“This nice property has over 150 different animals, including a Malayan tiger. And the spiders... well who knows. We had an arachnologist vacation here four or five years ago who said that he catalogued 1432 species but you should take that with a grain of salt because he said he found a Trogloraptor which is crazy because those are only found in Oregon and we are a long way from there. He drank too much. But yeah, lots of spiders. Your cabin is the next to last on the left down here. And just past it is the path leading north to the waterfalls. Three kilometers north of here but well worth the hike.”
We really needed some relaxation after having spent two years building our technology guidance business in Singapore. But relaxation with a bit of adventure. The Siti Wan Kembang Resort in Kelantan fit the bill. I was all for continuing the 16-hour days but my wife had had enough and kissed me into it. Talked me into it just doesn’t cut it. She always thought that her kisses were the best. I cannot disagree. I was powerless to resist. And I wasn’t too concerned about the tiger. One of only a few hundred surviving of its species (officially MT187, but locals call her Nadira), she’s got a GPS tracker and the resort is at the far south of her usual range. My wife found a website where we could track her movements, she was 12 kilometers north of us, so we thought could head over to the waterfalls and not be overly concerned that we’d get eaten along the way.
As we unpacked, we listened to music playing on Keiko’s laptop and I couldn’t not play air guitar to Slim Dimarco’s rockabilly tune:
the buzzing drove him crazy
ten thousand kinds of lazy
he drove his truck right off the road
at least that’s the story I was told
We danced for a while to his music and when his slow song Oklahoma Hills played Keiko started kissing me and I melted. The bed drew us toward it and it was hours until we set out for the waterfalls.
If we’d logged on to the tracker web site again, we’d have known that Nadira had been moving south while we’d been making love.
Photo credit: Greg Hume • CC BY-SA 3.0