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Perhentian islands - Paradise at the right time of year.. not monsoon season!!
Pulau Perhentian Besar, Malaysia
So after smashing it at our 2nd full moon we had to move on. Because of our early arrival in the south islands we had 2 weeks to kill before our flight out of singapore and we had no plans! So we asked around and did abit of research into where to head next and the perhentians kept popping up.
It was down to just the 5 of us now James, Rob, the 2 london lads and myself. The Perhentians are 2 small islands on the north coast of Malaysia. Because of the size of Koh Phangan and the Perhentian islands there were no travel routes that were pre booked so we had to make our own arrangments.
This seemed easy enough.. how wrong could we have been. The boat across to the mainland was easy enough, apart from the fact it took us to the wrong port! From here we had to get to the bordor of malaysia as no buses ran all the way through.
Firstly we had to get from the port to the bus station which was about a 8hr journey, we booked one up and got taken to the travel agents, 3delays, 2 bus drivers and 4hours later we were on our way in our own private minibus so it wasnt all bad. After getting dropped at the bus station we had a 7 hour wait for our bus to the bordor which was at 2am. Thats okay, we can deal with that, just wait around in the station until it turns up, well come 12pm people started telling us there was no bus until the morning and all the offices had closed. What do we do? listen to the locals and get a hostel or stick with our instincts and stay until 2am.
2am came and we'd made the right choice, the bus turned up and we were on our way down to the bordor. When we got to the bordor is was pretty simple, another 2 hours in a taxi and a 45 minute boat journey.
So after what turned out to be a horrendous 24hr journey, we finally arrived in what we'd been told was paradise! Once again we were proved so wrong..
The Perhentians are paradise when its in season, theres plenty of backpackers, hostels, bars and things to do. We had arrived on pretty much the last day of rainy season and the start of monsoon season! 1 hotel, 1 shop (with no alcohol) and 3 other people was all that was waiting for us. No electricity between 7am and 7pm and of course it was pissing it down. It reminded us of a modern day fawlty towers. We'd made the wrong choice but decided to stick it out for 2 days. It did however mean we could upgrade ourselves to the king sweet for not alot of money.
We made the decision for 2 of us to jump back on the boat and go and get 5 bottles of vodka and just sit inside and have an all day session. This was probably the only thing that was on offer to us and ended up being a very amusing day/night.
On our last day there we walked down to the shop and got offered a snorkeling trip by the shop owner. We thought we may aswell go as there was nothing else to do and it was raining again. This turned out to be quite a good choice as we ended up swimming with a turtle, still no sharks though!
We booked our way off of the island for the following morning and headed down to what would be our first city for a few months, Kuala Lumpur!
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