We were heading to Kota Bharu to meet our friend Kelly. We first met Kelly in Bariloche, Argentina (there seems to be a recurring theme of meeting up with people we first met in Argentina, which just shows what a good time we had and how many great people we met). He's from Alaska and was in Kuala Lumpur on a training course and had arranged to fly to Kota Bharu and meet us, before we all headed to the Perhentian Islands together. The bus journey was a royal pain in the arse. The 'luxury' 27 seater bus we were promised turned out to be a normal 50ish seater one that was packed full. The excuse was that the nice bus had broken down, I but we think they just overbooked and had to use a bigger bus. Then Kelly rang to say that he had missed his flight so would have to meet us at the islands a day later. This wasn't looking like the best of starts. But it actually ended all ok. We got talking to a Malaysian couple from Penang who were also heading to the Perhentians for the first time and instead of going to Kota Bharu (which is 2 hours and another bus from where we now needed to be, seeing as we weren't meeting Kelly anymore), we got a lift in their taxi straight to the ferry place and were on the first ferry at 7am, heading to Perhentian Kecil, the smaller of the 2 islands.
So with the bus journey firmly in the past, we arrived at Long Beach at 7.30am. I looked after the bags whilst Elliot went in search of a place to stay. This is a great tactic as there is nothing worse than lugging your bags up and down the beach being told that places are full. Twenty minutes later Elliot was back and had got us the last hut in a cute new resort just back from the beach. We checked in, had a doze and then explored the beach. Long Beach is the biggest beach on the island and you can get to a beach on the other side, Coral Bay by taking a 10 walk through the centre of the island, watching out for monitor lizards and spiders on the way. It chucked it down with rain for about 30 minutes that first day (I've included a photo so you can see it's not all sunshine on our travels) but that was pretty much it for rain for our whole stay. We wandered through to Coral Bay, which is a bit smaller and checked out the accommodation there. We found a lovely resort called Senja Bay, which was doing great deals on their rooms (40rm for hot water and fan - which was the price we were paying for our cold water shared bathroom) so we arranged to move in the next day.
Once we had moved over to Coral Bay, we hardly ever left that side of the island; it was so lovely and peaceful ad had great sunsets. We signed up for a snorkelling trip with a local guy called Mat and it was so good, we ended up going again. He works out of a shop in the middle of Coral Bay, if anyone is reading this and heading that way then I can't recommend his trip enough. Anyway, Mat took us out along with about 8 others on his boat and the first stop was Shark Point, which certainly lived up to its name. We saw at least 5 black tip reef sharks, some of which came really close and swum around quite happily. There was also a big hump head parrot fish that was following me at one point, which freaked me out at first as they look like they have massive buck teeth and that was all I could see went I turned around! After half an hour with the sharks we headed off to the next place, fish garden. There were quite a few fish here, including loads of sergeant majors and they all came running (or should that be swimming) when Mat started throwing crackers in the water. Next stop was turtle watching, which involves sailing the boat slowly around until we spotted 2 turtles and then we all piled in the water. The turtles are great, just swimming around and not really paying us that much attention. Then finally it was time for lunch at the fisherman's village, where Mat lives. It's not really authentic local food as they offer burgers and lots of western food as well, but we had the same as Mat, a chilli chicken dish and it was really good. Next stop was the lighthouse, which has great coral, but the visibility wasn't very good and I got stung on the leg by a jellyfish. Not the best stop on the tour for me. Next and last stop was romantic beach, which is just a gentle snorkel near the beach where there are loads of clown fish. We finally got home after nearly 7 hours out at sea, tired but happy at seeing all the fish and coral and with two new friends Grace and Adrian, who we hung out with quite a bit for the rest of our stay.
Kelly was finally arriving the next day, so we had an early night and kept an eye out for all the ferries arriving that morning. It was great to meet up with him again and after he dropped off his bags, we all went for a beer. This was a bit of a treat as the beers here are 9 or 10 ringitts (compared to 2.5 in Langkawi!) but we were celebrating. That evening we introduced Kelly to the fish barbeques that each restaurant on the beach does every night. It's all pretty simple, you choose your fish (or lobster or prawns), your sauce and then it comes piled with rice, jacket potato, coleslaw, fruit and banana cake. So much food it comes on 2 plates and you always seem to end up with coleslaw on your cake! The next day we went back on the snorkelling trip with Kelly, Grace and Adrian and to make this a bit different Mat took us looking for hump head parrotfish. And we found a school of over 30 of them ranging in size from 30 centimetres to over a metre in length. They weren't scared of us at all and we could dive down and swim alongside them. The next day the five of us went diving to a place called T3, a series of underwater rocks and caves. It was a great site and we saw massive puffer fish, triggers, nudibranches and some beautiful coral. All too soon it was time for Kelly to head back, so we said our goodbyes with plans to make it to Alaska at some point. Grace and Adrian left the same day too so we decided to head off the Kuala Lumpur the following day.
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