to the sandy beach. all procedure took more than 30min. somemore the sandy beach so hot. deng!

then we settled down and meet the homestay owners. they are very friendly. in the late evening, we started our job. my job is to follow the ang moh to do house location plotting using GPSMAP. wahseh steady! he got his gps and i got mine. we went on separate way to plot the locations and end of the day we compare our results. he's fast. we walked through all the path in the village to plot the location. never worried to get lost because gps can help!! haha. we even walked pass the graveyard! damn! geli betul. somemore walking alone.

walked half way got auntie in white pop up say 'Hi'! owh cool.

dont bother the auntie, they curious about our gps also. haha. we went on till i reached a house where there a group of small kids playing football. then then.. they stopped playing. all rushed to me, grabbing here and there pulling here and there, my pant almost pulled down by them. they were curious with the gps also..

'bang, apa nih?'

'telepon kar?'

'yeah, ini untuk saya cari rumah adik semua. hahaha'

alright, i left them. enough for that otherwise i could not finish my job. then we finished our jobs. i compared with the ang moh lang. i got one house less than him. i was doubtful about that. haha. one more house for the white auntie?

that first night, we 5 people booked their bikes to Temajuk, Indonesia. haha. cool man. crossing the border without a passport. who says we need a passport? but we needed to pay a visit to the ketua kampung house at temajuk. the 'king' ma! what an awesome solar powered kampung. each house powered by a piece of solar panel but they can switch on the most of 3 pendarflour lamps of 10watts each. so jimat! one living room lighted by one lamp, it was so dim that i see your shadow and you see my shadow. unlike we kuching. wahseh on arr, got switch on nia!

we went around the kampung and i was curious to see a phenomenon. how come got people sitting in few rows outside a house?

owh! they were watching tv. haha. in kuching, tv swithed on also no people want to watch.

alright. thats the first night. going into midnight. everyone went to sleep. and i was paired up to sleep with mr charlie, a 60 year old man. wth! haha. luckily i slept first. haha. middle of the night at 3am, it was so hot that i was awaken. damn! i could not go back to my sleep anymore. why? i got a big ship beside me! LOL~

brrrrrrr...grrrrrrrrrr...blrrrrrrrrrrrp. sailing to china. so pek chek.

somemore could not withstand the hotness so i went down stair to sleep. on the staircase down, i tiok a kao lat stun!! how come got a white lady in white sitting at the living room. i switched on my hp light.

owh. that's makcik!

'yeah dik. panas ya? turunkan.' the makcik was so friendly. her room was hot too so she slept outside on the floor. why hot? we dont have fan in all the bedrooms. because no electric power supply ma. they could not turn on the generator set because it's noisy and disturbed the neighbourhood. there was only one table fan at the living room.

'kak, itu kiapas boleh pakai kar?'

'boleh, tapi tak boleh pakai lama. ini guna batteri dari solar. boleh pakai tiga jam saja.'

'wah, macam tu kar!' -.- i kena another stun.

'tak apa, kak pakai kipas lah sebab panas. tapi nanti pukul 4 kak akan tutupkan.'

'ok lah. kak sentiasa macam ini kar tidur di luar?'

'ya, kak biasa akan bangun dan tidur di luar sebab panas bah.'

what the heck. everynight like that. how to sleep.

the moral value here for our city folks is... you say it!! LOL

Day 1 pictures...

day 2 coming up..