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I’m just back after a 6 days stay at Pulau Perhentian… This place has turned out to be the ultimate tropical beach, snorkeling & chill-out destination – You get everything you ever dreamed of: White powder-like sand, waves, excellent water-quality, palm trees and so on… Actually it was fairly hard to get myself convinced of leaving this gorgeous place, but it was a “now or never” decision.

I stayed at Chempaka Chalets and paid 15 Ringgit per night for my room having shared bathroom, a mosquito net and some electrical light (because the Perhentians don’t have a centralised power grid yet… generators at every single place, which run only at night.). There is also no public water supply, so basically all water you use just comes from a well. The variety of food you can get is pretty limited, but you are free to order stuff, which is not on the menu – But this does not remove the fact, that food is really overpriced. But it is easily possible to stay alive on around 50-60 ringgit a day including accomodation.

A day trip for snorkeling was actually the most impressive single event on my journey so far! Wonderful coral reefs even in shallow water – Massive rock- and brain corals, anemones (with many clown fish – remember Nemo?) and all sorts of reef fish, such as rainbow fish, needle fish … Never seen a reef so “alive”! On the snorkeling trip we also went to some spots to see sea turtles (and there were huge ones!) and reef sharks… The trip ended at the “perfect beach” (named blue lagoon beach), where we stayed for some relaxing.

During the stay at the Perhentians I met some really interesting people, especially David from France, who is on a 1-year trip in Asia, involving countries such as Pakistan, Burma, Iran, Afghanistan and so on and Joanne from the UK, who was just on a 4 week stop over for her working encounter in Australia… Actually David and I got to Kota Bharu together in order to proceed as a Team for some time.