Brian and I headed out on Friday evening to Kota Bharu via Air Asia (Asia’s southwest). Kota Bharu has to be the world’s tiniest airport. Seriously. There are only 4 gates! From there, we grabbed a taxi to Kuala Besut (a tiny fishing town on the northeast coast of Peninsula Malaysia), which took an hour. We drove through some small, cute towns that are in way better condition than most places outside of KL. Our taxi driver offered to help us buy our speed boat tickets to Perhentian that night once we arrived in Besut. He took us to an office where we shelled out $70 RM per person for a boat ride to/from Perhentian. The agent told us to meet him back at his office at 8:00am so we could catch the first boat out.
We then headed to our hotel. I knew when I booked it that I really only had a couple options and believe it or not, this was the highest rated hotel. Ha. Yeah. It was old and busted. The bathroom was a toilet/shower combo with a broken toilet lid. It was rather disgusting, but, as Brian said, I thought of it as camping, but one step higher. The hotel cost $30 and it was, by far, the worst place I’ve ever stayed. I didn’t really want to sleep under the covers… so we both slept in our clothes.
After sleeping like crap, we packed up and headed towards the travel agency. We met our guy and he walked us to the Jetty where we paid a $5 RM Marine conversation fee to go to Perhentian. Then he got on his phone and walked around for a little while. Brian and I were not sure what was happening as people started boarding boats. We were told to wait. Our travel agent guy disappeared for a good 10-15 minutes as we sat waiting. Eventually he showed up again with a group of other people. They were asked to fill out a sign in sheet and boarded a boat. Just when we thought we’d have to wait for yet another boat, they waved us over. We started to leave the dock, but turned around to pick up one last person before heading east 10 miles to Perhentian. The boat ride itself was fairly decent. Not too bumpy and I didn’t get seasick. Hooray!
We finally made it to Kecil (the smaller island) and decided to go directly to Long Beach which is where most of the restaurants are. The speed boat only went so far into the bay and then we had to take a water taxi (for $RM2 per person) from the speed boat to shore. Ridiculous. Looking back I have no idea why they didn’t take us to the pier. Makes no sense. It all worked out though. And Long Beach was amazing! A few places to eat, dive shops, bars, and mini shops. We found a cute restaurant and ordered some breakfast. I had a honey pancake and scrambled eggs.
The above photo is of the water in long beach. Simply amazing! You could see fish from the pier!
From long beach I spotted an outcropping of rocks that looked fun to explore, so after breakfast we headed out to see if we could make it. Down from the pier, into the rocks and ocean. It took awhile, but we made it. We had to do some rock climbing and improvising, but we got there! I just want to point out that we were both in sandals the whole way.. cause we’re a little nutty. Here are some pictures of the trail we blazed. We were actually joined by some tourists who took a swim at the bottom of the rock but never made it to the top where we did (though we didn’t make it to the top of the rock because it wasn’t safe).
There came a point where we decided it was not wise to continue, so we headed back towards long beach and found another restaurant where they were offering a buy one get one free strawberry daiquiri. I was all about it! After hiking/climbing for over an hour I was ready for a drink! 🙂
We asked the server lady how to get to our hotel and found the trail, which is a small paved road, to the other side of the island where our hotel awaited us. 
It was only a 10 minute walk and we found our hotel no problem. Tried to check in, but much to my dismay, the room wasn’t ready. Decided to head down to the private beach to check it out and it was freaking awesome! Crystal clear water and tons of coral, which actually sucks if you’re not wearing shoes. 
Headed back to the hotel after 30 minutes and checked in. Dropped our stuff off, changed into swimsuits and went straight back to the beach in search of turtles, fish, and possibly a shark. No such luck with the turtles and sharks, but definitely tons of fishies! It was awesome! Coral, sea cucumbers, fish, and you could see all of it! Did I mention that the water was the equivalent of warm bathwater? Oh yes! Salty though. So much so that it was rather easy to snorkel around and float around for hours. 🙂
After I was so pruned my fingers couldn’t take any more water, we went back to the room to shower and head to dinner on the other side of the island, but not before watching the sunset on our beach. We went back to the place where we had drinks earlier that day for some Italian on the beach. It was so romantical! Food was decent. Not the best, but the setting made up for it.
Long beach turns into a disco dance club on the beach after dark. Complete with torches and fairly decent sized sound systems. Funny, there weren’t that many people around and we were tired, so we went back to our hotel. That’s when we both discovered how sunburned we had gotten. Luckily I had worn the SPF shirt my mom got me, but I missed my thighs, butt, and lower back. No bueno. And Brian… 😦 His whole back was pink. So we went and bought Aloe from our local shop which turned out to have kittens!! After covering ourselves in aloe, we both feel asleep almost immediately.
It was an amazing day!
Kari's Adventures 