Retracing my First Solo Journey to Paka, Trengganu

8 Jan 2019

Today, I am driving to Trengganu to relive a memorable journey I took  40 years ago.

In December 1969 after my "O" Level, I was very excited after convincing my  strict father to allow me to travel alone to Paka, Trengganu, to visit my uncle. I had planned this trip long ago and just waited for the right opportunity.

It was my first solo oversea road trip. I was full of determination to complete this arduous journey. Yes, those day was really a challenge even for adult to travel to a small town in East Coast from Singapore.

I left my house in Sembawang before sunrise. It took an hour on the bus to Queens Street, thereafter I had to transfer to another bus that take me across the Causeway to Johore Bahru Bus Station. From there I had to look around for a private taxi to drive me to Kuantan. The taxi only moved when they had enough passengers. The road toward Mersing was winding and the taxi was always speeding. The car has no air-conditioning and the ride was bumpy.

The road was single lane for each direction and was narrow. The taxi was always trying to overtake the many slow moving lorries.  By today standard, it was absolutely dangerous and reckless and some of the overtaking was a dare devil death defying act.

After Mersing, I remembered there are 3 ferry crossings at Endau,  Kuala Rompin and another place I cannot recall.  Those days many rivers did not have bridges. The taxi had to queue for their turn to drive down the ramp onto a pontoon that can accommodate 4 or 6 vehicles. The pontoon was pulled across the river with steel cables.

When I arrived at Kuantan bus station, I had to look for another taxi that was heading to Dungun or Kuala Trengganu. There were runners touting for passengers to fill up the taxi. The road to Paka was winding and at some point very steep and I always remembered the heavy vehicles struggling up the slope. The road wind through Malay kampongs with attap houses built on stilts and mostly surrounded by coconut trees.

Sometimes the roads are close to the sea and it was a very beautiful sight from the car. The stretch from Kijal to Kamasek is especially beautiful. You can see the waves rolling from the greenish sea.

My uncle was a Chinese Primary school principal. He was single and lived in the school which was situated along the main road. The school is about few hundred metres from the Paka Village. When I arrived at the school,  he was waiting for me. I felt a sense of accomplishment.

Reflecting back on this journey, now I feel that without the benefit of mobile or instant communication, he must have waited anxiously and worried about my safety. All I did was to write him a letter to inform him the date of my arrival and he acknowledge me by writing. Those are the day of communication.

Now I am thinking, my adventurous trip must have stressed him. For he did not know exactly where I was, clueless of my time of arriving or was I lost or in trouble. My parents too must have been extremely stressed as they don't know whether I had made the trip safely.


Now I realized how fortunate I am today. We have handphones for instant communication and data search at our finger tips. At the same time the GPS was pure magic that can bring you to any corners of the world.