Tall tales from Trengganu. II
Noel Rees, a British resident in Terengganu during the mid-twentieth century, published this second instalment of his “Tall Tales” series in 1990, offering a vivid first-person account of rural Malay life, local customs, and a harrowing tiger encounter in the state’s coastal hinterland. The piece functions as a personal memoir that captures the texture of colonial-era Terengganu through anecdote rather than formal analysis.
Summary
Rees opens with a government proclamation (No. 17) forbidding kite flying in Kuala Terengganu, translated into English by the British Adviser J. L. Humphreys, M.C.S., and uses it as a springboard into a description of the elaborate kite-flying competitions that took place during the monsoon season after padi planting. He then turns to top spinning, centring on Wan Hawan, a local champion whose top reportedly spun for over an hour and a half, and whose reputation as a “top doctor” capable of influencing spinning tops at a distance of up to 80 miles made him a figure of both admiration and suspicion in the betting culture that surrounded the sport.
The second major section describes the annual leatherback turtle nesting season on a stretch of sand dunes approximately 25 miles south of the capital, formed by a storm around 1880. Rees details the commercial egg-collecting operation: the shoreline is parcelled into lots at auction, watchers station themselves in huts on the dunes, and collectors extract roughly 70 of every 100 eggs for sale, primarily in Singapore. He notes the incubation period of 41 days and the local belief that mother turtles recognise and gather their hatchlings.
The final and longest section recounts a personal tiger encounter after the Second World War. Rees, recuperating in a rented bungalow in a Malay fishing village, is drawn into a night-time ambush with the game hunter Locke to intercept a tiger that had taken a cow. What proves to be a family of four tigers (two adults and two cubs) surrounds their tree for hours, and the episode ends with Locke firing two shots to scare them off rather than kill. The narrative closes with Locke’s expert reading of the pad marks confirming the family’s presence.
Key Findings
- Proclamation No. 17, issued by the Terengganu Government and translated by British Adviser J. L. Humphreys, M.C.S., strictly forbade kite flying in Kuala Terengganu, with confiscation by police as the penalty (p. 69).
- Terengganu’s coastline measures 160 miles; the turtle-nesting sand dunes lie approximately 25 miles south of the capital and were formed by a storm around 1880 (p. 71).
- Leatherback turtles lay between 40 and 100 eggs (each the size of a ping pong ball); the incubation period is 41 days; approximately 70 of every 100 eggs are collected and sold, mainly in Singapore (pp. 71–72).
- The nesting shoreline (about 2 miles) is divided into lots and auctioned annually; watchers station themselves in huts on the dunes to mark nest locations (p. 72).
- Wan Hawan’s top weighed nearly 2 pounds and spun for over an hour and a half; he claimed a “top doctor” range of 80 miles (pp. 69–70).
- The tiger that took the cow proved to be a family of four (two adults and two three-quarter-grown cubs), as confirmed by Locke’s reading of the pad marks; the cow was dragged approximately a quarter of a mile from the sea (pp. 74–75).
Conclusion
Rees presents these episodes not as ethnographic documentation but as lived experience, and his closing reflection — that “when you live in the East you come to believe in things you would never believe in in England” — frames the entire piece as a meditation on the permeability of rational and supernatural explanation in a colonial encounter. The tiger story, in particular, undercuts the hunter’s authority: Locke’s two shots were a bluff, and the family of tigers was never killed, leaving the narrative open-ended and the “tall tale” quality of the title fully realised.
Context
- Rees was a British resident in Terengganu (likely in an administrative or advisory capacity) during the 1940s–1950s; the piece was written retrospectively in 1990 and published in the JMBRAS as a personal memoir rather than a scholarly study.
- The text preserves a colonial administrative perspective (reference to the British Adviser, the proclamation system, the game-hunting culture) while simultaneously expressing genuine affection for the local community and its customs.