Since our bus was leaving at 7:30 am we got up early, packed
everything and went down to the hotel lobby for our free breakfast, and as the
elevator door open we were struck with the powerful smell of fish. Looking around, the buffet eating area was
completely empty, which was odd as it was supposed to be open by that time. We found a staff member and he told us to sit
down, then gave us the breakfast menu.
Now I’m pretty adventurous with food, but this menu even made me
wince. Everything had fish, mostly
anchovies. You could have rice with
anchovies, seafood rice, seafood soup, curried fried rice with cuttlefish, rice
porridge with anchovies and so on. We
looked at each other and agreed that we didn’t want to start this lovely Canada
Day off with a fish brekkie, so we passed on breakfast and went to the bus
station to catch our bus. Fortunately
the snacks we bought the previous day included a lovely loaf of fresh bread with
jam and nuts inside so we enjoyed that along with some apples and drinks.
We were headed up to the Perhentian Islands, which are
located a few miles off the north-east coast.
The local bus took us through many small towns, and as we found
yesterday, the surrounding were becoming less and less beautiful as we
progressed – garbage everywhere, many half constructed buildings, houses
falling apart, more animals wandering around, poorly dressed people and so
on. It must be one of the poorer regions
of the country. After a couple hours we
arrived in Kuala Besut and immediately saw a sign pointing towards the jetty
for boats to the islands. The hotel Ana
had booked included the cost of the boat but we hadn’t received any further
details on where to go or what to give the boat guy, so we just strapped on our
packs and walked over to the jetty. As
we approached, a guy came up to us and asked us where we were going, so we told
him and, of course, he somehow knew exactly who we were and guided us over to
the boat, which was just about to leave.
Perfect timing! As we’ve found
all over this country, everything just seems to work, which makes it very easy
for traveling.
There were about fifteen people on the smallish boat and it rapidly
took off across the water as the driver opened up the throttle. It felt so good to be on the ocean, crashing
over the waves, headed to a brand new place.
After 20 minutes we arrived at the first of the islands, called Pulau Kecil,
and dropped off a few people on a beautiful beach nestled into what looked like
a pristine jungle. We continued to the
other island, which was very close, enjoying the views along the way of the
gorgeous beaches, clear and clean water, and dense jungle.
The boat pulled up to a dock at the end of a beach on the
big island, called Pulau Besu, we unloaded our stuff and continued up to the
hotel, which was directly in front of us and looked fantastic. There were a number of people lounging on the
couches in the lobby, lazily reading a book, visiting, or some just staring
blankly into the ubiquitous white screens of tablets, laptops and smart phones.
We passed the big, beautiful pool on the way up to the room
and the kids were immediately smiling.
The room was basic, but quite large and had two big beds. We unloaded all stuff then went for a walk around
the resort to check things out and get our bearings. Our impression of the place soon started to
change as we found ourselves practically wading through garbage in some spots
as we went on the “jungle walk” which lead through the back of the resort to
the surrounding properties. The area was
not even that large, but everything simply looked tired and unkempt. We abandoned the jungle walk and instead went
to explore the beach. As our hotel was
at the southernmost end of the beach, we walked south, away from civilization
to see if we could find a nice place to set up a blanket and go
snorkeling. As we walked down the beach
we found a constant stream of garbage, which made us more and more angry at how
they could not keep this potentially beautiful beach clean. By the time we returned we were hot,
perturbed and hungry and the kids were starting to get cranky as all they
wanted to do was go in the pool. The
hotel did serve lunch, but not for another hour and the prices were absurd, so
we talked to the dive shop guy and he told us to walk down the other way on the
beach as there were several other
cheaper restaurants there which would be open.
We did so and found that this part of the beach was well kept, garbage
free and had all sorts of nice guesthouses, chalets and restaurants. We settled into one of the restaurants,
enjoyed a nice (cheap) lunch, had some cold drinks, and were back on track.
We returned to the hotel and grabbed our snorkeling stuff
then went to ask the dive shop where the best snorkeling place was. After talking to him a bit, I booked a dive
for the next day but, more importantly, Magnus decided to do the Discover
Scuba, which is where you take a short course on diving, do some pool training,
then get to go on an actual dive!
Amazingly, he was old enough to do it so he is very much looking forward
to his big diving adventure tomorrow.
We walked all the way to the other end of the beach and had
a fantastic time snorkeling. Even Stella
tried it, but didn’t quite figure out the technique, so Ana and her stayed
camped out on a beach blanket while Magnus and I spent well over an hour
exploring the coral.
We returned to the hotel for a big swim in the
pool then returned to our room for a long, accidental nap. Later that evening we returned to the beach and
found the most idyllic scene you could imagine : tables set up on the beach
beneath the stars, many people from many countries enjoying dinner, a small
beach bar playing amazing music and serving cold drinks, the occasional lightning
display from a storm cloud in the distance, and the sound of the ocean waves
lapping at the beach. Everything was
good in the world once again and we had nearly forgotten about our initial poor
impressions.
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