The Pehentian Islands

We left the freezing cold of the Cameron Highlands to heat ourselves in The Pehentian Islands. We arrived at Long Beach on Pehentian Kecil on Saturday evening after a long bus journey and a very scary speed boat ride. Luckily we met a girl on the boat who works at one of the dive shops on the beach so she was able to get us into one of the beach huts there so we didnt have to do the long and agonising hostel search. The beach here is very small with only about 10 bars/resturants here but it is the most beautiful beach that we have come across in Asia. All the bars are on the beach (so nobody wears shoes anywhere) and beyond the beach is just jungle!

After we'd arrived and sorted out the hostel we decided to go out for a beer, only to find that not one of the bars or resturants sold beer! We were very confused (and a little distressed) at this point.
But, in the distance we could see a man clutching an ice box and a cardbord sign that read "cold beer, 8RM", he was our saviour! We made our way over to the make shift bar which consisted of this guy's ice box on small table, two candles and the cardbord sign. Later on we managed to find another bar. When I say bar I mean beach mats and candles on the floor and a guy selling cans of Tiger beer and bottles of vodka. It soon got busy though and they made a bonfire and it there was a nice chilled out atmosphere.

Yesterday, we chilled on the beautiful beach in the morning then decided to have an active afternoon Kayaking. We have both done it before in Vietnam and we knew it would be fun and pretty easy...how wrong we were. It took us about 10minutes to get the kayak into the sea then a further 15minutes to get in goddamn thing whilst everything we owned got soaking wet! We set off aginst the waves (which seemed to get much bigger the second we got into the water). We stayed in the kayak for about 20 minutes, got just far away enough from the shore to take a photo with our soggy cameras then we made our way back to the beach, realising that kayaking was neither fun or easy! I think we'll stick to the sunbathing.

Today we went on a snorkelling trip around the islands. The water is so clear so we were able to see right to the bottom of the sea. There were 8 of us on the boat with a crazy driver, but it was a good group which made it fun. We saw lots of beautifully coloured fish and coral, two huge turtles and even saw a shark! We had lunch at a litte fishing village and then ended the day on a gorgeous beach called turtle bay. It was completely secluded with us being the only ones there. It was the most beautiful beach we've seen and probably will see in Asia.

Apart from the guy with the ice box and the bar with the bottles of vodka, we've been told that there is a party scene here on the island (somewhere on this tiny beach) so we are going in search tonight, with our bottle of vodka....

xx