Pulau Ketam, The Last Chinese Fishing Village In Malaysia
On this occasion of Vesak Day Holiday in Malaysia, I decided to do a bit of traveling by visiting Pulau Ketam. It is a small island located about 40 KM west of KL. What so special of this island ? People said that this island resembled the last chinese fishing village in Semenanjung Malaya. Also the seafood is very cheap and delicious. I don’t know about the former claim, but surely I can proof myself about the later one, can’t I ? So here I am, embarking in my first journey outside of KL. Thankfully I don’t have to go there by myself, I manage to find 3 other adventurous soul to accompany me in this journey, Pa Ato, Willim, and Surya, all are my Jatis colleagues. 
First of all we have to go to KL Sentral Station where we can ride a KTM Komuter train to go to Port Klang. From where we can go by jetty to Pulau Ketam. The train journey is quite an experience itself. KTM Komuter is train used to connect KL to several small city/suburb surrounding it (Klang, Shah Alam, Seremban, to name a few), much like KRL Jabotabek in Jakarta. The train itself is quite comfort, air-con is running fully, along the way, we starting to see all those ‘kampong houses’, mostly are made of wood, and it is raised above the ground, much like Traditional Houses in Sumatra Area (’Rumah Panggung’). The Journey took almost an hour becoz of many stops along the way. From the Klang Station, it just a throw of the stone to reach the Jetty port. The jetty leave every 30 minutes to the island and only cost 6 RM, quite a bargain considering it is air-con and very fast. The journey took us through all those swampy mangrove island and since we are inside the aircon cabin we couldn’t really feel the fresh sea air. By the time we got to the island, our stomach are already screaming for the food. We rushed to find the seafood restaurant to alleviate our hunger ASAP.
Once we see a group of restaurant, we chose the busiest one yet still have an empty table for us. We order Chili Crab (a must considering the name of the 
island, Pulau Ketam, actually is a malay word for crab), deep fried sotong, mixed vegetables and a steamed teochew style Bawal Fish. As soon as the food arrives, we found that most of the claim about the food is true (except ‘the very cheap’ tag !!). But it’s not too bad actually, it only cost around 80 RM for all of those food, served for 4 people, so each person contribute only 20 RM. After a very satisfying lunch, we go on foot to explore the island further. We just realized that almost all houses or concrete building never built on top of the land directly, that’s because when the high tide (’air pasang’) flooding the island, almost 75% of the land there will be submerged with the water !! and other interesting thing, most houses doesn’t have a proper sanitazion system such as septi-tank, in their toilet, all human disposal will go to the ground (or perhaps more appropriate, sand) directly. I guess they figure it out that the high tide will wash the dropping anyway so why need the expensive septi-tank when the nature already took care of it !!.
We explore the island by means of a small pathway made of concrete, the village itself is bounded by forest. Well, it’s not actually a forest like usual forest, they are consist of small mangrove trees, floating on top of water,more like bushes in fact, just checkout the photo at the left. Around 5 PM we decided to go back to the jetty port, and catch our ride back to the mainland. It’s a very exhaustive journey but we got to see many things as well. So it’s worth every buck of your penny !!
