KELANTAN REVIVED (WITH PARACHUTE)
By:  Iris P. Concepcion

"Credit The Omnipotent And Higher Being To The Heavenly Supremacy Of Sound, Shapes And Lights.:--Iris P. Concepcion

Kelantan, Kota Bharu, Malaysia offered me another highlight to the wonders of hues and woodwork designs the last time I had visited it.

This is my fifth visit to the town, silted on a bus chair with my ticket dispensed from an ATM-machine like machine.  My friend, Sitti, provided me a map of Kelantan this time around, a treasure find to the art of visuals.  She had placed them on her receiving desk at Perdona Inn, my usual area of residence when combing this Malaysian enclave.  I was immediately delighted over the presence of museum sites as provided in the locator's guide map where the artifacts of the town's history are introduced to the visual hawker.

Brpchures of Kelantan always feature the open-gated, three-coulumned doors (Merdeka Square) with a sculpture of an open book nestled on top of the middle column.  I find it proper with its page leaves neatly molded as if flipped.  Once you enter this wide, open fortress, you are greeted with the Museum Istiadat di Raja, a splendid structure with oblong and circled shapes illuminated on wood windows that are covered with corn-dusted curtains.  They play an impressive backdrop to the window carvings.

Next to it is the Istana Balai Besar, a handicraft area with a curious cross and triangle-columned designs overlooking the central area.  Its gate resembles the Merdeka Square book gate.  It is nonetheless structured with dark brown, wood panels in between columns like a wired fairy tale, eureka entrance.  It has more dimension and looks more enthralling from afar.

To its right is another immense, triangle building that houses various government and e-commerce place of transactions.  The huge stairs leading to the main area are shiny and glassly vaulted.  Inside it is a bank/tax office with humongous wood panels. This transaction hub on the ground floor shall remind a visitor of the spacious hotel front desks in big cities.  Its interiors are airport-like with a giant clock hung on the second floor area like a cuckoo's nest waiting to get egged.

During the time of my visit, Merdeka Square displayed various motioning floats decorated with themes of Nature.  This could be the town's version of the Rose Bowl Parade in New York, with a play of lights and shapely contours.

Floats come in different designs, from hotel structures and pagoda roofed, mini installations. Chinese temples and open water areas are likewise present here.  The well-lit place stands as an entertainment foil to family night prowlers.  Instead of the beach-themed restaurants, families can partake of nature parks, wildlife, flowers and cascading gardens inside this open, visual auditorium.

Down south is the calm and serene Kelantan River running still with a vast forestry across it, uniquely silent and sleeping. The river shelters differently-designed boats marooned in water houses.  This could be the forerunner to bay areas with their anchorages of well-built yachts and jet skis.  Here, the appeal is rustic as the jet skis are transformed into wooden sailing splendors with regalian chairs never failing to catch the eye of the visitors.  The teriific usage of river stream, a liquid howl to River Kwai, is perfectly circumnavigated.  Next to the river stream is an open verndah of tables and chairs for nightly diners with a small road separating it from Ridel Hotel, a Maine-like residence with restaurants below selling cakes, coffee and other freshly squeezed fruit beverages.  I have squired a neat leather bag here, stitched and pruned in Hollywood design of production work.

This side of Kelantan is a miraculously, united area of eyeful delights.  All its main buildings start from the visage of a circle.  It is unnamed in the map but it refuses to forget the past with its war chests, old fashioned automobiles and tanks preserved in their original forms.  No traffic light is needed here. Vehicles circle around and enter/exit in whatever form of direction without any structural hindrance. I found myself walking inside the round pedestrian lane as if I am Mt. Olympus. Spanish meld with the Chinese and American designs, basked in European sunlight.

Three Europeans were walking here like myself, enthused by the beautiful Moorish, Hindi and Muslim edifices built freely beside Mediterranean hotels.  If urban planning had visited Manila in this manner, Philkippine tourism's tax receipts could perhaps generate a billion hits per month.  I can imgaine the Jones Bridge and Pasig River plied with gondolas and swans instead of the garbage piles polluting the waterways.

My lunch here consisted of the Muslim fare, saramudin, a rolled, fried fish dipped in sweetened sour sauce which reminded me of mother.  My servings are big; crucnchy too, with their curious tips perfectly snug to my taste buds.  This could be the food devised by sun gods, immensely tanned and golden, with their Pharaoh eyes and immaculate head gears that cascade down to their hips.  Their eyes are lined in black like Lawrence of Arabia.  I had seated myself beside these men on my train ride where they, too, ate a sesame-seeded dough filled with minced filling.  I had asked one of the Pharaoh ladies where she had come from.  She gazingly looked at me in a haunting manner with the word: "Peru."  The book Bridges of St. Luis Rey immediately flashed to my mind with its bridge stories of people traversing the river bank, their minds occupied with sacks of tales in purposeful wanderings.

It is likewise here that I had sampled my thirst quencher whioch hydrated me for the whole day: a guava juice. I bought it from a vendor who likewise peddles corn juice, hotdogs and shrimps.  If one fancies a more elaborate and quixotic taste explorations, Ridel and Riverfront hotels offer a mixture of the Orient, Western and Mediterranean cuisine with a more eclectic selection of fruit beverages.  I saw from the menu that it also offers goat dishes and a wide array of tasteful desserts.

Pelangi Mall is, moreover, located here with its intricately designed small shops selling curious finds on the ground floor: unique athletic wear to leather bags.  I saw a young man strumming his blue guitar sheened like Elton John's, with his back in intermediate fusion with the jetted river.  He played it like a Mexican troubador would, unmindful of the richness of his adequately shaped surroundings with a glimmering sun provising the melodic heat. At night, the hotels bear stripe shadows using only one material in one stroke: white paint. The light below provided the illusion and it was quite fanciful staring at the elegant but simple trick of the visual from my chair.

I personally think that this place is a virginal paradise to the artistic voyeurs, with mosques, temples and western designs blending in one united front.  To bellow profanities here is almost a sacrilege.  This is not a nocturnal area for the rowdy.  At night, it invites mediation and self-preservation with yawdles of orchestra serenading one's senses, if one has learned the art of musical progression within one's harmonious self.  At Ridel hotel, even the waiters are impeccably attired and obscurely polite with ready suggestions for the food enthusiasts to calm their hungry tummies.

I likewise saw Chinese men sitting in elegant manner, sipping their teas and taking pictures of the differently-designed residence that had suddenly acquired loft and daintiness.

I returned to Merdeka Square at night and was greeted with lights in various shades. This could educate a watcher to proper cinematography lighting if one aims to become a film director or simply, to teach an engineer how to fasten his light inisde a room with an optimum aesthetic radiance.

This, in a town, is much more than a traveller's insight to the uses of Nature and how it properly communes with people.  Even its tourism folks had gifted me with a box of postcards in recycled carton papers.  One could write his/her own impression on Kelantan in its Guest Book under the eloquently columned: "Remarks".  I had placed my comment with people from France and Belgium, imagining myself as a giant.  I inscribed them in big, bold letters since the book is a 10 footer with an 8 width dimension (funnily transcribed).

I had then purchased my  daily provisions at Pantai Timur. For 20 ringgit (200 baht), once could buy Chicken McNuggets (RM5.95) two packages of sausage frankfurters (RM1.99 each)  and  spiralled fries from Belgium (RM3.95).  PT never fails to astound me with its ridiculously lowered prices.

Kelantan is also home to the massive Tesco grocery store with its impeccably designed surroundings but it is quite far from the town proper.

I headed back to Thailand, breezing through immigration and had waited for my train back to Yala.  I had, in this recent experience, capped a wonderful sight of a man descending from a parachute, bolting out from the sky, landing on the train station just like how my Reader's Digest stories had scribbled the ascent/descent of these paragliders.  There was no helicopter hovering nearby thus, I had wondered, where the parachutist may have come from. He seems like a character straight from my short novella, "Slow" who had jumped off to leave an urbanized zone.

Perhaps, he too, had visited Kelantan but had chosen a more wicked and more adventurous transportation than myself back home.