Perhentian Islands

Up about 8:00AM, showered, went looking for breakfast, but nothing is open yet! So we got our bags and walked to the tour office and at 9:30 walked to the boat. We had to climb over 5 other boats to get to our boat. The boat ride was about 1.5 hours, and we got dropped off at Long Beach. The bigger boat can't go directly to shore (and there's no pier), so small aluminum boats with outboards (taxi boats) pick us up from the big boat and ferry us to shore for 2RM (RM is shorthand for ringet). We got a hut at Matahari for 30RM, which is a little more expensive than Thailand, it's about $12CDN), but that's the lowest we could find. There are some 20RM huts, but apparently they are horrible.

We had brunch, then showered, then hit the beach and went swimming, walked to the other side of the island, to Coral Bay Beach (10 minute walk). Coral Bay Beach isn't nearly as nice as Long Beach, so we headed back to our beach and checked out a couple of dive shops and decided to do a couple of fun dives with Turtle Bay Divers.

We went back to the beach, I swam some more, Courtney fell asleep on the beach and got a lot of sun.

The beach and swimming at Long Beach are beautiful, the water is so blue/clear, and the sandy bottom extends way out into the bay.

We went back to the hut about 5:00, showered, then had supper, played some frisbee, then Court went for a run. Coming from Thailand to Malaysia, we had to move our watches ahead an hour, so we get quite a bit more sun in the evening now.

The bungalows we're staying at have some cats, and there are two litters of kittens running and bouncing around. They are sooo cute, and so full of energy!! They run around, chase after each other, pounce on each other, wrestle with each other, pounce on anything that moves (or looks slightly interesting to them). They seem to have a never ending supply of energy. When we got to the huts earlier today, Court called me out of the hut. There was a big lizard, perhaps 1.5 feet long, running around the bungalow area.

We watched "The Recruit" in the restaurant where we're staying, from 8:00 until about 10:00, then to bed.