Tanjung Piai, Dec 21, 2001 (Friday)

I wrote this piece in 2001 when we visited Tg Piai for the first time and now I am planning another trip there to see if anything has changed

How do you feel to be at ‘the southernmost tip of mainland Asia continent’? Well! Honestly nothing. We are at the Tg Piai Resorts now and we are supposed to feel something special. I do not know about my family but I do not feel anything different. Although this is our first time here as well as the first time on the sea resorts it is just like any other places. The only different there is water below us.

We arrived around 1.30 pm at Tg Piai via a wedding in Pontian and expectation was high. As usual my children were expecting swimming pool and all, my wife non-committal and myself, just expecting that it would be a good place to relax a bit. So far I have discovered a bit of both.

The place?

I really have sympathy for Malay businessmen. The resort could be a swell place but the maintenance is appalling. Let me sum up;

• The lock in the bath room is missing
• There is no towel
• No complimentary tea and coffee
• No proper food facility
• No kettle to boil some water
• No hot water
• The seafood restaurant which suppose to be the other main selling point is not well organised and maintain
• Not a resort as resort supposed to be

With the official designated titled as the most southernmost tip of mainland Asia continent marketing is a bit wanting. They could have really banked on it but as far as I know unless I scan the Internet really hard I do not really know this place exist at all. The tourism brochures hardly focus on Tg Piai with that tag line.

However, when I woke up in the morning it was a bit different. I walked on the wooden platform with my camera in my hand and my son Baqir, and later Taherah, tagging along I observed a different perspective of the place. It boiled down to what you really want to do. To just relax, cool off or just do nothing this is not a bad place to be.

We were the only guests staying at the resort and that was good and bad at the same time. Of course good we have all the facilities, which were not much, to our selves and bad because there weren’t much activity. When we reached there I was thinking of staying for two nights but thought otherwise. So, before lunch we packed up, checked out and drove up towards Pontian as we did yesterday evening. We played tourist in Pontian and soon decided to head for home via JB.