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Published: July 25th 2011
The journey to the Perhentian islands was not the longest or hardest we'd endured so far but still pretty epic even by our Asian trip standards. It started with a 4am cab ride to one of KL's airports and a McDonalds breakfast to prepare us for the day.
It was raining when we left so weren't too sad to be leaving KL and the 2 hour flight onboard one of those scary propellor planes again to Kota Bharu on the east coast was painless. Once down we took a deep breathe and prepared for the enevitable ripping off that comes with most taxi booking in Asia.
With the barganing out the way we had the pleasure of travelling with a driver who was either falling asleep at the wheel or sounding like he was suffering an astma attack or worse some combination of the two! A tense hour later we were at the boat terminal trying to decide via some dodgy 80's looking photos, which place to stay at that night as we had been informed it was a school holiday (of course!)
The hour boat ride we had been warned would be the worst part of thejourney
was actually quite fun, as the two oversize outboard motors of our 15 person craft powered us through some pretty big waves we had the pleasure of laughing at some fat guy trying to hold down his lunch! After dumping off some other passengers at the posher 'big island' we arrived in the waters near 'small island' where we were transferred to another boat for the 100m trip to shore through the clear shallows looking out for Nemo along the way. We then had to jump knee deep into the water and carry our bags up to the beach to find our hotel. When I say 'we' I of course mean 'I' had to carry both bags along the beach as Emilie was still suffering from her swollen foot.
Once I'd gotton over the traumer over having to carry both bags for the first time (they have wheels so up till this point had not actually been on either of our backs!! I know what your thinking, proper backpackers yeah!) I had the shock of discovering what a hole we'd booked into for the night and why the photos we'd seen when booking looked so dated. No electricity was doable
but no water either seemed a bit much, the beautiful beach being only a 30 second walk away did help us during the day and by the evening a bit of the modern world had reached our wooden shack so we could see to have a cold shower.
One night was enough however and the following day we moved to the only brick building along the beach for some proper luxury, this did also blow the budget so the next day we moved yet again but this time to the other side of the island (via boat as no vehicles are allowed on the island) where we found a place that met our needs and budget.
The Perhentian islands are simply stunning and the next three days were spent exploring what the clear blue sea had to offer. We found a local fisherman who took us out in his tiny boat and acted as tour guide telling us when to jump out and snorkel with turtles and how to catch our lunch using just hand reels. But the real highlight for me was when we anchored at shark bay and were able to come literally face to face with
sharks, absolutely amazing!
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