Island of Dr. Maru

  Pulau Tioman ABC, Pahang, Malaysia
Monday, July 24, 2006

Pulau Tioman is the stuff of horror movies. Spirits on the island bring out the worst in people. I'm not talking about ektoplasmic variety, but rather the ethyl type. Tioman is a duty free island in an otherwise relatively expensive country to drink. Here, I met some of the best and worst people on my trip.

I met Lyn, an English girl, in the port town of Mersing that used to work on the island. I was planning on going to Selang Beach, but she told me that there were a bunch of assholes there that hate Americans and the beach wasn't very nice. So I decided to follow her to ABC Beach instead.

It all started out great! A guy recognized her when we got off the boat and gave us a lift on his motorbike with a sidecar to Nazri II where her friend Maru works as the chef. He greeted us with a couple cold beers and I knew this was gonna be a long day as it was only 11am. After a couple more beers he made up some very yummy roti canai (Indian bread with dhal dipping sauce) and gave us a couple bungalows for 20RM (~$5). Lyn decided to call her Muslim friend, Fuk Yar, to come and meet me and have a drink. I usually get along with just about anyone, but this guy was the biggest twat I've ever met. He sits down and after about 5 minutes, the first words that come out of his mouth are, "Where are you from?". Since he was a friend of Lyn's, I just answer him instead of giving him my usual 3 Taboo questions speech with Saya dari Amerika in broken but passable Malay. I swear, I'm not making this up. He then appears to pout, gets up from the table and leaves without saying a word. Later I found out that his ignorant hatred of Americans is so blind and entrenched that no logic could possibly shake his core belief that ALL AMERICANS ARE EVIL. He actually said that to me after he got really drunk and started to attack not only me, but the entirety of the Western world. I asked him if he knew any of the Americans that he hated. His reply was George Bush. (OK, he is stupid, but evil?) I asked him if he could name any other Americans that he hated, but he couldn't even name one more. I laughed and asked him if the only American that he knew, he didn't really know at all, how could he say that ALL AMERICANS ARE EVIL. Faced with overwhelming logic, he got a bit violent and shook his fist in my face and said, "I don't like you". I asked him if it might change his mind if I told him I was also Canadian. I think this upset him even more because at this point he started yelling at me in broken English and what amounted to challenging me to a duel on the beach. I'm laughing my head off and told him in Malay that I didn't understand his English. I told him that I came to Malaysia to have fun and meet nice local people, not fight them. "Since you are clearly not one of them, please just go and F*CK OFF". His unarmed battle of wits lasted a couple more days where he and a few of his friends would continue to threaten me until Lyn got fed up with the bullshit and put one of his posse in a choke hold, dropped him to the ground and said that if anyone wanted to fight me, they'd have to go through her first. Did I mention that she was a Psych nurse in a past life? Finally, the blindly ignorant fools left ABC and I got back to having a good time with a couple of German med students. Unfortunately, a different kind of fun ensued when "Dr. Maru" got a bit jealous that I was spending so much time with Hikka and poured on his ummmm.... "charm" trying to get into her pants. One night she'd finally had enough of his antics and told him in no uncertain terms to F*CK OFF and leave her alone. Where he got mad and shouted some mostly unintelligable blatherings about how he had studied to be a doctor before becoming a chef and he only had a few classes left. He get's no respect.

You'd probably think that I would have left this island "paradise" by now, but after 3 days of traveling to get here, I wasn't leaving without a fight (no pun intended). Fortunately, things got much better when I discovered the other end of the beach and then much ummmm... different after finding the Duty Free Shop near the Airport.