Perhentian Islands

I spent my last few days in Malaysia on a beautiful quiet beach on the Perhentian Islands, off the East coast, with two people I met at the hostel in KL.  I wish I was still there!

We took an overnight bus (which was unusually comfortable) to the pier and then took a speedboat to the island early in the morning.  We opted to stay at a secluded resort called D'Lagoon, instead of on the main beach.  It's not completely cut off, as there is a (poorly marked) hiking trail, and there are water taxis that take people between the beaches and to other close islands, but it was nice to have a quiet place to relax without all the noise and craziness.

D'Lagoon was great, we were able to get a room with three beds for not much more than we were paying in KL, and they have a dorm and several bungalows as well.  There's a restaurant with pretty good food and they also have diving trips and rent out snorkeling equipment so it was really convenient.

We were surrounded by water and jungle and the monkeys and other wildlife would come right into the resort.  I always had to keep and eye on my stuff to make sure they didn't take anything!

The view from our window

Monitor lizard

We spent a few hours relaxing at Turtle Beach, which was completely empty except for one couple. The beach was mostly shards of coral and it was hard to get out in the water far enough to swim but it was pretty and a nice quiet place to read by the water.

We hiked over to Long Beach, which is supposed to take about 45 minutes but took us about twice as long because the trail is confusing and we got lost.  We hiked up to the top of the island by the wind mills and solar panels that supply power to the island.  The view was great!

Long Beach was nice, kind of like Koh Phangan but smaller and less crazy.  The beach is lined with restaurants, bars and dive shops and wasn't very crowded.  We walked to the other side of the island to watch the sunset, one of the strangest ones I've seen.  The clouds were bright green!  After dinner we took a boat taxi back to our beach.

One of the women at the resort has trained a jungle cat to come to the main building every night and she feeds it fruit.

They have several games, including the Malaysian version of Monopoly.  

I definitely could have spent a few more days on the island reading in my hammock, listening to the waves and enjoying the sunshine!