Tioman. Tee. O.
Maan. The soft sound of those
soothing syllables massage out the last of any stresses and strains hiding in
the fibres of my muscles. Minutes,
hours, dates and days swim together in an endless cycle of a sleepy
passing. The rise and fall of the sun is
the only concession to the movement of time, that and the intermittent grumble
of my belly. Silence and stillness hang
in the air like ripen fruit, broken only by the thud of a coconut dropping to
the sand, or the occasional impatient twitter of a brightly coloured bird. Even the sea is subservient to the ambience,
its serene swash kissing the sultry sands. 
The beach is a sandy swathe of rocks and trees offering a
textured morphology, and, thankfully, saving it from commercial development. Small wooden huts sit back from the water’s
edge, on the wide green leafed grass that slopes inland towards the rainforest
covered hills of the islands centre. Monitor
lizards perform their duties, patrolling their patches with an arrogant
waddle-wiggle, keeping the kitten population in check. There are few cats with a full tail on this
island, battle scars, narrow escapes from the flick and snap of the lizards
tongue.
Across the thin path, just wide enough for a motorbike and
sidecar, a myriad butterflies skip with jerky elegance from one exotic flower
to another. And the remaining kittens
bounce after them, their stumpy tails bobbing behind them. Along the path are a few simple restaurants,
usually shut, offering various noodle and rice concoctions, and some shops,
usually un-manned, selling essential sundries.
There are no t-shirt sellers, no beach hawkers, no tour pushers. Neither are there touts, scammers, drunken
louts, gap year cretins, litter, hotels, KFC’s , shopping malls, or obnoxious
fat ostentatious Russians. In fact there
is very little to mar the natural integrity of this beautiful beach
setting.
The sea is warm, clean and clear. Standing in its refreshing coolness, out of
the sear of the sun, looking through the soft wrinkle of its movement, pipe
fish can be seen darting between my ankles.
There are reefs that can be easily snorkelled to off the beach, big
bulbous yellow corals, like giant popcorn, swell from the sea floor. Psychedelic parrot fish flash brightly in
little schools, and playful clown fish peek nervously from the softer corals
that submissively move with the currents.
They say that one notches down a gear or two staying here;
mine have pretty much ground to a halt.
I can feel the sea air quickly rusting them, eroding the unnecessary
machinery of worry. Here’s hoping I
won’t find a need to notch them back up anytime soon….I don’t think it will
happen. I like the pace here. I say pace, more a slow fall into utter relaxation. Tee.
O. Maan.
N.B. I have since
discovered that the cats tails are a result of inbreeding. But I prefer the image of a life and death
stumble along the sands between a big lizard and a little cat.
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