Perhentian Islands, Malaysia
My ticket included a van ride and a transfer to a speedboat. We were dropped off at the pier for the Perhentian Islands an hour or so south of Kota Baru. From the Taman Negara I boarded a mini van with the four French and another man who spoke German, French, English all very well, I don’t know where he’s from to be honest, and we all headed off to the coast. We picked up another pair of French along the way and then two German ladies at another stop. The van was full. I moved to the front seat and plugged in Jimmy Hendricks while I watched in amazement and horror at the seemingly endless Palm Oil Plantations in various stages of growth including mountains and foothills stripped of jungle and terraced with dirt roads for future planting and extraction. On the way we took a short break and some logging trucks happen to be there. The Palm Oil problem is getting bigger with jungle disappearing at an alarming rate and with it goes animal habitat and animals that will never come back, ever. PepsiCo is a big investor in Palm Oil and I’m hearing they have less than adequate standards. Palm Oil goes by many names mostly to camouflage its true identity to consumers like you and me. My advice, don’t buy processed foods at all, none, and that is very difficult to do in this day and age. I stopped buying bags of chips, tubes of Pringles, Snickers Bars, and all restaurant fast foods. I haven’t been in a McDonalds or any other fast food joint for that matter in over two decades. I’ve been told by many not to buy Palm Olive soap or connected products. Since entering Malaysia I’ve seen very few birds, almost no butterflies, and no bees. I don’t hear monkeys in the trees or see signs of wild boar rooting around in the underbrush, nothing. That’s not to say they aren’t there, I just didn’t see any.
Under the pier for the Perhentians I saw numerous plastic water bottles of various sizes filled with used motor/machine oil. The bottles were floating or resting at the tide line while a monitor lizard hunted crab between the rocks. Fifteen minutes later a black kitten curiously ventured down to the waters edge. I looked for the monitor lizard, known to eat kittens, and found it 50 meters away. The kitten was safe for the time being and I called it back off the beach with a kitten call I learned as a kid. The kitten scampered up the beach and back onto the main walkway looking for its kin. I didn’t actually know which Island I wanted to go to yet and one of the Germen ladies standing near me smiled and just said, “Go with the flow.”
When it came time to tell the boat captain where I was going I followed the German ladies. The word ‘ladies’ makes them sound old. I’m now done with the respect portion of their introduction; they are in their young 20’s and traveling for a little while together but staying usually in different places. We all go to Coral Bay on the smaller island. A large Muslim masque could be seen from far away on the smaller island and stood at the edge of the sea in the middle of a small fishing village. It was beautiful and impressive. The ride out was a little bumpy due to the afternoon wind and waves but only took 45 minutes of gut slamming to get to the big island where we dropped off the four French on a floating square dock. As we sped off to the next drop point I took a shot out the back of the boat. Talk about having fun.
The boat captain dropped us off and again I followed the ladies up to Perhentian Tropicana Inn where the girls were looking for a dormitory for cheap lodging. I got a single room for three nights expecting to maybe jump islands. The dorm was full so I had a beer and offered to watch the ladies bags while they searched Coral Bay’s many high and low-end lodging options. I paid 80 Ringgit/night ($20 USD) and the Germans returned with a 50 Ringgit/night bungalow at the south end of the beach called ‘Butterflies’. Their bungalow was on concrete stilts overlooking the bay. One of the girls decided to stay in a tree house a little further down the trail. She was interested in doing her advanced open-water course because the prices are still reasonable. Diving prices are still low but very few places on the planet beat www.asia-divers.com on Koh Tao for quality instruction in many languages and price. Within a few days I recognized two distinct personalities. Once this girl did her advanced, she told me of her wish for continued diving plans and was headed down to Indonesia. I told her about Lembongan Island off the coast of Sanur, Bali, Indonesia and www.bigfishdiving.comand my future dive plan that we will get to soon enough. In parallel, she wanted to dive Komodo and some of the class dives in the area. We had a couple mango shakes and I told her all I know and she wrote much of it down. When I was done, her eyes were sparkling with inspiration and she is in Bali now headed for some of the best diving her trip will offer. I also make a point to drop a card for further information if people need it or are curious about options or some of the places we talk about.
The French couple from an island near Mauritius and the European dude all stayed in other places but we did hook up the following day for a 5-hour snorkel trip for 40 Ringgit/person. I wanted to go to check the visibility before paying money for diving. Lee, our snorkel guide and boat driver, took us to numerous snorkel spots, Shark point where I saw a black tip reef shark, Turtle point where we swam with two large turtles, Romantic Beach which was a beautiful beach but all the coral was dead. We went to some other spots where my French friend, let’s just call him ‘Captain Morgan’ saw another shark resting on the bottom for some time before it moved on. We took a lunch break next to the large Masque in the fishing village where we saw a sign preserving Muslim culture meaning no bikinis or men in shorts. Lee lived here with his wife and baby girl said we would be okay because it wasn’t Friday, their prayer day. This is something you should remember when coming to a Muslim country. They have Friday and Saturday off and don’t be surprised if the banks are open on Sunday.
After the snorkel trip we all went our separate ways for showers and I drifted up and over to Long Beach on the opposite side of the island. I sat at the ‘Sun Preacher Bar’ with a group of foreigners that were almost local. The waves were coming in 20 meters from the bar and I realized I hadn’t seen waves since San Sebastian, Northern Spain. I knew I ‘d be in these waves the next day. The currents here are pretty interesting swinging left to right with the tide and pushing between the two islands. Apparently the average count of deaths by drowning is around 3-4 per year. Growing up in California and playing at the edge of riptides all my life these currents didn’t faze me. So far so good on the death toll this year but the season just started, August is peak season and then drops into monsoon season and the beach and island pretty much shut down. It’s a tempting place to ride out the monsoons because the waves are steady and the rain passes quickly because the islands are small and the clouds blow right over them and are gone. Be prepared to have a lot of boiled noodle packet that you bring with you and a plug-in kettle for water for noodles, tea, etc.
One night on Long Beach I walked into a chill bar with a pair of men from Holland, one of them kindly nicknamed me ‘Polar Bear’. A woman standing next to me at the bar ordering a bottle of something and all the fixings for a couple cocktails looked at me. She is dark skinned with brown curly hair with bleach blonde ends from the sea and sun. She carried a small traveling guitar case; I don’t know what you actually call the instrument. She stared at me for a second and said, “I know you”. I vaguely recognized her but with all the travels and travelers I’ve experienced and met I couldn’t place where I met her just yet. She invited me to a nearby dive shop where she and a Malay man were playing music. ‘Joe-Joe’ and Rob and I sat down and they had a pint of Vodka with coke while I worked on a couple beers all the while my head spun around this woman’s words. It came to me; she played a set in Mabul, off Semporna, Borneo at Jeff’s Dive Shop two years ago. I was rather impressed with myself actually having the memory at all. We reloaded and went to the dive shop where she was playing and I said to her, ‘Mabul, Jeff’s Dive Shop.’ Her eyes lit up with the acknowledgement. Her playing reminded me a bit of Tracey Chapman or maybe it’s that she played a Tracey Chapman song, both good. This young girl is dancing on her stool to my music while solving Sudeko. (sp?)
Long Beach is where many foreigners go for a dance party on the beach. There are many bars on the beach and the ‘Beach Bar’ has a dance floor in the sand. It starts heating up around 9 pm and rages on until 2 am or so, depending on the crowd. The one thing to know about Long Beach is there is not a lit path from Coral Bay to Long Beach so people who have been having A LOT of fun tend to stray from the path and end up in an awkward position on the unleveled ground to the side of the path. A torch, flashlight, is a good thing to carry. Booming dance music can be heard far away until the wee hours even with more construction of higher end bungalows and hotels continue on the periphery.
The sunset’s on the Coral bay side and many people sit out in front of the Muslim restaurants, they don’t serve alcohol or go out on the pier and take photos of the beach and sunset when the light is right. I personally spent more time during the days on Long Beach due to the waves and less boat congestion. I offered to play some of my music at the Sun Preacher Bar and the boss liked it enough to want a band list and songs. The rest of speakers on the beach would start up around 6 pm and that was usually time to go to Ewan’s Restaurant, it’s behind Coral Bay on the walkway to Long Beach. The food is good and cheap and the service outstanding. Another attribute was that it had the strongest Internet signal on the island. I ate almost all my meals at Ewan’s except when there was a cool movie at Ombak’s Restaurant but the prices there are outrageous and I never stayed longer than the movie. Some people would just buy a bottle of water and take a break.
I ended up staying on this little island for 7 days and never considered going to the other island again. I figure I might as well save some adventures for another time because I’m sure to come out this way again. I could have stayed longer but something was calling me back to Tioman Island to the south, I think it was diving. I wanted to see what is there since the visibility here wasn’t good. My round trip off the island was open ended and got up early one morning, packed and headed for the Coral Bay Pier for the 8 o’clock speedboat back to the mainland. The ride wasn’t so bumpy this time and very few people on the boat.
www.davidcdagley.com
