Advertisement
Published: November 8th 2009
Edit Blog Post
After completing our scuba diving open water courses on Tioman Island, we headed north to another island off the east coast of Malaysia called Perhentian Island. Perhentian is actually two separate islands and we stayed on the smaller of the two at an area called Long Beach (which as the name suggests is next to a long beach). We'd heard mixed reports before getting to Perhentian as to whether or not the island was actually open or not because usually, at some point between the end of October and mid-November, pretty much everything on the whole of the two islands will close down for the monsoon season which hits the east coast at around that time. Luckily, we discovered we definitely had until the end of October before everything started to close, although some of the accommodation and cafes were already closed. Perhentian is known for being another very good diving spot in Malaysia, so, with our new scuba diving licenses, we thought we'd take advantage of the cheap prices and go for a dive with one of the guides from a dive shop on the island. Due to the sea being slightly rough on that day, the visibility wasn't quite
as good at the dive site we went to compared to how good it was on Tioman Island, but it was still fairly decent. The highlight of the 1 hour dive was seeing a massive stingray which was hiding under a rock (I was careful not to do a Steve Irwin though). I also saw loads of nemo fish and many other amazing looking fish that I can't remember the names of. Not far from the island was a big cargo ship wreck which you could dive down to and look around and we'd originally planned to maybe do that dive the next day, however, in the night it started to rain reaaaaallllly heavily and the next morning everyone (including us) decided to just get off the island as soon as possible because it could of carried on raining for days or even weeks. To get back to the mainland we had to pile onto a small and rather unstable-looking speedboat which was far too overloaded, it nearly flipped over a couple of times on the way which wouldn't have been fun. Fortunately though, we made it back to the mainland alive although very damp.
After an overnight stay
in the worst hotel of all time in Kota Bharu, it was back on the road with the destination being Penang. Being on the west coast of Malaysia, the weather was much better there since the east and west coasts have alternating wet seasons. Penang is yet another island, but this time it is much, much more built up and it's only about 3km off the mainland and is connected by a bridge. I only spent two nights there but it was a really nice place and was definitely worth seeing. I stayed in the biggest population centre on the island in a town/city called Georgetown and the guest house I stayed in was possibly the nicest accommodation of my trip so far (which makes up for that horrible place in Kota Bharu). The guest house was in a really nice looking colonial building and it had an old feel to it as well as being super clean and modern at the same time (it also had the best free breakfast ever). I took the tram to the top of Penang Hill on one of the afternoons that I was there to get a view over the island, but it was quite cloudy up there so I couldn't see much. It was noticeably cooler at the top of the hill though so it was good to get away from the heat and humidity for a bit. Wishing I could stay longer in the accomodation that I'd found on the island, it was time to head back to Kuala Lumpur as in a few days I had a flight booked to Cambodia.
Originally, the plan was to visit Cambodia whilst in Vietnam, but due to running out of time on our Vietnam visas, we decided it would be best to get a cheap Air Asia flight to Cambodia and back from KL whilst we were in Malaysia. So, back in KL, I had a bit of time to see some of the things which I'd missed first time around when I was there a couple of weeks back. I visited the Kuala Lumpur bird park which is a big walk-in aviary where most of the birds are allowed to fly around freely (there's a big net over the whole place so they don't fly away) and it was actually really good. Also, I found a nice lake on the outskirts of the city where you could see the whole city skyline from. Both of the days that I was back in KL, it was extremely hot and humid, it was bad before but this time I couldn't even sit still without sweating since it was about 95% humidity. All in all it was a fun last week in Malaysia and now I'm in Cambodia which I'll be writing about next time, bye for now!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.149s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0562s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Jennifer Purves
non-member comment
Guesthouse in Penang
Hi there! It was great to read your blog as it has some really useful info for my travels! I'm currently in KL and hope to visit Penang very soon. Please can you tell me the name of the guesthouse in Penang? It sounds really nice so maybe I'll stay there when I visit! Thanks! Jennifer