KECIL ISLAND

Olfactory memory

The island of the giant tortoises

I still remember the feeling of abandonment I felt on the day of departure from the island, on that small boat, which Malaysians call speed buoys, moving away from the beaches of Kecil Island.

I think it is the place in the world that comes closest to the synonym of earthly paradise, snake included. One morning on the beach of the small island “kecil”, I saw a green snake that was climbing a bush, it was long and very thin and a hypnotic bright green. I took the cute little snake by the tail as they do in documentaries and made it sway a couple of times like a lasso. Two Malaysians who worked for a nearby resort came running and kindly advised me to escape … I caught one of the 10 most dangerous snakes in the world by the tail! At night in the bungalow where I slept you could hear the squirrels, incredible but true, eating the mango, it was not so much the sound of chewing that you heard, but the thud that the mango made when it fell on the roof of the bungalow and made you wake up with your heart in the throat. But there is no beauty in the world, comparable to the coral reef of kecil island, a unique marine fauna in the world, where you can dive and swim clinging to a giant turtle by being transported into a blue sea like a sapphire, to then go up and find an uncontaminated nature of flowers and tropical fruits with a sweet and enveloping scent and you think you are truly in paradise.