Promoting Pulau Besar

MALACCA: The state Museum Corporation (Perzim) had unveiled an intriguing tour package for gutsy holiday makers to spend a night at Pulau Besar, an island off the coast here with mythical tales likesaints and genies. Perzim’s general manager Khamis Abas said the package dubbed ‘a night in the museum’ is anticipated to receive an overwhelming response when the tour is launched on June 11.

“We want people to experience for themselves the so-called eerie feelings that is often linked to Pulau Besar although the package is introduced with an objective to debunk the perception that the island is full of supernatural occurrence,” he told StarMetro recently. Khamis said Pulau Besar looks like a pregnant lady lying on her back and locals attribute it to many legends.
“The island has also become a place of pilgrimage to a large number of people, especially Muslims from the Indian continent and China,” he said. “Many pilgrims come to Pulau Besar to visit a mausoleum believed to be of a wali, Sultan Ariffin Syeikh Ismail Waliallah.”

There are also numerous other graves visited by pilgrims such as that of Datok Janggut, Datuk Puteh and Nenek Kebayan Khamis and the island’s houses at least 23 legendary and holy spots which could be accessed through boat rides from jetties on the mainland. Some of the mystic spots on the island are Sultanul Aarifeen Tomb, a pious man who came from Baghdad in the early days when Islam arrived to the Malay Archipelago, a well which was used by Japanese soldiers during World War Two to behead prisoners and a skull rock, a rock similar to the shape of a human skull. Apart from that, many sunken trea­sures like gold coins are also believed to be buried at Pulau Besar just like Monte Cristo, a island in Italy.

When told about the new package by Perzim, a boat operator from Anjung jetty here, Zahidi Ismail, 54, said he welcomed the move by the museum authority to woo more visitors to the island. However, he cautioned the museum authority to remind the visitors on the taboos of the island as he claimed there are about 146 genie villages here.

“Of course you cannot see it with the naked eye but I am plying between the mainland to the island everyday and we know what the genies dislikes when humans enters their sites,” he claimed. He said visitors should also avoid flaunting when visiting the ‘Ripping Stone’ site where the huge stone at the center of the island, believed to carved by a warrior known as ‘The Black Tounge’ and also when visiting the snake shrine- a shrine made by a priest who could transform into a giant snake.

-thestar online.