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Published: August 7th 2013
Jade on Long Beach
The beach we stayed on at the Perhentian IslandsOur time in Malaysia so far seems to be flying by, and we are quickly getting to the point where we will soon be crossing over the border into Thailand to start our adventures there......however we still have our dwindling list of places here we want to visit beforehand!
From Melaka we moved on up to Kuala Lumpur, which was only a quick 2 hour coach journey, and so before we knew it we were trudging the streets of KL to try and find a bed for the night. Melaka seemed to have chilled the both of us out a lot and so we had decided while we were there that we wouldn't book any hostels and we would just find somewhere to stay once we arrived.....this was probably the worst decision we could have made, as most of you are probably thinking, as KL is the capital city of Malaysia......and so it's going to be busy!
We had been recomended a hostel to stay at by one of the guys we had met while we were in Singapore and so decided we would give this one a go as it sounded like it was probably one of the
best places to stay at. However once we got there we found there were no beds that night, and this isn't a small hostel either, it's like a big hotel, a very nice one at that and its fairly cheap. So after we had been sent in the direction of where most of the hostels were nearby, this became the common response whenever we asked for a bed for the night.....either there was no room or they were refurbishing the place! We managed to find a room eventually though.....and to be honest i'm suprised we survived the night there! It's only a small place and would have been quite a nice place had effort been put in by the owners, from the moment we walked in we felt like we were just a hinderence to the guy who owned it.....and he just got even more annoyed when Jade asked if she could see the room before we payed out to stay there.......so Jade went off and viewed the rooms and we ended up staying just the one night, and i'm glad it was just that to be honest, the hostel had had a recent outbreak of some recent visitors, who
the pest control had come to sort out thankfully but the smell was so strong that i think if we had spent any longer there it may have even killed us off! However after spending a night in our small windowless room smelling to high heaven of some kind of pest poison, we decided to check out and had managed the day before to actually book a few nights in the original hostel (Regae Mansions) which we had been recomeded......after the previouse hostel we felt like we were in the Ritz! And the place definately lived up to it's reputation and i would recomend staying here to anyone who heads over to KL. The staff are so friendly and the rooms are amazing....not to mention the roof top bar which stays open to the early hours where it seems everyone goes to party of an evening.
The rooms themselves are pretty cool, you get your own hole in the wall as it were, but i'll let you look at the pictures as they probably explain it better than i could!
Kuala Lumpur hasn't really got loads of things to keep you occupied, it's more of just a place
where everyone passes through, either geting flights to or from variouse other locations, but we didn't let this stop us....we still explored the city as much as we could and ended up visiting Batu Caves which is just outside of the main city and really easy to get to.....this is one of the main Hindu Temples in Malaysia apparently and is well worth the visit. Jade even managed to get attacked by one of the hundreds of monkeys which are around the caves which ended up being one of the highlights of the day for me.........we were climbing what seemed like hundreds of steps to get up into the caves and on the way up there are monkeys everywhere! anyway as we got about half way up there was one just siting there staring at the passers by and so Jade decided to take a picture, but as she did so it just jumped at her and clung on to her bag around her neck as it had seen a small bottle of hand sanitiser hooked on..........once he had decided he was having it that seemed to be it.....no matter how much she spun around sending the monkey flying through
the air, nothing could get it off, in the end i think he had enough and grabed the railings and eventually pulled the bottle off, and then he just sat there in front of us and attempted to get in........i didnt see it on the way back down so i assume the hand sanitiser got the better of it! haha.....but they are clever little things and we were not the only victims as pretty much nearly everyone had something taken off of them.
With the best part of our time over in KL we began to try and decide where we were going to visit next on our travels and both decided on the Cameron Highlands, which is meant to be amazing for treks but in the end we never got to go here as apparently it was the peak season so it seemed everyone was heading there and we just couldn't find anywhere to stay (we learnt our lessons from KL and decided to try and find a hostel online before we got there!) so in the end we ended up heading to the coach station and heading off to the East coast to the Perhentian Islands......This is
also another great place to visit if you like Diving or Snorkelling as the water is so clear and even just going in the shallow sea you end up seeing small fish swiming away from you which is pretty cool. It took us around 9 1/2 hours to get to by coach to Kuala Besut where we then got a spead boat over to the Perhentian Islands just as the sun was coming up, and this took about another half an hour before we were then told to move across to another smaller boat (which i don't think Jade liked one bit) and then jumping off the boats into the shallow waters and begining our next task of trying to find our home for the next few nights.......now on these islands you can't actually book accomodation so you just have to turn up and hope theres room, which there always seems to be! We ended up geting our own little beach chalet for 90 Ringgit, about £18 and the cheapest place we could find, and it wasn't actually all that bad, plus it wasn't far from the beach so it was an ideal location! Again the guys who worked at
this place were really friendly and really chilled out, on the first morning we had to wait a while until our room was cleaned and so stayed in the reception area as we were both knackered after the journey........one of the guys from the hostel then decided we needed entertainment so got his guitar out and sang quite a few songs really badly while drinking beer.....this was at 8 in the morning so after no sleap the previouse night it became a bit surreal and we had to laugh afterwards.
If your on a budget the islands can be a little bit more expensive than on the mainland but it's definately worth a visit, on the upside it has some of the cheapest Scuba Diving courses in the world! So it's worth a trip just for that. The night life along the beach is really good also, with lots of little bars opening up giving firedancing shows and a few little restaurants throwing on BBQs.
We ended up staying here for just 4 days, and i managed to get beyond burnt aswel, but we were both glad we had come over and visited some islands as thats one
of the main things we were coming to SE Asia for, so hopefully there will be plenty more like this to come! After we had left our coach at Kuala Besut on the way over, we manged to buy return tickets for the spead boat for 60RM so that was handy as when it came to leaving we could just jump on and off we went......even if they did like to overload the boat to bursting, as they seem to do with any mode of transport over here. For those who do venture over this way, just to warn you once closer to the beach or the port whichever way you're going, once changing over to the smaller the boat taxis they like to take you to the beach or to the boat then they let you know that they are going to charge everyone 2RM each (so it shouldn't be anymore than this either).....I know it's only like 40p but just so that it doesn't come as a shock, over here in Malaysia, as i'm sure they do everywhere they will do anything to get as much money out of Westerners as they can! So anyway once we were
back at Kuala Besut, we decided to get a taxi with a couple of lads we met on the boat to the nearest town to begin our next long coach journey back to the West Coast of Malaysia!
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