Advertisement
Our journey to Perhentian Kecil was not quick by any means, and to think we did it the "fast" way!
Let's start from the beginning, shall we?
When we were planning our honeymoon, Steph had posted a status on Facebook looking for suggestions for places to see in Thailand. Our Engagement Photo Photographer responded and said that out of the many places she had travelled throughout the world, Perhentian Islands were one of her favorites. She absolutely raved about them, and after some internet investigating, we added Perhentian Kecil to our "must-do" list. Perhentian Kecil is the smaller of the two Perhentian Islands, with Perhentian Besar being the "big island". We knew it was going to be quite the journey to get to the Perhentians, either by land or by air, but after all of the positive things we had read, we figured it was worth the journey!
We started off from Krabi, but before we headed to the airport we opted to get Thai massages. Steph's story of her massage is one that can only be explained dynamically in person - but we will just say that there was nothing relaxing or enjoyable about it. Steph spent
Long Beach
View of Long Beach while we ate a decent breakfast at Mohsin Chaletthe entire hour of torture deep breathing both to work through the pain that the woman with man-strength was inflicting on her (and no, it was NOT a ladyboy) and using the breathing as a means to not blow up on the woman who clearly spoke no English and was not understanding Steph when she was repeating "gentle!" "softer!" "not so hard!" "stop pulling!!!". Thai massage = NEVER AGAIN! No wonder it costs the equivalent of $6.
Moving on from that low of the trip, we caught a taxi for 250Baht to the Krabi Airport. Without getting into details, but for the sake of us being able to look back and laugh, our taxi driver was no less than crazy. We are pretty sure he wasn't even a taxi driver, but just a random guy wanting to make a buck or two, because what taxi driver doesn't have 100 baht on hand for change?
In no time we had landed at Kuala Lumpur International Airport where we grabbed a Malaysia City Mug from Starbucks (Steph collects them!) and a delicious meal at McDonalds. We took advantage of the free WiFi (although the connection was terrible) while waiting for
our next flight, which would take us to Kota Bharu. Kota Bharu is actually only about 5 hours from the Thai border, but because we were coming from Krabi, we figured flying was the most comfortable way to get there versus an overnight train and multiple taxis.
From Kota Bharu we took a one-hour taxi to Kuala Besut, the small town in which the ferry for Perhentians is located. By the time we got there, it was 9pm, so we had to find a place to crash for the night. The hotel we were dropped off at was all out of basic rooms, and only had a family suite available. So we set off to wander the dark streets of Kuala Besut in the hopes of finding a cheaper alternative. The guesthouse we found, Nan Guesthouse, we found was the only other within the town, as we later learned. It cost 30 Ringgit, which is less than $10 Canadian, and was VERY basic. They had a TripAdvisor sign in their window which gave us a false sense of positive when we went up to our room - luckily we knew that in less than 12 hours we would be
on Perhentian Paradise! Of course we had to remind ourselves of that when we discovered THE BIGGEST COCKROACH KNOWN TO MAN KIND IN OUR BATHROOM SINK. That sucker refused to leave, and Colin's kill attempts failed as it was too fast to hit. Still, we made it through the night, and were happy there was a memory foam on the mattress which was probably an attempt to cover up the horribleness underneath, but it worked for us for the night.
The next morning, we were in for another journey. We boarded our little boat that would take us 10 nautical miles to Perhentian Kecil. The ride was probably only 30 minutes but it was the longest 30 minutes of our life. White knuckling the entire trip, we were battling 10-foot swells while gripping the rails to save our lives. The first few bumps were a little funny, but in no time, us and the other 7 people on our boat were basically in tears wondering if we were going to make it to the Perhentians without being swallowed up by the sea, and how the heck we were supposed to do this boat ride BACK when it was time
to leave the so-called paradise. In fact the bumps and smacks we experienced during this boat ride resulted in us having some pretty bad back pain for the next few days, dreaming about using an inversion table to stretch out our compressed spinal cord.
The Perhentian Islands are mostly undiscovered and undeveloped. The tallest structure is two stories, and there are no roads or vehicles. Electricity is run through generators, and is typically only on during the night hours. Being in a predominantly Muslim area, it is considered a "dry" island - no alcohol is served during the day, and in the evenings, you can buy it from a guy who sells it in between the restauarnts. It is a very relaxed atmosphere, perfect for those who want to get away from it all.
We started out at Long Beach and wandered along the beach stopping in at the resorts price shopping. We were feeling pretty indecisive and by the time we worked our way from one end of the beach, then back to where we started, out of impatience and laziness we paid 30RMB for a filthy shack at Moonlight. We won't go into the details, we
will just say that there were dead bugs all over the bed! Gross! We decided just to use it as a place to store our bags while we relaxed on the beach for the day. Of course in our panic to get out of the room, we left the sunscreen behind. It was very overcast, and we chose to be nieve to the fact that we were at high risk for sunburns.
After spending the day at the beach, we took the 10 minute jungle path over to Coral Bay, which is the beach on the other side of the island. We price shopped a few places here and ultimately ended up booking at Shari-La Resort. We headed back to Moonlight to grab our packs and turn in our key, practically running away from that place!
It was at this point that we realized we should have purchased shares in Aloe Vera. Even Colin, who rarely burns, was in extreme pain due to the awful sunburn that had occured. To say we resembled beets would be kind. Needless to say, the journey with our backpacks on from Moonlight to Shari-La was a bit uncomfortable to say the least,
but we made it and were excited to have quite a nice room on a beautiful resort.
The Honeymoon gods were on our side as the next day there was a torrential downpour that lasted from about 4am to 4pm. Selfishly we were quite pleased, as this gave us an excuse to spend the day lazying about in our room without feeling guilty or ashamed that we were so burnt we couldn't set foot in the sunlight. We kept our skin soaked with aloe vera, and had a relaxed day playing Scrabble via our iPad, reading (Colin: Game of Thrones & Steph: Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult), and playing Crazy 8 Countdown while listening to music on our covered patio. Remember earlier when we mentioned this was a "dry" island? Well we thought ahead, bringing both a Rum Runner Flask that we filled with leftover Sangsom from Railay, and an additional mickey we purchased on our last night in Krabi. A bottle of coke was all it took for us to enjoy Rum & Cokes while waiting for the rain to settle down so we could head down to Coral Bay for some dinner.
BBQ Sets are very
Romantic Beach, Perhential Kecil
The most beautiful beach, hands down! popular on Perhentian Kecil, and remarkably cheap. For 18 RMB ($5.85 Canadian) you could select from a wide variety of fresh fish (squid, barracuda, snapper, prawns, lobster, some fish in whichs names we cannot pronounce nor remember...), and along with it, get a baked potato, salad and dessert. We found ourselves eating at Mama's Cafe quite a bit, as the service (her & her 4 sons work there), the food, and the prices were all great. The Guava Shakes are to die for, and the burgers and sandwiches were great (minus the processed cheese, but that was the only type of cheese we noted seeing during our entire trip)!
We booked a snorkel trip through Mama's for the next day, hoping that our sunburnt skin would be kind to us if we wore t-shirts while in the water. The snorkel trip is incredible value - 30 Ringgit ($9.75 Canadian) for a trip that leaves at 10:30am and has you back by 3:30pm, stopping at 6 spots along the way - 4 for snorkelling (Coral Gardens - hands down, the best snorkelling we have ever seen. The corals were MASSIVE and there were never ending fish!), Shark Point (we saw
4 Black Tipped Reef Sharks here!), Turtle Point (we saw two huge turtles), Lighthouse (the current here is very strong so you have to be a good swimmer, but again the fish were never ending, and there was a family of Sting Rays here!); Fishermans Village on Perhentian Besar for a 90 minute lunch break, and Romantic Beach, which was absolutely one of the most gorgeous places we saw on our entire trip.
Our snorkel trip made the entire journey to & from the Perhentians worth it for us. We have both done a significant amount of snorkelling throughout the Caribbean and Hawaii, but this day as a whole was the most successful snorkelling we have ever experienced. However, our day started out quite sad as we received some tragic news at 10am when we went to Mama's to meet for our snorkel trip. We noticed that it was closed when we arrived, a strange thing since we had eaten there for breakfast before and knew that they shouldn't be closed at 10am. We sat down at a table, figuring there was an explanation and that we would wait for our snorkel guide to meet us.
A few
moments later, a lovely man from England came over to ask us if we were waiting to go on the snorkel trip with Mama's. He explained that, according to the owner of Amelia's (directly beside Mama's), Mama had had a heart attack last night and had passed away. Her sons had accompanied her body back to the mainland and Mama's wouldn't be opening that day. We were shocked and very saddened, as apparently this had happened less than 15 minutes after we had paid for our meal the night before and smiled at Mama who was sitting beside the cash register. Unfortunately, it sounded as if nothing could have been done to revive Mama, however Steph being a nurse really had to focus to shake the feeling that perhaps she could have been some help, if only we had been there just 15 minutes later than we had. Nonetheless, we knew we couldn't live in the past and tried our best to enjoy the beauty of the islands, knowing that Mama had passed in the place that she loved the most, with her dedicated sons by her side.
Thinking that our (small) deposit was lost and we wouldn't be
able to take the snorkel trip through Mama's that day, we started to inquire with Amelia's about joining their boat trip. However, they hadn't forgotten about us and had sent a friend over from the mainland to take us on the trip. It turned out that we were the only ones who had paid a deposit with Mama's, so anyone else who had originally wanted to go on the Mama's boat ended up going with Amelia's (unfortunately, the owner of Amelia's capitalized on the tragic situation and refused to give back any money to those who made the switch from Mama's to him, and then wanted to return to Mama's when someone showed up to take them. Because we had actually paid Mama's a deposit, he agreed to give us back our 30RMB). We ended up being the only two on our snorkel trip, which made for a very romantic honeymoon trip!
We had planned to check out Monkey Bar that evening, which was over on Long Beach, but truth be told we were enjoying the relaxing vibe of the Perhentians and decided that aside from having dinner at Panorama Chalets Restaurant on Long Beach, we would have a
chill and final night on Perhential Kecil. We were still feeling the damage from both our time in Railay and our sunburns, and knew that our livers would appreciate a break before we met up with the guys again in Koh Phangan and went to the Full Moon Party.
We had the choice of spending another night on the Perhentians, which we would have LOVED to do as we really wanted to snorkel some more, but that would have left us with only an hour to transfer planes in Kuala Lumpur. We didn't want to risk missing our $120 each flight to Koh Samui, so we decided to give up our cheap flight from Kota Bharu to Kuala Lumpur (it was only $23 thanks to a terrific seat sale) and book an earlier flight. We took the 4pm ferry back to Kuala Besut and were checked into our hotel just after 6pm.
We opted to prebook our hotel, simply because we wanted to stay in a real hotel and live the life of luxury for one evening. We used Agoda to book the Grand Riverside Hotel, which cost us $55 for the night. The hotel was stunning, with
Mama's Cafe
A huge favorite of ours! Friendly staff & excellent food... not to mention cheap cheap!
(Rest in Peace Mama.... she passed away one night while we were there) a beautiful lobby, clean spacious rooms, and comfortable beds. We spent the evening walking around Kota Bharu, with Steph sweating immensely, as seeing that we were in a pre-dominantly Muslim city, she wore a maxi-dress and a cardigan that covered her chest & full length of arms. She still stuck out like a sore thumb, but considering the hotel doorman complimented her on her choice of clothing, she at least felt as though she was being respectful to those who lived in the city.
We don't really have much to say on Kota Bharu. We attempted to check out the night market but found that they were selling cases from the cell phones we used in Grade 9, which was 13 years ago according to our math. We ate at McDonald's because we truthfully hadn't been the least bit impressed with the food in Malaysia (the BBQ sets were good, but that was about it).
The next morning, our alarm failed to go off, and so at 620am when the hotel front desk called asking if we still wanted the taxi we had ordered for 6am, we frantically threw our things into our backpacks and anxiously hoped that
we would make our flight - boarding was at 7:20am and the airport was 30 minutes away! Thankfully, we made the flight without any real issues. We then had to transfer from Kuala Lumpur Airport to the smaller and older airport Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah, aka Subang - of note, it has been renovated and was the most beautiful of the two! In no time, we were boarding our flight and on our way back to the country that was definitely our favorite of the 3 we visited - Thailand!
Perhentian Island Tips Transportation Our flight including taxes/fees/luggage from Krabi to Kuala Lumpur on Air Asia for about $80. Our flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Bharu was a mere $32.
You can save about 7 Ringgit by paying for your taxi to Kuala Besut + Ferry to Perhentians (roundtrip) at the tourism counter at the Kota Bharu airport. We paid 210 Ringgit for all of the transportation, however this did not include our taxi back to Kota Bharu when we finished up at the Perhentians. In that case, we used a shared minivan and paid 20 Ringgit each to get to our hotel in Kota
Bharu.
Returning back to Thailand, we paid $40 each from Kota Bharu to Kuala Lumpur. We then had to taxi for 70 Ringgit ($22) from Kuala Lumpur International to Subang Airport, where our next flight was departing from. Our flight from Subang to Koh Samui was the most expensive of our trip, costing $120 each on Firefly Air.
Accomodation We price shopped places to stay on Long Beach and made note of the prices for other's reference. One thing we noted while trying to research Perhentians was how little information there is on the web. Hopefully this will be of use for someone!
Long Beach D'Lagoon: 65 (fan)
Buba: 265 (A/C)
World Cafe: 300 (A/C)
Panorama: 30-150 (fan or A/C)
Mohsin: 100 (fan room); 20 (dorm bed)
Moonlight: 30 (fan) - very dirty & run down, with dead bugs on our bed!
Coral Bay Shari-La: 180 (A/C with breakfast buffet) - however a couple we met mentioned they stayed one week and paid up front for only 80/night!
Butterfly: 30 (fan)
Senja Bay: 160-200 (A/C with continental breakfast)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.115s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 11; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0778s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
