The Perhentian Islands - the small island

So - from Taman Negara we headed to the Perhentian Islands off the NE coast of Malaysia. We'd heard a lot of good things about the Perhentians on our travels, but then we hear a lot of things about a lot of places which don't always match our experiences so we weren't counting our chickens...

It started badly. Another long trip involving being taken to a jetty away from the main harbour and being told that this was the only way to get to the Perhentians, which we knew was a lie. (I guess we had to have some less than satisfactory experiencres somewhere down the line. They just seem to have happened within a few days of each other).

But there was a boat and we knew it had to go at some point (albeit an hour after they said) as there were another dozen or so people there who woudl have been pretty angrey of not. Also - we met a really nice British couple in the minibus who had come out for a 2 week holiday to visit their daughter whilst she was travelling. They were waiting for the boat too and it felt kinda nice to have responsible adults around for a while, so we stuck around...

The fast boat turned out to be a slow boat (surprise, surprise - avoid Symphony Travel at Tok Bali pier is all I can say) and then, right on cue as our boat pulled up at Long Beach and we transferred into the speedboat to the shore, the heavens opened. Almighty downpour and big waves. Nice.

Anyhow. We'd decided to stay on Longbeach for the first night as it's the main centre and we could get our bearings from there. We'd tried to book a few places on Long Beach, but all but one of the phone numbers we had seemed to be wrong. However, we had succeeded in booking a room at Moonlight Chalets and we were glad to get there and out of the rain at the end of a long journey.

Okay - the chalet was a bit shabby, but the people were really nice and it was clean and dry and we decided to check out other places the next morning when it stopped raining. At least we had somewhere that night. Knackered, glad to be at the end of a long journey, we went to bed...

Then, at about 12.30am, the bed collapsed. A bit annoying, to say the least. It didn't really look like reception was open so we just decided to put the matress on the floor and get some sleep - at least we now had a valid excuse for checking out in the morning.

So, all was fine, Alec was dozing off and I was just getting to sleep when I heard a really faint noise. Really, really quiet above the noise of the fan. Was I just imagining it? Still not sure I shined the torch under the collapsed bed. Are those eyes or just reflections off nail heads? Nothing is moving. Turn on the light. Take a closer look - oh no, that's a rat which appears to have gone into my bag and extracted a sealed packet of 'emergency biscuits'...

Sleeping on the floor is one thing, but paying a tenner to sleep on the floor with a rat in the room is an entirely different ball park. Unfortunately there was no-one at reception other than boy, maybe 12 years old, who we'd seen earlier in the day and who now helpfully informed us that everyone was in bed. He eventually tried to call someone, somewhere between his 9 cans of coke and 2 cigarettes, and said someone was coming, but no one arrived.

Eventually, after walking the beach and finding nothing else open (it was 3am - what did we expect?) we spotted a hammock and some mats on the platform above reception and decided to sleep there. (The 12 year old tried to protest and tell us that only staff were allowed up there to which we said, 'well go and tell someone then'.)

Needless to say, the next morning, with a partial refund in hand, we once again cut our losses. Lured by the guidebook's pronouncement that the big island was slightly more expensive than the small island but had 'higher standards of accomodation' we took the 5 minute boat trip over crystal clear blue waters to Mama's Chalets.