Turtle Fun

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Hello, it's Ben.
We are in Kota Bharu now, up on the north eastern tip of Malaysia. It is supposedly a very conservative, traditional islamic place, but so far in that respect it hasn't differed much from the other parts of mainland Malaysia we've seen. However, the singing to bring people in for prayer at the local mosque was the best i've heard in the country! It didn't have the spooky tinge we'd heard in places like Melaka, it was almost chirpy! I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it as we wandered around the town today! On Pulau Perhentian Kacil (the long name!) i asked this guy Jason (a Malay from Kuala Lumpur) whether they were recordings or live performances and he said that most of the time they are live performances, even at 4.30 in the morning they're in such good voice! It definetly beats the terribly out of tune cacophonous ringing of the Reading church bells anyway.
So this morning we were on the Perhentian islands (Kacil), as we were yesterday and half of the day before. We gave up on visiting Taman Negara national park as we have to be in Kuala Lumpur in four days to fly to Sabah.
The perhentians were nice, but we were staying in the busy part (long beach it was called), and the late night bars really loved their terrible fairground-esque trance pop rubbish. But it was a beautiful island and we met some nice chaps from Canada, Sweden and Malaysia to tongue wag with over food and drinks.
We had a hard time finding somwhere to stay, not for the lack of accomodation, but lack of suitability to Sarah's tastes! But to be fair, some were pretty crap. One was a shed with a bed in it (for 20rm, about 3 pounds), others were nice but had shared toilets that were pretty nasty, but we found a nice place in the end (and later had a nice chat with the guy running one place we turned down because of the nasty toilet). It had a window that wouldn't shut though, and the shower head had red goo forming at the holes and the water tasted like metal and plasticine, but hey, it did the job.
The best part of our stay on the island was our snorkelling trip day. We snorkelled in some cracking places and saw some crazy coral and fishes, but the highlight was finding a green turtle and swimming with it. It swam around below us, between 10 to 2 metres below us, occasionaly coming up to the surface, as our group (me, sarah and 5 others) kept a respectful distance on the surface, but followed it's every move. It was really amazing. It has these two eel-like fish swimming underneath it's belly the whole time, and a tiny yellow fish that stayed next to the turtle's head. There was a lot of small jellyfish in the sea that the turtle would chomp at as it passed them. It was brilliant.
The speedboat there and back was a bit crazy. The first one was crowded and we all got very wet. The boat today was pretty much overfilled, but we didn't get too wet as the boat couldn't go very fast because when it attempted speed it lunged sideways alarmingly! We'll be a bit more careful in future, but when there's only one boat service there's not a lot you can do. But it was an experience anyway. And not everyone was as uncomfortable as me as there were the few who had got on first and spread themselves out without making any space as at each stop more people boarded. We ended up sharing a taxi to Kota Bharu with one of these lovely people, who is staying in this same hostel as it made our journey cheaper.
Apparently Kuala Lumpur is experiencing some flooding and heavy rainstorms, and we're off there on Monday, so it should be interesting. Apparently there is a lot of trouble in some of the southern states of Thailand too (that has been going on for a long time but has been pretty much ignored by the British press, to my knowledge) so we have to do some homework and make sure we stay well away from there when we head there in a couple of weeks.
My eyes are going blurry now, it must be time for bed. Goodbye! x

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Comments

[Andrea]

Hi Ben Well your definitely giving me the travel bug! The eel like grey fish on the turtle are remora. They are cleaners and stick with turtles and sharks, oh and divers sometimes. We had one with our group on the whole of a dive once that was trying to clean our silver cylinders, bless. We had no problems in Thailand this year, but admittedly we have never travelled further south than Phuket. There is crime around; opportunists who will take wallets etc just like anywhere. There’s lots of stuff you read your supposed not to do like don’t show the soles of your feet (unclean), that I see all the time. Don’t pat anyone, head is the clean, sacred, part of the body) on the head, so try to resist ruffling cute little children’s hair. Take shoes off before you go inside anywhere where there are shoes outside, otherwise look like your going to do it and the proprietor. Like the Japanese, they don’t like confrontation, so arguments don’t really happen, everyone makes their apologies and sorts it out politely. Thai’s like people talking their language and you can pick up a few useful phrases, like mai ben rai (no problem) which will go down well if needed. Must get on with work now Andrea.