Travel day to Perhentian Islands

Thursday, 25 July 2012

Our bus to Kuala Besut Jetty departed at 8am. We were ready at 7:30am to arrange for the Persona driver to take us to the bus station. The group of Germans that dormed besides us had the same idea. Instead of waiting for the driver to return, we hopped on the back of the pick up truck along with all the 8 big backpacks. I found a tight comfy seat among all the bags. Anders and Alan had to sit on the edge. Alan had the worst spot. He was on the corner, thus exposed both ways to the road. You would think the driver will drive with caution knowing half of Alan's ass was hanging off the truck. No way. Business as usual. He kept on driving fast and heavy on the turns anyways. Alan was holding tight to his dear life. Good thing we all got there in one piece.

While waiting for the bus, I busted out the Lekker chocolate wafers. Only well balance meals for us. We waited for some time before the bus showed up. Today was a travel day. One hour till the first town where we ate breakfast, 2.5 hours till lunch and 3.5 hours till the jetty to the 45 mins boat ride to the kecil island.

These long bus journeys seem to be passing quicker every time. We are getting used to it and it's ok since we are traveling for a long period of time. It give us some down time to catch up on our sleep and blogs. For lunch we stopped by this crappy buffet place. For 10 rm, you get all you can eat crappy fried rice, noodles, nasty fried chicken, and some really good watermelon. We also got the nasty powder juices. Yuck, but it stuffed us till we got to the island.

It was a bit chaotic at the jetty. They loaded us onto the speed boats like we were heard animals. It was a-ok for us. The sun was shinning and the sky was blue...unfortunately the water was brown! Anders questioned if that's how the water was going to be. I told him we still had 45min boat ride to go. It was amazing to see the color of the water changed from brown, to green, to blue to turquoise. Beautiful ride. It was also interesting to hear another American girl socializing with fellow passengers. In the matter of 45mins, I heard her travel story. She was traveling alone mostly, but had a few friends meeting her here and there. It's funny how Americans can just socialize with anyone...maybe not always welcomed by others.

When we arrived close to the beautiful long beach, they made us transfer to a smaller motor boat (aka taxi boat) to get to shore. Another 2 rm! The boat is supposed to fit 6 but an italian couple insisted to get on with us and the German couple (6 already including the skipper). So he took them but only one fitted, so the couple had to separate. Chaos.

Long beach is on the small island and is supposed to be the party beach of the Perhentian Islands. We choose to stay there since we already booked four nights at a quiet beach on Besar, the big island. Also it's the weekend, it'll be good to party it up. It's high season now, so most of the places on long beach is walk in only. We were a wee bit concerned about getting accommodations. We read a lot of reviews on trip advisor and most (if not all) were pretty worn down. Our mission was to find the best of the bad bunch, and not pay too much. Alan made a preliminary list on which ones to check out. First one was Matahari chalet, fully booked. It smelled like sewage anyways.

We became a bit despaired, so Alan wanted to have one person wait with the bags while the other two walked around finding a place. I insisted that we should walk together since we all had backpacks (well Alan with his roller backpack). Anyhow, being me and the girl, we all walked together. I stupidly walked us to half way the wrong end of the beach to find our second choice. Good thing a man told us where we were heading half way there. Anyhow, we ended up at Mohsin Chalet. They only had the most expensive room left that cost 220 rm for an AC room with one double and one single bed. We checked it out before agreeing. It will do for today, we could change the next day since we paid day by day.

Our chalet was the highest of all of them. This meant lots of step but a great view of the beach from the balcony. The beach is gorgeous. The water looked so blue, a beautiful compliment to the white sand. The reception / restaurant area also has a nice view and free wifi. The chalet was at the end of the beach, so the "loud" bar - black tip - was not that loud from our room at night. Supposedly they play music till 5am.

To be honest, the room wasn't in great condition, but better than what we had in Taman Negara. It had the basics and that's as good as you can get here with budget accommodations. Also, there weren't really any five star resorts here either. Anders did a good job of upgrading our bed by putting on our stolen sheets and mosquito net. It made our sleep feel a lot cleaner.

After agreeing to stay there, we all took a quick shower then went for dinner. We heard the food quality is ok for beach food, and the thing to try is BBQ. BBQ it was. We walked along the beach to find the fish we wanted at the right price. For 20 rm, we each had fresh fish, rice, sauce, and some nasty juice. Our candlelit table was literally on the beach. I had grilled squid and fresh watermelon juice which was delicious and refreshing. Alan had the king fish, which we also ate a lot of in africa. Anders took revenge on shark by eating it. Definitely lots of yummies in our tummies. The boys also bought some 7rm tiger beer in this shack where you summon the beach dude by ringing this bell.

We went to the only pumping bar afterward called Black Tip. It's really relaxing. They had straw mats and small tables set up on the beach. We weren't certain how these people made money because people just bought drinks from the shack because it was cheaper. There was also another shack where a white woman sold shots. She took one every time you did one. We weren't sure how she was still standing by the end of the night. There were also fire throwers and blowers entertaining us. Some people smoked hookah pipes. Really cool with the music in the background. This is what life is partially all about. We need very little in life to be pleasured. All this made us forget about the crappy room.

The night was filled with good conversations and people watching. The table next to us had two girls chatting up these two beach boys. It was interesting to observe how these not very attractive beach boys get so much attention because they work at the bar on a beautiful tropical beach. But even more amusing was when we saw this random girl who came to join them and stole the attention of the beach boys from the two other girls. The whole mood and conversation from those two girls went cold. Hee hee hee. Fierce competition for these fat lazy beach boys. I'm happy with my fatty whitey anders :-)

The only downside to this bar or any of the restaurants on this beach is the lack of bathrooms. All, except monkey bar, had no bathrooms. Since I'm a girl, and peeing is necessary when you drink, we had to make many trips back to our room up the many steps. Good work out. Anders was a sweetheart walking back with me every time. He didn't want anything to happen to me. We eventually decided to bring out Alan's small flask of $1 Tanguay rum from the Philippines. We quickly drank it up. I would like to think it's my stellar mixing skills and not that we were alcoholics. I mixed it with pineapple juice and 7up. We then refilled the flask with our expensive Bacardi from duty free. That also quickly went away. We were all then ready to dance the night away.

On the dance floor, no one wore shoes but still danced up a storm. There was one topless Malay guy butt bumping everyone. Anders and Alan got some pretty hard butt bumps, but they didn't mind. They've pushed him back pretty hard too. Eventually the guy got thrown out. The music was awesome at black tip. They played all the major hits. Definitely a fantastic first night on long beach.