The Perhentian Islands, Malaysia

---

After a quick overnight stay at a hotel close to Kuala Lumpur International Airport, we caught a short flight to Kota Bharu at the top of Peninsula Malaysia's east coast. From there it was a one hour taxi drive a 45 minute speedboat ride to reach the Perhentian Islands.

All the way from the airport to the speedboat jetty, the rain kept falling and the skies were a very depressing shade of grey. It hit home at that point that we'd just about had enough of the wet weather. July is peak season for the Islands, and it would be terrible luck if we weren't bathed in sunshine everyday. Fortunately, as we moved further and further offshore the clouds disappeared and the sun started shining down. This was more like it...

The Perhentian Islands lie approximately 19 kilometres off the coast of northeastern Malaysia in the state of Terengganu, approximately 64 kilometres south of the Thai border. The two main islands are Perhentian Besar ("Big Perhentian") and Perhentian Kecil ("Small Perhentian"). Both islands are fringed by white sand beach, and the reefs and crystalline water are host to a wide variety of coral, sea-turtles, jellyfish, small sharks and reef-fish.

With eight nights booked at Abdul's Chalets on Perhentian Besar, the next nine days were designed for doing nothing. That's why this blog can be kept short and sweet - because the pictures can do all the talking...

However, picking out a few of the highlights:

- Claire passed her PADI Open Water Diving course with Universal Divers, surviving the dreaded drills of taking her mask off and having her air turned off 10 metres underwater;

- After Claire passed we buddied up and dived Shark Point (coincidentally, much to the dismay of Claire this is also where she was made to remove her mask). Awesome diving together, but unusual seeing each other underwater for the first time. Maybe not the best dive, but we did see a handful of black-tipped reef sharks which is always cool;

- Water teaming with fish! Unfortunately three of years ago the summer water temperature was a couple of degrees too high (it was a lovely 30 degrees for us) and killed off all the coral. It's coming back quickly now and the fish are back in high numbers. Rich enjoys antagonising the nervous Nemos, but our favourite has got to be the cute and beautiful spotted box fish;

- Swimming laps of the house reef as the sun went down to build up an appetite for dinner;

- Hassle free dining. With only three restaurants on our stretch of beach, all serving good food and having near identical menus, there was no time wasted deliberating where to eat each night. Each serving noodles, rice, curries, burgers, stir-fries, satay, sandwiches, soup, and nightly barbeques - there was plenty to keep our tummies happy!

- Lying on the beach and sitting on the porch of our sea-view beach hut (only five metres from the sand), just relaxing and reading our books; and

- Rich had his birthday - there can be few nicer places to turn 28! Although there were no 4th of July fireworks, that evening a distant storm put on spectacular show with lightning bolts flashing down into the sea and illuminating the whole sky. Quite a backdrop!

Boarding the speedboat at the end of our nine days we reflected that this was somewhere that we had really relaxed. We could feel it in ourselves and see it in each other. Lying on beaches, soaking up sunshine, diving and eatting yummy food... we could do more of this!!

Our plan was then to head to Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. With it being the wet season in that part of the world, there was going to be potential for some very wet days!

That's why that "was" our plan. We just couldn't take the risk with the weather. And as we said, we haven't quite finished with this beach business yet...

We're still flying up to Cambodia for ten days. However, instead of heading north after that we are going to head west to Bangkok and then follow the east coast down until we reach Kuala Lumpur. It's from there that we fly to Los Angeles on 15 August.

That ought to give us plenty of time to log some more dives, top up the tan a little bit more and enjoy some more great food...

---