Malaysia offers a great variety of beautiful vacation spots because of its southern East Asian location and is surrounded by different seas. After we visited the beautiful west coast with the Malaysian favourite holiday Island Langkawi and the impressive and all over the world known Indonesian Island Bali, we decided to visit a further place called the Perhentian Islands to recharge our batteries and to end our gorgeous semester abroad in Malaysia.
Perhentian is a small Island with two main Islands and some smaller places where no one lives. Its located on the east coast of Malaysia just beside the Boarder of Thailand and is a wonderful target for vacation to just do nothing but enjoying the beautiful beaches with its crystal clear water for snorkelling and diving. The Names of the several Islands are Perhentian Kecil and Perhentian Besar, but during our visit we stayed on the Perhentian Kecil with its wonderful Coral Bay. The resorts and bays are scattered on the islands and are just connected by small trails through the jungle. This gave us the feeling of being separated from the hectic city life.
We started our journey from Subang Airport for domestic flights with a local Airline called Fireflyz. It is comparable with the common cheap airlines in Europe with one exception; an airscrew engine powers the aircrafts. Sadly, the Perhentian Islands don't have an Airport and we had to land on the nearby mainland airport called Kota Bharu and had to take a one hour ride to the ferry station in Kuala Besut where the ferry will take us to the island. The ferry ride will make you seasick, because the South Chinese Ocean is harsh. But overall, the whole trip was like a little adventure and a great start-up.
As a tourist, once can choose from a great variety of beautiful resorts, located directly at the beach! Just Google or email for a room in the Hotel called Senya Bay Resort. We were absolutely satisfied with our accommodation. Of course, like in every destination in Malaysia or Asia, you can’t expect the accommodation standard like those of Europe but they provide everything you need for bridging one sunny beach day to the next.
Within the days we spent on the Island, we rented snorkelling equipment, for around RM5 per day and had a great-guided snorkelling trip to several locations. We had an outstanding experience especially from the trip, which we booked, from one of the shops on the beach (in our case the Maya Bay Resort – Restaurant and Snorkelling Trips). During the day, we visited the turtle point where we swam nearby a sea turtle and went to a shark point where we were surrounded by 10 sharks, each up to 1,5-2m in size. We also jumped off a 13m height Lighthouse and enjoyed Mother Nature’s fascinating underwater world filled with corals and beautiful fishes.
If you are interested to experience diving, you can also book a scuba diving discovery trip in the Perhentian Island. The Discovery Trip includes an introduction to the theoretical diving and after that, a real diving experience in the sea, about 12m deep.
Another activity, which we did aside from the beach activities, was jungle trekking. We jungle trekked through the jungle in the middle of the island. Of course, the jungle was also a popular tourist activity hence, it isn’t untouched. However, we were lucky enough to encounter with the famous monitor lizards and monkeys walking and jumping around.
One of the benefits of the island was that there are a lot of great restaurants and BBQ Spots on the beach. Especially if you like seafood, you are at the right place! We would recommend for you to try the red snapper or Asian Lobster they are incredibly good. But if you are more of the adventurous type, you can try ordering the shark, barracuda or stingray! However, the side back of Malaysian restaurants is that the service is much slower as compared to the service staff in Germany, more so for the people on the Island as they are very laidback.
The trip to the Perhentian Island was an eye opening adventure for us and relaxing at the same time. The Perhentian Island was definitely the right choice of place to escape from the daily hectic life and to recharge. We strongly recommend this destination for holidays and if you want to enjoy the beautiful East-Coast of Malaysia. Our trip completed our time in Malaysia in a way and would stay in our mind for a lifetime.
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