A travel tale: The Langkawi chase
Hello CbW readers,
I’ve crossed a mini-milestone in the number subscribers and feel the extra pressure of expectations. But, I want to keep this fun for me. And so in the grand tradition of CbW newsletters, you will be left always wondering what the next one is about. I also realize that I am under-indexing on travel stories and I have a lot of those. So, you will see the occasional travel tale pop out slightly more frequently going forward. This one is one of them.
Great travel stories emerge from one of three things: a) A planned adventure b) New culture immersion or c) An accidental turn of events that in turn leads to an unplanned adventure.
N and I’s idea of an epic adventure is probably doing a day trip, totally unplanned. We don’t really have travel stories that are likely to be interesting to others, however amazing it was to us or however beautiful the place was. I mean, unless something unusual happens, it is very difficult to have a great tale of adventure about how you found this one veggie Ramen shop in Tokyo. Even I wouldn’t listen to my own story.
This brings me to the third way to squeeze out a travel tale- an accidental adventure. By its very nature travel is adding more uncertainty to life and so often a great source of exciting travel story is an adventure that’s thrust upon you. I’ve had many an accidental adventure thanks to my general forgetfulness and its resulting consequences like the time I traveled across countries without a passport (that’s a tale I will tell another day).
This time around, it’s just a little story of how we chased some robbers on a scooter in the hills of Langkawi back in 2012.
Langkawi
Beautiful beach resort. Turquoise sea. Verdant tropical forests on hills.
We stood at the edge of the forest with the guy next to us wielding a machete.
Let me back up.
N, me, my sis (S) and bro-in-law (H) were traveling together and had just flown into to Langkawi and had a couple of cocktails at a seaside resort where we were staying. As evening approached, we decided that we wanted to go to a popular beach.
In order to get to the beach from where we were staying, we had to drive through a forested hilly stretch. So, off we went on two scooters, me driving N and H driving S. The hills were a little cooler and darker compared to the bright, hot seaside and it was a pleasant journey.
That’s when the shouting started. At this point N and I were ahead in our scooter and on hearing the racket behind us N being N says, “Drunk idiots, let them go,”
I mean, N’s mission in life is to be as far away from idiots as possible. In this endeavor she’s had some exasperating moments having to stop or pause many of my idiocies. In any case, hearing a scooter come very quickly behind me, I move to the side of the winding downhill road with the intention of letting these ‘drunk idiots’ go.
A scooter zooms past us, a little too fast. Two men in it. They aren’t shouting though.
The shouting is still coming from behind us and it quickly dawns on us that it is coming from S and H and that it wasn’t as much of the ‘drunk’ variety as ‘panicked’ variety. Even as the gears in our head are still meshing trying to find purchase with all this new information, S and H now speed past us while trying to communicate the situation to two clueless humans.
We heard words like ‘handbag’, ‘passport’, ‘stole’ and it all came together much like Dhoni in the last two overs playing for CSK. I mean, in terms of things starting to connect and not much in terms of heroics.
The men had snatched my sister’s handbag and were now escaping. We had even gracefully let them go.
Naturally, a chase ensued.
The chase
With our bodies now flooded with adrenaline, we partook in the chase. The order: The robbers in the lead now, being chased by H&S in another scooter and N&I in the trailing scooter, a twisted little convoy in the hills.
Now, I don’t know what each party was thinking here and I don’t have a way to explain why things happened the way it did except to speculate.
Perhaps the men expected that fear would paralyze us or that typically tourists wouldn’t give chase. Or maybe, this was their first time attempting something like this. Or it could be H bellowing out the fact these men stole the handbag and a few passing uphill tourists giving us quizzical looks.
Whatever be the reason, it probably dawned on the men that: a) We were not going to give up chasing them down the winding hills and b) We valued the passport more than their lives. Presumably.
Point to note: Even now, they probably didn’t yet realize that there were two scooters of Bharat-mata’s sons and daughters chasing them but only the victims (H&S). So, to change tact and throw them off (also presumably to not head into civilization that lay further down the hills they went), they suddenly did a 180 and began going in the other direction.
Now, here’s the scene. My bro-in-law, momentarily thrown by this sudden flip, tried to brake and turn back up the hill and in the heat of the moment lost balance and H and S both fell (thankfully no injuries). The robbers zoomed past them and at this point probably breathed a sigh of relief as it would take time for him to right and start chasing again. By then, they would be long gone with the handbag.
Except, they didn’t realize the twist in the tale. The joker in the pack. N and I in another scooter coming downhill. When I realized that the robbers had turned and were now heading straight back at us, I thought “ok, what’s the smart move here”. Unfortunately, before I could even finish the question, the robbers were almost on us and I did the only thing I could do - use my scooter as a weapon in a dumb kamikaze stunt. I suddenly veered and ran my scooter right into theirs. I was going to mad-max ram the shit out of them with the tiny toy scooter.
Our scooter connected with theirs on the side. The robbers stopped and staggered for balance. I presume at this point one of the robbers could have said ‘who the fuck are these people’ in Malay but they recovered and restarted. We meanwhile still had to do the turn and continue chasing. Observers rightfully called it the most amateurish chase sequence in the history of Langkawi.
And so, with all of this happening in the span of about 5 minutes, the convoy had changed. The robbers now had us on their tail and bro-in-law behind us and we were going back up the hill now instead of down. My little ram-a-scooter action had bought us a few seconds so we could all be where we started with some shuffling of our order.
This continued for a couple of more minutes at which point the robbers decided that this was an unsustainable approach. So, they suddenly dropped their vehicles on the edge of the forest and ran into the jungle.
The conclusion
We didn’t care about the money but we did about the passport in the bag. So we stood by the scooter which was the only scene of crime and watched some foliage move around in the jungle. H, perhaps with the heat of youth, was pushing to go into the forest after them but N and I kept warning him not to. Who knew what these men carried with them.
At this point, a local fisherman and his daughter who were coming down the hill in a scooter saw us standing by the side of the road near the jungle clearly distressed and stopped to find out what was going on. Using sign language and repeating some words we communicated to him what happened. And he understood.
Then, from his hip he unsheathed the most evil looking machete we had ever seen.
At this point I wasn’t sure if he was a good guy or a bad guy. For all we know, he could be part of the same gang. Or, maybe he was another guy trying to scam us while we were caught with our pants down. But then, if he was a good guy, I was thankful to have the addition of a local with a machete on our side.
So there we stood at the edge of the forest with the guy next to us wielding a machete. But even the potential-local-hero was reluctant to chase after the robbers into the jungle on our behalf.
Unlike movies, there’s not much you can do but wait. And so we just stood there. After about 10 minutes or so, when it looked like there was no hope, there was a flurry of activity at the edge of the jungle about 200 meters further up the road and one of the men emerged, left the handbag at the side of the road and ran back inside.
We ran up and collected the bag and thankfully everything was as-is except for the money whose loss was acceptable for us. And so, thanking the fisherman, we got back on our scooters and decided that we’d continue to the beach anyway even though we were quite shook.
And therein we have a tale to tell, an adventure we would never wish or want but happened nevertheless and one that can be told over coffee or drinks on warm evenings in cozy comfort.
Could be Worse,
Tyag
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