PULAU PERHENTIAN KESIC

Our next stop on the adventure was the tropical paradise of the Perhentian Islands or in Malay - Pulau Perhentian. We caught the local bus from Kuala Terrenganu and thought that we would be there in 2 hours at the most. However this being Malaysia things dont always happen that way. We hadn't even left the city when the bus we were in pulled off the main road and eventually stopped at what turned out to be the bus depot where the mechanics etc are. Unbeknownst to us our bus had something wrong with one of its wheels and so the driver took the bus full of passengers to the depot for it to be fixed. Of course the driver and his sidekick assured us it wouldn't take long.........1 hour later and we were starting to wonder. Once the job was done we were underway again and off to Kuala Besut the next staging point of our trip and the location of the jetty from where you catch the ferry to the islands.

Kuala Besut

We met a French Canadian couple who were also heading there and after getting hit up by representatives of the local ferry ticket companies we bought some 'beverages' (as the islands are in a Muslim state and this is expensive and hard to come by) and jumped on the fast boat to Perhentian Kesic. We had paid 30 ringit for the boat to take us to the beach and when we got to the bay our boat was surrounded by WATER TAXIS which we were then supposed to pay another 2 ringit each to take us to the beach. None of us were prepared to pay that and are new found French Canadian friend Michael insisted that he take us to the beach.

Perhentian Kesic

We got out gear to the shore and then started at one end of the beach looking for a place to stay! Of course we had arrived at the hottest part of the day and this ended up being a very sweaty undertaking indeed as the first five places were either full or really horrible! Plus they were asking rather extravagant rates for some of them too! We ended up in these really cool little bungalow type huts that were brand new and very, very clean (hard to find in Asia!) for 40 Ringit a night (about $18.00 approx). The only downer of them was that the power only ran from 6.30pm - 1.30am each day. This meant our fan turned off at 1.30am and we were left sleeping in a mini-sauna (or so it seemed).
The first evening we went to a few dive shops to check out what their Open Water PADI and refresher courses would cost and settled with Sea Dragon Divers as they said that Liv could join in on part of the Open Water course as part of her refresher course. She ended up getting a real great deal as she got one free dive (it was good to get a bit of extra revision as it had been eight years since she did her course in swimming pools in Palmy and the tepid waters of Wellingtons bays!). We also got her another fun dive so that she could come out to one of the best dive sites in the Perhentians called 'The Temple of the Sea'. This place was absolutely beautiful to say the least. We saw some bamboo sharks, a white eyed moray eel, a very large Great Barracuda and lots of other tropical fish including many 'Nemos!' There was a very strong current at this dive site which is basically a big pinnalce rock out in the sea. This current allowed us to experience what its like to drift dive and the sensation was as close to flying as I could imagine!
I absolutley love diving! It is so amazing to be able to stay down longer than my one breath could allow when getting seafood at home. The whole time I was doing the course all I could think of was getting crayfish and kina back in Aotearoa! There were two German guys Michael and Sebastien who were our dive buddies for the course. The four of us had a great time not only in the sea but also afterwards when we would go out for dinner together and have BBQs of fresh fish steaks - king fish, barracuda, shark, blue marlin and cuttle fish(squid) and all the trimmings.
It's great that now we are both QUALIFIED DIVERS and will be able to do some more fun dives on the rest of our travels in some of the myriad of dive sites that Asia and Europe have to offer. We spent the last day at a place called Coral Bay a mere 10 mins walk via jungle track from our chalet where we met a little baby monkey called Abu that Liv immediately fell in love with. He was a pet at 'Steffen's Diveshop' who was the original diveshope operator in the Perhentians. We had dinner and played 'Grass' with our German mates and called it a night (THANKS CHRISSY).

It was really awesome to stay put somewhere for more than one night and allowed to relax a bit and truly enjoy where we were. After 6 days of diving, snorkelling, swimming and sunbathing (Titch you will be jealous as of your big sister as she has a killer tan now!) we decided it was time to move on. So once again we packed up our stuff and set our sights for............

Arohanui
Liv and Tama xx