26 June 2008 - The Perhentian islands!!

17th June

We had to drag ourselves out of bed this morning! We were very kindly offered a lift into town by the guest house owner, (it was in his best interests as we had to get to a cash point to pay him, but still kind non the less!!)

We paid the owner and he took us to the bus station so we could get our bus. On first impressions the Malays were great. We had 15Min's before our bus left so we got a coffee and some breakfast. We actually missed our bus due to a communication error but thankfully we only had to wait 30Min's to get the next one!

An hour later we arrived in Kota Bharu, we asked about the next bus we needed and was told we had to wait 2hrs. In the mean time Dan went off to find another ATM as we realised the island where we were headed had no ATM's so we had to stock up before we got there. I was pleased to see Dan return as some guy had sat next to me and stared at me continually for at least 10Min's. I almost told him it is rude to stare at people but i thought better of it!!

Two hours on this bus and we arrived at the port town of kuala Besut. We bought our boat tickets and promptly got onto the speed boat. In 30Min's we were pulling up to the pier at kecil perhentian, i have to say i was very excited much to Dan's annoyance (he didn't want me getting my hopes up!!), this island looked gorgeous! The water is the clearest we have seen yet, the sort that you just want to dive right into!! As we walked down the pier i could see the fish and couldn't wait to get diving and snorkeling!!

We found somewhere to stay within the first 5 Min's, it was a basic bungalow with an attached bathroom, electricity was 7pm to 7am so that wasn't too bad.

We had been advised by Anwar, Kate, lee and Anna, to try out the m&m and snickers shakes, well we didn't waste anytime!! We decided that we would have to ration ourselves to one every other day as they were seriously tasty!!

Later that day we got chatting to a group of people so we joined them for dinner. All of a sudden the night sky light up, we all looked up wondering what was going on. It must have been a meteorite, it was amazing it shot across the sky for at least a couple of seconds before it fizzled out leaving an orange and white streak behind it. I don't think we will ever see anything like it again in our lifetime and it was the topic of conversation for the entire evening.