Visit to Eagles Ranch Port Dickson
29th July 2006
Eagles Ranch, Port Dickson
An overnight success, our first attempt to venture to somewhere not too far away; Port Dickson. We insisted Pauline should attempt to organise this and settled for the Eagles Ranch in PD. We left the bookings too late and so lost the chance to stay in the tepees, which sounded romantic, if your partner did not snore!But alas, at 50 plus, being romantic was staring at the Carlsberg mermaid and the ladies chatting up the barman who had a physique of Chee Kin. We were not sure what we were supposed to do when we get there. We were pretty excited and the publicity had promises of a chance to relive teenage days - campfires and a stroll along the moonlight beach; a naked moonlight dip in the waters with mermaids. My trip to PD started about 12.30 p.m. from Cheras. First stop was scrumptious lunch of beef noodle in Seremban with Felicia and Wing Kwong. Then while Wing Kwong went home to visit his mum, Felicia and myself went about to look for kachang putih and cendol. I had a nap and woke up to the lovely aroma of freshly brewed tea and butter cake she baked. We collected Sze Poh on the way to Tiew Seng’s residence. The rest of the gang was there but not Tiew Seng as the Anchor ladies held him up somewhere in a coffee shop in town. At 50 when you talk, your brains don’t work, it is your stomach and that is why you get hungry pretty fast. We figured we might not survive till PD, so we decided to eat Far Seng Restaurant at Rasah New Village. It was a good choice and I enjoyed my belated birthday treat. The Thai style trotters was fantastic, so was the belly pork cooked with peanuts and mui choy. Missing was the other birthday chap, Kim Fui who was held up some where. It also meant we all had plenty to eat and we had enough left to tar pow.We were bursting our bellies, we trooped down to Eagles’ Ranch in PD. Tiew Seng threaten to drive back if there was no air-con. He did not want to relive scout memories of mosquitoes and feeling sweaty in the wrong places. We were pleasantly surprised when we finally managed to find our ways around the dimly lighted surroundings to the dorm. It looked the perfect setting of a wicked weekend. Pauline read our minds and checked the guys and gals into separate dorms. Despite all the protests, she was adamant we should not lead each other into temptation. Annie was relieved as it meant she could have some peace and quiet. Five girls and five guys in separate room, separated by a chipboard wall, was exactly her understanding of a perfect 10. Tiew Seng quickly booked the top bunk of the double decked beds. Must have been a first time experience for him. How he got up to the top bunk, we had no idea but after that he did not know how to get down. After dumping our bags in the rooms, we easily found our way to the deserted pub. Good we had the whole place to ourselves.The waiters promptly announced that they were going to charge RM50 corkage for the bottle of Old Parr that Tiew Seng brought. Yours truly was not going to let it off easily so after some ranting and raving coupled with names dropping, the charges were waived. We had the usual round the table bull-shit, Kam Onn was advised to go for a full health test. We all concluded his blood has 50% alcohol content. Fui finally arrived after his first round of piss up in Seremban.Then at 11.00 pm, we realised that we were in Jeyabalan’s territory in PD. and felt bad for the next 3 seconds we had not contacted ‘The Officer’ to come out to join us. Stories about Balan were shared round the table. One of his admirers was Zip and roundtable discussions centred on his gentleman traits. Just after one in the morning, when the last drop of whisky dried up, it was then time to look for food. The roundtable discussion on the life of a gentleman officer had effects. At the car park, Fui demonstrated a real-life situation when he opened the car door for Zip and me. He bellowed aloud that we should never again say he has never opened the car door for us. Zip and I had a fit! Tiew Seng discovered not only he lost his mobile, the back tyres of his Kembara were looking pretty flat. These little setbacks were not going to stop us from our hunt for food. We drove around looking for nasi lemak but had to settle for a place which looked and the music sounded very happening. Assumptions can be deceiving and later we realised the singers on the stage were actually paying RM2 to be PD Idols. The singing was so bad, we paid them triple to stop.We all crawled into our bunkers close to three. Wing Kwong left at 6 and Kuna at 8 in the morning to meet their family obligations. What was that, duds?? My mobile rang at half eight and Tiew Seng number appeared phone at the other end. Some kind soul found his phone and decided to call the last dialled number. So we made our way to the bar where the phone had spent the night with all the empty whisky bottles. When I looked at the missing phone I realised why no one nicked it – the model should have been made the shelves of Nokia museum. On the way, we discovered the Kembara was parked on uneven slopes, which does give you an illusion of a flat tyre when you are tipsy.By the time I got back to the dorm, the girls were tarter up. We took a stroll down the beach without the guys. Pauline picked up some seashells which she said made perfect ball guards, 2 for Fui and 3 for Kam Onn. She has been counting!!Breakfast at Pasir Panjang was a disappointment as we were swatting the flies that were interested to park on our food. Melaka sounded close enough to head for lunch. A rather uneventful ride, although we tried to make some rambutan pit stops. The assam fish for lunch was delicious. This was then topped down by cendol. Cold Beer sounded good and we made our way to Jonker Street. While the guys hung at the bars, the ladies made their way to the shops to help jolt the local economy. After dinner of Malacca Hokkien mee, we bid Malacca goodbye and made our way back north. We did it in good time as Fui skilfully weave his way through the stalled traffic at Ayer Keroh. The journey from Tiew Seng to KL was the start of a terror ride back with blind Mr Magoo aka Kam Onn. He insisted that 140 kmph was the normal speed when travelling on the KL Seremban Highway and you should always overtake buses if they are in front of you (even though the buses were speeding at 150!) Strangely, ever since that night, my blood pressure constantly hovered between 140 to 150!!The highlight came a few weeks later when Pauline passed to all the campers an envelope. As a bonus of keeping ourselves pure; the carefully guarded balance of our earlier RM 50 deposit was returned to us. Out of the packet dropped some loose dollars and coins. We all kept the packs as souvenirs. Looking back it was a weekend of pure gluttony.
Angie Yen
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