The Perhential Islands are a backpacking magnet for those who venture to the East coast of Malaysia. The islands(two of them, one small and one a little bigger) are situated about 40 nautical miles for the mainland in the Northeast.
We spent three days there after we left the Taman Negara jungle Friday morning last. And if I’m honest, the most exciting part of the islands were the speed boat journies to and from the islands. That’s not to say we didn’t enjoy it there, it just it wasn’t what we had expected. Maybe because we only had Gili Trawangan as our yardstick in which to compare it to.
To be fair, the Perhential islands are stunning and very quiet. A real picture book chill out heaven. When we landed there we went looking for accommodation and found ourselves a nice little beach hut on stilts about twenty meters from the beach itself which worked out at around twelve euro each per night!!
We spent our days walking along the beach and sampling lovely local food in the various beach front restaurants that peppered every nook and cranny. The weather wasn’t exactly excellent apart from a few golden hours here and there, so we didn’t build too many sand castles in the three days.
Planning….
Since we had no ambitions to do more snorkelling or boat trips here, it gave up plenty of time to plan what our next moves were going to be regarding the trip.
Initially, the plan was to travel into Thailand via overland crossing(since its only 60km to the Thai boarder from the mainland), but we found out that Southern Thailand can be somewhat dangerous and travellers were advised not to cross into Thailand via this route.
So with that in mind and also due to the fact that you only get a fifteen day tourist visa when you cross overland into Thailand compared to the 30 day when you arrive by air, we decided that it would be best to return to Kuala Lumpur and get a cheap AirAsia flight into Phuket.
So thats what we are going to do. The full moon party in Ko Phangan is on July 17th and we shall be there in full force complete with UV body paint and buckets of whiskey and red bull!
One month review…
Time certainly travels fast when your emmm…..travelling! Really can’t believe how quickly the past four weeks have gone. In saying that we’ve already touched base in four of the eight in total countries that we will visit on this trip.
Before I visit a new country or go travelling, I always have preconceptions formed as to how I think the culture will be, what the food will be like and will I end up liking the adventure or not. So far so good concerning Asia. For me its ticked all the boxes so far for the impressions I had already conceived in my mind.
Its cheap, the people are very friendly, the food is delicious, the weather is fantastic and the scenery is stunning. That’s the only way I can describe to those of you that haven’t visited Asia before. In saying that I can only speak of the countries I’ve visited so far in Asia. We still have to hit Thailand(only spent to days outside of Bangkok), Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.
To give you an idea of how cheap it is here to eat out in a local restaurant, today we had three main courses, two deserts and five drinks….all for the equivalent of thirteen euros! Taxis are scarily cheap and when you consider the extortion at home it would really make you stop and think. The bus and train transport system is so cheap its almost free!
The next blog update will be from Kota Bharu where will be staying for a few days after the Perhentian islands.
I’ll leave ye with a short photo video that I managed to put together using Picasa. I’m limited with what I can do as I don’t have my software with me on the mini laptop for making decent slideshows and the internet connections usually take a long time to upload videos like these.
Asia 2011: Month 1
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