Awaking In The Middle Of Nowhere
At around 0300hrs in the morning, our coach came to a halt in the middle of nowhere. It was a regular pit-stop. As we stepped out of our coach, we were greeted by the traquility of the night as there was almost nothing around us, barring a makeshift Minimart where Shou Yi bought his Mentos from and the public toilet. As we looked wearily around our surroundings, we saw a sign that said, "Surau". Had never heard of such a place before but I'm pretty sure that I'll be back here on my trip home. After a short 20-minute break, our coach drivers signalled for us to return to our coach and we resumed our journey to Perhentian.

Behind Schedule
Pierre mentioned to us before we fell asleep in the bus that we would approximately arrive at Jeteh at 0500hrs the next morning if we were still on schedule. Hearing that, we set our handphone alarms to 0500hrs.

It had barely been 3 hours after leaving Surau, when the alarms on Shou Yi's and my handphones started beeping. As we wearily tried to open our eyes, everyone else in the coach barring the drivers were asleep. Then a huge sign saying, "100km to Jeteh" whizzed past our windows. Knowing that we were way off schedule, we closed our eyes and went back to sleep.

Closing In On Paradise
0630hrs. Once more, our coach came to a stop. This time, we were quite sure that we were finally in Jeteh. Grabbing our bags, we stumbled our way out of the coach and were instantly greeted by a posse of taxi drivers bombarding us with questions. Seems like these guys know when there are tourists coming over to Perhentian for a holiday!

Still bleary-eyed, we stood and observed the commotion before us. Pierre was haggling with a taxi driver over the prices that he would have to pay to bring him to Kuala Besut where we could all take our respective boats to Perhentian. I think they settle for RM7 per person for the short trip.

I guess we were still rather dazed and confused from all that travelling as we were not exactly thinking straight. But when Iggy tried to negotiate the prices for our trip to Kuala Besut, all of us were totally shocked by the price he quoted for the driver. RM7! Luckily the driver was not offended and explained to us that the normal charge was RM20 and he could take us all for RM5 each! Lucky us!

After successfully negotiating our fare for the ride, we trudged towards our driver's car and loaded up all our bags into the boot before squeezing into the rickety car of our driver.

Cows On The Highway
We enjoyed the cool morning breeze as our car whizzed along the expressway of Jeteh. Never before have I seen such vast landscape that's devoted to rearing crops and livestock. The place was filled with an air containing the sort of freshness that you cannot get in the city.

Then, I saw a strange looking road sign that I have never seen before. It was a yellow triangle with a cow marked on it. Surely there are no cows around right? Immediately, I was reminded of a particular scene in the movie, "50 First Dates" where the female lead lost her short-term memory after being involved in a car accident when she swerved her car off the road to avoid hitting a cow on the road.

*Shudder*

Then, I saw a entire herd of cattle grazing by the side of the road. My spine started tingling. Hope we won't hit any along the way as that would surely spoil our entire holiday! Thankfully, no cow was dumb enough to try to cross the road in a kamikaze attempt and we made our way safely to the Kuala Besut Jetty after a quick 10 minute ride from Jeteh.

A Boat Ride Away Now...
Kuala Besut is a fishing village with a very sparse population. The morning air was still fresh but salty. Guess it's because we were so close to the sea.

After calling our contact person who said that he would arrive in approximately 30 minutes, each of us found time to indulge some time to ourselves. Iggy and Shou Yi went snooping around, exploring the tiny village. Zane took some time out to take a dump at the public toilet and I went around taking photographs of the animals and people there.

After a short wait, Azahar, our contact person arrived and told us that our boat will be arriving shortly. So we had to wait again and while we were waiting for our boat to arrive at the jetty, a group of noisy Malaysian tourists came and disrupted the calmess of the morning by creating a major commotion. Guess they were rather enthusiastic but I think they were going overboard. Just too noisy, I want my holiday to be a nice and peaceful one!

Thank goodness their boat arrived soon and they were all quickly packed up onto their boat and set on their way off to their holiday hotspot. Hope I won't run into them on Perhentian. Noisy Pests...

The Fast Ride To Perhentian!
Our boatman finally arrived at 0745hrs and we happily loaded ourselves onto our personal speedboat to finally bring us to Perhentian! By then, the sun had already long begun its ascend and the morning sky was warmly illuminated by the rays of sunlight high-lighting the perfect blue sky.

As we flew across the waters, the anticipation within us was just about to spill over as we realise that we are only 30 minutes from arriving at our holiday destination...

Bit by bit, the tiny speck before us started growing in size... that was our holiday destination for sure we thought. It had to be! In a while, that tiny speck had transformed into a large island. That was it! Perhentian! At last, we were finally at our holiday destination after enduring the gruelling 14 hours of travelling.

Touchdown!
Our boat parked itself outside the coral grave surrounding the island while waiting for a smaller water taxi to bring us onto shore. We curiously peered over the side of the boat to see how clear the water was and to our surprise; we saw schools of fishes swimming beside our boat! That water was so clear that we could not believe our eyes! It was too good to be true. Guess that was a sign of things to come in the coming 3 days of our holiday!

After a short wait, we transferred from our speedboat to a water taxi that brought us onto shore and we immediately trooped to our resort to check in!

658 and 659 were our room numbers. Iggy and Zane took Room 658 while Shou Yi and I took room 659. The resort staff led us to our rooms after ascending at least 3 flights of wooden steps deep into the forest before finally reaching our rooms! We knew that we would be victims of a bloody attack from the mosquitoes if we did not whip out our mosquito coils out to repel those blood-sucking fiends of the forest! So after a quick setting up of mosquito coils and unpacking, we were ready to rock and roll on our holiday!

Breakfast, Then The Action Begins
Under the recommendation from Julie, we took a boat costing RM6 each from Perhentian Island Resort and set off to Abdul Cafe at Tuna Bay. There we had the most wonderful meal of Club Sandwiches, Cheese Burgers and Fries accompanied with Ice Milo and fresh Carrot Juice.

After pampering ourselves with a fine breakfast, we decided to rent kayaks for the day from Coco Hut Resort and explore the island on our own.

Shortly after leaving the shores of Tuna Bay, we realised that our paddles were fucked up as they were not the right type of paddles required to steer the kayaks efficiently. Nevertheless, we kayaked our way from Tuna Bay over to the other island, Pulau Kechil to take a closer look at Perhentian Village before we decided to turn back and head towards Turtle Bay where the Perhentian Island Resort was located. Exhausted spending lots of time struggling in the choppy waters with out lousy paddles, we were relieved to beach up onto the soft sand of Turtle Bay.

Spa Treatment
Unable to resist the calling of the clear waters of Turtle Bay, the four of us changed into our swimming gear and jumped into the cool, inviting waters. We lay floating in the waters; spent from our earlier efforts from kayaking all the way from Tuna Bay, to Pulau Kechil and finally to Turtle Bay.

As we relaxed, we discovered by chance that the soil underwater was actually very, very fine mud like particles that resembled the kind of exfoliating mud that one would find when they go for a full body spa message! Immediately, all of us went gaga over the mud and started dumping the mud all over each others backs and laughing like lunatics who have just discovered a huge stash of gold! The more we played, the wilder our antics got and we starting taking photos of us being covered in mud!

Then suddenly the waves started getting bigger and trashed us back towards shore. The waves got so strong that on one instance, all four of us were smacked senseless by one gigantic wave that caught us unawares. We were probably not the only crazy ones around as one Caucasian dude tried sticking a beach chair into the mud off shore and started chilling on it. It was hardly a surprise to see him knocked senseless off his chair when one of the large strong waves hit him and sent him reeling back to shore!

Escape From Turtle Bay
After spending some more time sun tanning and playing football with Shou Yi, we decided that it was time for us to stop slacking and continue our quest to do kayak over to Long Beach which was quite some distance from where we were and make it in time for lunch.

As we tried to get off the shores of Turtle Bay, the waves started getting choppy and knocked us back onto shore. That was then Iggy and Zane had to play Baywatch lifeguards and rescue us from the mess that we were in. After regrouping, we successfully launched ourselves off Turtle Bay and we were soon on our way to Long Beach!

We were struggling with the choppy waters and after a titanic struggle; we managed to crawl our way onto the shores of Long Beach after being tossed around in the open waters for close to an hour! Thank Goodness I had Zane sharing the kayak with me. I think I would have made it there alone on my own effort. Owe you one Zane!

Halfway through the journey across the open waters, we were all yearning for an ice cream to quench our thirst... Never did we expect to find something better than ice cream at Long Beach!

LONG BEACH!
We had barely managed to drag ourselves onto shore when we were strangly attracted to a cute cozy looking cafe at the far left wing of Long Beach. It was called Lemon Grass Cafe. It was there we first took 15 minutes to recover from our previous exertions before our senses came back to us. You could say that at that exact point of time, we were all looking like exhausted madmen!

Across the other table, we saw this British lady have a nice, white, ice blended drink that we were very tempted to get. But when the waiter told us that we could get Mars and Snickers bars blended together with ice to get a similar looking drink... we went absolutely ballastic!

Guess the waiter must have been very amused by us! But then again, we were totally worn out by the trip over to Long Beach that we were all unable to use our brains in the right way anymore.

Besides from ordering our Mars and Snickers Milkshakes, we also ordered chicken and beef burgers together with lots of fries to go together wtih it. At the same time we were amusing the waitress, Wany, with our terrible attempts to say six in Malay.

Exploring Long Beach
After a good lunch, we started walking down the entire stretch of long beach to explore what they had to offer in their shops. It was either mostly overpriced accessories that we could get in Singapore or cheap beachwear that we already had.

We realised that the beach was largely occupied by lots of foreigners that looked British. And most of them were either lying in the sun or reading books under beach umbrellas.

We were lucky enough to find an unoccupied umbrella that the four of us were able to hide under. Zane decided to take a cat nap while the remaining three of us decided to dash for the waters and cool ourselves from the maddening heat! We were having a wild time mucking around in the water and trying out wrestling moves on Shou Yi while we were taking photos.

Then we started talking to this guy, Greg, 26, who was on a 10 month vacation with his girlfriend, Julie, after he took a photo for the three of us. This guy used to be a project manager in London but he was retrenched. So he took his severance pay to fund his trip around the world. As of now he should have already covered Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Mt Kota Kinabalu before he stops over in Singapore before going to New Zealand, Fiji and South America before he returns home! Such an amazing story to tell!

After that, we realised that it was getting dark and we could not stay any longer as we needed to kayak all the way back to Tuna Bay to return our kayaks.

Dinner @ Abdul Beckons
After another superhuman effort by Zane, we finally made it back to Tuna Bay in around 40 minutes. Don't want to talk about kayaking anymore after that crazy expedition.

After we returned the kayaks, the four of us decided to chill in the cool waters just before Abdul Cafe. There we talked about supermodels, mutual friends, lesbianism and lots of other nonsense as we spent time chilling in the waters!

Before dinner, all of us took turns to shower off the salt water at the communal bathroom behind the cafe before we towelled ourselves dry and grabbed the best seats in the cafe!

There, we ordered 4 sets of seafood dinners; 2 Kingfish sets, 2 Barracuda sets together with watermelon, mango, pineapple and mixed fruit juices. The food was wonderful and we happily lapped up whatever we had on our tables. Wonderful meal!

Before we knew it, the sun had set and we had to get a boat back to our resort. After much trouble, we found a boat that could take us back with whatever amount of money we had left from our collective funds.

Night Activities
After safely arriving at Coral Bay Resort, we made our way up to our rooms in the darkness. Actually we almost couldn't find our rooms as all the rooms looked almost the same at night!

We were relieved to finally return to our rooms and we all took turns to shower before Shou Yi and I invaded Iggy and Zane's room and bugged them to teach us how to do the Jazz Step; Suzie Q. And they had not showered yet. Hahah~

Well... so there we went counting, 1, 2, 3, 4, STOP!!!

Zane: "Wrong, wrong! Start over again!"
Zane: "Wrong, wrong! Never do together...."

Haha~

That went on... till the next day.