Singapore, Malaysia and the Perhentians

We had taken the decision to stay in Singapore for a couple of days to find our feet and suss out how we would get through Malaysia and if we could work it so that we could get some time on the Perhentian Island (We had heard quite a bit about them). Singapore was a welcome break from the general grime and relative chaos of Indonesia. I t is VERY clean and the transport systems are good, two things we had not experienced in a while! Anyway, we spent some time here spoiling ourselves a little with some shopping and good food.
Cocktails!

Frogs legs!


We managed to find out that getting to the Perhentian Islands wouldn't be too much of a hassel, in fact all we had to do was get an overnight train, a short cab ride, then a boat and we would be there! So we organised the train journey and off we went, albeit in the crappy top bunks!

Now we generally look forward to an overnighter on the train, its quite cozy and you can get a good nighst sleep (based on previous experience). This train however was a different story altogether! There was something underneath the carriage we were in that was obviously swinging around and catching on something because every 5 or 10 second you would hear a very loud bang as the object struck the underneath of the carriage!! Needless to say, very little sleep was had....it was grim!

We arrived rather grumpily at our stop in the morning and bundled into a taxi, then onto a pretty quick boat across to the islands. I managed to spot a marlin or sail fin on the way over which was a massive surprise (of course i was the only one to see it, as always!) We got dropped off at a place called Abduls and quickly got the feel that it was basically a holiday destination rather than a travellers place (we kind of expected that anyway).

It was a little strange to be surrounded by families and what have you! Nonetheless, the beach was nice and the sea was great for swimming. It was picture post card blue!


We had heard good things a week or so before about another place round the opposite side of the island called Bubbles Dive Resort. After a couple of days on the busy side (eating well, drinking quite expensive beer and watching a little football) we booked ourselves in to Bubbles and made our way round on the Taxi boat. What we were greated with was a completely different atmoshpere, the beach was practically deserted, it was completely secluded and it was very quiet indeed! We got checked in and had a little look round.

You could not see the bungalows from the beach as there was a wall of small trees hiding them.

This helped to create a nice feel to things and also aids with turtle breeding. Turtles use this beach regularly to lay their eggs and the resort monitors the turtle numbers that come to shore using volunteer groups from over seas. There are no flash lights and bright lights allowed as this upsets and disorientates the turtles. Any disturbance can result in the turtles aborting their eggs at sea which is obviously bad news. The beach itself was really nice and was flanked by deep jungle and large boulders.

You could snorkel just off shore and the amount and size of black tip reef sharks was quite impressive! You would see at least three or four sharks on every little snorkel trip! There were also turtles and a good veriety of smaller fish along with some large bump head parrot fish. We even got a little spooked when one time we were circled by three large black tips! Safe to say we made our exit quite quickly!
We spent about 4 days here, in which time we chilled right out (it was so quiet, most of the time we had the beach to ourselves) and went on a little snorkelling trip just to break things up a bit which was cool. We saw some really good corals and some big fish. It was a nice few days and we would recommend it for a family holiday for sure! No rest for the wicked though, we had to get to Thailand!