Perhentian Islands…

Next stop: Perhentian Islands!

We hit the road again and headed Northwards…there was a lot of dodgy overtaking (something you kind of have to get used to!), an emergency stop to avoid hitting a rather large cow (…narrowly avoid!) and a couple of nights in a small town that was celebrating the beginning of Ramadan by singing the Qur’an throughout the night!  I hadn’t been warned about this so needless to say I had a couple of sleepless nights! Oh travelling!! I didn’t mind too much though, after all, I was on my way to Perhentian Islands!

We made our way to the island on a speedboat and arrived on the East side of Pulau Perhentian Kecil. A busy beach with lots of boats, bars and backpackers – it looked like we were going to have a lot of fun on this island!

We walked up and down the beach and chose our residence for the week…it seemed OK until we ventured across to the West side that evening…a 15 minute trek through the jungle took us to a beautiful beach that was much smaller, quieter and much more beautiful. We arrived just in time for sunset…

…needless to say we were sold!

So we spent the first night in our dingy room on the East side of the island (we also discovered it had brown water so we were not staying there long!) the reassurance of knowing we were headed somewhere a little nicer the following day made it all the more tolerable!

We got up bright and early the next morning, crossed to the other side and never looked back!!

I absolutely loved Coral Bay, I think I could live there given the chance.  I spent half the week on the beach and the other half underwater.  It was incredible.  I saw my first turtle which I was SO excited about, his name was Jake and he only had 3 fins (poor fella), nobody really knew what had happened to him.  I did all sorts of diving; deep dives, drift dives, muck dives…I was told there was a chance I may see a seahorse but alas I did not.

The snorkelling was good too, I didn’t have to venture very far to meet the interesting underwater residents.  I was only a little way out when I came face-to-face with a big old barracuda – needless to say I sh*t myself and backed off a little!  He was about a metre long and he was awesome but I decided to leave him to it! Towards the end of the week the waters seemed to be taken over by a huge swarm of very small jellyfish.  These ones weren’t dangerous and they didn’t sting but it’s still not very nice to have to swim through them.  We tried one day but it just wasn’t worth it.  There were so many and they were everywhere! After meeting their larger (scarier!) cousins in the waters of Tioman Island I wasn’t the biggest fan of the jellies anyway!

I didn’t have an underwater camera at this time, all of the wonders I discovered are solely stored in my memory (which is kind of nice actually!).  I did have one by the time I reached Borneo though.  I have some amazing underwater shots from diving around Mabul which I will source and share with you all in time.

Here are some snaps of the beautiful Coral Bay…

*Girl About the World*