On Perhentian

Barely a day of rest after Monday's red eye flight from Shanghai, I was on my way to Perhentian. For the uninitiated, Perhentian consists of two tropical islands off the north-eastern coast of Peninsula Malaysia. I leave it to Wikipedia to detail the geography of it.

We boarded the bus from Lavender Street in the evening

and arrived at the ghost town that is Jerteh the next morning. The bus journey took 11 hours, discounting any delay caused by bus breakdown - which, as luck would have it, happened on two occasions. Aside from that, the bus journey was quite a torture because I could never get into a comfortable position to sleep and the air-conditioning was too cold.

From Jerteh we cabbed to Kuala Besut with a Turkish couple

and reached the jetty after having some overpriced breakfast at a nearby restaurant.

Finally we cruised to the Perhentian islands on a speedboat.

So much about the long and winding journey. In the end, Perhentian was nice. You get to enjoy some really breathtaking views of the sea and the sunset is beautiful. When it doesn't rain, the sun is lovely for suntanning too. But overall, Perhentian isn't spectacular. To me, it's just an island that is not Singapore. Perhaps another Bali or Tioman, except that compared to the latter islands, Perhentian is less a victim of crass commericalisation that comes inevitably with tourism, it being less established and well-known. The people are friendly, which we all agreed is extremely necessary to ensure the long-term survival of the island whose economy is entirely driven by tourism. Most visitors hail from Australia and Europe, so we didn't feel left out not knowing how to speak Malay.

That's about all I have to say about my little jaunt to Perhentian. Enjoy the pictures!