Boat Ride in Kuala Sepetang (aka Part 5)

continued from here

How on earth do you make a three day trip stretch to 5 posts and you're still only on your second day? Easy.

Firstly, make sure that you had your trip more than a year ago.

Secondly, because you have forgotten most of what you did (unless you took notes, which you didn't because your initial plan was to actually complete the write-up as soon as possible), you try recalling what you did by looking back at your photos.

Thirdly, because pictures scream a thousand words than actual thousand words do, you end up posting pictures (after cutting yourself out of it, or putting a black box on your face first - if you're in it) and caption them with not so funny captions that they are sufficient to tell everyone about what you did or how your trip went.

Fourthly, because the posts are loaded with pictures instead of words, when you preview them , they tend to look extra lengthy, and you don't want that because your aim is to actually share your experience with your friends who read them (and everyone knows that some lengthy posts (especially when accompanied by photos) may lead to skipped parts), and therefore you start splitting the posts.

But I digress (a lot)

Kuala Sepetang - A Boat Ride, Lifestyle and Other Things

View of one of the fishing boats at the village

The boat ride

After the mangrove park, we decided that we'd take the boat ride around the Kuala Sepetang area. There are a few different boat rides available, but we decided to take the one hour boat ride that goes down around the riverside past the fishing villages and the mangrove forests.

For those who are interested, Kuala Sepetang is also another place that is steeped in history. This is where the very first railway line was built (to Taiping) in Peninsular Malaysia, back in 1885. These days, Kuala Sepetang is known as a fishing village where boats are more abundant than cars. As we took the boat ride, the guy giving us the tour told us that there was absolutely nothing to do on the fishing village other than house the fishermen and their families. Anything you wanted to do elsewhere, you had had to wait for one of the boat taxis to take you out to the mainland. Just as our boat guy was telling us this, we saw a family, dressed up for the Saturday evening, excitedly waiting for one of the boat taxis to take them so that they could have a day out like anyone else. I'm sure they are pretty happy with their lives (well, they looked happy as the breeze blew at them while waiting), but it makes you realise how terrible people can be the more they have. Take those of us who live in towns, where we complain even about the slightest discomfort that disrupts our busy schedules. Sigh.

Another item of interest mentioned by the boat guy is that due to the isolated nature of the fishing village, practically every single house carries a satellite dish which has over 500 channels from all over the world, which somehow compensates them having nothing much to do (at least that was the impression I got from the boat guy), and the best part - the satellite dish is apparently illegal elsewhere in the country! Other than the fishing village we got to see an eagle and a few monkeys by the mangrove.

After the boat ride, we drove back all the way back to Taiping town in order to grab some dinner. This time we had some Chinese food, which as expected was delicious. The night ended here as we were all very exhausted and ended up sleeping quite early.