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One of the highlights of a much-travelled life is a journey I made many years ago on a prau layar - a traditional sailing boat - from Indonesia to Australia. For most of the two month crossing we dawdled between islands, but there was the odd tropical storm to contend with, and for the final week our only navigational aid was a transistor radio which we used to swivel to locate Radio Darwin.

I relate this story here because that boat was built by one Haji Abdullah bin Muda on a river island called Duyong by the Malaysian town of Kuala Terengganu, 30 years ago. Amazingly, Haji Abdullah is still there, still building ironwood boats on an island of fishermen, and meeting him proved quite an emotional moment in what was an exotic mooch down Malaysia's most timeless coast.

Haji Abdullah's boats, all handmade and held together with wooden nails, are fabulous to behold, a privilege to own and a challenge to crew. The fact that ours had sailed like a pig and lost its bowsprit in the first serious storm was neither here nor there; you can't expect boats hand-fashioned from wood so heavy that it sinks in water to perform like the latest advances in kevlar.

Was he still making for foreigners, I asked? He was. Why, the boat which stood before us was for a British gentleman - who had locked it up when it was all but finished and disappeared with the key, leaving many bills unpaid. Haji Abdullah smiled gently. He was prepared to wait, as he always did, until his customers felt ready to return.

In sticking to a hard-won traditional skill and conducting his business with grace and trust Haji Abdullah is typical of East Coast Malaysia. The West Coast may set the nation's political agenda and keep its economic heart beating, but its waters are opaque, its cities congested and its landscape monotonously patterned with oil palm and rubber plantations.

Very few headlines are made on the more traditional East - which also happens to be the centre of government opposition - because this is a land where life is lived according to the seasons, a land where rice padi, tobacco plots and coconut palms are separated by a long seam of blindingly white sand from a clear, warm bath of a sea so gentle, outside the monsoon, that it can barely summon up the energy for a wave.

Offshore are some of Southeast Asia's least developed islands, and inland, standing on stilts in amongst the coconuts are some of Malaysia's finest wooden kampung houses, on whose steps will be sitting disarmingly friendly people, many of whom speak English.

This is by no means a beautified or a sanitised region, although it has its beauty and its (moments of) sanitation. It is a place whose charm is revealed in broken conversations, and where visitors should be prepared to find themselves the centre of delightful curiosity.

Malaysia's tourism marketing would have you believe that the East Coast is a hotbed of Malay culture, namely kite flying, top spinning, shadow puppet theatre, and the manufacture of traditional batik and songket fabrics. Sure, wonderful homemade kites are often in the air in the evenings, moaning in the wind, and their owners will be proud as punch with any words of admiration. Sure, there are batik factories, where workers doodle skillfully with hot wax and then colour by hand. But you'd be lucky to see top-spinning and the wayang kulit shadow-puppet shows are a mixed experience for the non-enthusiast.

At one, in the car park of the Kota Bharu cultural centre, the sound system was eccentric and the introduction over-long. When I popped my head over the side wall to sneak a look at the musicians I caught the eye of the very camp impresario-in-chief. "Ooh," he squealed delightedly, "where you from?" We conducted a brief conversation and I withdrew, aware that his microphone had remained switched on and that the audience, on their bums on the tarmac, had had the Ramayana delayed by a backstage chat-up.

No, the real reasons for coming here are the landscape, the gentle pace, a couple of particularly elegant places to stay (the Aryani and Tanjong Jara, see below) and above all the chance to get right in amongst the fabric of local life. For the price of a smile, those people on their steps will be only too pleased to show you how it is they live and what it is they do.

Thus, north of Kota Bharu, we turned off the main road into a fishing community where the larger freshly landed fish were cleaned and put out to dry on acres of bamboo racks. The smaller catch was poured in two rows of stone jars where it rotted until the remains sank to the bottom, leaving a perfect budu - fish sauce.

Thus, south of Kota Bharu, we sat under the roof of a tobacco-drying centre amongst breastfeeding mothers who were picking the Virginia leaf off strings to which they had been tied, while young men climbed up inside the kilns to place new rows of fresh-picked in seven aromatic layers before lighting the fires below.

Thus, by Dungun, we met the coconut-gatherer who trained his leaf-tail monkeys to answer to him by placing his mixed sweat and saliva in their mouths. His favourite animal had, he said, slowed down ever since he had caught it a wife, and now, instead of scrambling directly up a tree it would stop half way and gaze through the coconut grove with far-away eyes. His other male was a far better performer, although so vicious and twisted by captivity that it was only interested in wandering goats as sexual partners, and would lure them with food offerings to within chain-range before taking advantage of them while they were otherwise engaged.

Although there are few must-see destinations on the coast, several have significant characteristics. In the north, Kota Bharu is a town of middle-aged shophouses which is known as the centre of Malay culture, with a celebrated night-time foodmarket and adjacent central market, where most of the market women will permit a degustation of exotic fruit - fruit for which we have no English names such as duku, langsat and setia - provided you buy something at the end, and tell them how many wives/husbands/children you have.

Towards the river, the town's giant russet-domed mosque is like an old ocean liner setting sail on a sea of corrugated iron roofs. This is very Islamic territory, to the extent that during evening prayer-time all the hawkers at the night foodmarket leave their carts completely unattended, safe in the knowledge that everybody else will stay respectfully away.

But there are plenty of Buddhists here too, thanks to its proximity to the Thai border. The land to the north is dotted with Thai temples, including the largest reclining Buddha in Asia, a rather brutal representation which was once hit by lightning. The border itself is a river crossing buzzing with long-tailed boats smuggling goods in full view of the customs jetty.

Kuala Terengganu has a better riverside setting than Kota Bharu and a distinctive Chinatown at its heart. Habitually the Chinese are less approachable than the Malays, but these are an exception. The guardian of the 200 year old temple was pleased to see visitors, showing us how the building was created completely without nails. In the food centre, Chinese gents sitting around in vests drinking Guinness invited us to watch mah-jong, the Chinese form of dominoes.

Offshore, the islands - most notably Perhentian (Besar and Kecil), Lang Tengah and Redang - are clearly visible. Tourism here is still pretty much an adventure, with unspoiled beaches, coral-filled waters and dense tropical jungle inland. Originally the preserve of backpackers and divers, the islands have been moving gradually upmarket, particularly on Redang which now has a five-star resort with golf course.

Golf aside, the rewards of these islands are underwater; the coral is not brilliantly coloured - primarily russets and purples in table and antler shapes - but the fish are fabulous and surreal; trigger fish, parrotfish, clownfish, coral trout and even turtles (I saw two while snorkeling), along with the occasional harmless blacktip shark.

At night, the only light comes from the stars, from eyebrows of lanterns set on a limpid sea by nightfishermen, and the occasional flash from some very distant electric storm; on land, the only noise to interrupt your reverie will be a flying fox crashing from tree to tree above your head.

This is as close as the East Coast ever gets to a son et lumiere, and the only 'show' in town. Bear that in mind and, as the doorman of the Aryani Hotel so charmingly put it, "you won't keep yourself boring". No indeed.

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