Island Faces

Now, one year and some months down the road since we started our attempt to move to Langkawi, it almost seems as if we partially live there already.  So much so that we come back to KL with anecdotes of the people we've met, befriended and woven into our life memories.

Our first contact point on the island was our friend Aida. Someone we had only briefly known in KL through a mutual pal.  She moved to Langkawi a few months before my sister and I first went out there to investigate the inn for sale from the Classifieds.  Today she is a Langkawi resident and a naturalist by profession.  

A passionate environmentalist, I also suspect she's caught the bug and will someday look for her own plot of land on the island.  The more the merrier, I say. Plus, it's always nice to begin life in a new place where you already have a friend.

This is Pak Man, who someone once referred to as the Jinn Tanah, on account of his ability to broker land deals.  He was the first land broker we met in Langkawi.  A fiesty old fella, who doesn't hesitate to climb a hill just to check out the view from its best vantage point.  Thanks to him, several of our visits gave us decent workouts!  And be warned - often times I had to resort to makeshift hiking poles of deadwood while he skipped along ahead of us in his flip-flops.  He also introduced us to the famous Langkawi Ikan Bakar shop where the locals mostly go for their fix of Malay rice and fish grilled a la minute.

We first met Pak Man during the historical March 8, 2008 elections and he had plenty to say on the subject of politics.  If our leaders in their ivory towers think they can get away with hoodwinking the grassroots, I'd suggest they talk to him.  Maybe then they would realise that we Malaysians don't suffer fools gladly.

Although in later months we broadened our search to other land brokers, Pak Man unwittingly became a crucial factor in us securing our eventual plot of land - even though he didn't broker the deal.  Maybe it's the way things work in small communities like an island - everything revolves in concentric circles so that you often find that your new starting point is almost exactly where you began in the first place.

This lady is who I want to be when I grow up!  I believe she is already well into her seventies, but she is such a delight. 

We had arranged to meet her at the plot of land she wanted to sell - a good three-acres set among a vast expanse of paddy fields.  It's hard not to fall in love with the sight of paddy fields at harvest time.  Patch after endless patch of lively green stalks, heads bowed from the weight of rice ready for reaping, swaying like uncertain toddlers every time the breeze tousled their leaves.

The minute we met Makcik, I knew Anim would buy her plot of land if she had cash to spare.  The lady alighted from her ride - a noisy, little motorbike driven by her seemingly underaged grandson or grand nephew (one never knows the specifics) - with the agility of a teenager and the certainty of someone who intended to continue living for a long while yet - despite what the universe may have in store for her, thank you very much.

Later, we found out she was a well-recognised figure around Langkawi.  It turned out she actually had her own motorbike, and would have rode it to our meeting had it not been out of petrol.  Her only concession to modernity was to wear a helmet while riding.  But she didn't bother with a driving licence.  By her calculations, she was too old for the policemen to be stopping her for no reason.

Meeting Makcik made me a little melancholy.  Here was a local resident who had a valuable asset to sell and limited means to do so.  The reality is that a fair number of land deals on the island are being increasingly transacted with foreigners - most looking to retire on Langkawi or make it their holiday home.  But without the ability to converse with them in English, locals like Makcik are at the mercy of multiple land brokers whose layers sometimes can run up to five or six deep, leaving the land owner with a lot less once commissions had been paid.

I have heard that the situation in other more developed islands like Bali is very bad.  To the point where locals are harrassed by land brokers to give up their land for not-so-pretty pennies.  As a result, local Balinese are moving further and further inland, pushing them farther off from the economically lucrative tourist trade.

I hope this doesn't happen in our own Langkawi.  The more I frequent the island, the more I see how we can stop what is happening in Bali and Phuket to Langkawi.  But it will take Malaysians with a conscience to exercise some self-discipline in ensuring that while we improve the commercial viability of the island, we also do it responsibly, with least negative impact on its residents - be they human or flora and fauna.

It's not someone else's job to preserve the gifts we have.  It's ours.

Land Ahoy!

Looking for land in Langkawi can be a really confounding experience.

First, there's figuring out who knows what is up for sale.  Our search for land took over a year, during which we made trips to the island every two to three months, following leads of land for sale.  Some came via friends who knew we were on the lookout, some came from sources as random as the Internet.  After several visits, we even had leads coming from people who knew people who knew we were looking.  You get the picture.

We traipsed across paddy fields.  We climbed big hills and small ones, through rubber plantations and orchards, peered through trees to uncover hidden vistas and pretty much saw most of the island.  

I have always known, deep in my soul, that I can have anything I set my heart on.  Call me a brat, but that's the way my life has always worked out.  I decide what I want and I just go and get it.  At times, confidence wavering, I wondered whether we would ever find something we liked.  After almost a year, we were both a little ragged from all the looking and looking over of plots previously seen. 

But on good days, I just knew.  Having Anim in the whole equation was also a huge help.  She's the more patient of the two of us, and whenever Speedy Gonzales me got irritated at the lack of progress, she was always the one who reminded us to take the deep breaths and let things just flow.

I distinctly remember a certain rainy evening in Langkawi when I was almost at the end of my rational tether.  We were due to return to KL in a couple of hours after yet another weekend of fruitless searching.  It wasn't that there was no land for sale.  It was just that nothing felt right.  Either a plot was too hilly and would cost too much to develop, or too far, or too small or too big, too rocky or too inaccessible.

Tired, I resorted to less pragmatic ends and decided to try a bit of wishful thinking.  I asked Anim to drive down a small village road in the pouring rain just to take a look at what was there.  During the entire journey, I recall telling her, "This is where we need to be.  We need our plot to be in this area."

And believe it or not, that was exactly what happened the next time we went to Langkawi.  

The first plot of land we were ever shown on the island was a strange little triangular piece that looked like a martini glass.  Its svelte figure aside, the piece of land was in a great location.  Subsequently, that plot was perhaps always our mental benchmark for location, location, location.

I don't know if it's serendipity or just the universe working its magic, but the plot we finally decided to purchase was directly across the road from the martini glass.  Weird, isn't it?

Taking The Plunge

My sister and I didn't start out as bosom buddies.  Born four years apart, I was the eldest and she the youngest with a brother in between us.  In our childhoods we shared a bedroom for some time but led pretty separate lives and little confidences.

As we both grew older and became the selves we are now, we discovered each other somewhere along the way, shared secrets and worries, rants and silly girly excitements about love and all sorts of growing up things.  She taught me some things I should have probably taught her, me being the older one.  I, in turn, was probably just there for her in any way I could be when I felt she needed some propping up.

Over the last ten years we have shared a particular bond from some weird and wild adventures that we may not have fallen into without one another.  Impromptu drives to Singapore and back, unscheduled flights home from a foreign country, long-distance phone calls to chase imaginary ghosts from a hotel room and a random trip to Spain.

Given our inclination towards stepping out into the unknown together, it was perhaps fitting that she was the one who accompanied me on the maiden trip to Langkawi to check out the little resort advertised in the papers.  Only this time we had an extra companion - her then baby son.

The trip, like any that mark a turning point in one's life, was unremarkable in its minutiae.  We saw the little inn, marvelled at the creeper trellis that was probably it's only charm, sunk our toes in the sand behind the rooms and contemplated uprooting our lives and moving to the island.

Prior to this visit, I had not been to Langkawi for some four or five years.  In my numerous previous visits, it had always been somewhere to get away to and nothing more.  But this time round, things felt different.  There was an inexplicable pull that goaded me to keep walking on a a stretch of beach each time I felt like turning back.  It felt, for lack of better words, familiar and new at the same time.  Not like a home you've known your entire life, but a safe place where your soul could be happy and perhaps start a fresh chapter of your life.

We came away from it determined to try and give things a shot.  Anim did the numbers and we talked about the possibility of moving.  We were excited at the prospect of things.  But in the end, as fate would have it, the inn was bought by someone else.  

In retrospect, it was perhaps for the best.  Once the inn slipped from our grasp, I turned my thoughts to the idea of building something from ground up, the way we want it.  And the more I thought about it, the more frightening and exciting it seemed.

I suppose I cannot deny that I have the attention span of a goldfish.  Things that are new and unfamiliar captivate me.  But once I figure them out, they cease to keep me fixated.  So the idea of crafting an entire little resort all by ourselves appealed because it was so different from what we've both done in our professional lives.  Plus, it was a dream we both somehow had tucked away in between the loose leaf pages of our lives and what ifs.

Once Upon A Time....

While flipping through the newspapers during lunch hour one seemingly unfateful day, I paused to peruse the Classifieds section.  I don't know why I did it.  It's an old habit I picked up some years ago out of boredom.  And there, nestled in between ads for once-loved furniture of an expat couple moving out of KL and puppies for sale was THE ONE.  It was a modest entry, considering the possibilities it offered.

It advertised a small resort for sale on the island of Langkawi.  I blinked and re-read it a couple times.  It seemed too good to be true.

Finally, I gave the advertiser a call.  The resort was a small place, just over ten rooms, already operating and apparently turning a decent profit.  The owner was leaving the country and needed to sell it quickly.  Even the price sounded right.

A few hours and excited phone calls between Anim, my sister Karen and I later, we made the decision to go and check the little resort out.  Little did I know then, how much it would change my life.

I suppose my reason for wanting to explore the possibility of completely trading in my life for a new one was at once impulsive and at the same time paradoxically calculated.  I had spent over 15 years building a career for myself in the Malaysian corporate world.  In that span of time, I guess I felt I had exhausted all attractive possibilities.  By my mid-thirties I had already become Bosswoman to some twenty-over staff in an international communications agency.  Then I went on to what some would say is a plum job in quasi-Government-linked company land.  A job that some would say was a cradle to grave one - the only way you would lose it was to leave.

There was little else I saw worth pursuing upwards of my rung on the corporate ladder.  Most of the people I knew in senior management were unhappy, pressured largely by the need to not fail than the passion for their work, worried about keeping up with the payments on their Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs rather than wondering what new horizons lay within their lines of sight.  Internal politiciking that resulted in too many inconclusive, drawn out meetings that ultimately were of little consequence didn't help either.

In short, I was bored.  And there was a part of me that increasingly wanted to pursue a personal passion of mine - to write and be published.  I felt creatively strangled by my nine-to-five job.  I hated going to work in the morning and when I got there, there was little to keep me interested or inspired.

Over the years, I had always played this cat-and-mouse game with my mental self.  Changing jobs and moving on to newer and better things - all of which only served to keep me enamoured for a little while until routine and boredom set in again.  The truth is, I did a decent job and got on well with most of my colleagues in almost every place I have ever worked.  But the prospect of chasing sales targets and Key Personal Indicators that kept moving farther and farther away each year didn't appeal to me anymore.

So when I stumbled across the ad, I had to stop and breathe.  It was as if all of a sudden I literally found myself at the crossroads where I had been for a while, except this time the fog had cleared and a new path had revealed itself.