This morning’s journal entry is all about the small Planet Doug adventure from yesterday. I rode my bicycle to an island outside of Melaka that was full of what appeared to be rusting and abandoned ships. It looked fascinating from a distance, and with my recent experiences of clambering aboard the ghost ship on Melaka Island and visiting a Submarine Museum, I wanted to get a closer look at these ships and maybe even climb around on them. That was the plan anyway. The one big wrinkle is whether this island was open to the public or if security would chase me away.
Saturday, June 20, 2026
7:50 a.m. Room A1 Makhota Vibe Inn
Melaka, Malaysia
Yesterday was an interesting day. The weather was perfect in the morning, and I decided to follow through on my plans to ride my bicycle back to the section of reclaimed land where the Submarine Museum is located and try to explore the island with all the ships on it. Of course, I had plans to record this small adventure for a YouTube video. And while I was recording that video, I kept stumbling over what to call the island. I believe it has an official name. I saw online and on Google Maps that it is called Pulau Klebang Selatan, which means just South Klebang Island. But the official name doesn’t matter. What matters to me is that for some reason, there were a lot of what appeared to be abandoned ships on the island. I wanted to get a close-up look at these ships and figure out why they were there. And so I thought of this island as a ship graveyard or, as I said a few times, the island of misfit ships. I guess I was mentally searching for some kind of catchy name that would stick. I must not have ever found that catchy name, because nothing ever stuck in my head and I stumbled over both “ship graveyard” and “island of misfit ships” every time I tried to say them. I think “ship graveyard” was the best choice, but my brain constantly wanted to say “island” as well, so it came up with “ship graveyard island” and things like that. And I found myself hesitating and having to think and stumble through a bunch of combinations before I finally said anything.
There was a strong possibility that the entire bicycle ride out there would amount to nothing. The island where I planned to cross the bridge wasn’t bristling with signs or security of any kind. In fact, there was nothing there at all. There wasn’t a single sign giving the island a name or the name of a company indicating it was private property. There was usually no one there and there was no gate of any kind. From that vantage point, it looks like a public island with a connecting bridge. When you look at Google Maps, you can even see a location pin on it that indicates it is a public park called Pulau Kleban Selatan. So you can make a strong argument that the island is open for anyone to go out there. Why else would it be a park? But there was a very real possibility that I wouldn’t even make it across the bridge before being stopped and told to go back. And even if I made it across the bridge, the first person I met out there would likely talk to me to ask what I was doing out there and then tell me I wasn’t allowed out there. So it could be a complete waste of time. But it seemed worth the risk. And I had a backup plan. If I was denied entry immediately, my plan was to ride back to Melaka and devote the day to visiting a brand new museum that I had just heard about.
And for the YouTube video I hoped to make about the island of misfit ships, my plan was to start the video right at the bridge and the island itself. This is something new that I’ve started doing, and though it goes against my usual instincts, it is probably the right choice. I did it for real the first time when I went to the Submarine Museum. Normally, I would start recording video at the moment I leave from my hotel or even as I am getting ready in my hotel room, and then I would talk about the Submarine Museum while riding my bicycle there. For me, the effort to physically go to the submarine is part of the experience, and I like to show that as well as some interesting things along the way. But I changed that approach for the submarine because the submarine itself is so visually striking. I decided it would be odd to have a video title and thumbnail about a submarine and then not show the submarine at all for twenty minutes as I ride my bicycle to get there. So instead of doing that, I didn’t even turn on my cameras while I went there. I waited until I was standing in front of the place before I launched into the topic.
For this island, my plan was to do the same thing. I wanted to be standing at the foot of the bridge with the island and the ships behind me to start the video. If my video promises a look at an island full of rusting, beached ships, I want the ships to be right there in full view within the first couple of minutes. In a way, it felt odd to do that. I’m so accustomed to thinking of the journey as part of the experience that riding my bicycle out to the island without recording video felt weird. I started to wonder why I was even riding my bicycle to begin with. I had the same thought when I visited the Hang Tuah Center. If riding my bicycle there isn’t part of the video experience, then why don’t I just take a Grab? What’s the point of the bicycle ride if it isn’t featured as part of the overall experience? So as I rode my bicycle out to the island, I hardly knew what to do with myself. All I did was mentally review some of the things I’d learned about the island so that I’d have those facts at my mental fingertips if I wanted to mention them. But other than that, I had nothing to do but turn the pedals, look around me, and get lost in my thoughts. It felt so odd.
Of course, in the case of all these videos, using the bicycle to get there still felt right. I COULD have taken a Grab to the Hang Tuah Center or the Submarine Museum, but I prefer to have control over what I do. I like the freedom and independence of having my own transportation. I would find the process of using Grab to summon a car and then waiting for it and going through all the inevitable hassles to be annoying. I guess it’s part of my personality makeup that I would rather ride my bicycle for 20 kilometers through intense heat and traffic than fight with a smartphone app and communication problems and payment problems to use a comfortable car. And even if I don’t use the experience in a video, I still enjoy the bike ride and the ability to see more of the city and scenery as I ride through it. Finally, in all cases, I made plans to continue the experience AFTER the main event. So even thought I didn’t record the bicycle ride TO the Submarine Museum for a video, I DID record a video about a bicycle ride AFTER my submarine visit. I rode my bicycle around the reclaimed land and Klebang Beach and to the Coconut Shake place. And it was during that bicycle ride that I was able to get a close-up look at the island and come up with the idea of visiting it. And on the visit to the Hang Tuah Center, I didn’t record the bicycle ride to get there, but I DID record the bicycle ride back to my hotel. So in all cases, I tried to use the bicycle ride to my advantage even if that wasn’t part of the main video.
In any event, even if I wanted to use a Grab car to visit the island, I couldn’t. The island and the bridge to the island is in a somewhat remote area that is difficult to access. No Grab driver is going to be excited about driving his car down those rough rocky roads and through the mud. Chances are they would refuse. And I would be dropped off far away and have to walk. And then how do I get back to my hotel? It would be very hard to get a Grab to come out there and pick me up. So for the shipyard island, I had no choice but to use my bicycle.
The bicycle ride was largely without incident. I had the Strava app running to record my day, and I stopped at a couple of places to take a photo to include in the final 3D Flyover Map. The way the Strava app works (and how Relive works) the photos MUST be taken while the app is running in order for the photo to be inserted. You can’t take photos later on or get photos from somewhere else and THEN insert them afterwards. They have to be taken in the time the app is running in order for the photos to be registered. And having the Strava app running reminds me to take at least a few pictures along the way. So I keep my eyes open for anything that is visually striking along the way. In this case, I think I took just three pictures during the bicycle ride. I took a picture of a tall apartment building. To me, that building represented the grand plans for all this reclaimed land and how those plans failed. That was the overall idea behind my previous video and this one about the ships. I’d been learning more and more about these big chunks of reclaimed land, what they planned to do with them, and how the developments failed and ground to a halt.
I also took a picture of the empty and derelict set of buildings and fence and gate that had the sign saying “Eco Marine” on them. I’d learned that this 200-acre section of reclaimed land was supposed to be turned into the Eco Marine Theme Park, complete with luxury 5-star hotels, 1,100 floating villas, a 10,000-seat convention center, an amusement park, the Submarine Museum and much more And they got as far as reclaiming the land and bringing out the submarine and building the Birkin 5-star hotel, but that’s it. The funding and investment dried up after that and the whole project was cancelled or at least put on hold. So I had that story on my mind as I rode my bicycle, and I took a picture of that lone building to illustrate how these projects were cancelled. And I took a picture of the Eco Marine offices and finally I took a picture of the Birkin hotel. These places were spaced out along the bicycle ride so that they would pop up in the 3D map to show the stages. AND they would illustrate the overall theme of the video.
As always, it wasn’t easy navigating the streets of Melaka. Simply getting from the streets around my hotel to the main road leading out of the city requires a hefty detour down a series of one-way streets. In this case, I’ve learned that I can make this distance much shorter if I cross the highway near a hospital and carry my bicycle across the highway divider. You’re not supposed to do that. In fact, the hospital has had a few instances over the years of patients being injured there because it’s very easy to misjudge the speed of oncoming traffic. And this led to putting up a sign telling people they CAN’T cross here. And that’s because this traffic has just been going up and over the major Melaka River Bridge, and it is wide open up there and the cars have really sped up and are now going downhill quite fast. And people misjudge that speed and end up getting hit. Oddly enough, the hospital built their main parking lot on the other side of the highway. So people MUST cross this highway to get from their car to the hospital. And the hospital put in place free shuttle buses to make this safer. But I imagine it takes a long time between shuttle trips, assuming the shuttle still runs at all. I’ve never actually seen one running. The first time I used this shortcut, I was caught unawares myself by just how fast the traffic was coming at me. And I suddenly had to break into a sprint with my bicycle and run across fast or else I would have been hit by a car. It makes me smile every time I do this to imagine all these elderly people, sick people, people in wheelchairs, people with children in strollers, all trying to cross this highway for their hospital appointment. They are going there to get healthy, but they have to risk their life to get there. Someone really didn’t think things through when they built the parking lot.
The chain on my bicycle fell off once along the way, and I have no idea why. I waved hello at the lonely security guard in the shack at the Birkin Hotel. He waved back at me. And then I had to navigate the rocky roads on the reclaimed peninsula to get down to the very end so I could work my way back up the shore to reach the bridge to the island. Once there, I got off my bicycle and walked it along the rocky shore. At that point, I fired up my two GoPro cameras on the bicycle and I mounted the 360 camera. My idea was that I could be pushing my bicycle past a bunch of local fishermen, and they might want to chat with me, and then I could record our conversation with my new 360 camera mount. The problem there is that the 360 camera doesn’t have a microphone mounted on it. So I need to run both my main GoPro and the 360 camera at the same time and sync them. The 360 camera records the video and the Rode Wireless Go records the audio on the GoPro. I didn’t plan to use this video as part of the main video, but I thought it would be a fun experiment and could maybe be a bonus video clip at the end. There weren’t many fishermen around yesterday morning, but I did have a chat with one of them.
Finally, after all this planning and thinking and reading about land reclamation and the bicycle ride, I made it to the spot where I could lock up my bicycle and walk across the bridge. Unfortunately, my luck seemed to be bad right from the start. The other time I was there, the area around the bridge was completely deserted. There was nobody there. Occasionally, a pickup truck with workers would drive across the bridge to the island and back, but there was nobody stationed there as security or anything like that. But this time, after I locked up my bicycle and got all my camera gear ready and started walking over the small hill to the bridge, I was stopped in my tracks: there was a big SUV sitting right at the base of the bridge. Somebody was there, and I thought it had to be security guard. I waited a few minutes behind the cover of some trees, but then I thought maybe someone had just parked there, and I decided to risk it. But just as I was about to burst out of the cover of the trees, I spotted a woman in a uniform walking around the SUV and taking video with her smartphone! I couldn’t believe it. There was probably nobody there 90% of the time, but on the morning I make the effort to ride all the way out here and shoot some video, somebody shows up in an SUV and parks there.
I quickly turned around and melted back into the trees and found a comfortable spot to wait on the rocks in the shade and cover of the trees. The way this woman was recording video or taking pictures, it seemed to me that she was doing security rounds. I figured she must be driving from spot to spot and she would hang out at each spot for a few minutes, and would take some video to prove that she was there and that everything looked okay. So I thought I just had to wait her out. I just had to sit tight and wait until her job was done and she would drive on to the next security checkpoint. That was my plan anyway.
It’s funny, though, how slowly time passes when you are waiting for something to happen. I think I was there at 9:30, and I told myself that I would simply hang out and relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery and sunshine until 10:30. And if she hadn’t left by then, I would try to walk past her and onto the bridge and see what happened. I had no proof that she was a security guard of any kind. For all I knew, she was there fishing or her husband was fishing and she was just hanging out the van until he was done. Perhaps I could waltz past her and across the bridge and nothing would happen. But she looked official and I didn’t want to risk being seen until I had no choice. But, man, did the time pass by slowly. I felt like I had been there waiting for thirty minutes, and I’d check my watch, and only five minutes would have passed. Meanwhile, the crows moved in. And the crows did not approve of my presence at all. The crows that lived in this area and hung out in those trees moved in closer and closer, jumping from branch to branch, cawing at me and cawing at me to get the heck out of their territory. They actually got on my nerves after a while, and I would suddenly fling my arm in their direction to startle them and shut them up and make them flap away to a different branch for a minute. But they would always creep back and caw and caw and caw.
To add to my annoyance at the time, I decided I might as well pass the time by booking my hotel room for another night. Whether I made it to the island or not, I would still end up with video to edit. If I didn’t get to the island, I would have the museum video to edit, and I would want to stay another night and day to edit that video. So I fired up Agoda and Booking and the other apps, and then I realized I had screwed up again. I had waited too long, and the next night after my current reservation ended was Saturday night, and all the rooms at my current hotel were taken. I’m staying in some kind of a queen room at the Makhota Vibe Inn. But it’s not entirely clear which variety. The hotel advertises a Standard Queen and a Deluxe Queen, and I don’t know which one I have. And they advertise two different hotels. This hotel is listed as the Makhota Vibe Inn and as the Hollitel Hotel. But it doesn’t seem to matter which listing you use to book which room. They all lead back to the same place. So I’ve been able to book a Standard Queen and a Deluxe Queen and both reservations seem to apply to this room I’m in. But on the Hollitel listing, they call them double rooms, not queen. Yet, the photos match my room exactly in terms of furniture and layout. So when it comes down to it, it doesn’t seem to matter which room I book. I always just book whichever room type at whichever hotel that has the cheapest price. And then I end up being allowed to stay in this same room. It’s quite confusing. But in this case, none of those were available. All the queen and double rooms were listed as sold out. A funny thing about Agoda is that when a certain class of room is sold out, they always list it at the cheapest price it went for. So they make you feel doubly bad. They make you feel bad that you missed your chance to book the room, AND they say that you COULD have had this room for 32 ringgit a night! But you missed out. Yet, in reality, the rooms were probably booked at 63 ringgit a night or 73 ringgit a night. Maybe one person got a special deal at 32 ringgit. But when they list the rooms as sold out, THAT’S the price they list: “Sold Out at 32 ringgit.” Yet, in reality, if one of those rooms was still available for Saturday night, it would cost you triple that. Hotel booking apps really know how to work the system and work your emotions.
From Agoda and Booking and other apps, I saw that if I wanted to stay in this same hotel another night, my only option was to book a triple family room for about 130 ringgit/night. Which is insane. I stayed in one of those rooms one time, and it is a far less comfortable room than my Standard Queen. And it is in a different building, and I would have to spend a good chunk of the day packing up and then moving to a new room, only to have to move back again when a Queen became available. I was really kicking myself that I had screwed myself over once again by waiting too long to reserve a room. This happens all the time. I figured I would have to move to a different hotel. If I have to pack up and move to a different room anyway, I might as well move to a completely new hotel that has a room at a cheaper price. But I resented having to do that. Malaysia has always been such a struggle that way. Accommodation seems to be in short supply.
Anway, I was a bit annoyed with myself that I had failed to book far enough ahead. I still had a reservation for that night. And I figured I had plenty of time to book beyond that. But I forgot that the following night was Saturday. And Saturday night is the worst night. Friday night is always available. Sunday night is always available. But Saturday night is fully booked long in advance, and if you miss your chance, you are out of luck and homeless once more. You’ve got to lock down Saturday night really early, and it often takes me by surprise. I just get so caught up in my experiences and shooting video and editing video that time goes by faster than I expect.
So I sat there on the rocks vaguely scrolling through all the hotel booking apps to see what might be available, with crows cawing in my ear aggressively, and occasionally looking through the trees and foliage to see if the SUV was still sitting there. And to my annoyance, it always was. How long was this potential security guard going to just sit there? I waited until it was almost 10:30 (though it felt like an eternity), and then I caught a break. Something completely unexpected happened. Out of nowhere, a small boat – like a tiny, flat barge – putt-putted into view from around one of the huge ships across the water. Five men in office-style clothing were standing on this barge, and it started heading in my direction. I quickly put two and two together, and I guessed that these men had come out to inspect one of the ships. In fact, I had seen them up on the top decks of the nearest largest ship. And now their inspection or tour was done, and they were leaving, and the little boat barge they were on was bringing them directly to the little cove and beach where I was sitting and where the SUV was waiting. And it all clicked into place. This group of men had come here in that SUV and the woman sitting patiently in the SUV was their driver. She had waited in the SUV for them to take care of their business on one of these ghost ships and return. And now that they were coming back, these men would hopefully pile into that SUV and they would drive away, and I would finally be free to cross the bridge.
A funny thing is that where I was sitting on the rocks I was hidden from the SUV and the woman there. Maybe she could see me. I wasn’t sure. But I was on the other side of a hill that was covered in trees and foliage. But from the perspective of the men on this barge boat, I was completely wide open and in perfect view. I waved a cheerful greeting to the men and they waved back with a smile. And to my relief, when they boat barge landed on the beach, they scrambled out, got into the SUV, and they drove away. I was now fully alone and I was free to begin my tour of the island. At least I hoped I was.
My original plan was to stand on the bridge itself, right at the start of it, and open the video there. But with this episode with the woman in the SUV I decided it was better to be safe than sorry. I thought that perhaps if I stood out in the open on the bridge itself and talked into a GoPro for five minutes, I was risking being discovered. I thought perhaps it would be better to film my video introduction right there in the trees with the bridge and island behind me. And then I could simply walk cross the bridge without stopping. And then once on the other side, I could head to the huge ships and lose myself in them and lessen the risk of being seen. A funny thing is that when I was getting ready at my hotel room, I instinctively put on my bright red Canada shirt. I tend to alternate back and forth between a blue T-shirt and this red one. And it was time to wear the red shirt. But at the last second, I thought perhaps it would better to go with the darker blue. It’s not like is a camouflage outfit, but it would be less visible in and amongst the giant ships than a bright red Canada shirt. Then I might as well be walking around waving a Canadian red and white flag. Better to go with the dark blue shirt, I thought.
I was so happy to finally be able to fire up my GoPro and walk across the bridge and begin the tour of the island. And to my relief, there was nobody in sight. There were still no signs anywhere saying this was private property. There wasn’t a single sign of any kind. There were no gates or barriers. And there were no people at all, certainly no security personnel. So I walked across the bridge and headed straight for the first set of beached ships. I noted that there was a type of road. All the pickup trucks I’d seen going to and leaving from the island seemed to be going to the same area and they had created a smoothed out section of dirt that served as their road. And I figured as long as I stuck to the beach, the shore, and the ships and stayed away from that road, I could lessen the chance that a group of workers in a pickup truck would stumble across me.
My tour of the island and the misfit ships exceeded my expectations. In fact, I could say it far exceeded my expectations. The ships and barges, especially when viewed up close, were fascinating and full of detail and interest. They were also huge and towered above me and around me. As I noted on video, it is one thing to see a large ship from a distance. It is quite another to be standing right beside as it rests on the beach. Their size and scale becomes a new thing altogether. And many of the ships were accessible. I was able to climb up onto them on various ramps and makeshift platforms.
I had wondered beforehand about the nature of this island and these ships. I wondered if they were just being stored there between jobs or if maybe they had been abandoned and left to rot. I also wondered if they all belonged to the same company or if this island was used by a variety of companies to dump old ships. And my close-up inspection quickly told me that the vast majority of the ships and barges had been left there to rot. They would never sail again nor do any kind of useful work. This island was essentially a junkyard for ships, and not just for ships. There were derelict and rusting cranes and giant trucks and all manner of industrial equipment required for major land reclamation projects. I also noted that they weren’t cutting up the ships for scrap steel. I think they did use these rusting hulks for spare parts, but they weren’t recycling the steel. Many of them had even sunk to the bottom. The front part of the ship was resting on the sandy beaches and the rear part was under water.
Walking on these ships and around them was fascinating and moody. The ships were moving slightly and there would be creaking and moaning as metal rubbed against metal. The crows followed me around the island, perched on the ships and cawed at me incessantly, even a hundred of them at a time. Some of the ships had been torn apart by the waves, and pieces of metal were banging and crashing in the wind and waves. I walked gingerly on these ships and felt my way to ensure as best I could that the rusted metal deck beneath me could still hold my weight. It’s one thing to be a random YouTuber going for an adventurous stroll among these derelict ships and shooting some urban adventure video. It would be quite another to be the YouTuber who fell through the rotting floor of a massive barge and became the target of a complex rescue operation and emerges with broken legs and deep cuts. I did not want to be THAT YouTuber.
There was one barge in particular that was tied up against a set of three much larger ships. I was able to climb up onto this barge and walk around it. And then I discovered that there was a spindly ladder that reached from the barge up to the edge of the much larger ship. Given real determination, it would be possible to climb up that ladder and explore that ship. But common sense prevailed. The ladder was very thin and unstable looking. It also had a large bulge arcing outwards. It did not just go straight up the side of the ship but bulged outwards. And it was held in place at the top by some knotted ropes. The feet were not held in place at all. And the ladder spanned an opening between the two ships where, if you fell, you would be trapped in the water between them, at risk of being crushed if they happened to come together. Plus, of course, falling in would mean destroying all my camera gear in the water. Finally, I thought that climbing up that ladder would put me in full view of any of the workers nearby that I han’t spotted. And perhaps some casual worker would let it go to see some strange foreign white dude strolling around some barges and the beaches. But to see that dude risking some serious danger and injury by Spidermaning up an unsafe ladder, he would have to call somebody to go investigate. So I resisted the urge to climb the ladder. I think that was wise.
I walked as far as I could along that side of the island and eventually got to the end of the ships. The very last one had a relatively thin metal I-beam resting on shore and on the ship. And to get on the ship, you had to carefully navigate that narrow I-beam. I made sure to keep my attention on the beam and NOT on the GoPro, so I made it safely across. I was only partway around the island by that point, but based on what I had seen, I had covered the section with the majority of the ships. If I continued beyond that point, the going got much rougher and more difficult, and I think it would lead me through an area of buildings and offices. It was best to stay far away from there. So at that point, I made the decision to turn back and return the way I had come.
It’s funny but I hear a lot about people disliking needing to backtrack or do something a second time, especially when they are travelling. But I love doing that. Going back the way I had come would give me a second look at everything I’d seen so far, and I always end up seeing everything in a new light and seeing new things I’d missed the first time. PLUS, on my return walk, I planned to use my Insta360 X3 camera, and that would turn the backtracking into something completely new. That would probably be most apparent when I left from that last barge on the narrow I-beam. With a GoPro video, you don’t really get the context. But with the 360 camera, I can hold the camera far out to the side and capture me and the I-beam and the whole context. It would likely look far more interesting and exciting.
Of course, using my 360 camera raises the complexity level quite a bit. The Insta360 X3 is very tricky when it comes to audio. It’s possible to mount an external microphone on it, but that requires a special mount and it makes the camera much heavier and bulkier. And the audio is not reliable. Plus, the microphone has to stay inside the stitch line, and it usually doesn’t and you get a black blob floating in the sky. Lately, I haven’t bothered with doing that, and I run the GoPro Hero 12 and the X3 at the same time. I record the video with the X3 and use the audio track from the GoPro. But now I’ve suddenly got two cameras running, which doubles the chance of a glitch, of a battery running out, of an SD card filling up, a cord coming loose, or a camera overheating. You really have to WANT to shoot in 360 in order to do it. And after all that, you end up with hours of reframing afterwards. In this case, I decided it was worth it and shot the entire walk back plus the conclusion of the video on the 360 camera.
I tried to take advantage of the 360 camera’s abilities, and I stuck it into open holes, up high, and into unusual positions that wouldn’t be possible with a GoPro. But I don’t know if that really added anything. I won’t know until I start reframing later today. On my walk back, I took the time to climb up and onto every single ship that I had already explored with my GoPro, so it took a long time. I think I was out on the island for about two and a half hours, which was a long time to be out there without being stopped by any of the workers. I had been extremely lucky, and my luck held out right until the very end. In an ironic turn of events, just as I was walking across the bridge to leave, the security guard showed up. In fact, I had stopped in the middle of the bridge to record a conclusion. And I was standing there on the bridge, halfway across and talking into my X3 when a car arrived and drove across. The car stopped beside me and when the driver rolled down the window, I recognized the same security guard that I had met a week ago when I tried to cycle in from the other direction. There was a gate on that road, and this guard had told me I wasn’t allowed to go any farther. So I turned around.
And now here was this same guard, and he clearly recognized me. The tone of his voice was quite funny because he seemed puzzled at seeing me again. And the really funny thing is that he assumed I was walking across the bridge to go TO the island. So he told me that I wasn’t allowed to go there. So I just said thank you and walked off the bridge. But I think he was totally unaware that, in fact, I’d already BEEN to the island – for two and a half hours – and I was now leaving. I wasn’t in the middle of walking TO the island. He caught me just as I was leaving. And he looked around for a bit and looked really confused and seemed to be wondering just how in the world I had gotten there. The first time he saw me, he had blocked me on the road. But now here I was at the bridge. And if I didn’t take that road past him and his security shack, how in the world had I gotten there? It seemed pretty obvious to me. There was 200 acres of empty reclaimed land covered in trails and roads. I had just circled around come at the bridge from the other direction. But he didn’t seem to imagine that this was a possibility.
I could be wrong about all that. It’s possible that someone on the island had spotted me and called him to come investigate. So maybe he knew I had already been out to the island, but there was nothing he could do since when he saw me, I was just on the bridge, NOT on the island at all. And he simply told me I wasn’t allowed on the island, and when I simply walked off the bridge back to the mainland, that was about all he could expect. I admit that when I was out on the island about to turn around to leave the way I had come, I strongly considered removing the SD cards from all my cameras and putting in fresh ones. I remember that in previous years, I had occasionally been stopped by police or the military, and I remember in Thailand, some soldiers stopped me and made me delete the video from my GoPro. I didn’t realize it at the time but some buildings that were in the background of what I was filming were military. And so they came out and told me to delete the footage and watched as I supposedly did it. And I thought that there was a slim chance someone from the company that owned all these ships would stop me and then demand that I hand over the SD cards or delete the video. So I wanted to remove the current cards and keep them safe and put in fresh decoy cards. But that seemed a bit paranoid considering the casual nature of this island. And it was so hot out there and I was so tired and I’d already had to stop so many times to adjust my cameras and change batteries and let them recover from overheating that I just wasn’t in the mood to fiddle around with them again. And I figured that in taking the SD cards out in that environment, I risked dropping them or losing them or damaging them anyway. The safer option seemed to be to just not bother and leave the SD cards in place.
I ended the video back at my bicycle and I rehashed the story of the security guard finally encountering me just as I was leaving. I don’t know at the moment how much of that chat on the bridge I caught on video. I probably lowered my 360 camera to waist level, but it probably caught some of the security guard and his car. So I can include that brief encounter. I don’t think I said much of anything. The guard didn’t say much either. I think he just said I couldn’t go to the island. I said thank you and walked away. I think that’s all that happened. But I’m not sure.
Once I ended the video at my bicycle, I mounted all my cameras on my bicycle for the ride back to town and back to my hotel. I figured I could record a little bit as a bonus video clip, and I wanted to stop at the same Coconut Shake place I visited before. Unfortunately, I got confused and I took the wrong road. I forgot that the Coconut Shake place was on the main road 5, which is different from the smaller road I usually take. I’d have to go out of my way to get there. And by the time I realized that, I was already far past it and didn’t want to turn back. I just rode into town and stopped for my usual liter of cold milk instead.
By the time I got back to the hotel, I came up with this idea to just ask the hotel staff directly if I could pay them for my room instead of going through Agoda. Agoda and Booking didn’t have any rooms listed. But when they say that, they are just referring to the rooms that they have access to at their price. It’s entirely possible that the hotel held back some rooms for walk-in guests. So I asked them about that, and it was a little bit confusing and irregular, but the main woman that works the front desk indicated that it was possible. She even suggested a price of 53 ringgit for Saturday night for me to keep my room, which is lower than the price I would have gotten on Agoda. So it worked out well for me. Unfortunately, as always, I couldn’t do it right away. That always happens, which is something of a puzzle. The woman said I could stay in my room for Saturday night and it would cost 53 ringgit. She would work her magic with the reservation system to let me stay. And that was great. But instead of doing it right then and giving me peace of mind for the night and next day, she said I should come done in the morning after her shift started. This always happens. I will make an arrangement about a hotel room, but we are never able to finalize those arrangements. They always tell me to come back at a later day. And then I end up running the risk that the arrangement will fall through. It often happens that I make an arrangement with a staff member, and then that staff member isn’t around when it comes time to pay. And then I’m stuck because no one else is aware of the arrangement we made. So I end up living in a state of fear during the night, worried that it won’t work out and I’ll have to book a room at a different hotel at the last minute. But, I’m happy to say, that I just now took care of it. I took a break from writing this story to go down to the lobby and try to pay for this room for tonight, and it worked. Again, it was confusing and irregular. She kept getting the dates wrong. I thought it was quite clear that I wanted to pay in cash for just Saturday night. And I gave her the dates. But she kept repeating back to me things like, “Okay, three nights from …” and she would list different dates. I would correct her, and she would say, “Okay, two nights starting tomorrow…”. And I would have to correct her again and insist, no, I just wanted to pay for ONE night. Saturday night. But she couldn’t figure it out for a long time, and I was worried that she would finally say that no it was impossible because the hotel was fully booked on Saturday night. But after a tense few minutes, we got it figured out and I paid her 53 ringgit through Touch ‘n Go. Interestingly, because I did it in person that way, I wasn’t charged any of the taxes of fees or even the Tourism Tax. Normally, through Agoda, it would be 53 ringgit, plus 15 or 20 ringgit in taxes and fees, so it would be 73 ringgit. But she just let me pay the base rate. Perhaps next time she seems me she will remember about all the taxes and make me pay more. Hopefully not. In any event, I have a home for tonight, and I can happily take the time to write this story and then start editing the video.
My original idea was to visit this new museum this morning. But I will put that off until tomorrow morning. Today will be all about editing the video from the visit to the island. It’s now much later in the morning than I had planned. I didn’t know I would have so much to say about this trip out to the island of misfit ships. I’ve been writing for a long time. Now it’s time to start editing the video. It already took me over two hours last night just to copy the video files from memory cards to my laptop and backups on my external drives. That always takes a lot longer than you’d expect. I essentially spent the whole evening just recovering from the trip to the island. That involves copying all the video files from three different cameras, uploading all the photos to my online storage archive, creating the Strava record of the day’s trip, using the Strava data to create the 3D Flyover Map on the Map Director website, charging up all the microphones and batteries, rinsing out all my sweat-drenched clothes and getting something to eat. That’s the whole afternoon and evening, and I hadn’t even started the editing. So that’s what I will do now as I wind up this story. Let’s see how long it takes…