Malaysia - Day 3: West to East

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We both forgot to set alarms and we had tickets for at bus at 10 a.m. I woke up at 9:45 and freaked out since there was no way we could get our things together, pay for the room, get to the jetty, take the ferry to the mainland and get to the bus terminal in time. Luckily Joel remembered the hour time difference. It was still a close call though.
Because we were running to make this bus we didn’t get any breakfast and we didn’t get in to Kota Bharu until almost 5 p.m. Luckily I had some almonds in my bag, but we were still starving. As soon as we got to Kota Bharu, Joel wanted to see if we could get to the Perhentian Islands right away instead of spending the night in Kota Bharu. We met Johar (Joe) the taxi driver, he called the ferries and told us the last ferry was in an hour. We said “OK. We can make that.” So he took us to Kuala Besut to catch a ferry. (He also pointed out that it was the first day of Ramadan and it would be difficult to find food anywhere. Excellent.) What we didn’t realize is that the taxi to the jetty takes an hour and fifteen minutes normally. Because this was the first day of Ramadan, it took even longer. So we ended up missing the last ferry. We got a room near the water, bought ferry tickets for the next day.
We ate dinner at one of the two restaurants that were open Kuala Besut. We got seafood Koay Teow, which was delicious. I’m not a huge fan of octopus, but I always feel like I should eat it anyway. I definitely prefer cuddlefish. Luckily, this had both.
We walked down by the water a bit, but there was no beach, so we went to the other restaurant that was open and ordered cendol (pronounced “chen-dall”), a traditional Malay dessert. Not a fan. It had ice, some sort of coconut milk, red beans, and green noodles. Noodles and cold, sweet things was a strange combination.
We decided to call it an early night since there wasn’t anything else to do in Kuala Besut and we had to catch the ferry at 7 the next morning. We had also had several action-packed days in a row and anytime we had laid down, we were out instantly. So we used the internet for a while and went to sleep.

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