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travelogue - part 1
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it takes about three hours to reach gua musang from kota bharu. the journey seemed endless as everytime i woke up, the bus was still moving. The day was terribly hot as kelantan hasnt had a single rain for almost a month.
i remember thinking that if only i could read in a moving vehicle, i would have finished reading the whole novel by the time i reached gua musang. but then i saw them, the limestone outcrops towering above the gua musang town. Man! the place is simply amazing. there are caves everwhere you look in gua musang, how cool is that. there's no word to describe it, i guess. surely, it's love at first sight.
we checked-in at the kesedar inn where i shared a room with my colleague. i felt a bit apprehensive at first because i'd to share a room with a colleague i barely knew but then i discovered that she was one of the nicest people i'd ever met. she reminded me of my former colleague 'durian belanda'.
the room at kesedar inn was quite comfy and the bathroom was also clean. the lunch however was superb. i thought the food would taste a little sweet but it's not. pedas giler, kalah pedas kari mak aku. and what is kelantan without budu. Actually, it tastes quite delightful.
we left the inn at about 3pm to make our way to one of the caves in town. i was not really interested in exploring the cave but it would look awkward if i were to stay outside when everybody else went inside the cave. damn! now, i had to act brave and look nonchalant even though I had butterflies in my stomach and at the time there were thousands of them. but I forgot about all that when I entered the cave. its interior looks really lovely, seriously. i forgot about my fear of claustrophobia and became one of the first to go deeper inside the cave. i was in another world. there’s a sense of tranquility and a surreal feeling that you wont get to feel anywhere else. the cave had a strong chemical odor and for some strange reason, the smell sort of stuck in my memory
the cave was so bloody dark i couldnt even see myself. you had to have a torchlight to guide you while exploring the cave. there are a few narrow and tricky passages inside the cave that required us to bend, squat and climb sideways to get past them. actually, exploring gua ning was a piece of cake but to an inexperienced and unfit woman like me, the routes were quite tough.
We saw a small river inside the cave and our guide told us that if we followed the river we could come out on the other side of the town or something like that, I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly because I was admiring the rock formations. there was this honeycomb like rock formation that were really beautiful. all it was missing was the bees. hehehe... to the untrained eyes like me, the cave looks beautiful but to a seasoned cave explorer, the cave was actually dying. I mean visitors shouldn’t have touched the beautiful rock formations because it’d destroy them. the coral reef like formation beckon people to take it home and put them in their aquarium. pretty kiasu of them. all of a sudden, i felt attached to the cave. the guide told us that the communist used to stay in the cave during the 50s. so, i got pretty excited thinking about it. hahaha...
when it was time to leave the cave, i felt pretty sad because i didnt know when i would get the chance to visit the cave again. but what I do know is gua ning wont be the first and the last cave I entered as there will be others in the future. believe me, this activity is addictive.
last modified Mar 15, 2005 at 0:15
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