New Pacific Hotel Kota Bharu

I open my eyes, leap out of bed, check my ipod which reads 4.39 am UK time and I pull back the mosi net on Carolyns bed to tell Dom it's 9.39am here and he is late for diving!! Hang on a minute Domiic isn't there...just a startled Carolyn who is obviously a little shocked at her rude awakening!! It's half 11 she exclaims...no way I just checked my Ipod and it said...oh yeah my maths always was ****!! 11.39am and Dominic has been gone for hours ...

So after little sleep we hop on our mini bus, collect a bunch of others heading for the Perhentians also and off we go!! The roads in Malaysia are remarkably better than those in Indonesia but it doesn't mean the drivers are...!! Our driver swerved his way in and out of the on coming traffic whilst driving so quickly over bumps that I bounced so high off my seat I could feel the roof of the car against my hairband!! I'M TRYING TO SLEEP HERE!!

Anyway we make it to Kuala ...

... where they could clearly see me. Great. They weren't shy at all about staring....and completely ignored Luc's reciprocal glares. I can't really blame them.... I would probably stare too if the only women I ever saw were covered in cloth from head to toe all the time.... I may as well have been naked! Feeling slightly uncomfortable I eventually got in the pool.... so at least it was harder for them to see my body! Eventually they started to talk to Luc and I..... mostly admiring Luc's ...

... different sights, all in all it was a lovely day out and we saw loads. The visibility was good but not brilliant, however that didn't spoil anything. We saw lots of different types of coral and fish including Black Tip Reef Sharks, a couple of small rays, a huge brute of a Grouper, red snapper, parrot fish and lots of lovely Clown Fish. The icing on the cake were the turtles; we followed one huge turtle as he was bottom feeding and then watched as he glided ...

... apparently the only jetty is private!). That was quite something. We stayed in the same guest house as the last time, catching up on emails and doing more research about the trip. We also did our eVisitor visa to Australia which was immediately granted. Quite painless! We went to the town later on, checking on the night market "same same" as the Thai would say!


Tomorrow, we head to Taman Negara on the jungle train...stay tuned!

After crossing the Thai/Malaysian border we caught a taxi down to the port of Kuala Besut. We could have taken two public buses down to the port but we probably would have missed the last ferry if we did that and we didn't want to have to stay in Kuala Besut for the night so we splashed out for the taxi and made the 3:30pm ferry. Ferry is probably the wrong word, nine of us squashed on to a speedboat, the "captain" hands us all our life jackets ...

What's Hot: seeing 45 baby turtles hatching all at once, having a mother turtle lay eggs 5m from our tent, clear water 8m deep, snorkelling inside a school of small fish, snorkelling with black tip reef sharks, sunrise in a speed boat with the rangers, italians say "oh bella, bellisimo", BBQ dinners on the beach, monitor lizards, learning to speak ...

... bank. Dr Liew (?) was a good host entertaining us with the multi-millionaire business of bird's nest rearing. He had read this book produced by a Malaysian author was really into it. Really does sound like easy money except the part where you have to collect the bird's nest amidst all the droppings. Lunch was at a ward's farewell party. We then presented 2 topics to an absolutely silent crowd of 6 registrars. Talk about being disinterested ...

Hello again, i left you last time just before we got on a bus heading towards the Perhentian islands, which in fact turned out to be a land-rover with no seat belts and a mad driver (well mad in English standards but just normal over here). After a air raising 5 hours journey we ended up at the port. Where another journey just as hair raising began. A 21 km boat trip to the islands in a small rowing type boat with two 200 hp engines on the ...

... seemed fairly peaceful but I was reluctant to take out my camera to take a snap. I said goodbye to Thailand for a second time and headed into Malaysia. Immediately bumped into a guy I had met in Koh Tao also heading to Perhentian. There are two types of people that you met travelling. The ones that you would consider sticking with and those that you would ditch at the earliest opportunity. Fortunately Paul was the former and it was great to see ...