Perhentian islands (east coast Malaysia) & Singapore

***I have been waiting to find time and a computer where I can add pictures to the blog.  I thought I could at our current hostel, but the computer has worms, so we can't/don't want to plug in our usb to add pictures.  I promise to add pictures once we get a chance.  Sorry everyone.***

We left Kuala Lumpur and flew to the Perhentian Islands on Sunday, March 6.  We had to fly into Khota Bharu, then take an hour taxi to the Kuala Besut jetty, and then about a 30 minute boat ride to the islands.  The boat was by far the worst form of transportation we have taken so far.  The sea was very rough and our boat would go up on a big wave and then thump very painfully back down.  Some of the thumps were brutal!  Knock the wind right out of you and make your entire body ache.  We ended up getting to the island around 6:30pm and then searched for a hostel.  Kyle was trying to find a treehouse hostel that sounded great, but after finding out that it was an hour trek, through the jungle, in the dark, I put my foot down and we stayed at a nice hostel in a dorm and met some other nice travellers.  We had a delicious seafood buffet for dinner and then went to bed.  The next day was a beach day.  We found a nice quiet beach, read, and snorkeled.  Within the first 10 minutes of snorkeling we saw a 5ft long black tipped reef shark, along with tons of other fish.  After our day at the beach, Kyle and I were both very sunburnt and very mosquito bitten.  Then on Tuesday, we signed up for 2 dives and went to the NW of Perhentian Kecil and dove.  The highlight of our dive was seeing a sea turtle.  Once we got back on the boat, the weather started to get bad.  We headed back to the dive shop to get new oxygen tanks but we were too late, the storm had already been unleashed.  THAT boat ride was the worst boat ride, and those thumps did not help a very painful sunburnt bum.  I was almost launched out of the boat at one time.  It was a little terrifying.  Once safely back to shore we ended up not getting to do our second dive because it continued to rain all of Tuesday and Wednesday.  We had an early flight out of Khota Bharu on Thursday, but we were afraid the rain would prevent the last ferry from leaving, so we left the island at noon on Wednesday and spent the night in Khota Bharu. Nothing really special about Khota Bharu, but our hostel was super cheap and very decent.  We left Khota Bharu Thursday and flew back to Kuala Lumpur where we bought train tickets to Singapore and ended up in Singapore a day earlier than expected.

We arrived in Singapore at 10pm an hour later than expected because our train had been late.  At the train station we tried to get a taxi to Chinatown, but there were no taxis available and there were 2 groups of elderly people waiting in front of us, so we decided that we could ask for directions and walk.  It had started to rain lightly, but within 10 minutes of walking, one of the people we asked for directions offered to give us a ride to Chinatown since it was far and raining.  I was hesitant, but Kyle quickly agreed and took the man up on his offer.  The gentleman was a very nice and helpful guy named Mark.  He gave us some suggestions on things to do and dropped us off in Chinatown.  From there we began the dreadful and extremely tiring search for a hostel.  After a good 2 hour hunt in the rain we still had no place to spend the night.  Everywhere was full (little did we know that some shopping fair was taking place at the neighboring stop and there were no vacancies anywhere).  We finally had to give up and get a hotel.  An expensive purchase and the hotel was by no means worth what we paid for it.  Oh well.

The next day we switched to a hostel and stayed in a 20 person dorm.  I would NOT recommend this for anyone.  We were woken up at 5am by a group of Germans coming back from the bars and then again at 7am by a fresh arrival of a huge Chinese group that showed up and didn't seem to realize people were still sleeping.  Why does Chinese always seem to be shouted?  Anyway, we spent the day walking around the city and seeing what there was to see.  The food in Singapore is definitely amazing and the people are very friendly and far less rude then some of their Asian neighbors.

Then on Saturday the 12 we went to the Singapore Zoo, which was an amazing zoo!  We saw Komodo dragons, even a baby, and a lot of orangutans and a few babies which were very entertaining to watch play.  At dinner we got to watch a fire show which was pretty great and quite funny.  Then we went to the night safari, which was an entirely diferent zoo, but next to the other zoo and got to see some nocturnal animals.  Kyle's favorite was the slow lapis, one of the few poisonous mammals and the only poisonous primate.  We also got to ride the night tram and see other animals that you couldn't get to on the paths.  Kyle's highlight of the day was when we went into the flying squirrel exhibit and were looking around for awhile beacsue we couldn't find the squirrels.  Another gentleman in the exhibit pointed one out to us.  All of a sudden the flying squirrel jumped off of the tree branch and flew right at me.  I was convinced that the squirrel, who was quite large, was going to land on me, thus I let out a scream of terror.  I probably scared the squirrle more than it scared me, but Kyle proceeded to laugh at me for the rest of the evening.  We didn't get back to the hostel until late and then had to be up really early Sunday morning to catch our flight to Phuket, Thailand!!

Miss you all!  Love, K & M