Cuti Cuti Malaysia : Kuala Rompin, Feb 7-9, 2008

2nd Day, Friday

I woke up early as usual and decided to go out to check what morning like in a small town of Kuala Rompin. The rest in the room Sam, Baqir and Mar decided to follow me.

The town was of course small and there were only two major eating places open for breakfast and both were selling varieties. We bought the usual breakfast combination of kueh-kueh, nasi lemak, and roti canai. With that we drove back with a detour towards the Kuala Rompin beach area. They were already several families there but the beach was, although flat like Cherating, not a beach where you want to play on or go for a swim. It was more for just having nice picnic for the families. The water was almost black and the beaches strewn with debris and wastes. I drove further in and discovered an abandoned paddock which was nice. I took several shots of the place with Baqir as model and some of them turned out like a Salem high country advertisement :).

Since it was Friday I decided to just stay in until lunch time before we go out. Lunch was another main decision point while we were in Kuala Rompin because of the Chinese New Year weekend we did not have many options. In the end I decided to go back to the place where we stopped to have lunch the day before. But once we were there I picked another restaurant, Gerai Makan Mak Ngah. However the food were just about the same and you are not going to get wrong here. Even if you just walk in and sit at any table you’ll get the same kind of food and taste.

After lunch, since the turn off to Lanjut Beach was on the way back, I decided to check out the place and we took the road less traveled. It was at 1531 hours that we were on the straight beach front kampong road. I knew that it was the road to Serai Lanjut Beach Resort and Golf Club so I was expecting a decent surrounding. I was not disappointed. From the road the Serai Lanjut Beach Resort and Golf Club looked promising and I thought I wanted to go in to check the place further but when I saw the guards at the gate I drove straight ahead. Not that I was afraid or anything like that I just felt it was a turn off straight away. So we drove further on in until we reached a small kampong, Kampong Pantai Bernas, at the muara. There was a boat jetty there that was more like a tourist and anglers jetty than anything else. Probably it was a low tide that we did not see any boats there. Beside the jetty on the left was a budget hotel Ikhwan Beach Resorts, ` that I have seen while browsing the internet for places to stay in Kuala Rompin. From the description in the Net it was passable place if you do not have any other options. It was cheap within a fisherman kampong environment but too far out from the town if you need anything. Even if you just want to kill the time there the place could be a bit hot during the day. Later when I looked at Google Map the muara was actually close to the Kuala Rompin town where we stayed. Because there was no access road the kampong was cutoff and the only way out was to use the Lanjut road. I guess if ever the place is being developed a bridge would be built across.

There was not much thing to explore there but the jetty was good enough for me to just relax to enjoy the breeze. We Baqir, Kak Cik and I just sat around watching the anglers trying their luck. Over time several other anglers and visitors came to join us at the jetty and the atmosphere changed straight away for us. Gone were the tranquility and feeling good situation as if the newcomers suddenly absorbed them..

Close to 1700 we slowly moved out from the place. But of course being me our way out included detour to another beach area along the way. There, there was a tyre swing being put for kids to play and Mar in seeing that straight away made a beeline for it and there she stayed almost the whole duration. As for us the sea breeze was strong and pleasant enough for us just lazing around and having teh tarik. In the end we stayed there almost an hour.

We had planned to have a family session in the karaoke room that night I rushed back and lucky to get a room booked for 2100 session. Due to that we opted to have dinner at the hotel. It did not matter the dinner was a disappointment as everyone was really looking forward to the karaoke session. So that night we polluted the good air of Rompin with our tone deaf singing that we called music LOL. Bottom line everyone had a nice time. Intan and Tariq having little Khadijah with them decided not to join us but I knew for a fact they were itching to contribute to the pollution of Rompin quite atmosphere. I sang so much my voice croaked, not that my voice was any good in the first place; I guess I croaked even worse. Even the amphibians around Rompin were not even close enough to want to make me their friends. I would not be surprised if some of them actually ran away in shame. We ended our session close to midnight.