Back from Paradise

Here it is! Late but finally here! My report about my stay on Perhentian Kecil!

Guys, I am going to switch from German to English. The reasons I don't have to mention I guess. It is for the benefit of all.

Right after I had published my last post we decided to go to Malaysia the same evening. The whole thing was really spontaneous... I have to admit I was a bit suspicious in the beginning. Nevertheless I packed up my stuff (I had bought a Chinese-made backpack for 20EUR) and we met to catch a taxi to the bus station. It took us a while to find the right bus operator but we finally managed to get tickets for the 11h overnight bus to Jerteh. After a quick spicy dinner we boarded our bus which was equipped with aircon and business seats. Everything looked perfect. Sometime in the middle of the night we woke up to realise that our bus broke down. We were somewhere half the way between Singapore and Jerteh. After a while and after some discussions with the bus driver and his assistant, we could get on another bus, but we had to sit on the floor. After we had switched to a third bus we finally arrived at Jerteh, took a taxi to Kota Besut and jumped in a speed boat, which was supposed to bring us to the Perhentian Islands. It did and we finally arrived at Perhentian Kecil at 8am, without having any clue or even accommodation. Luckily we were really early, so at 11.30am we were able to book a room for three in the Mohsin Hostel, a nice Hostel a bit further up the hills, overlooking the beach. So we moved in, relaxed and had a nice breakfast with ice-coffee and banana pancakes. In order to avoid boredom on the readers side, i will just sum up the five days: the main activities during our stay were pretty limited to sleeping, eating, lying around, swimming, drinking, talking, playing poker ("allons joue au poker!"haha!) and a tad bit of reading... normally I am a person that needs at least some sort of activity. But the island teaches you how to behave... everyone is just relaxing and trying to have a good time. So I adapted. During the night people met at a bar called "Palm Tree 2". Quite a nice bar selling Tiger Beer and even Vodka... they even have a dancefloor where you dance barefoot! It was really nice meeting all sorts of people, talking about random stuff and even having really serious conversations until early morning... So nice! During my five days stay I managed to see eight (8) meteors! On Friday Kristoffer and I went snorkeling. Actually we were meant to do the trip with Aurélie, but we were just to lazy to get up early enough to join her on her trip. So we went down to the beach and booked a private tour, for a really good price actually (Kristoffer is the man when it comes to bargaining. He loves it so much that I have to remind him of the ethics sometimes, haha!). We saw sharks (small but still they looked like sharks!), stingrays, turtles and a bunch of other fishes. Really nice. It was during the snorkeling that I decided to take a scuba-diving course. Yeah!

To sum it up. Long Beach on Perhentian Kecil is a perfect place to laze away and have a good time. The people that go there are all adapting to the local lifestyle, so the atmosphere is really chilled out... We met really nice people from all over the world: Dutch Jasper, easy to recognise because he always wears one black sock, haha; British Gareth who loves to talk about "rim jobs" and Ben & Sebbe, two French guys who really enjoyed the chilled out atmosphere at Kecil. Here are the guys:



But as mentioned before, we did not do much... Guess I would get really bored after a week. But the five days were so nice that I would love to go back some time.

So if you ever happen to be near the north-eastern coast of Malaysia, make sure to stop by at Perhentian Kecil. Take your own little chalet near the beach, have an ice-cold Tiger and a seafood barbecue and enjoy the fun of doing nothing! You will like it.