Pulau Perhentian

Can't believe it's the 5th July already! Two more sleeps in Malaysia, one on the plane and we are home.
To business: The Perhentian islands were magic. We caught our Air Asia flights, first to KL and then on to Kota Bahru, just south of the Thai border in a pretty strongly Muslim area of Malaysia. We spent the night at Crystal Lodge, nothing much to write home about, and got some food around the corner. We tried murtabak, a griddle bread, from a street vendor which was quite tasty. While we were eating teriyaki chicken and chips elsewhere, the heavens opened and there was an almighty storm. Luckily we didn't get too soaked running back to the hotel. Next morning we caught a taxi (yep, splashing out as the public transport to our next port of call is a bit convoluted) to Kuala Besut where we were to catch the 10 am ferry to Bubbles Dive Resort on Perhentian Besar. A 35 min or so ride in a motorboat found us deposited on the beach in front of Bubbles, our home for the next 3 nights. It was great, a real desert island getaway. The snorkelling off the beach in front was good. We saw a couple of black tipped reef sharks and lots of colourful fish and many clams. They run a turtle conservation NGO (ecoteer) from Bubbles so we went to talks by the resident marine biologist on coral and turtles. We met some of the "turtle girls", volunteers who do turtle watch during the night, research and beach clean-ups. Nice! Rebecca was also able to do some crafty stuff with Lucy (the house keeping supervisor from England) and some of the other staff members. She painted, modelled clay turtles and they made a board game. While she was occupied doing that we got some snorkelling in. We also did a half day snorkelling tour around the island where we got to swim with turtles and snorkel the Coral Garden which was beautiful. We also snorkelled at Shark Point where Kaz and BW saw a shark which was apt! Weather was mostly overcast (but hot) which saved us from getting too baked by the sun while snorkelling. Bubbles was also home to flying lemurs (Cynocephelus variegates) which we watched from the dining area at night. It flies from tree to tree with a batman-like cape. Quite amazing.

We retraced our steps this morning and arrived in KL at about 4:30 pm. We caught the Skybus to KL Sentral and then the monorail to Birkut Bintang where our guest house is. We walked around the corner to a road lined with Chinese foodstalls where we had a delicious meal of satay, sesame honey chicken, kai lan (greens in garlic) and pork. Tomorrow a day exploring KL.