Lessons in bar burning and local weapon making

Perhentian Island Part II - April 17 - 23

We sat on the beach, sizzling under the shade of the umbrella and wondering how the hell that happened, when we saw it. The men in red shirts. We wondered how and when they would come again. Booze-slingers couldn't last long on this island and it had been about a week, we'd heard, since the red shirts had been there to tear them down. Just last night we were at one of the beach bars, enjoying a night of British company and warm rum drinks on the sand with no chairs. The drink of choice here is called Monkey Juice and it tastes like flavored rum but really its 25% Arak. No one, not even locals, really knows what it means and we heard that recently someone died from drinking it, so Elissa and I sipped slowly and checked in with each other. Just another notch on the strange belt. The island has now started to take on a hazy glow, like my eyeballs have been singed enough that everything is in sepia tones; not the good sepia tones of 1930s recollections, but the bad sepia tones where you'd expect clowns to pop out of the gutters. Anyway, back to the red shirts. We had heard that last week they came with their equipment and hammered one of the bars to the ground. On the island, along with no electricity, there is supposed to be no alcohol sold. It's government property and the government seems pretty rigid. A few nights after that, the foreigner whose bar/wooden shack it was rebuilt it and had a huge party. His dedication to the cause was incredible and would be awe-inspiring if it wasn't saturated with getting foreigners wasted.

So, the red shirts came back, this time with a vengeance. Elissa and I, and the whole island, were sitting on the beach enjoying our shade tans when a huge fire burst out a few yards in front of us. Unphased and sepia-mouthed, we wondered what it was. We noticed a smoldering pile that was the bar that we were at the night before and saw the red shirts pulling at the other bar with hammers and throwing it into the fiery pit. The emanating heat was unbearable but we were transfixed. We tanned and watched the bars burn down, watching the locals and the government chat and smoke and laugh. We were utterly confused and calm, under a spell that I would choose to never really be under again. We didn't ask, no one who was watching was surprised. That night, as though nothing happened, the exact same bar was rebuilt and the party continued. It looked the same and felt the same, leading Elissa and I to believe that we had imagined the whole thing.

After the bar burning, Elissa and I were hungry, so in a movement with the rest of the tanning bodies, we got up for lunch. This meant walking a few yards on the hot sand, sitting on plastic tables and chairs, and waiting. All of the restaurants on the island have the exact same menu, down to the same laminated story about how the Perhentian Islands came to be. Creepy. As we ate, we saw a group of about 7 local men following two tourists. Then, a fight broke out between the two groups, the locals obviously having the upper hand. We all just sat and watched, bleached out by the sun and unable to move because of the heat. Fists flew and cries for help were heard, women started screaming and rushing out of their warm indoor stores. The tourists walked slowly, too hot to run from them, until the locals grabbed planks of wood and broke them over the tourists' backs. Elissa and I ate and watched, unable to say anything that would bring justice to what was happening. Finally, an elderly guy stepped in the middle and broke it up. We found out later it was over a snorkeling mask that had been left at the shop. Two nights before, a tourist got beat with a bamboo stick so badly his arm got broken and his friend got knocked unconscious. All because he touched the locals' head, a huge cultural mistake to make. I decided I should leave.