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Perhentian Islands
Entry 31 of 33 | show all | print this entry |
Perhentian Islands..
It all started with me arriving too late to catch the last boat over to the island! Bugger! As the boats dont tend to run frequently, I ended up having to stay a night in Kota Bharu (where I flew into). I stayed at KB backpackers which was super dodgy.. and not very nice, but it was cheap and convenient. Kota Bharu really didnt have much to see, so there was no point staying anywhere nice. The back packers did manage to organise a minibus to Kuala Besut, which is about an hour away from Kota Bharu where you catch the boat to the islands from. Getting to Kualur Besut cost me only RM8 instead of RM40 which saved me some cash... so the cheap backpackers was good for something. :) And it was on the mini bus I met Molly a Canadian from Vancouver who i ended up spending a bit of time with.
The next morning, once I made it to Kuala Besut vis the mini bus it was onto the fast boat to the island. These fst boats were dodgy lil boats, about 5 metres in length, with a basic material roof, and two massive 200HP outboard motors on the back! It took about 1 hour by these to get to the island, and if it was choppy there was a good reputation you would get very wet! Luckily our trip in was relatively calm so we didnt get too wet from the waves, but it did rain so it seemes we were to get wet one way or another. Upon getting to our beach there was no jetty so another smaller "taxi" boat came up to pick us up and take us the rest of the way... and charge us the RM2 charge.. cheekey buggers.
Perhentian Islands are Malaysia showpiece islands on the East Coast right up north near the boarder to Thailand. There are 2 main islands called Kecil and Basar (meaning small and big... literally) I stayed on the small Island, Kecil, at a place called long beach which is famous for its backpacker scene (and night life). It has a lot of low budget accommodation options and has the most night life of all the spots on both islands. The beach is a lovely white sand beach with some AMAZING turquoise water surrounding the bay, with jungle surrounding the beach and the guest houses in amongst the jungle. There is also no electricity in most places during the day (at night they run the generators), and there are no roads or cars on this island either which makes it a pretty chilled out kinda place... exactly what I was looking for.. and I loved it from the begining!
Neither me or Molly had arranged any accommodation on the island prior so as soon as we got to the beach we went trudging around looking for accommodation. I couldnt be bothered lugging my bag around with me so I trustingly left it on the beach while we search, only to find out that everywhere was full!! We did manage to finally find somewhere at the end of the beach called rock gardens, and it was very cheap too.. RM20 per night, and you got your own wooden shack to yourself. It was one of the grottiest places ive ever stayed though!! The huts were ok, and consisted of roughly peiced together bits of wood - you could see the ground through the floor boards, the sky through the roof, and the outside through the walls. The largest gap in the floor was about 1 inch wide... but that also meant that due to the lack of fan, it wasnt too hot with all those "ventalation holes"... "speed holes" you could say. Me and molly ended up getting lil huts right next door to each other, AND we got an ocean view, so we should have considered ourselves lucky. We also later discovered that all sorts of wild life came free with the hut too, including some rather unusually large geckos - these geckos must have been up to 30cm long and came in a range of colours! The toilets however were in a block in the middle of the complex and were totally disgusting. No hot showers, no toilet paper, no lights, no locks on some of the doors, no doors on some of the showers, and no toilet bowls in some of the toilets.. just a hole in the ground with a place for you to squat... hmmm... nice.
After settling into our new homes me and molly went to get some lunch, of which I ordered a side of fresh water melon, and i nearly got a whole watermellon!! I couldnt believe how MUCH there was~! Both me and Molly had trouble finishing it! Not a bad deal this was... I liked this place already.. but now i liked it more! :)
Now one of the main reasons for coming to perhentians was a girl i met in thailand last time had come here and raved about it, but also said that the diving was fantastic, so I wandered across to the closest dice shop called Spice Divers and enquired into some diving with them, and before you know it I was booked into the next dive at 3pm. In the mean time i managed to lose molly, so I just spent some time taking in some of the beautiful sun on the beach. For the dive we went to a site called d'lagoon which was one big coral reef just off the shore, not too far from the beach and it was magnificent! The visibility was great and there was all sorts of marine life to see! All in all apart from seeing the usual I saw a turtle, 3 reef sharks swimming in a line over the reef and thousands of "nemo's". :) All in all it was a great dive, and with the water temp at 30 degrees it was hard not to enjoyed it!
After the dive I managed to finally find Molly again and we went out for some dinner, and later down the beach to discover some what the night life consisted of. We were disappointed to find out that the beer was between 8 and 10 ringgit per can! Thats really expensive for asia.. There was another option however, not that it was a hell of a lot better, but it was a small bottle of vodka for 25 ringgits. The bar would sell you the whole bottle, and then give you cups to drink it out of. You just had to either supply your own mixer or buy a few cans of sprite or juice from the bar. This was the asia I was used to! The name of the bar we were at escapes me, but we ended up there till the early hours of the morning with a bunch of people we met, two of them being an irish couple with one being a music producer, and the other being a singer. So while someone played the guitar, she sang along. She had the most beautiful voice, and it definitely made the evening. Somewhere along the night I also lost my "room key".. I put this in quotes as its not a room key as such, but more of a key to a padlock that attached to a bolt on the front door of my hut (I wasnt staying in luxury, so I didnt get a door knob). Lucky for me however my wooden window doesnt shut properly so I could wriggle my way through that and get in.. a lot better at disturbing the owner at 4 in the morn! From now until I got this sorted out I had to enter and exit via the back balcony, so I threw a chair off the balcony so It made it easier to climb back on when I wanted to get back in.
The next morning I woke up in unbelievable heat with a good quality hang over, mainly due to the cheap vodka, but also lack of drinking water. I thought it would be a good time to sort out this lost key business. Thinking they had a spare I asked "reception" (a small hut down the stairs) if they had a spare key.... to which they had confused faces and a quick argument in malay. I waited patiently for 5 mins when a small malay man came up with a jar of keys. He tipped them out.. about 80 of them.. onto the ground outside my hut, and proceeded to try each key one by one. About 20 mins later we discovered that NONE of them worked so it was off to get the master key... and by master key I mean hammer! They then pryed the lock and catch off the wood and let me in. All in all it cost me 10 ringgit for a new lock and catch to be attached, but it was all a laugh at the end of the day.
By now I was starving and I had to make it down to the dive centre (about 20m walk) for my dives as I had signed up to complete my advanced course. For this I needed to complete a compulsory navigation dive and one optional dive, which I chose to be the wreck dive. The fist dive was the wreck dive and was to be done at Vietnamese wreck. This wreck is about 30 years old and was a pontoon type vessel that used to carry refugees during the Vietnamese war. No one died when it sunk, and it landed in about 18 - 23 metres of water upside down. The visibility on the dive wasnt amazing, but there was one really weird thing I saw. During the dive we got to go inside the wreck, and as it was quite old it had a large amount of coral growth on it. Once inside you could look up, and you would see coral growing upside down from the upside of the wreck. What was weird though is that the fish would also swim upside down as if they were swimming the right way up with the coral.. and it wasnt just one or two fish either. Every fish I saw on the roof was swimming upside down!! What made it look even stranger was watching your bubbles go up passed the fish swimming upside down, and into the coral growing upside down... it almost looked like your bubbles were floating to the bottom. Other than that we saw a few other large fish, some barracuda, and quite a few puffer fish.
The next dive I did was my navigation dive which consisted of underwater navigation by means of compass and natural surroundings. Funny thing was when I practiced on the beach I screwed it up, but underwater I was spot on! One of the tasks I had to do was use the compass to navigate a square traveling 30 metres for each side, and i managed to end up right on the spot where I started within about 1/2 a metre! Once I had completed the tasks we used the rest of the time to do some pleasure diving, of which I spent a lot of time playing with all the nemo's I could find. The best thing about these fish is that they are very aggressive which makes them quite fun. As you swim up to their home in their sea anenome they will come out and dart around trying to threaten you, even though they are only 5cm long. Occasionally they will try to bite you, but this never hurts. Sometimes you can put your fingers close to the anenome and the clown fish will come up to scare you away, and you can then cup your hand under him, and slowly bring him away from his home, and you end up with a nemo swimming in the cup of your hand! Its great fun!
After the dives I found molly up at her hut, and she was going down to play some volley ball. I had to finish some paper work to get my advanced diving license, but I managed to catch up with her for a short trek through the jungle to the other beach on the other side of the island called coral bay for sunset. This is where I met Linda who was from Holland, and Suji from Canada. Coral beach was a bit like long beach where I was staying, only smaller and less busy...and the sun set turned out to be crap anyway. There was a rather large cloud sitting on the horizon which kinda ruined the colours, but despite my complaining it was still nice.
After the trek we organised to meet up with everyone for dinner, and I told everyone that tonight was going to be a party night as it was my birthday at midnight!! Sandro who I met in Langkawi also made it to the island tonight so we had a group of 5 to go out with. We all started with a dinner on the beach, and then onto a bar called palm tree. It was at Palm tree where someone finally had some kerosene so i could do some fire twirling! I had been asking everyone if anyone had kerosene.. problem was everyone looked at me sideways as they didnt know what kerosene was. I finally managed to find out what the malay word was for it ( I dont know how to spell it, but it was something like: minya tana) and it was only after that I started to get somewhere! Although people wandered what the hell i wanted that for, and trying to explain fire dancing to a maly was out of the question!
After some fire spinning, it was a countdown till midnight and then we all started partying! I dont know what it was about the night, but everyone seemd to be in just the right mood to have FUN! We all went up to the bar and the main dance floor and we were all dancing away, just the five of us. Within about 1/2 an hr we had nearly the entire bar up dancing with us too...we WERE the party there!! After a while things started to quiet down a bit so we left to go to another bar down the beach, but there wasnt much else happening.
It was about this time Molly, Linda and I decided it would be a good idea to go for a swim in the sea.. and with the sea temperature being up around 30 degrees, it would be rude not to! Which also reminds me that when its pitch black at night and you're in the water you can move your hands really fast and then all the fluorescent plankton start to glow, and you get some briefly glowing fluro green specs all through the water... its sooo cool!! The whole night ended up being a really great night, and was an excellent birthday!!
The next morning I work up extremely tired, and only JUST managed to get my boat off the island in time in attempt to catch my flight to Bali, and found a very nice couple from England to share a cab to the airport with. I got on with them really well.. and its just a shame that I cant remember their names nor did I get their contact details. :( This time I was heading to Bali... or so I thought!! I had my flights all booked and paid for - and I paid next to nothing for them as I had booked ahead with air asia, the only problem is I had a similar problem of not having enought time between the connecting flight in KL, and I was going to miss one of them. I wasnt too concerned with that, as I could always purchase another one at the airport. The only problem was that the air asia flight I was going to get had been canceled... When I went to try malaysian air I found that wasnt an option either as their flight was too late. Oh ohhh.... I could then change my flights so I could have had the time in Bali, but that would have cost around 1000 ringgit.. or about 330 australian... and for a couple nights in bali that was just going to be too expensive!! Ouch!! Soooooo... I decided to go back to perhentian, as after all... I really loved it there!
So another missed flight... I missioned it back to the island. Back on the island I managed to run into Molly within about 20 mins, and she had the most confused look on her face, and wondered what on earth I was doing back!!
With all my running around at the airport It was about 7.20pm by the time I made it back onto the island. I had found everyone by about 8pm, but still hadnt managed to find some accommodation! :O I also really didnt want to go back to the delightful pleasure of rock gardens, so I was looking everywhere but there. I ended up settling for something more expensive at RM70 per night at a place just close by which was a lot nicer. This time I had a lock on my door, an actual door knob, light switches, a fan, my own bathroom and shower and power outlets to charge my phone / camera etc - these were ALL things that my rock gardens room DIDNT have! (although the light and power only worked at night when the generator was running). I quickly got changed and met up with the gang at a nice restaurant called panarama.
Later we went down the beach to a new bar called safety stop bar, that only opened last night. This was a basic bar right on the beach with tables in the sand, and was the bar where most of the beach was at. It was here where i met another kiwi, a lovely german couple that I originally met on the first boat ride to the island, and some irish girls that I just happened to be on the yacht I was on when I was sailing the whitsundays in Australia! This bar also had some "minya tana"... or kerosene.. and they were keen for me to do a "fire show" as it was a new bar and they wanted some attention. :P Cool! I ended up getting a free beer out of it, and was beginning to get a reputation as "fire man",not that I minded. Later that night we also went for another swim in the sea and got home at about sinrise... hmmm... seems to be a familiar thing happening. On summary my birthday was all over the place during the day, but Ive managed to turn it into two really really fun nights, and met some great people!
The next day was a killer waking up. I missed check out time of 11.30, so that meant I had to pay for another night in my "expensive" room. Although, I didnt mind so much though as it was a nice place to be. This day quickly became a nothing day, and involved a lot of lying on the beach, swimming and eating. JUST what I needed!! :) This was also my last full day on the island so I was quite happy to simply take it all in. Later that night again I met up with Molly and Linda again for dinner, and went back to saftey stop bar, where they wanted me to do some more fire spinning, of which I was happy to do and got a few free drinks out of it again. Tonight was a bit more tame than the previous nights, and didnt end up with a midnight swim in the sea this time. Also a lot of us were all leaving the next day so we didnt want to be too hung over, so I had an "early one" at about 3.30am.
I struggled to get up the next day at 9am to check out and make a dive I had booked in. This time we were diving sugar wreck. Surgar wreck as I am told was a larger ship carrying too much sugar when a big wave washed over the ship, and as she was over weight she couldnt handle the extra water and she sunk. No one died on this sinking either. The entire wreck is about 60-70 metres long and is in one piece. It went down in 2001 so there wasnt a huge amount of coral growth on the wreck. The best thing I found about this wreck was that apart from the low visibility trying to stop you, you could see the ship reasonably clearly under water, and it still had a lot of its ropes and nets all strewn around the place. Going inside the wreck there were some strange air pockets you could poke your head into if you wanted to, however we were advised against this, and I didnt particularly want to smell how bad that air was. One other great thing we saw on this dive was 4 lion fish all in the same spot! Its nice to see just one lion fish... very occasionally you might see two next to one another.. but here were 4 all within about square metre!! We saw a few sand sharks, and a few sting rays as well, but other than that this site didnt have that much marine life on offer.. Just cool ship wreck stuff!
The rest of the day I hang out on the beach talking to Katharina, one of the germans (one of the coolest germans ive met in fact.. GO Katharaina!) I met the other night who I got on really well with! After spending as much time on the beach as I could possibly manage I went to grab my stuff and had to then catch my fast boat back to the mainland. It was good bye to Perhentian Islands :( I seriously had a good time here, and with a combination of the people, the weather, the lack of cars and commercialism, and the vibe of the place... this has to be near the top of my list of my favourite spots... if not THE top. Its sad to leave.
Back in Koala Besut I said my good byes to molly, and started on my Mission to KL. I met 3 other travelers who I could share a taxi with to get to kota bharu where I was going to catch my bus to KL. 2 of them were from england and were also trying to get to kl by bus, which worked well for me as thats what I was trying to do also... but this catching a bus business was proving to be a little bit more difficult than I had imagined! Due to it being school holidays (its always a holiday where I go!?!?) all the buses going to KL were full!! We then got in another taxi to another bus station and found a bus with some space, but it wasnt one of the nice buses that big comfy limited seats.. so we decided against it and caught the same taxi to the train station now. Problem was the trains were full too!! Argh! I had to get to KL to catch my flight to Brunei, so I had no choice but to get that other bus. Luckily they still had some seats left when we went back to 2nd bus station. We purchased our tickets, killed some time in the near by mall, and then got on the bus at 9pm. It was a pretty uncomfortable journey but we made it to KL at stupid oclock in the morning... 5.30am.. and I was planning on not having to pay for a mornings worth of accommodation, but I didnt want to stay on the streets so I went back to the hostel I stayed at the first time I flew in a few days ago. They had space available, and I managed to get in one free breakfast at 6.30am, have a sleep, and get in a 2nd free breakfast when I woke up at 11am. YUS! haha
My day in KL wasnt much of anything as I had a flight to catch at 6pm so it ended up being what I called an "admin" day where I sorted out my travel blog, replied to emails, and generally planned things. I was in need of one of those so it worked out. Next stop was Brunei..... Stay tuned.
Photos from Perhentian should be.... um.. HERE.. but my camera broke, so i dont have that many :( : http://picasaweb.google.com/mrphillipthomas/20080405PerhentianIslands
Where I stayed:
Rock Gardens
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