Conservative Kuala Terengganu

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We had to pull ourselves away from the Perhentian Islands so we could continue down the East Coast, so after breakfast we set off with Mee and his boat for the 21km trip across the South China Sea to Kuala Besut.

Firstly, Mee’s boat was a single engine 12-18ft boat, onboard was Mee, a local chap, G and I (T)but unlike our two local travelling buddies we had no idea what we had let ourselves in for! After a precarious boarding at the unsightly pier, we set off at high speed, all is good, the sea appeared flat and calm. Ten minutes later and the sea swells are present, I (T) have never felt more like a floating bottle in my life, when our small boat descended down a swell, you couldn’t see the land in the distance, you couldn’t see anything other than a wall of water surrounding us which looked like it was about to submerge the boat at any moment. On the way up a swell, you had the feeling that we were travelling up a massive hill of water, in between the swells was the ‘smash’ of the boat when Mee miss-timed a swell and we dropped a metre or two on the water with spine shaking vibrations. I (T) though it was reminiscent of the rolling dales of England, if you swap the hills for mountains of water, and the green grass for turquoise water you have a fair idea, this lasted about 45 minutes until we were safely on dry land, not dry ourselves mind we were soaked from the sea spray, luckily our bags escaped the drowned rat look!

Back at Kuala Besut, ignoring the continual cries from touts wanting to take us back to the islands or Kota Bharu, after asking where the bus stop for Kuala Terengganu was, we got directed to the end of the road where along with a local chap we sat at the roadside waiting. The only information we had was that the bus did stop here, the company that runs the service was called S.P. Bumi and our guidebook informed us that there were three daily- no indication of times and it cost RM8.50 each. We had the Princely sum of RM27 on us, as long as the fare hasn’t gone up more than RM13.50 each we were ok, but fearing the prospect of being stuck in the god awful place that is Kuala Besut for the night, which has no ATMs either, they are located in the neighbouring town, we sat on our bags in the sun at the side of the road for 2 hours when finally the bus arrived and thankfully the fare was RM10 each, we boarded!

Three hours later we pulled into the main bus station at Kuala Terengganu at around 3pm and headed to the Ping Anchorage Backpackers Lodge and secured a twin room for RM 20. We then set off exploring. Kuala Terengganu is a very conservative area and has in large letters on one of its hillside ‘God Protects Terengganu’. Kuala Terengganu is also the centre of Malaysia oil and gas industries.

We set off in the baking sun and headed to have a look at Chinatown, this consisted of a rather pretty street with the usual fare, cute old fashioned houses, a little temple, but this Chinatown they had a lamppost pointing to the 7 new wonders of the world with distance markers, these were apparently confirmed in2007 as: The Pyramid at Chichen Itza, Machu Picchu, The Christ Redeemer, The Great Wall Of China, The Taj Mahal, The Roman Colasseum and Petra. We have so far made it to 3, more travelling for us then in the future to tick them all off!

Once our tummies were screaming out for food, we ventured into a lovely little restaurant for Asyam Goreng Nasi which is fried chicken with rice and curry sauce served on a banana leaf, which we enjoyed for RM5 each before heading back to our guesthouse to sit in the roof terrace were we drank them out of beer (they had 2 cans left!!), after a few hours we retired for the evening.

Once in our room we noticed someone had written on the departure instructions poster located on the back of the door that this room has bedbugs, so on closer inspection of the mattress we asked to move rooms (knowing how badly G reacts to the little bugs), with G still not convinced the new mattress was bedbug free she had a very interrupted sleep as she woke up periodically looking for bedbugs. Thankfully it was a bedbug free room so we packed our stuff and headed back to the bus station and purchased two tickets to Chatering further down the East Coast.

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