Perhentian Islands

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Sorry it's been so long since i last wrote but the internet is hard to come by when you're staying in paradise! So...much to get through...we left the beautiful Luang Probang last Saturday for a short internal flight to the Vientiene before catching an 8pm flight on to Kuala Lumpur. Both flights were short and absolutely fine, the problems started once we arrived at Kuala Lumpur and none of our 4 cards were working...after some frustrating phone calls, thousands of security questions, one Big Mac and a few hours we were finally with some money and could settle in for a night at the airport! To my suprise there were actually lots of people spending the night in the airport! Once comfortable we were able to get a few hours sleep amongst our bags on the hard terminal floor! Our flight the next morning took us to the East Coast of Malysia, Khota Buhra before getting an hour long taxi ride to a jetty in Kuala Besut (now 24 hours into our journey from Luang Probang). After sorting a ferry ticket we were at sea and on our way to Pulau Kecil. Once again, i have no words to describe how beautiful this island is...white sand, aqua water, palm trees, some shacks...that's about it! Paradise! We arrived at our final destination, Long Beach at around midday relieved to have made it but with no accomodation for the night. After reading in the Lonely Planet we walked up the beach to a recommended "chalet"...it had shared bathroom facilities but we signed up for 2 nights...well it was an experience...the room could best be described as a shed on stilts without a light but a fan that ran from 7PM to 7AM. Basic was the word to describe it! Nevertheless we were happy to have arrived at our destination and excitedly made our way to the beautiful beach! We chilled on the beach until around 7 before our first experience of our accommodation...after over 3 weeks it was high time for a shave so i took my razor to the shack that was our shared bathroom and began shaving, this proved difficult as i was under constant attack from mozzies so decided i'd head back to the shed and let Yasmin shave my face instead...on my walk back i was met by a dragon (the very same as in Bangkok) who was angry, whipping it's tail and puffing out its throat...i now had a dilemma, the dragon or the mozzies...i opted for neither and took a shower, half shaved hoping it would have disappeared by the time i got out! It hadn't and instead i rushed by it razor in hand and got Yas to finish off the rest of my shave! In the evening we found a nice place on the beach and had local Malay curry!

The next day (now Monday 16th) we had a day on the beach again. In the evening we were approached by a french guy and a few brits to play volleyball on the beach which was a lot of fun and led us to having food in the evening with a load of people which was cool before sampling the local booze, named Monkey Juice (a sweet rum) at a beach bar in the evening. The following morning we moved accommodation to a place we'd been recommended to stay by a man we'd met in Laos. It was essentially an upgrade into another shed but this time the shed was bigger, cleaner and with a light in the room and much nicer shared facilities, run by an Irish woman.

On Wednesday was another contender for best day of the trip (/life) as we went on an 8 pound snorkeling trip for the day. The first stop was to a coral bay named the lighthouse, was awesome and saw all sorts of fish around. The next stop was turtle point where we saw the outline of one turtle in the murky water below and another disappearing into the distance. Feeling a little disappointed we went to our third destination, shark point! After unsuccessfully looking for sharks for around half an hour our boat driver took me and Yasmin off and after a few minutes he'd found 3 or 4 sharks which we were able to see from about 10 feet away in the crystal clear water. Was awesome seeing black tipped sharks that close! We then had lunch at a local fishing village which was good. After lunch, sensing our disappointment our driver took us to another turtle point, after driving around a bit he saw a turtle and we dived in and were straight away able to see the turtle really clearly, about meter wide and long on the sea bed, about 10 feet down, after watching it for 5 minutes it came up to the surface for air, brushing against Yasmin and missing her by just centimeters, an incredible experience! The final stop was to (another) beautiful stretch of beach surrounded by coral where we saw loads of fish including rainbow fish, clown fish, parrot fish, barracuda, giant clams and sea cucumbers to name but a few. To make a great day even better, in the evening we set off for the ten minute walk to the other side of the Island to watch the sun set from the pier which was beautiful and then on to a restaurant our Irish landlord had recommended which cooked fresh fish in front of you on the BBQ. As Mum, Dad, Granny and Laura will remember, one of the best meals i've ever had was lobster that was cooked in the same way on a beach in Mauritius, remember that? So I went for the same again and Yas and had red snapper. It was sooooo good and tasty and rounded off what was such an amazing day!

After one experience of a lifetime the day before (swimming with a turtle) came another, yesterday after breakfast we went for a 40 minute hike through the island jungle to a secluded beach we'd been told about by one of our friends from Volleyball. This was the most beautiful beach i've ever seen, and that's saying something after the last few days AND we had it totally to ourselves! The two of us on an empty 80 meter stretch of beach that looked like something straight out of Robinson Crusoe...got some great pictures which you'll see soon no doubt! After spending the day there we walked back and went back to the same restaurant again where I had Lobster...again! And Yas had chicken satay and squid!

This morning we got up, ate some breakfast and took a 5 minute boat taxi over to the bigger island of the two Perhentian's to check in to our hotel for the next 5 nights! While waiting to check in, Yas was looking at the dive centre prices and rather impulsively, follwing our amazing snorkelling trip we've decided to take up a 4 day PADI course, allowing us to dive alone anywhere in the world in the future! It starts tomorrow, what we hadn't anticipated was the 120 pages of theory we need to read before tomorrow at 9.30AM! 80 pages in i decided to come write this! Hope all is well back home, we're having an incredible time here and making the most of it as not too long before home now!

lots of love

Jamie and Yasmin

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