Beastie Besar

It’s been a rollercoaster, the last few weeks. This weekend, though, was Chinese New Year, which meant (yet another) holiday – three days off, Friday to Tuesday. We went for a long weekend in Pulau Besar, which is a tiny Malaysian island, then came back to Singapore to watch the Beastie Boys and Jurassic 5. Nice.

Besar was stunning. White sands, sea of various shades of blue and lovely sunshine the whole time.







In my two and a half years here, I’ve become accustomed to travelling light. When I first arrived and went off to Sri Lanka for half term, then Krabi for Christmas, I over-packed. I would wear trainers, for example, and take flip-flops. Stupid. I’d take five pairs of shorts for a week. Ludicrous. I’d take two more t-shirts than there were days. Imbecilic. I’d take two pairs of long trousers, just in case one pair got wet. Pathetic.

In addition to all of these clothes, I’d make sure that my bag contained lots of important equipment like sun block, mosquito repellent, sting relief and tiger balm. Since becoming a more experienced traveller, I’ve realised that, actually, you can travel even lighter by leaving all that stuff at home and buying it when you get there. 7-11 is ubiquitous in Asia. They even had one on Phi-Phi Island.

So to Besar. The hotel didn’t have a shop. We wandered down the track a little bit and came to a shack which had bottles of coke in the window, so we thought there was every chance it might be a shop. An old hunchbacked woman lifted herself off a hammock strung onto a nearby tree and limped over to us (she was carrying two huge bananas behind her back, which is irrelevant, hence the brackets). She wandered into the house next to the shop and said something in an irritated voice to an old man, who opened the shop door. He had whiskers sprouting all over his face and not many teeth.

The shop was tiny. The counter was covered by a film of greasy dust, on top of which were placed items for sale which, in turn, were covered by a film of greasy dust. There was some sun lotion in a glass cabinet, but, after scraping off the film of greasy dust, I discovered that it was out of date.

Our search for a shop continued, but every time we asked someone where the nearest shop was, they pointed us back towards the shop that didn’t sell the stuff we wanted. There was, you see, no other shop.



Fortunately we had a squeeze of sun lotion and, by conserving it carefully and sitting in the shade, we managed to avoid burning. Ella had brought a little bit of mosquito repellent, but she still got bitten about 20 times by sand flies. I, however, managed to avoid being bitten at all. Brilliant.



Anyway, after over two years here, I’ve finally been somewhere (other than the Red Centre of Australia) that really is in the middle of nowhere. Unless you count the shop as evidence of not-nowhereness. Which I didn’t, because its sun cream was out of date.



Snorkelling was problematic too. On the day we decided to do it, millions of miniature jellyfish were being washed up to shore. They were about an inch or two long. They were harmless, but Ella was a little bit squeamish. Every time we did a swimming stroke, we pushed them away with our arms. They filled our vision, too. Ten minutes was all we managed. Ella maintains that it was 'like swimming through frogspawn' and that the only reason I wasn't scared too was because I couldn't see them without my glasses. Nonsense.

We watched a number of other people run enthusiastically into the sea, then realise they were surrounded by jellyfish, before beating a hasty retreat.



After two and a half dreamy days in the sunshine reading Dracula and Snow Falling On Cedars, it was back to hectic Singapore to go to the Good Vibrations festival. It was an all day event, but most of the acts were a little disappointing. It warmed up with the third to last act, Aussie band Cut Copy, who were really eclectic and had some great songs. Then the Jurassics took the stage. They were cracking – very tight and melodic – they even rap in tune at times. The Beasties took the biscuit, though. They came on looking like 1940s types with suits and trilbies. They also carried briefcases, which was a nice touch. Oddly, they reminded me of Madness in a way: same sense of humour and natty threads. They played a number of classics, opening with Gratitude and closing with Sabotage, with No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn the song they chose from License to Ill. It’s hard to believe I was still (just) at Primary School when they released that album. They were very classy.