Day 144
Trip Start
Sep 14, 2006
1
128
169
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Cherating,
Malaysia
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
The outpatients reception area was a sea of school kids all with vaccination forms in hand and I was encouraged that I could get sorted out here. Again I was ushered to the front of a queue and told the receptionists what I needed. They found me a doctor immediately and I'm sure more queue pushing was done for that! The doctor was a nice woman and was interested in my trip as they don't get too many tourists up there for them to try their English out on. That was all very nice but the bottom line was that there were no yellow fever vaccines at the outpatients clinic. The doctor said she would try and find out where I could go for it and asked me to call back later. Arrrgh very frustrating! I had my main pack with me and no hotel so I decided to get a bus to Cherating and call from there later on.
Cherating is a backpackers haven apparently - a small village with access to a great beach and a very chilled out atmosphere. My bus took an hour and I was dropped off on the main road still about 1 or 2 kilometres from the village. I walked down the road and started to see the guest houses that were on my lonely planet map. I checked in to the Cherating Cottages and got the feeling that this village was strangely deserted too.
I know the East coast is less travelled and that the monsoon season is really only just finished but I did expect to see some other folk about other than smiley guest house owners! I took a walk along the beach for the second time in two days and started to feel a bit downbeat.
I made the phone call back to the doc at Kuantan and got the bad news I was fearing. Yellow Fever vaccinations are only available in Kuala Lumpur! I was pretty much resigned to a trip back to the capital before I made the call so I took it in my stride and thanked the doctor for spending her time helping and giving me an address to visit in KL.
That evening I did meet some people, a couple from Bournemouth who were waiting for the Perhentian Islands to "open up" after the monsoon season for them to resume their dive-master courses. Nice people who were hanging around a few more days in Cherating. I wasn't up for any of that and decided that in the morning I would try and get to Kuala Lumpur.
