Monday April 13th Perhentian Islands

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Monday April 13th
The minibus was fine, slept for a bit which was good because when you were awake you couldn’t look out the windows for the fear of dying as the driver tore his little hiace van through the jungle at breakneck speed. We arrived in the town to get a speed boat to the Perhentian islands at about 10.30 and boarded a little speedboat which proceeded to ramp over the waves and crash down on the ocean with enough force to have our asses bruised. Nice tip though as you headed out with all the islands in the distance. Felt like we were heading for the set of lost. There is very little on the Perhentian islands. We came to Long Be3ach on Perhentian Kecil, the small island. It is about a kilometer of beautiful jungle backed white sand beach with a calm clear azure ocean lapping up. There are no 5 star accommodations here; the electricity gets switched off at 8 in the morning till 6.30pm. Most places have their own generators but they are mainly for the shops, restaurants, not for the accommodations. Our boat pulled into the bay of Long Beach anyhow and about 100m off shore a little dingy came out to pick us up so we had to throw our rucksacks overboard into this little punt. We then had to throw our bags on our backs and wade in through the knee deep water to the shore. Our first taste of island life. We had no accommodation booked so had to head off looking, luckily soon as we got on the sand some fella from Belfast came up top us and said we could leave our bags in his dive shop while we headed in search of a bed. Got chatting to him and he recommended a place called Panorama and we managed to get a little hut in there.

The midday sun was beating down as we picked our bags up and walked up along the waters edge to our new very basic non air-conditioned lodgings, it only cost a tenner a night though so not too bad. We hung around out of the sun for a while as this was the first real hard sun exposing place we’ve been. Our skin is still the pasty white hue that we live with at home but I am sure a few days here and we’ll be getting confused for the locals. I headed down to the dive school again and booked in for a PADI open water dive course to start the next day and then we headed for something to eat. In total there are about 4 restaurants on the beach and 2 little shops. All set in little beach huts, it’s a very laid back kind of place, no roads, no supermarkets, no anything really. You can’t help but feel chilled out here. We certainly weren’t chilled out that night though as our non AC room pretty much cooked us. But our 3 resident Geckos living on the wall outside our door kept the insects at bay, we also had a big double Mossier net so that helps too. It’s like sleeping in an indoor tent, its brilliant.

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