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.

YALA WAT, REDUX
By:  Iris P. Concepcion

Yesterday was an ominous discovery of senses once more.  I had earlier listened to imptov classical music in my sleeping wear after a deep slumber filled with good thoughts, gobbling my linguine bathed in deep tomato paste with vegetable meat.  The music was refined by the musical gurus of the olden age.  Bass drums, flutes, lyres and harps had made friends with the often used instrument of choice for orchestras: violins.

I had often wondered where the musical score, Hey Mickey, had come from.  No one might have noticed that the three chords opening the musical piece may have been taken off from Sebastian Bach.

This is Nature Symphony, a musical compilation collected by the ears of people from the Reader's Digest with pictures of elks, deers, emus and other wildlife creatures accompanying the fabulous strings.  With this mystical sound environment greeting my bright morning, I went out to rediscover this city/municipality that I had called home for the past 8 months.

I had ventured past Yala's Provincial Hall.  I had noticed that the temple in front of it had grown a spectre of spring flowers in blinding whites and magentas, coupled with immaculate pinks. They do not have any leaves hanging on them.  I could have sworn these are tulips and daffodils circling out from snow in the Alps.  Their beauties could terrify one's visual senses, if one is used to prawns cooked in hot oil peddled in wheeled stores.

Trodding on, I had walked past Yala's Red Cross building, a blood bank for patients that had likewise embraced the memories of my childhood. I remember fondly its free nylon bag where my mother had placed all of her documents neatly in brown envelopes.  The building has perfectly trimmed bermuda grass.  I had likewise seen blue-collared men in construction gears who are building dams beside the trees with a Camel truck waiting like a motioning donkey in front of the toilers.  The triangled edifices of the structure yarns always bear lawns of bermuda grass, a spectacle that I never reject since it always reminds me of my serene childhood with my father's giant frog leaping on me via the camera lens.

Near this area is where I had dicovered another temple with Pagoda-like designs. Unlike the usual wat building for Buddhists inside Yala, this wat has four dimensional designs on its windows with finely sculptured embellishments, designs very intricate that had looked like juidicial signs from afar.

A perfectly tipped cone temple is under construction on its side that is golden coiled on top. Unlike the usual aluminum-based raw material, this one was woven in gold casting.  It springs itself as a foil to the multi-paneled roof tops of structures beside it.  In fact, this temple is curious as it is supported by huge columns in grey with palatial stairs which reminds me of the gigantic government offices in the United States like the White House. My dog, who had been an unsmiling bear inside a facsimile house earlier, is surveying this conglomeration of house of worships that had the word "supernatural" embedded on them. Inside it is a structure of a fat man, sitting, still swathed in gold. I found it odd since the usual Buddhist notion of non-materialism is exchanged for a more positive outlook of a taken-cared, icon god.

Here, we could marvel at pebbles and marbles that one could utilize for engineering works.  I took a handful of discarded materials for the kids to play during the weekend.  This area could have been a resort beach before that had been washed away by the universal gods as a kind of mortal chastisement to honor the higher, spiritual elements from among us. The roosters here are free to roam around with their heads perfectly razored. These are wonderful fowls; if only they could make their cuckolds louder.  Birds are melodiously chirping nearby, emitting melodies to the roosters' bass drummed tonsils.  If I were to have a flute with me, I could have devised a song on the spot using my herd of singing animals.

I had pangs for fast food at the precise moment I was leaving the temple.  I passed by trhe bricked sidewalk roads that are elevated, a correct building style.  I bought my lunch at the nearby 7-11 outlet (pizza in sausages and cheese with a  blackcourrant flavoured cream-filled wafer, all for 20 baht. I still prefer my mother's delicious grapes than this overtly sour fruit).  The outlet of this convenience store here is practically a miniature store in an outback United States town, with its unique flaming hotdogs and bacons that I had loved as a child which my departed mother had lovingly wrapped for me for breakfast.  Even the jams of pineapples, strawberries and peanut butter are lined up neatly.

I walked away from this quiant but small place with visions of my pretzels, coated in chocolates and packaged in Reynold's foil.

I tried to look for a pined tree area surrounding a lake that I had visited before for boating with bird sanctuaries and windmills. I finally saw the direction towards it in a short cut road. Nestled in the lake are stones of fine make.  I reacquinated myself with my Terrenganu chestnuts and dried leaves that the kids had used to form their lotus gardens.  The pine trees had swayed more beautifully with umbrella tents offering the promenaders their usual fare of fruits and fresh juices. These trees overlook the calm, lake water that had tremendously improved now than my previous visit with its badly constructed road. It now has a pavement in sandy, grey and white pebbles. It cascades its soft ripples, leaving the huge rocks adorning it unperturbed.  I have seen Muslims partaking their lunch in small tables, squatting, but they had the most delectable dishes of chicken and vegetables. They were using the proper utensils (not tin) and were sharing their food silently. I ahd thought then, how regal and cultured these people are. Even their mouth chomps are studied and refined. No loud voices nor cussing words, they had treated their meals like celebrations of life, thanking the Higher Creator for the abundance of resources in their mats, tables and utensils.

I always feel a certain calm and homelike unrestlessness when I am marooned in areas filled with pine trees. Willowy, radiant, subdued and swaying with the wind, there is a disciplined aura to the people who had visited it.  I often wonder how our forefathers had dreamt of a world in greens, exploring the undiscovered places and envisioning how they would look like 100 years from now.

An ode to my generous parents merits another look. To the place they have constructed in safe security for shelter and provisions, for not leaving us alone in times of immediate need, for being the strickler for order and decorum and for honoring their promises that never fail, not a bit of delay, when we had asked then for help.

Bermuda grass, pine trees, fruit jams and juices, tasty porcelain wares, all of these, I had learned to appreciate in heightened awareness yesterday. Queer as it sounds, I am much prouder of my responsible lineage (thinking of Workmen's Compensation Act and pensions way ahead of their time) now more than ever. I would not imagine myself a terrible brute with an insecurity belittling my small steps to your legacy.

Thank you Gauttier and Delia for rearing me with enough candor and civility to tame the rowdy sourpusses. I could not possibly thank you enough, with your stitched gowns and filled rice containers that are never left empty.