I’m in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with my friend Alicia. We don’t know where we want to go next, but a few minutes with a Lonely Planet book and a map give us a few ideas. We decide on an island called Tioman, in the southeast. We get directions to the bus terminal that went to Tioman (we thought). We walk our butts all the way there, tired and sweaty, we throw our bags down and I go off to look for a ticket. Turns out, we are at the station that goes north… so if we want to continue with our basically spur of the moment plans for Tioman, then we have to trek our butts to another terminal on the other side of the city. But instead, we just choose a destination marked on the bus company’s windows. Redang it is! The only glitch in our plan is- we know nothing about Redang!! Its not in the book, but the pics look beautiful and we know that we have a nearby backup, should Redang not be backpacker friendly. Alicia and I kill about 6 hours in an indoor amusement park (our last treat before leaving the modern metropolis of KL) and then sleep the night away on a cozy overnight bus. Sadly, our plans for Redang turn out to be a bust, so we head to a guaranteed good time on the Perhentian Islands. And there you have it friends, an example of how all plans are made and most places are visited... random chance plus a little luck, and there you have it… you are in paradise!!!
Imagine this- you take this little speed boat to some islands off of Malaysia called the Perhentians. We are heading to the “small island”. The speed boat pulls up to the island, and we transfer to a smaller water taxi boat that will take us straight to the beach. Long beach that is. No need for a road here, water taxis are how you get to another island or beach and the dive shops, restaurants, and bungalows are lined up on the short white sand beach. We literally find the cheapest accommodation on the beach, a little bungalow for 25 ringgit a night, (about $4 each), located less than a minutes walk from the crystal clear ocean. We throw down our bags, and head out for our first night on the Perhentians! This means walking down the beach a few meters and landing at one of the 2 open air wooden shacks that are the island bars. We have a seat on some mats on the sand, order up a mint shisha, stare at the stars, enjoy some fire twirling, and wonder how we got so lucky.
The next day Alicia will start her Open water dive cert, and I will start my Advanced dive cert. For the next 5 days my life would alternate between diving, hanging out at the dive shop, eating, swimming, perhaps a jump or two off the lighthouse, and sitting on the beach or our front porch at night!
Mostly, we were avoiding our room at all costs. Being a broke backpacker in paradise comes at a cost, you can’t have everything for the price of nothing. So, although our bungalow is suitable, it is not the fanciest thing in the world, with its rotting wood and huge cracks in the floor, no lights, kinda damp mattress, smelly mosquito net, 4 foot monitor lizards wandering the area, a moldy shared bathroom that is a farther walk than the beach is, and a hot tin roof that turns the room into a sauna during the day! Think a fan might help!? The island is run on generators, so electricity is only available from 7pm-7am, but this isn’t the regular kind of electricity… this is the backpackers version of electricity; our fan was not connected to an outlet, no, it was messily attached to other wires running through the rest of the bungalows and all into one outlet from an extension cord located about 100 meters away! Basically the dodgiest electric current you can imagine! So before you get too jealous of our paradise for a tiny price, tell me if you could handle that!?! ;)
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