Jambongan in Perspective

Last week I had such a blast weekend. I was being 'selected' to go to a super rural place somewhere deep in Borneo jungle in the name of Medical Camp. The truth was, I was not being selected based on any SKT or academic or being-the-best-dentist-around reason. It was purely and utterly because it happened that I was the only male dentist and nobody seemed like to care to go (understood as the rest of the dentists are female and no one had slightest sense of adventure). Not that I full with adventurous spirit or eagerly to go or anything, I just stucked in the middle of statistical ratio of lack of male dentist in Malaysia and global I guess.
So I went.
The place called Jambongan in up north Borneo, it was an island as I could see in Google map. According to my mother in-law Jambongan had some similarity with Zamboanga which meant 'Jambangan Bunga' or a bouquet of flowers in Zamboangan aboriginal language. Yeah, I could see the similarity there.
We began our journey by hitting one of the Sabah's riddly roads. Composed by natural potholes that made every tires gasping to blow it was a mind-boggling to imagine how these people surviving every other day to even walk on it. Shame on Sabahan's politician for not making proper roads or highways for people who voted for them. I didn't think that people would mind so much to pay the tolls provided the roads were good and free from potholes. But in the end of the day politician will always be politician. Always keep their heads up and resist to look down despite being stumble at every points.
Eventually, we arrived at Paitan jetty after having a waggly body massage all the way. As you can see on the extreme right of the blog page, the dusty roads were so terrible that made the driver went blindly to go forth. Luckily, our driver was an expert of the roads and could even predicted which corners that he could go over taking. But as much as I despised the roads, I enjoyed the bumpy roller-coaster that made me feel like part of Eco Challenge drivers.
From the Paitan jetty, we took on a speed boat and attained Jambongan 45 minutes later. I must admit, for somebody who loved out-doors and physical activities so much, boat riding along the Jambongan river must be a super compelling and intriguing experience one could ever ask for. Sorry for the extreme right picture as everybody was given butts as a result of major amazement!
Jambongan itself was nothing short of remarkable and overwhelming. The beach was so picturesque that I even managed to pick couples of alive clamps within seconds I set my foot on the white shiny beach sands. The shells and corals were great and dozens of lanky coconut trees waving as if two lovers at far were about to unite after so long adjournment.
I met several cool guys while I was in the island such as Dr. Kelvin (didn't realize he was a MO until we reached the island) and some teachers who took me by surprise that most of them were from West Malaysia (orang Semenanjung we called them here). I had a good time chatting with them while being served a local food siput sedut of the ocean version. Oh my.. seriously I was stunt to see how casual they were while eating the 'thing' as if it was a goreng pisang (fried banana). Since I already mentioned about it might as well I go with description. As everybody knew how was it like for siput sedut of the river version (RV) morphologically, the ocean version (OV) were only slightly bigger in size. There was one major thing that differentiated between RV and OV which was the OV had a single claw projected out from the shells once its cooked. This claw was very important during serving as it acted as a tool to pull the filler out of the shells. Despite being called siput sedut the OV didn't really carried its name well. In stead of being sucked to evacuate the filler as in RV, the OV on the other hand needed to be pulled out single-handedly. To me the name was rather a misnomer if not totally true. As for me, after being persuaded and threaten that they will leave me in the island if I didn't eat it, I did and it was a pleasant surprise for me that the taste of the 'thing' was nothing like I imagined. The taste was good and it had a strong taste of cuttlefish. I ended up finishing the rest!
I asked one of the teacher about how they filled up the gap between after school and the next day. The answer was simple yet so powerful almost shaken the inner core of me inside out. NOTHING. Seriously?!
How could one survived and at the same time keeping the sane on par when there were no at least some entertainment or rather social activity to be done?
Well, I guess this was the major turn off for me. I could not at all living in such places that offered me no life. Call me town boy or spoiled brad or anything I didn't care. Bravo to the lines of dedicated teachers. I raised everything up for them.
So I think I got all covered up for now. See you in next writing!