Perhentian Islands

So far, Malaysia is getting an A+ and now we get to experience some of the most majestic islands in all the world, the Perhentians, located in the east coast of the peninsula. We have to take a 6 hour minibus ride (at 5 in the f&$cking morning! Ah!) to get to the ferry terminal which ended up taking 5 hours because the bus driver was driving like and F1 race car contestant. Heather managed to catch some zzzzz's while I just gripped my seat-rests for dear life and prayed that we didn't topple over the steep cliffs.


Mike, Dom, and Matt


The only good thing about our bus ride to Kuala Besut was we had an awesome group of people, all Brits. There was Pete and Sophie whom we met from our last bus ride from Krabi. Then there was Mike, Matt, and Dom, who were on holiday for 2 weeks from their very serious jobs in London. We saw each other everyday for almost a week and dubbed ourselves "the crew".

Long Beach

We arrived at Kuala Besut and boarded the small speed boat to the Perhentian Islands. 2 islands make up the Perhentians: Kecil and Besar. Kecil is the small of the two and is where all the backpackers go, specifically on Long Beach. Besar and the other side of the island are more resorty and for honeymooners. Heather and I are close, but we ain't THAT close...

So we disembark the mini speed boat on Long Beach, the most beautiful beach I've ever seen in my life. We grab our gear and start shopping for a bungalow that we'll be staying in for the next 5 days. After trekking up and down the beach, we settle on Panorama chalets for 55 ringget a night, or about $9 each. We have our own room, bathroom, and balcony that's about 100 meters from the ocean. Pretty sweet huh? The only bad part was that we only had a fan in our room and the electricity for the whole facility was turned off from 8am-noon and from 4:30-6:30. So annoying during the evening cause you don't want to be outside for mosquito hour but you can be inside cause it's too dark! But it'll do, so were happy.

Our bungalow

Because we arrived so early during the day, we had the entire afternoon to chill and hang out on the beach. We sat at one of the very few restaurants on the beach and ordered some lunch. When we finished, we laid out our towels and proceeded to lounge on the sand and play in the water for the next few hours. The sun was hot, but not too hot, so it was perfect. We even decided to go for a swim down the beach to get some exercise. Later we each did a separate 30 min run which felt amazing after all the pad Thai and noodles we've been consuming for about a month now...

Once the power was turned back on and we were able to shower, we went back to the same restaurant as before to get some dinner. It wasn't long until we ran into Pete and Sophie again (it's a really really small island). They told us that after dinner they were going to join the other English blokes from our early morning minibus for some drinks. We were down to go and hang out, I'm mean sh!t, what else were we going to do?

In a strange turn of events, the Perhentians have a decent night life despite only having 3 bars on the whole island. The four of us walk to the farthest bar down the beach and see the guys hanging out on the mats with some "monkey juice". So we grab a spot and join them in their nighttime shenanigans. We proceed to do this almost every night we were there cause there was good music, great drinks, awesome company, and fire dancers!

Fun times on the mats

Monkey juice

Orang Utan is the local sweet rum that is the drink of choice on the island. I tried to buy a bottle of it for back home but I waited till after we got off the island and the didn't have it! Dammit, so sorry dad, you won't get to sample any monkey juice when I come home. But as you may have guessed, orang utan with coke or sprite is called "monkey juice" for obvious reasons.

I told myself that I couldn't drink for 3 days after our 3 week Thai binge so I counted myself out for the first night of drinking. Trust me, I needed to detox! But we still managed to stay up until 2 am dancing and having a great time getting to know each other.

I'm my going to bore you with the mundane details of the next few days, just know that it was a lot of TSD (tan, shower, drink for those of you who are not up to speed with my super cool acronyms). There were some highlights which I'll tell you about...

As previously mentioned, I am not a scuba diver and have no desire to submerge my body  25 meters under water. No thanks. But Heather is all about it and had the opportunity to do 2 spectacular (and remarkably cheap) dives while we were on the island. She went to a dive spot called the pinnacle and also was able to do a ship wreck dive. In all honestly, I was a little jealous about the later. So I slept the sh!t out my bed every morning while she was doing her best Jacque Cousteau impression.

I never want to leave!

So hot right now

Being goofy

Matt and I swimming in paradise

Heather indulging in a "refreshing"sea
coconut shake at The Meeting Point Cafe

Its time for me tell you about "The Meeting Point" cafe. There were only a handful of restaurants on the island and 3 of then had prime beachfront property. The problem was they were right next to each other except the menus and chairs were slightly different. After a few trial and errors from the other 2 places, we established one of them ironically called "The Meeting Point" our cafe of choice, and pretty much ate here the next 4 days... Lunch and dinner with the exception of one night. Lol. Why spoil a good thing right? We knew the menu like the back of our hand by the time we left... Well maybe not the English guys cause they ordered a club sandwich during every single lunch!

It was one of the English blokes, Matt's, birthday the second night. So of course after dinner there was a series of drinking games. The boys brought a half a bottle of vodka, and a full bottle of gin and apple liquor. We mixed our booze with either coke or 100 plus (the local soda that tastes like a watered down version of squirt). We then proceeded to teach them how to play our favorite drinking game: kings cup. Afterwards, we hit up the rooftop bar that overlooked he water and had some pretty sick live music jamming. We heard some bob marley, pink Floyd and oasis. It was all going smoothly until Pete came running back to the group after saying goodnight, and told us there was a giant jumping green and yellow spider in their room. Petes face had a half smile  Matt and Dom were the brave souls who managed to find supreme courage (probably from being heavily intoxicated) and recruited to kill the spider. That's all you guys, I'll stay back here.... Despite some arachno-drama, it was an awesome night and I'm pretty sure Matt had an epic (or epileptic, as he'd like to say) time.

The Crew - Sofie, Heather, Matt, Me, Mike, Dom, and Pete

Matt's bday shot of... tequila?

BFF's

Ahhhhhh, the beach... my haven. I just about tanned every single day and consequently, got super tan during that week. A girls gotta get her vitamin D somehow! Anyways, there was always someone from "the crew" on the beach to hang out with. We would either tan (which never lasted too long cause it was so bloody hot and humid), or play frisbee (Heather's personal favorite), or read/play music. Not much to it really. Its the laziest/best lifestyle there is. Needless to say, we ended up staying an extra night because it was truely ecstacy on the Perhentians.

Our last day was very sad. We had to say goodbye to the English lads but a farewell to Pete and Sophie. We will be meeting up with them in Bali in a few weeks after Singapore. Love those two! So we leave the islands at 4pm to head back to Kuala Besut, but not before enjoying a full day of sunshine. When we get to Kuala Besut we onnly have a couple of hours to kill before we catch our bus to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. And the story continues....