Monkeys and the Perhentians

Back to civilization people! Or at least to places where they have regular electricity for 24hours, 7days a week. Long post so bear with me (3 days without posting, so... yea...)

On my last on Penang Island I went to the Botanical Gardens and so a lot of macaque monkeys. They were swarming the place and right on the sidewalk. The monkeys were quite aggressive and seemed to want all any kind of bags people had in their hands. There was a sign, actually many signs, saying that people should not feed the monkeys. But people did anyways. Cute monkeys but just don't get too close.

Visited the colonial section of Georgetown again before waiting for my bus at the hostel. I really don't get how Georgetown became a UNESCO heritage city. It's dirty and not very pretty at all. Maybe the mixing of cultures but you get that everywhere in Malaysia. I would think more so in Melaka than Penang.

The hostel I stayed at in Georgetown, 100 Cintra Street, was very nice except it had no mosquito netting in the dorm rooms. I basically doused myself in repellent right before bed. It definitely had a very colonial Chinese feel to it.

RANDOM NOTE: I have been approached several times by people of the Indian subcontinent and they say 'Sir, you are very lucky, you want to know why?'. I think this is a scam for some sort of fortune telling but I'm not sure. Any insight would be helpful. I was approached in Hong Kong, Macau, and in Kuala Lumpur.

Alright, so after an hour or two of waiting I got on my 70RM minibus ride to Kuala Besut, the city that has the jetty where boats take off to go to the Perhentian Islands. I was traveling with Chinese-Malay family. I lied to them and said I was from Taiwan (meaning I grew up there). Then they started to talk to me in Min Nan Yu (the Hokkien, Taiwanese dialect). I didn't know what to say but lie that my family didn't speak Taiwanese in our home. They asked me about the geography which I half-assed lied about and about the military draft. I gave them some random number of years I had to serve. Anyways, they bought it but I don't know if whole-heartedly. I was too tired to care and tried to sleep in the cramped quarters.

I got to Kuala Besut at 4am! The man working at the boat office came early for me. (The bus driver arranged this). But man was I pooped and just slept in the office until the first boat at 7am left. At this time I met up with a very indecisive Spanish couple and they were just being troublesome to the travel office. They couldn't decide on a guesthouse and made everyone else at the boat wait for them. This is the second Spanish couple that made a fuss. The first was in Yangshuo (they were fighting with the boatman about the price and my friend Jason and I got in the middle of it).

Eventually, got onto the boat and got onto Perhentian Kecil, the smaller of the two islands. The guesthouse I wanted to stay at, Matahari Chalet, was fully booked so I had to find another one. I ended up at a place called Symphony Village and got a private a frame hut. It was okay but really old and creaky. Plus there was a monitor lizard who liked to lounge on my roof (monitor lizards are huge; like 1m or more). At least, it had a mosquito net, which worked, and a fan, which cooled me.

On the first day, I decided I wanted to go snorkeling. Very bad idea. I was ill-prepared for the ocean. My sunscreen was almost out and I had to scrape what I could over my body. I didn't think to take my motion-sickness pill because the boat ride there was fine. Okay, at the first dive spot and I totally kind of freaked because I have never snorkeled before. I swallowed some of the sea water. Eventually I got the hang of it. But after a while I felt really nauseous. I don't know if it was the nasty seawater in my stomach, sea-sickness, or my lack of sleep on the mini-bus. In hindsight, I think it's the combination of the three and more of the latter. Saw some clownfish, parrotfish, huge sea turtles, and reef sharks. But felt really sick so I had the boat driver take me back after three dive spots.

I went back to my hut and slept. When I woke up my back was really tender and I though 'Shit, how the hell did I get sunburned'. It's probably because my sunblock isn't waterproof for the entire four hours I went snorkeling. Probably should have re-applied it after each spot, what I had left of anyways.

For the next two days, I stayed in the shade and only went into the water twice. It was excruciating because the water looked really inviting. It's clear and the shallows go on for about 20 meters with little white fish swimming around you. But I knew I would get even more sunburned (I did; now my upper chest, knees, and shoulders are also burnt)

Took a overnight bus with a pushy Argentinian girl and dodgy Belgian guy to KL. Arrived here. Now, waiting at a net cafe before my 4:20pm AirAsia flight to Hanoi. Heard it's raining there.