It COULD have been worse!

I'm sitting on the edge of my seat - not out of eagerness, but in order to reduce the pain ...

The weather has gone weird. One minute there is no horizon where the silky ocean melts into the sky, and there is not a breath of breeze. Then we hear a rumble in the distance. Soon the wind starts, blowing first from one direction and then swinging around to another. Clouds appear, and sometimes storm systems appear to collide in the swirling winds and flashing lightning. And then there is the downpour ....
And everyone says it looks like the monsoon might come early this year (not that anyone ever really knows, but they like to guess). Which means the islands will soon close, and we need to get out there as much as we can.

Our main man on Kapas, Zai, has quit his job - too many Europeans turning up in his restaurant demanding breakfast at 7am. So we have started looking around at the other resorts.

Kapas Beach Chalet (above) is a pleasant resort with heaps of interesting greenery.

This time we got hold of Hans, at the "Kapas Beach Chalet", and booked one of his cabins. (We have visited there before, but never stayed in the cabins there.)

When we got on the speedboat on the mainland, we were joined by three other couples, including a lady who was carried on by her partner, and was accompanied by a wheelchair and various other bits of paraphernalia.

Thinking she was very brave to go to a sandy island in a wheelchair, we soon noticed her very Australian (Perth) accent and got talking.

Here we are just setting off from Marang on the mainland (above).

We found that she was a triathlete living in Kuala Lumpur up until last November when a car drove into her on her bike, breaking her back. With great determination she has regained a lot of mobility after the original diagnosis that she would be a quadriplegic, and looks forward to eventually walking again. Having lived in Malaysia for a number of years and frequently visiting Kapas, this was her first return to the island since her accident. We found her and her friends charming to talk to - and thoroughly enjoyed hearing Aussie accents for a change - so we said we would come and visit them in their resort later in the day.

Our chalet is the second on the left (above).

We settled into our quaint little chalet, and went for a swim. The ocean - as usual - was warm and clear, and the fishes seemed glad to see us! Returning to the chalet, Peter headed down the cement steps into our chalet bathroom ...

... and slipped. He hit his back and hip on the corner/edge of the steps, banged his head on the wall, and somehow (we are not sure how) broke the sink off the wall. I stood there thinking about our new friend in the wheelchair, and wondering how broken Peter was.

He was okay - few funny looking bruises, but not too much pain. We managed to re-attach the sink, but not the drain part - everything flows out through a hole at the bottom of the wall anyway.

We wandered down to see our Aussie friends in the "Qimi" resort - one where we have never (yet) stayed, and found the two men were not there, only the two ladies. They had left some vital medication in Kuala Lumpur and the two men had taken a boat back to the mainland and driven frantically back to KL to get it (5 hours each way!) and were hoping to be back during the night. So we spent a couple of happy hours keeping our new friend company.

The reception area at Qimi Resort - many of the facilities here are built in stone (above).

Relaxing in the restaurant at Qimi's until the storm passes (above).

Just as we were leaving, the thunder rumbled and the rain crashed down, so we sat in the restaurant a while. Then we took a look around and booked ourselves a room there for next week! (They are quite a bit more expensive than the other resorts, but very nice and we are looking forward to the change.)

Our friend decided to join us in the restaurant, so one of the local men was roped in to transport her from her room to the restaurant.

Qimi staff bring our friend to join us in the restaurant (below).

This morning, I got up to go for my 7am swim - as I usually do when we stay on Kapas. It was a rather grey-looking morning, and I didn't really feel like a swim, but I know that I always feel so good after ...

The water was a little cool and looked clear, but there were things hitting me all over - it was like swimming in soup. One or two of them made my skin sting a little - the water was full of tiny, tiny jellyfish - I remember this happened once before.

Feeling a little disgruntled after such a short and not so pleasant swim, I headed down the steps into our bathroom...

I could not believe it as my head hit the wall, there was a searing pain in my hip and bum (below the tail-bone, fortunately) and I turned around to see that somehow I had knocked the sink off the wall again - no memory of touching it!

Back home on the mainland now, sitting on the edge of my chair because sitting back puts pressure on my bruises.

But it COULD have been much much worse!!

Save the Kitty - pleeease!

It must be summer holidays in Europe, and somebody has been telling those Europeans about our little island (Kapas)! So instead of the place being practically deserted like it was last year during Ramadhan, it's crawling with pasty and sunburnt bodies (not something we are used to here).

Poor Zai has had his idyllic lifestyle rudely interrupted - he complains to us that when he gets up in the morning and comes outside (around 8 am or later) his restaurant is full of Europeans demanding breakfast. He no longer has time to flop around in the ocean making sea-shell jewellery or sit around watching his freshly-caught squid drying in the sun.

But for us, it meant moving to another resort (just down the beach a bit). This place looks like Lisa (our hippie almost-daughter-in-law) has already been here, it's definitely where she belongs.

It's difficult to photograph with all the bits and pieces hanging everywhere, and the shady open restaurant with wooden floors and clean wooden tables. They have some sort of a special deal where people can stay there as "staff", and so there always a number of keen helpers around to serve in the restaurant.

We didn't actually stay there, we booked one of the new cabins in another resort through Hans, the chap running the European place, but that sort of gave us the run of both resorts.

 In between this new resort where we were staying, and the European "Kapas Beach Chalet" resort is another locally-run resort called "Mak Cik Gemuk" - and of course it is all closed up and locked for Ramadhan.

When we first moved into our chalet we could hear a cat yowling - nothing new there, this place has lots of cats, none of them specifically 'owned' by anyone but generally friendly and often adopted (or else they adopt people).

This expectant puss, for example, was trying to keep cool in the restaurant and looked quite well-fed and happy.

But the crying cat near our cabin continued all day and into the evening. When we finally paid attention, we realised there was a mother cat - we could see her prowling around heavily in milk - and a young kitten somewhere calling pitifully.

We soon discovered a locked bathroom in the closed resort where the kitten was trapped, but when we asked around we were told simple "no key". So all night the little kritter cried (without becoming weaker as we had thought it would) and the mother prowled around.

In the morning in the restaurant they asked if we had slept well, and we mentioned the kitten. One of the European girls was immediately concerned - she was quite familiar with the mother cat and knew where its nest was with the second kitten.

They tried putting the desperate mother cat into the bathroom where its baby was, thinking they could then chuck food in there for her until the owner returned, but she was unwilling to jump down into the room. Despite being unwilling to break the lock or damage someone else's property, they decided to remove a sheet of roofing.

When the chap got the roofing off and looked inside he was very surprised to see that the tiny kitten was actually in the toilet bowl in the bathroom - no wonder it hadn't become weak from dehydration, and maybe that was also why mother cat wouldn't go down to it.

Well, he lifted the kitten out, and gave it back to its waiting mother. She sniffed at it suspiciously, and it immediately started to run off wildly on other adventures until she bopped it on the nose and put it back in its place.

It was a relief for all of us.