Mama's Place Pulau Perhentian Besar

... to meet or something to doand met Mo and Leigh, Bart then joined us (one of the people from my hostel in Taman Negara) and also Philip (how had just arrived from Taman Negara). Tim and Pete also made a late appearance and I introduced everyone to them. We all chatted and had a great time, listening to each others stories. I got a great feeling of happiness and fulfilment tonight, speaking to people I liked very much and have a lot in common with.

... So i got up and went to investigate .. what a beach ... OMG absolutely fantastic ... white sand and water that is crystal clear .. so i went for a swim and sat under an umbrella for the rest of the day .... lovely ... i cant wait for the rest of the week if it is as lovely as this ... the water was warm and calm and perfect!!! I think i shall go snorkelling tomorrow

c xxx

... the "Jaws" theme song in my ear through his mask, pinching my on my backside during the most dramatic points of the tune. These animals do not deserve to be messed with and are in the ocean for a reason. They are the top killers. They are the ones who maintain population control (other than humans, but the sharks are the ones who do it naturally of course). These animals are made of pure muscle and are more powerful than we could ever imagine. After a while I got seriously ...

... of Dutch population seems to be on the island, wooden clog production must be at a standstill. Love the Dutch, usually fun, friendly, easy going type of people and for what ever reason seem all to be extremely easy on the eye. Picture perfect desert island which is full of super friendly supermodels, hard life eh? Billions of mosquitoes also share the paradise. I have been bitten to death, legs look like a Braille book. Hanging with a group of six or so ...

... goggles in the middle of a moonlit tropical island beach has to go down as one of those more unusual moments.


Day 7: Moving On Again

Leaving the Perhentians. Back on the speed boat taxi – they like their outboards BIG here and they don’t like to hang about.
20 minutes after leaving we were back on the mainland to find our way to the junction with the main road to Kuala Terengganu where we we’ ...

... up Hanan with my wimpering (I.e. “It’s so hot! Waaaah…it’s too hot! I’m too hot! Waaaaaah…”). After continuing to wimper pitifully, I finally got up to take a shower in the hopes of cooling down a bit. This helped a little, and I was able to read in bed until I finally fell asleep. I made up my mind, though, that we were moving to a better place the next day.

We woke up after the miserable night and checked out of Mata Hari ...

... same(!) and hop out to the small island in the morning by speedboat.  Not quite the perfect idyllic place we anticipated, it was thin on the ground for action.  Certainly no bars due to the state being a fairly strong Islamic State.  It was available but just expensive and not on display.  Having researched this beforehand we arrived prepared.  Thank you Bali Airport Duty Free.

As there is more than one island on this archipelago we had a walk across this ...

... to slow down and basically ended up walking most of the second half of the course. It was more like a hike than a race (I have no idea how all the people ahead of me managed to run it without falling on their faces). Anyway, so I was about fifteen minutes from the end and was convinced that I must be in the bottom half of competitors seeing as I was going so slowly... I even stopped to take a photo of the jungle at one point ...