The House on stilts

There was something about the smell at the harbour which enthralled me as a kid. The air was pungent and carried a composite of scents which collided into the harbour smell. A trip to Aunt Z's house during the school holidays had always been a treat for us kids. My cousins and I used to spend our school holidays together having loads of fun and not worrying about the business of growing up.  Aunt Z's house was built on the swampy banks close to the harbour.

The trip began with a short sampan ride from the jetty. We boarded the sampan gingerly and spread ourselves out to distribute the weight evenly. The scenery was awesome. The sampan carried us between huge vessels towering into the sky. Other sampans left these vessels loaded with goods so traffic in these waters were high.

We sat demurely in the sampan as it carried us to Aunt Z's House on Stilts. I remembered longing to dip my fingers into the cool green water as the sampan surged forward into the smell. A few knocks on the head, previously administered by my Ma took care of that. "There are crocodiles in there," she would proclaim at the beginning of each trip. So I was a gullible kid.

The approach was fascinating as the distant houses loomed larger. Mangrove ladders greeted us at the end of our sampan ride. These ladders had always been a hurdle for the gaps between the rungs were wide. Manoeuvring these steps weren't easy for me as I wasn't agile.  At the top of the ladder is a wooden gangway which led to Aunt Z's house.

The front door opens into a square living room which is spacious by today's standard. Bedrooms are situated on both sides while the ancestral shrine occupied the main wall which looked out through the front door. Behind this wall is an area occupied by a large wooden table. Further at the back is the kitchen and the toilet. The toilet was most extraordinary. It was a hole cut out from the plank floor. You drop your stuff through the hole and the fishes below snapped them up.

Aunt Z's speciality was the stir-fried curried catfish.  There is a reason why I don't like catfish or fish dishes in general.