It was Matt, our very first ever dive instructor way back in the midsts of time and on the other side of the world who first put us on to this place. He told us that if we ever got down to this neck of the woods we should seriously go and dive the Perhintians. He wasn't the last to sing their praises either. We'd heard of beautiful beaches, great snorkling, an almost carribean laid back atmosphere, trees laden with marshmellows, chocolate fountains and all sorts of other goodies.

I suppose you could hardly say, with the month we've just had (dipping our toes in the crystal blue waters off the Gulf islands of Thailand) that we were particularly starved for beach life. Nor could you maintain with a straight face that we hadn't had our fill of diving stunning coral reefs teeming with little fishies, morays, sharks and other watery wee beasties. So I guess there was no real need for us to head straight for Malaysias Perhentian Islands as soon as we'd crossed the border; apart from the fact that we both know when we're onto a good thing and frankly want more.

Kota Baru to Coral bay. Kecil
With all this in mind we managed to get up at 5:30 am for the bus ride from Kota Baru to the port of Kuala Besut, staggering even our hostel owner with our eagerness. She normally has a cook to do the breakfast and had to do it herself that morning, she didn't even know how to scramble an egg! The islands aren't far off shore, just 25 minutes or so, we'd decided on Coral Bay beach, on the smaller of the two islands as it was recommended by Jo and Jim back in Phnom Penh. They stayed in Maya resort, which was the destination of most of the boat, and full by the time we got there anyway. Never mind, we quickly snapped up a hillside chalet in Suria resort, panoramic views accross the bay, balcony, toilet and walls thin enough to hear what the occupants of the room next door were thinking. We were lucky to have a couple of giggling girls next to us, two Aussie girls we met had some constantly moaning English old women as their neighbours, and two Swiss girls were plonked next to a pair of devout muslims, intent on keeping to their hour long loud prayer obligations, every morning from 5 to 6 am!

Snorkelling the Perhintian's.
Amanda jumped straight into the sea with a mask and snorkle, put her head under and immediately saw a shark! Which is quite normal for Amanda, she is like a shark magnet. Eager to see the rest of our little island paradise we spent the whole next day in a boat with Jeffrey from Mama's and four Dutch holiday makers speeding round on a snorkle tour. We swam with three or four black tip reef sharks, clown anenome fish (Nemo) massive schools of reef fishies and all sorts of groovy stuff like big sea cucumbers, eels and someones old shoes... We stopped at a particularly good turtle spot, and watched in horror as 20 or so Italian snorklers, decked in the latest speedo swimwear relentlessly chased a terrified green turtle, each lunging for it every time it dared to come up for a breath, trying to stroke its shell. Amanda was screaming at them and refused to get out of the boat anywhere near them. I jumped in and gave them a telling off. We went and found our own turtle and tried not to give it a heart attack. By the time we'd seen all the islands other beaches, and some of the big island too, we were happy we'd picked the right place. Jeffrey was convinced Amanda's name was Debbie (because I tend to call her 'Baby') and we didn't have to heart to tell him he was wrong, so that was her name with the locals on the beach for the remainder of our stay.

A ten minute walk from Coral Bay Beach, through the jungle to the other side, was the aptly named 'long beach', the main backpacker hangout on the island. We spent a couple of nights there, mainly because the food was pretty bad at our place. The best restaurant on our beach impressed us on the first night with its veggie curry, then let us down on the second by making it with the leftover coleslaw! We didn't go there again. Coming back through the jungle was a challenge, there being no lights whatsoever inthe dark, and lots of snakes, scorpions, spiders, four foot monitor lizards and whatnot. Showing my old boy scout side I flipped out the trusty swiss army knife and fashioned a quick candle lantern from an old mineral water bottle. It was all quite adventurous until Amanda spent too long standing on a fire ant nest we couldn't see in the dark.

Feeling the vibe with Dive Tribe.

Aside from the fact that no-one really needs a reason for being in a place so awesomely magnificent as this, we had come mainly to dive. For the first couple of days we sized up the possibilities, found out where the best dive spots were, who was going, when and with what size a group. Then we assessed the quality of their dive shop t-shirts (a very important part of diving!) and chose the lot nearest to our hotel, who also happened to offer us a free cup of tea or coffee pretty much whenever we wanted it. On top of all this they were also the most laid back, uneffected dive school. A lot of instructors and divemasters have very little time for actual divers, they tend to get in the way of the mirror, the people at 'Dive Tribe' weren't like that at all.

Evidence of Amanda actually cleaning her own gear

Sugar Wreck, Temple of the sea and D'lagoon.
Mari was our divemaster for all three of the dives we did. The first was on the recent wreck of a huge (70 metres long) ship transporting sugar which sank in 2000. I tried to taste a little water, for your information, salty, no sugar at all. Quite disgusting actually. The visibility was a bit crap, for all those who care about this sort of thing, only about 7 metres, but it made it eerie and spooky and the ship itself was really cool. We swam through its now empty hold, saw a load of bamboo sharks (not nearly as scary as you imagine, they're only about three feet long, more like lady boy sharks than the manly kind that eat people) and scorpion fish, which are really very scary, and a bit deadly too actually. A couple of days later we did two more dives, one called the Temple of the sea, a big pinacle rising from the sandy floor, covered in coral, more bamboo sharks (5 under one rock) and moray eels. D' Lagoon was our last dive and would have been a bit rubbish if Mari hadn't been occupied with three Dutch guys who hadn't dived very much. Amanda and I quickly realised there would be no fish to oggle, so we stayed at the back and had a laugh instead.

Jungle bar on Long Beach

On our last night one of the western women who'd married a local guy and set up out here (there are many more than you'd expect) was having a leaving do (she's off home to earn some money to come back with) in the jungle bar which is as hard to find as the name suggests. Amanda and I, the two Swiss girls with the fundamental neighbours and a group of Irish lads doing their open water course all decided to attend... and why not?

The first adventure was in finding it, without a torch or my ingenious candle lantern, the second was in affording a beer. Malaysia being a muslim country, the local dissaproval of alcohol is reflected in the prices. We snuck in a previously bought bottle of extremely toxic vodka and made do with buying the mixers all night. Amanda had a fight with a dead snakeskin, and won triumphantly and at some point the obligatory guitar came out. We were all singing 'wish you were here' until Andy (dive instructor) made it to the decks to start the party off. Amanda learned some new dance moves (big fish... little fish, feeed the pigeons and open the sun roof) and I managed to catch gut-rot from the extreme potency of the backstreet moonshine we were necking. All in all a very successfull night. We found out the next morning that the Irish lads, who'd left an hour or so after us were attacked on the jungle trail by a group of locals. Apparantly they had spent the night 'looking' at their women... maybe the muslems have it right about alcohol after all.

Speed boats, heavy heads and full tummies
Hungover and late the next morning we treated ourselves to the hotel buffet brekkie, all you can eat for just an arm and a leg. We
spent two hours amazing the Malay waiting staff with our expanding bellies and firm constitutions, it's now about eight hours later as I sit and write this, and I still feel full!

With the beachfront dive shop staff and divers all waving goodbye (quite a nice moment actually) we paid our two ringit each for a little boat to take us to a very slightly bigger boat 50 metres off the beach which we'd also had to pay for (don't get me started) and sped back to the mainland. The Perhentians had been like a little fluffy dream wrapped up with hot weather and a blue sky. Fun, relaxing and still with that extra ingredient to make it all go right. If what we could be expecting from Malaysia was more of the same then bring it on!

We shared a cab with a Kiwi guy and a Polish girl back to Khota Baru, secured our old room in Ideal guesthouse and prepared for our next destination, not quite as idylic as the last, but just as fun I'm positive. As long as you don't mind leeches of course!