Mersing

Mersing grew where the Mersing River meets the South China Sea, a natural shelter on a coast with few harbours. Long before the town existed, the Seribuat islands and this shore were known to sailors working the route between the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and Indochina; Tioman appears in Arab and Chinese navigational accounts as a watering point, and the mainland river mouths supplied timber, rattan and fish. Malay fishing villages and small Orang Asli communities inland were the earliest settlement.

The town as it stands took shape under British administration in Johor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Chinese merchants opened shops along the road and the river became a collecting point for the produce of the interior — timber, gambier, rubber and later oil palm from the estates cut out of the forest. A district office, a market and a jetty followed, and the coastal road linking Johor Bahru with Kuantan turned the settlement into a stopping place.

Before the Japanese invasion the coast around Mersing was fortified against a landing during the campaign for Malaya, and concrete defences from that effort can still be found along the shore; the attack came overland from the north instead, and by January 1942 Mersing stood on the final Commonwealth defensive line across Johor, from Batu Pahat through Kluang, as it was attacked along its length. After the war the town returned to fishing and trade until the 1970s and 1980s, when Tioman's rise as a holiday island turned Mersing into a ferry port. The harbour and its terminal grew with that traffic, which has shaped the town ever since.

Mersing's culture is that of the Johor east coast: Malay, Muslim and tied to the sea. The fishing communities keep to a routine set by tides and the monsoon, and the months when boats cannot go out are still spoken of as a season to be endured rather than a holiday. Mosques are the centre of village life along the coast road, and the loudspeaker call to prayer marks the day in the town as much as the boat horns do.

The shophouse streets belong to a Chinese community of Teochew, Hokkien and Hainanese descent, whose families came as traders and shopkeepers and who run the coffee shops, hardware stores and many of the seafood restaurants. Their temples and clan associations are small but long established, and Chinese New Year closes much of the commercial centre for several days. A smaller Indian Malaysian population and Orang Asli communities in the forest districts inland complete the mix.

Visitors are a normal part of life, but Mersing has never become a resort town itself: it sells tickets, beds and meals to people on their way somewhere else, and keeps its own rhythm. Dress in the town is modest, greetings are quiet, and the pace is slow — an evening walk on the esplanade, coffee in the shophouses, and early nights before the boats leave.

The town and its mukim were estimated at close to 71,000 people at the 2010 census, with the wider district spread across fishing villages, oil palm estates and inland settlements. Fishing remains central: trawlers and smaller boats work the coast and the waters around the islands, and much of the catch is trucked to Johor Bahru and Singapore or turned into dried fish and keropok, the fish crackers made along this coast.

The rest of the economy is oil palm, small-scale farming, government offices for the district, and tourism — boat operators, ticket agents, hotels, restaurants and the drivers who meet the buses. That income is strongly seasonal: from March to October the harbour is busy from early morning, and in the monsoon months the jetty empties, hotels close rooms and families rely on savings and on fishing when the sea allows.

Mornings begin with the market and the return of the boats; the middle of the day is hot and slow; evenings bring the esplanade, food stalls and football on television. Young people leave for Johor Bahru, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore for work and return for the festivals. Flooding after heavy monsoon rain, the state of fish stocks and the cost of running a boat are the standing local concerns.

Mersing eats what its boats bring in. Ikan bakar — whole fish rubbed with a spice paste, wrapped in banana leaf and grilled over charcoal — is the local staple, served with rice, sambal belacan and raw vegetables. Squid, prawns and crab come fried with salted egg, in butter and curry leaves or in a thick chilli gravy at the Chinese restaurants near the river, and steamed fish with ginger and soy is the dish to order for a table.

Dried and preserved seafood is a trade in itself: salted fish, dried anchovies and keropok, the crackers made from fish or prawn paste and sold in bags from shops and stalls along the main road. Johor's mainland dishes are all present too — mee rebus, yellow noodles under a thick spiced gravy with egg and green chilli; laksa Johor, a fish and coconut gravy served with spaghetti; and nasi lemak, coconut rice with sambal and anchovies, sold from early morning.

The Chinese coffee shops supply the other half of the town's eating: kopi brewed strong and sweetened with condensed milk, kaya toast, soft-boiled eggs, and later in the day fried noodles, chicken rice and pork or fish ball soups. Fruit stalls sell rambutan, durian and mangosteen in season from the orchards inland, and cold sugarcane juice and coconut water are the standard defence against the heat.