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The last time you had heard from us we were in Jerantut. From here we decided to go to Kuala Terengganu (a strict Muslim city) for a couple of days as we had time to kill and we read that it might have been an interesting stop over, off the tourist track, on our way to Pulau Perhentian. Rather than do the jungle train that gets you into the jumping off point for the Perhentians at silly o'clock at night.
On the bus ride we headed up the east coast and passed through lots of little Kampungs (villages) some with just wooden shacks, women sitting around on their doorsteps in groups and of course little shacks for places to eat (asia seems obsessed with eating). The bus rides were quite pleasant and were a good opportunity to see the east coastline of Malaysia.
9 hours and 3 buses later we arrived at our destination, Kuala Terengganu. We trudged around a few different hotels (notice the word hotel and not hostel, doesn't mean they are nice!) We eventually settled for the Grand Paradise Hotel, not as posh as it sounds!
We headed straight out for some tea.
We came across
Bags of Turtles eggs.
There were loads of stalls selling these. Not just one! some local hawker stalls and were looking at a menu, just looking! and talking between ourselves about what to eat. The guy was stood there (as they do) and writing down everything we mentioned! So we didn't eat there, as we don't like pushy people, we went next door to a nice lady.
14.05.06
After Andy washed some clothes in a bucket and hung them up with some skilfully positioning of our travel line and had breakfast in a travellers cafe, we went out for a day of sight seeing.
We went to the central market, where on the internet we had seen that they were selling turtles eggs. So we were curious.
As we arrived we were greeted with the hustle and bustle of a local market scene with us being the only westerners around, everyone was having a real good look at us and being very curious.
They were selling everthing from fruit and veg, fish,clothing AND BAGS OF TURTLES EGGS!! They were around Rm20 for a bag of 6-8 and as you may remember from outr previous blogs, these are an endangered animal. How bad is that? The market was a real eye opener and really
interesting. The smells were really varied ranging from spices to smelly fish and stinking meat. On some stalls the women were sat there fanning there not so nice looking sausages to keep the flies off.
We had read in our Lonely Planet that an Island off the coast called Pulau Duyong Besar was quite interesting with lots of boatbuilders and a kampung lifestyle, so we decided to get a ferry over and have a look. Could we get a ferry?? Could we 'eckers like. We walked miles through Chinatown to a ferry terminal that wasn't there, then walked back to another couple and waited and waited and waited. Of course we tried to ask!! But all they did was point and grunt. There was also a Japanese guy (really nice) that had been told to wait at this terninal and he had been there ages obviously in the same boat as us (or not). I Andy tried to ask some normally friendly Malaysians on one of the boats but all they did was laugh at me (this got me very annoyed) Anyway the boat never turned up so we headed off to a shopping center that Melissa spotted. For
The local KFC
Anyone for a zinger burger? lunch we had a cup of sweetcorn!
Later on we checked out the bus timetables for our bus north to Kuala Besut, where we get our boat from to the Perhentian Islands (Paradise?)
The next day on the 15th we checked out of our hotel and walked up to the local bus staion to catch a 8:30 local bus to Besut.
At the local bus station whilst waiting for the local bus a local old guy came up and sat with us for about 45 minutes chatting to us in his basic English and our basic Malay, he even invited us back to his house, why? We don’t know. We assume that he was just being friendly. He gave us his address for us to send him a postcard from England. The Malaysian people seem really friendly in our brief encounter with them so far.
Kuala Terrengganu made a nice change away from the tourists and gave us a little insight into maybe a real Malay town.
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