Pulau Ketam (10-11th March 07)

I had been working in KL for several years but I haven’t been to Pulau Ketam which only need 30-40 minutes ferry ride from Port Klang. So, when I knew Huay Mein was organizing the Pulau Ketam trip, I signed up immediately without any hesitation.

The jetty to Pulau Ketam is located opposite Port Klang KTM station. So, some of us took kommuter and some of us drove and parked the car in front of KTM station. We would like to take 2.00pm ferry. However, the ferry only arrived the jetty at 2.20pm. After 35 minutes, we reached Pulau Ketam and checked in Sea Lion Hotel which is just a stone throw away from jetty. The rooms are quite cozy but with no bathroom attached.

The weather was hot. But we did not want to waste the time at hotel. So, we decided to go for a walk and exploring Pulau Ketam village. This is a mangrove island. The houses are built on stilt. Motorcycles are prohibited in this island. Bicycle and boat are the main transportation in this island. Majority population is Chinese and they are mostly fisherman. There are schools in this island. I noticed that there are a lot of temples here. We found out that one of the temple will having some celebration at night. That will be one of our programs at night.

I went back to hotel around 5.30pm. There were a few groups of people checked in the hotel and made the hotel nearly full. Teck Long came back to hotel and told us that a tour guide was offering us a package which includes Pulau Ketam sight-seeing, crab catching and also aborigine’s village visit. Each person cost RM15. All of us agreed to take up that package. A boat took us to one of the end of the island where a fishing chalet is located. From here, we slowly walked back to our hotel (central part of the island) while listening to the tour guide brief us on the attractions, culture and history of the island. This part of the island is very quiet, seldom visit by tourist. We took our time to admire the scenery, taking photos, listening story from the guide. It’s a very relaxing walk.

I think it took us more than 1 hour to reach the central part of the island. Wilson said he had been to Pulau Ketam twice and only now he realized that the island is so big. It’s dinner time. We stopped at one of the restaurant for dinner. We ordered crab, fish, prawn, fishball and squid. We waited for very long and when the dishes served, we felt disappointed. The portion was small and it’s not nice. Only the fried squid was good. The dinner was very expensive mainly due to we are tourist.

We proceed to Nan Tien Temple after dinner to check out their celebration. The place was very crowded. Initially we thought there will be Chinese opera but there were only dancing and singing performance at stage. Huay Mein, Lo, Ah Loo and Ah Son went back to hotel after a while where the rest of us stayed until 10.30pm. We played cards and mahjong until 2am.

The next morning, Kok Yuen woke everybody up at 7.30am. We washed up and went for the breakfast. Tour guide met us at 9.30am and brought us to visit the volunteer fire station, Chia association office, couple bridge and Koperasi Herr Ming Pulau Ketam. After that, we took the boat to go out to the mangrove swamp to set up two crab traps. Then, we visited the aborigine village nearby. Tour guide told us that government had gave this village a boat to fetch the aborigine children to go to school few years ago. But most of them had dropped from school after couple of years. We gave some candy and snacks to the children. We were at the village for half an hour before go to collect the crab trap that we set. Will we able to catch the crab back? Of course……..not, anyway it’s expected. Well, at least we knew the way to set and collect the crab trap now.

We back to Pulau Ketam around 11am. There is a thing that we have planned but haven’t done at this moment – cycling. So, we rented the bicycles from the hotel and cycled to the part of the island that we haven’t explored. 12 persons with 12 bicycles cycled around the island, such a nice experience. I am very cautious when cycling, especially when there are people or other bicycle coming from the other direction. I do not want to fall off from the road which is 5m higher than the ground. The weather is very hot. After cycling, we went for the cold ABC and cendol.

We left Pulau Ketam with 2pm ferry and back to Port Klang. Before going home, we had the Bak Kut Teh at Klang as our late lunch. Yum…Yum…it’s so delicious :D