Everybody's Going Surfing, Surfing Cherating

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After a rather quiet time in Kuala Terengganu we headed a few hours further south along the beautiful coastal road, which has been stunning all the way from Kuala Besut with its gorgeous blue sea running to the left of us. Our next stop was Cherating, a small village by the sea with a beach. Our guide book described it as an outstanding little “travellers” community where the locals have moved out and travellers moved in, it is an oldish village of ramshackled tinned roofed wooden houses and once you get used to it quite cute really. The draw here is the surf and pretty much every local chap surfs. We wondered around for an hour in the baking heat and finally finding a gaff for the night for a whopping 40RM, with no sea view. We were offered one for 40RM with sea view but the western style toilet didn’t have a seat, the owner was adamant we could use it but we said no way hosay, anyway the chalet was a hole (really a complete dump) so we left, hence why we ended up in a 40RM chalet which was quite nice with no sea view (baring in mind it is still out of season on the east coast we were expecting accommodation to be slightly cheaper).

Once we had recovered from traipsing around for ages we headed out in search of an ice cold beer, being a “travellers” community most places sell beer even though the village is in the conservative state of Terengganu. We found one with ice cold glasses too and enjoyed a nice beer by the river. After which we wondered around, had dinner, a few more beers and went to bed.

The next day was a bit of a nothing day really, not knowing how to surf and it not being in the turtle nesting season (the east coast is a good area to view the turtles nesting, when it’s the season of course, between May and October we believe), the place left us with not much to do except watch the surfers and drink beer. Still on a tight budget we couldn’t drink all day, so we drew out the process of drinking big bottles of beer for the longest time ever before having a nice dinner and a few more beers back at our gaff. We had to resort to drinking inside our gaff to avoid the biggest mosquitoes we have ever seen, even G was feeling them on her!!!!

All in all it was a good place to stop but not being surfers we weren’t really drawn into the “travellers” community which consisted of about 5 westies (fishermen trouser wearing ones at that oh and the obligatory guitar playing one) and to be honest were left a bit bored after walking up and down the one road of the village about a million times.

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Comments

[madey]

good
how to surf there?? have rental surfboard??

[Tony and George]

chatering
the surf was okay, the locals were loving it, dont know how much surf boards are to rent but they have loads of them.