Kota Bharu during Hari Raya –Startled we were woken a couple of times during the early hours of the morning with my phone ringing. Dazed we just assumed they were cold calls. On the third ring, I picked up, as it seemed to be persistent and I had a bad feeling. I did not really understand so Dave took over. It turned out to be the bus driver calling us to say the bus had already arrived at the station to pick us up in Kuala Terranganu and we needed to get there ASAP. This was 4am and our bus was supposed to be at 5.30am. Still not with it we hastily packed everything up, got dressed and headed to the station. The bus indeed was waiting for us and it was already full with people. We took our assigned seats as quietly as possible so not to wake people up and we were on our way to Kota Bharu. The journey was uncomfortable and we didn’t really sleep. The bus also stopped not too far into the journey at a mosque for an hour. We ended up arriving into Kota Bharu at 8.15am.
We were pleased with this time though as we hadn’t wanted to get into Kota Bharu too early. We had actually been contacted by someone on Couchsurfing about staying with him for the night; so he could show us some of the Hari Raya celebrations. He had initially arranged to pick us up from the station around 9am. However, at about 2.30ish that morning he had sent us a message telling us to message a girl named Magda in the morning as they had only just gotten in and he wasn’t sure he would wake up. So shortly after we got in we messaged Magda on Whatsapp. Not too long after she got back to us but said she was having trouble waking Daniel up so she was not sure when they would be able to get us. After us waiting around a while, not hearing anything and then prompting her again she said maybe we should go into town to look around a bit and she would get back to us. We ended up getting a grab into town (6RM) to what we thought was a small mall. It turned out that this wasn’t open, the market area and practically the whole of town was shut, presumably as it was still the Hari Raya holidays. We ended up luckily finding a subway where we camped out for a bit and grabbed some breakfast. More messages relaying where we were and we were just getting “that’s nice” sort of messages back no indication of when or even if we were going to get picked up. We went to look at the mall, which was now open, but turned out to be just a department store with hardly anything in it. We sat on a practically abandoned empty floor of the mall just waiting. We were exhausted by this point, annoyed at having to wait and we just wanted to be able to put our stuff somewhere so we could at least wander around. At 2.30pm we were getting sick and tired of waiting so we messaged the guy to say that we really appreciated the offer but we would find a hostel or something. A couple of minutes later we actually got a message off him saying they were finally on the way and he was sorry. Another hour went by and we were done by this point. So we messaged again and said they were actually nearly there, could we walk around to the other side of the mall. We were greeted by him, as well as 4 other Couchsurfers (2 Russians, 1 Argentinia and a Czech) in his tiny car. Our stuff shoved in the boot and all of us crammed in we had to switch quickly from exhausted and annoyed to friendly and personable!
It turned out to be a really good thing that we waited and he hosted us as we had a strange but interesting day. Instead of heading back to his house we headed straight to his family’s house for some more celebrations. It turned out a lot of the major party type celebrations had been the day before but for the day we were there and the rest of the week Danny would spend it going to several different family members houses each day. We were invited in to meet lots of his family (although apparently he considered it only a small proportion of them). The women greeted women and the men greeted the men. We stood around chatting to a few members of his family and with the other couchsurfers. We were then invited to help ourselves to drinks and food. After an hour or so we left saying goodbye and thank you to all the women/ men again. Then we drove to a different house. This time to one of his friends houses which was more odd. We were invited into a reception room where we were given root beer, biscuits and cakes but no one from the house stayed to talk to us at all, instead hiding in other room. After a few minutes we followed Danny down to the river where we were joined by a few of the family members from this house so they could take selfies with us. Again, after a short while, we were on our way to our next destination- Danny’s stepmothers house. All of us Couchsurfers sat around a big dining room table where plates and several noodle dishes were nicely laid out along with more cakes and biscuits. We were offered tea/coffee and asked if we could have our picture taken but that was pretty much the whole interaction we had with the family even when we invited them to stay and chat with us. Full, gratefully but feeling rather confused about the whole situation we got back in the car to finally go back to his (his mother's) house.
His house itself was very grand and decorated with ornate furniture. As Couchsurfers we had all of the upstairs area of the house- 2 bedrooms with a shared bathroom and the other couple had a pull out bed on the balcony outside. We only had a brief sit down before we were changing into swimwear to go swimming at his friend’s communal pool nearby. We all had a laugh in the pool playing ball games even as it started chucking it down with rain on top of us. We went back to the house very briefly to dry off and change before we were whisked out in two cars to the night market. We walked around for a bit but didn’t really find any food so went out for a search in the cars. This ended up being a bit of a drama. Due to the celebrations EVERYONE and their extended family were out at the restaurants Danny tried to take us too. We kept stopping then zooming off again. It didn’t help that two of the Couchsurfers were vegetarian and another was vegan! And she was moody about not being able to eat anywhere anyway. Eventually we found an Indian restaurant and settled down for some food at 11.35pm. When we got back to Danny’s we sat on the balcony for a bit chatting away and talking about plans for the next day as we wanted to go the Perhentian Islands. By the time we got into bed we were shattered, it had been a whirlwind of a day. From waiting around for half of it and then not stopping for the other half.
In the morning we woke up and got ready to journey to the Perhentians. Danny turned out to actually be a local travel agent so he managed to get us round trip boat tickets to the Perhentians for 50RM instead of 70RM. We had planned on getting a taxi or something but Danny offered to take us to the pier as a few of us were travelling there. Before we went we quickly had some breakfast as his lovely mother had made us some pasta and coffee. Danny dropped us off at the pier and made sure we got on the right boat and we were off to the Perhentians enjoying the clear blue waters.
Alex
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