We decided to spend the last 2 weeks in Asia on a beach and soak up as much sun as possible before leaving, so we headed to the Perhentian Islands, just off the north eastern tip of Malaysia. Beautiful beaches – white sand, clear water, awesome snorkelling. These islands are far from developed, not a single road on the island, and the resorts are scattered on different beaches between the 2 islands (Kecil & Besar). We spent most of our time on the small island, Kecil.
The hotels on the islands are mostly budget huts with interesting accommodation standards (1 and 2 Star Beach Bungalows!!). We spent our first few nights on Coral Beach, which was one of the quieter beaches, with only about 5 hotels, few restaraunts, and dive shops. No nightlife whatsoever...we found it hard at first to find beer anywhere on the island, but managed to sniff some out (you really had to ask as it wasn’t displayed). So needless to say, we were able to cut down our average daily beer intake. We ended up meeting a few people who had asked if we’d want to go on a snorkelling trip/beach hunt with them. So we rented a boat, and about 8 of us went to “shark point”, a snorkelling area where we supposedly were to see sharks. This place ended up being probably the most dangerous place we’ve seen in Asia. As we pulled up in our boat, a girl was screaming at us for help, she was almost drowning, had no life jacket, and was far from her boat. Another couple was having the same issue, as boats were ripping through the area and the current was strong, so we ended up staying only 15 min maybe...and saw no sharks.
Next we found a secluded beach, Romantic beach. This was the beach Kyle had been searching for his entire life! Whitest sand we’ve seen, nicest water, and no people, no hotel, no road to it – we had found pure paradise! We spent the afternoon hanging out there with a bunch of ice cold beers we managed to scavenge ($3 per can), went snorkelling, (where we saw about 5 baby sharks), and enjoying the scenery. Romantic beach had an amazing coral reef with all sorts of stuff underwater, swim with about 5-7 baby sharks all the time, stingrays, many many clownfish (nemo) hanging out in the anenomi coral, and tonnes of other tropical fish. Kyle vowed to make it back to this spot a lot over the next two weeks!
After Coral Bay, we went to Mira Beach, a few shanty bungalows on its own private beach. This was our favourite place in Perhentians. Accommodations were very basic (wooden huts, shared bathrooms which was pretty much a hole in the ground, no fan in our room, and power for only a few short hours at night). However – it was the people that made all the difference for us. The 4 people that worked there seemed to just enjoy life, and we had lots of fun with them. One of the guys, Mohammed, was definitely a free spirit – always laughing, making us laugh, and bringing us lychee fruits. This guy seemed to have the personality of a 10 year old sometimes, knew how to have fun everyday. He would bring out his mattress every night and just sleep on the beach – living a simple but happy life.
Kyle was on a mission to swim with a big shark, so as he was out casually looking for it snorkelling around the point, he turned to come back, and a large black tip (reef) shark swam only a few feet in front of him, excitement and panic took over, and he hi-tailed it back to shore. It was 2 metres long, and fairly thick (small in the shark world, but large for what we are used to). After that, Kyle and a Spanyard we met, were on a constant hunt for this shark, they searched sunrise and sunset, only to spot another one on the reef about 1.5 metres long. While at Mira, we constantly jetted over to Romantic Beach to soak up the sun and peacefulness.
After a few nights at Mira, we decided to check out Long Beach – the main backpacker beach in Perhentians. However, I got an ear infection – so when we went to Long Beach, Kyle and I decided to drop Kendra off and hunt for some accommodation while Kyle and I tried to find a doctor in the village. Overall, this seemed to be the worst day for all of us. Comforting to know with all the deadly animals in the jungle and in the sea that there is no doctor to be found!
Kyle and I came back from the village (where we found there was no doctor around, and told to come back later – after another expensive taxi boat ride) to find Kendra red faced and exhausted from walking up and down the scorching beach looking for a room. Long Beach is by far the hottest beach on the islands, the sand is so hot you can barely walk on it, so felt like 40 degrees, and Kendra had been trucking her backpack around, so we felt a little sympathetic but thought it was a good intro to backpacking in Asia. Yet again, we had found interesting accommodation (room looked fairly clean, but later found out lots of mould in bathroom due to no windows, and even mould on the pillows – bonus!) However, room was cheap! But with my ear still infected, we wanted an AC room for the next couple nights – no matter what the cost! Ended up finding a decent place with AC, big room, felt like luxury. (But was still only about a 1 star hotel)
After Long Beach, we decided to check out the other island and stayed at Flora Bay. Was a nice beach, but still couldn’t compare to our Romantic Beach. We spent most of our time here sleeping on the beach, reading, and playing crib at night. One day we hiked through the hot mosquite infested jungle to arrive at another secluded beach surrounded by big rocks, not as nice as Romantic, yet still relaxing.
After Flora Bay – we decided to spend our last 3 nights on the islands back at Mira Beach. We were excited to get back and see our new friends, and they were just as excited to see us again (well at least Mohammed was) He came up and screamed when he saw us “My friends my friends! My darlings! You came back!!” . He came up to our shack, swept up the deck and the room, told us he was happy we came back. While at Mira, we headed to Romantic Beach, again of course, and decided to do a dive the next day. On our dive we all saw a 1.5 metre shark – was pretty cool to all see that. Kyle and I also noticed a large trigger fish (which we didn’t know what it was at the time), was such a cool looking fish, big and colourful, so went swimming towards it – our instructor started telling us to get out of there. Apparently, they are aggressive and will come and bite you. Good to know for next time I guess!
Back at Mira, Mohammed was screaming something, so went to check it out, on a stick he had a very poisonous viper snake on the end of stick.....and of course it was on one of the decks of the huts just behind ours, if we weren’t creeped out enough at night, we were now! We got the typical Asian local response “No problem”! Our last night on Mira Beach, the staff prepared a BBQ on the beach. Lots of food (mostly fish), was really good and we were really appreciative as it took a lot of prep work. We tried some Reef shark, quite good actually, and barracuda is excellent. Our last day, we spent the day at Romantic Beach (again), didn’t go too deep though, as have heard in Asia, you can get bad karma from eating shark.... we also saw a fairly big monitor lizard eating a smaller baby, weird to watch, but the little one did put up quite a good fight. When it came time to leave, we got a bunch of pictures with our friends at Mira. They helped load our bags on the boat and gave us a big hug. I think Mohammed teared up when he said bye to Kyle. We got on the boat and he was screaming “I love you – I love you”! We were sad to leave them, but were ready to leave the beach.
We then were on our route to Bangkok to stock up on some cheap clothes and souvenirs before leaving Asia and heading to France to meet up with my brother, and say bye to Kendra.
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