Malaysia

Pulau Ketam isn’t very big but it might take you a while to walk around the island. Most people get by on electric bikes or regular bicycles. Electric bicycles usually go for RM 20/hour but our homestay rented them to us at RM 15/hour, so off we went to explore the habitated areas. There are 2 primary schools and a secondary school on the island so there’s a good amount of younger folks still here.

The main commercial area by the jetty is sleepy on the weekends though. It has a very familiar small town vibe. Both Mandy and I are from Sarawak so we felt very comfortable here. You can hear snippets of Teochow and Heng Hua, old ladies with curly hair smoking cigarettes, and men with Buddhist tattoos undergoing traditional Chinese cupping while seated on low stools. This can be any rural town in Sarawak – Serian, Lundu, Batang Ai.

Most of the shops serve some kind of noodle dish in the mornings so we went to a random one. Interestingly, all the coffee shops had their shutters half closed and lights off to save electricity but they’re actually open.

Mandy ordered a kueh tiaw soup dish with several different types of fishballs. This tasted peppery and mild. She didn’t like it and ended up eating my noodles.

I went for a dry tossed noodle with pork, shrimp, and boiled eggs. This tasted good but unfortunately I didn’t get to eat much of it. Mandy swapped her noodles with mine after tasting my superior order. I don’t really enjoy soup noodles but I’m a nice guy so I exchanged with her.

We also ordered 3 coffees from the next coffee shop. This one only had canned drinks and they asked us to order from their neighboring shop if we wanted brewed drinks. You can only do this in small towns where the competition is less and the spirit of cooperation is higher.

Thus satiated and fueled with caffeine, we went to Lover’s Bridge. This was marked as a tourist attraction on official Pulau Ketam maps but in reality, it’s just a rickety arch bridge. It’s good for photos though.

Mandy is pointing at the richest person in Pulau Ketam. Haha. This house is so different from the wooden structures surrounding it. Modern, sleek and tall, it’s the highest point on the island.

There’s also an old cinema beside the Lover’s Bridge. It’s amazing to think that at one point, the population of Pulau Ketam was large and vibrant enough to support a theatre as big as this one. 👏

Mandy randomly asked me what my IC number was and we found out that our last 4 digits were in sequence! What a coincidence! These checksum numbers are always odd if you’re male and even if you’re female so we can’t be the same but having ours in order is serendipitous.

It was an extremely hot day so we went to get some ABC (shaved ice dessert) to cool down. Our homestay told us about this stall, which he says has the best ABC on the island.

It was pretty good! There’s peanuts, nata de coco, jellies, cendol and all the trimmings underneath a mound of shaved ice and gula Melaka.

We sat with the owner, who told us many tales about the history and origin of the people who’re now at Pulau Ketam. He had a stroke a few years ago so his daughters run the stall, which is actually a shaved ice machine in front of their home.

We also went to the temple opposite which has very old tortoises and a huge, long python. Their toilets are very interesting too – little more than a carved rectangle on the floor. There’s no sewage system in Pulau Ketam. All human waste goes into the sea and it’s washed out by the tides.

We decided to cycle to the furthest end of the island until we couldn’t go any further. All the paths here are made of wooden boards on top of stilts. Only the main jetty and commercial area has concrete roads. It’s very exciting.

The view on the bridges that connects the island is nice towards the further regions of Pulau Ketam. You can see fishing boats moored to the individual jetties connected to houses. This is a less commercialized area of the island.

There was a very friendly woman running a drinks and snacks stand near the end of the island. We stopped there for a couple of beers. She told us she’s from Klang and come down during weekends to stay with her mom and run the stand. It’s a good place to refuel. She’s one of those people with natural PR skills.

We found an abandoned wooden house with creaking, rickety floorboards that would make a perfect photo op. The floorboards were so rotten we nearly fell through into the sea a few times.

I did a cool pose (or so I thought) and I ended up looking like such a sissy we couldn’t stop laughing for a good 3 minutes. In my defense, this looked manly and casual when conceived in my mind. The execution and angle could have been better though. 😄

Here’s a proper one so you can get rid of the previous mental image.

This is my favorite photo of us. I love the emo vibe. I told her to do a sad pose. #emoforever

We went back to Remember Me Restaurant to have o chien (oyster omelet) and a beer. This isn’t as good as the ones you’ll get in Penang or Kuching but edible. Especially on vacation since everything tastes better when you’re having fun.

The ones here are gooey and soggy instead of the crispy variant we get in Kuching but they’re both equally good.

It was a good overnight trip! Pulau Ketam is a chill and relaxing place that’s perfect for a weekend getaway. It’s not too far from KL or PJ either – just a 40 min drive and a 30 min boat trip away. I can see why people like it here. I’ll definitely be back someday.

Goodbye Pulau Ketam! We made great memories here and we’ll miss you. 🦀

My housemate Mandy and I decided to make an impromptu trip to Pulau Ketam over the weekend. She’ll be moving out this week so it’ll be a fun thing to do together. I’ve never been here but I’ve heard a lot about the idyllic small town vibe and I really enjoy places like these. I come from a smaller town myself and I like visiting even more rural places like Kapit or Sarikei.

Pulau Ketam is only accessible by boat. It’s a 20-30 minute trip from Port Klang and the ferries and boats usually charge around RM 9-10 per pax. I saw a few souvenir Pulau Ketam tee shirts at the jetty and assumed they’ll be more at the island itself but surprisingly, no one sells them at the island. Haha. I actually wanted to get one.

The boats are the same express boats that we have in Sarawak. A lot of our rural towns are only reachable via the river so boats are a major mode of transportation there.

These boats are air-conditioned and leaves every 45 minutes. There’s another type that’s open to the elements but much faster for RM 1 more. We took the other kind back.

This is the view from the Pulau Ketam jetty. It’s not a very big island and most of the commercial areas are concentrated in the middle.

It was an exceedingly hot day and I have gotten more sun in the past weekend than the previous 10 years of my life. I’m sunburnt and peeling right now despite applying liberal amounts of SPF 50+ sunscreen.

We stayed at a homestay called Little Happiness Family. Little Happiness and Happiness Family is owned by the same people who runs Pulau Ketam Mini Market. They’re a friendly mother and son duo who gave me a RM 50 discount when they heard about the price I’m paying via Agoda. Agoda charged me RM 174 per night and they said it was more than they charge if you book direct so they refunded me RM 50. I thought that was nice of them.

The room we booked had a large double bed and two singles in a double decker bed format. I think it’s meant for families. All the units have their own shower/toilet as well as air-conditioning. Ours had a window with a view of the back too!

Our hosts recommended a place called Jia Jia for seafood but it was closed for Winter Solstice Festival. We went to the most famous one in Pulau Ketam instead – Remember Me Restaurant.

Crabs are a must! This is Kam Heong Crabs. It’s RM 68 per kg. This is slightly more than 1 kg for RM 78. It’s not bad but I’m actually not a huge fan of crabs, mostly coz I don’t enjoy deshelling them. I like huge crabs like Alaskan King Crab though. To clarify, I love the taste of crab, I just don’t like picking at them and getting bits of shell in my mouth.

We also had Nestum Prawns (RM 38). These are pretty good and they’re fried to a crisp so you can eat the whole prawn without peeling, even the head!

I had someone to peel the prawns for me though. Hehe.

Best!

I also added on Kung Pow Mantis Prawn (RM 26). This are not fresh ones, obviously. It’s the frozen and pre-battered type that’s mass produced and sold everywhere from Langkawi to KL. Not my favorite.

There’s also an obligatory vegetables dish – cabbage stir fried with belacan for RM 16.

The bill came up to RM 180 for 2 pax including drinks and beer, which is around the price you’ll expect to pay in PJ too. Not bad, but I’m keen to try Jia Jia next time since it was not only recommended by our homestay, a random aunty selling snacks in the furthest habituated edges of Pulau Ketam also told us about it.

The nightlife at Pulau Ketam is pretty sparse, although we spotted an 80’s style karaoke pub and an uncle told us about a feng tau joint. Most people seem to congregate at the jetty to hang out and relax and that’s what we did too.

The jetty had a psychedelic strobing light which was a little out of place but kinda nice.

Our homestay provided bicycles but there was a huge family staying there who was about to take the last two. Mandy convinced them to let us have one of the bicycles. I should add that these are two little kids of around 6 years old or so. Hahahaha. I think their grandpa gave Mandy a look of mild disapproval. I didn’t dare to ask even though I wanted a bicycle coz they’re so small, so I’m glad she did. 😌

There was a cool breeze coming in from the sea and the night was bright courtesy of the full new moon. I put on some tunes on Spotify and we ended up talking and singing and riding bicycles till midnight. Good clean fun.

I brought along a bottle of JW Black Label and we ended up playing drunken Chinese chess in the room. We had to Google the rules and made up many of our own so it wasn’t much of a structured game but still a lot of fun. I really enjoyed myself despite being a man who prefers my own company most of the time.

Day 2 coming soon!