After leaving Koh Phangan's awesome beaches and Salad Beach Resort we headed south and over to border into Malaysia again to sample the Perhentian islands. People say they are the most beautiful islands in Malaysia so we thought we ought to check 'em out.
Going back into Malaysia travelling the most direct route to the Perhentian islands turned out to be a bit of a headache as it took 2 days of bus, ferry & taxi rides to get there. We also had to go through the most dodgy part of Thailand with military checkpoints every 5kms and lots of troops and machine guns everywhere. Wasn't easy but we made it. After some initial crappy weather, everything cleared up and the Perhentians were looking pretty damn nice. The islands are very remote only accessed by boat and they have no roads and don't have stable 24 hour electricity. We pretty much spent everyday on the beach. The only downside staying on the islands is that food is bloody expensive (compared to the mainland) and generally low quality with a couple exceptions. I'll tell you, I was constantly hungry and my stomach couldn't wait to get off the islands so I could chow down like the pig that I am.
The sand was perfect for sculpting and we got creative trying to makes castles and stuff. Uriah's posing with her turtle. The picture doesn't do it justice because it looked much bigger in person.
Water... Crystal clear with surprisingly nice coral and fish just off the beach.
After leaving the Perhentians we headed to Kota Bharu to figure out our next step. Kota Bharu is in the north-eastern state of Kelantan which is said to be the most conservatively Muslim part of Malaysia. It didn't really feel all that conservative compared with the rest of Malaysia though and the people were incredibly nice. A genuine kind of nice that we haven't found anywhere else in southeast asia. And... I got some good FOOD in quantities acceptable for a largish man. Malaysia has some damn good desserts too.
There wasn't much to do in Kota Bharu except eat and browse around. We spent a good part of the day planning our next moves and we've had to shake up our travel plans again. Ever since we left Cambodia, we've been just making it up based on what we feel like doing. Thats how we ended up in Japan! Its an amazing feeling to have the freedom to be able to do that sort of thing. To just wake up and ask yourself "where do you want to go today?"
Anyway, we bought overnight bus tickets to Kuala Lumpur and from there we were planning on going to Bali & Lombok in Indonesia. Flights turned out to be too expensive though at this stage of our trip so we're saving Indonesia for another day. We also encountered some problems with buying our tickets for London as our discounted Qantas tickets cannot be issued electronically for Bangkok->London and would have to be printed paper tickets issued from Australia. Rather than sitting in Bangkok for probably over a week waiting for tickets to be mailed here (which would be very risky because they may never show up!) we've decided to head back to Sydney for a week to straighten out our matters before heading to europe for a month. Its not going to cost us that much so why not? Hopefully we get our flights!
On another note...Its been 6 months of travelling now. How time flies.
-Derek
No comments:
Post a Comment