Kuantan

There is no place like home. Every time I come back to Kuantan I feel a sense of peace that nothing else can replace. This is the place where I spent the best years of my life, growing up, discovering myself, making my dreams and ambitions come true, living life.

Like many other small town folk, I chose to work in the big city. I have been a resident of the Klang Valley some 12 years now. And yet, oddly, I still often feel like an outsider, a migrant, like I somehow do not belong.

There is a sense of realness in Kuantan. People love and accept you for who you are, regardless of your shortcomings. Whereas in the big city people tend to be more superficial. I can’t help but think that most people are nice to me not because they really care or because they are nice people, but because there is something in it for them. Of course I have met many nice people along the way, but few and far between as compared to Kuantan.

I suppose there is nothing to stop me from permanently residing in Kuantan. But at the moment the lure of the big city still draws me to its demanding splendour.

Perhaps one day when I am old and tired, when there is nothing else left to achieve, when I am done with the world and vice versa, perhaps then I shall come home permanently. There is, after all, no place like home.