So I spent a weekend on Long Beach in Perhentian Kecil and the only observations I had to make where in regards to the hellish the bus ride and scrumptious seafood? Something is definitely missing here.. Surely, there must be more to the famed Long Beach than that.
Truth be told, I didn't even know that Long Beach had such a reputation until I heard scores of tourist as well as my own travel mates telling the travel agent at Kuala Besut jetty that accommodation on Long Beach is A MUST. Apparently, Perhentian Kecil is much nicer than its sister island, Perhentian Besar and is also a backpacker's haven which pretty much meant that the entire length of Long Beach was packed with Westerners. In a nutshell, it was basically an awesome spot to people watch. It was safe to say that my travel mates and I did our fair share of looking at the heavenly bodies all around and in such concentration.
Despite the beach being densely populated with tourist,it is worthy to note the water was pristine.. clear turquoise as far as the eye can see which gradually turned into a deeper shade of azure that indicated the depth of the water. The water was also shallow for quite a length from the beach itself so I suppose you don't have to worry much if you don't really know how to swim. It was like a huge, salty swimming pool. The light tan sand was also very smooth and fine to the touch although I wouldn't go digging too much in it as a lot of the visitors tend to bury their litter in it. Yes, it seems horrible but that's what they do so you're better off just sitting or lying on the sand rather than building a sand castle as you might dig up more than you bargained for.
My first day on Long Beach was spent literally on the beach for the entire day. For not wanting to waste a moment of our short trip in our electricity-less chalet, we headed for the sea during mid-day.. truly a ridiculously bad idea if you do not apply sun block properly (and by that, I mean a full on thick lather of the stuff). At any rate, we did spend several hours in the water and even managed to chat up other vacationers in the water. When we got tired, we came up to the sand to take a short nap under an beach umbrella which you can rent for the whole day for RM10 and then headed to one of the restaurants on the beach for a teatime snack before heading back into the water again until dusk. Despite being severely burnt that day, I must say that the experience of just hanging out on the beach and swimming (or perhaps soaking) was brilliant and in my opinion, well deserved.
...
The next day was spent snorkeling as we had pre-booked a snorkeling package for the whole day with our travel agent earlier. I believe there were 5 snorkel sites altogether. The first snorkel site was pretty deep and I lost my snorkel as soon as I jumped into it because I forgot that it was only loose placed on my head at the time. Thankfully, one of our guides dove in to retrieve it much to my appreciation and embarrassment. The coral and marine life was indeed beautiful but I must say lacked variety and after the 3rd snorkeling site, it was pretty much a repetition of the same things. We were however brought to areas where you can spot sea turtles and sharks. Unfortunately, this involves a lot of chasing with about 20 other people around you. I didn't see much pass the crowd so that was a bit of a disappointment though I believe my mates did manage to get a view of both.
We got back to Long Beach just a little before the sun went down so again.. we went back into the water until the sun had properly set before heading back to the chalet to get ready for a night of further chilling. Once again, we headed to the Palm Tree Cafe but we weren't in much of a mood to dance.. especially on sand which makes you look drunk even when you don't have a drop of alcohol in you. Instead, we opted for card games with a friendly islander who works at the club. God only know who only came up with the ridiculous card game but it got more funny and at times, extreme as the night went on. I think I lasted until about half past 1am until I realized something was wrong with me so I decided to go back to the chalet earlier than my mates but not before stumbling, falling and cutting myself on sandbags cum makeshift steps. Wholly embarrassed, I limped as fast as I could into the darkness back to our chalet. My mates stayed until almost 5am.. our boat off the island was at 6.30am and our bus back to KL was at 8am. Nice.
An insane vay-k? Definitely.. but what can I say, insanity loves its company.. and apparently random holidays to boot. 
No comments:
Post a Comment