Mersing to Terengganu

I realise that my poor blog has been in somewhat of a static state the past two weeks.  I have a good excuse though I promise.  Darren and I have spent the majority of the last two and a half weeks on fairly remote islands with either no internet acecss, or access that was too slow and too expensive to bother with.  When we have been in the city, we haven't had any wifi and I've been too lazy to copy and paste the posts I was keeping from my lap top.  Sorry!  So, to brief on what's been going on:

While we were in Salang, I kept a daily diary, which I posted previous to this one.  Once we left Salang (which we only slightly regretted) not a whole lot happened.

Mersing
It was some sort of school holiday the day we chose to leave, and getting a bus out of Mersing (where the jetty dropped us off) was next to impossible.  Everything was fully booked, and aside from taking an expensive taxi, we couldn't get anything out until 11 pm.  The next town we were headed to was only four hours away and notorious for being somewhat of a sleepy, quiet town, and we didn't want to arrive in the middle of the night.  So we spent the evening in Mersing... which was far from interesting.  Aside from being the major hub/jetty for getting to Tiomen (the island Salang is on), there really isn't anything else going on.  We spent a few hours in an internet cafe, got our hair cut (more about that disaster in a moment), and then drove each other crazy until it was time for bed.

Now for the haircut.  I must say that I didn't go into the salon wholey unwarned.  I had heard of the atrosities that they carry out in Asian hair salons and I was hesitant; however, the thickness and heat of my hair could not compel me to resist.  Darren went in to get his hair cut (which is safe and straight forward), and when the lady asked me if I wanted to get mine cut as well, I simply told the truth, "Yes!"  The problem was is that I just didn't want to get it cut by them, but that was already beside the point.  With little ability to communicate, we both understood and decided on the word "thinning":  I was going to get my hair thinned out, a middle ground if you will between getting my hair cut and dealing with the heat.  Well... I am not about to argue or dispove the notion that getting your hair cut in Asia is a bad idea, but simply reinforce it... especially if you have curls.  What was meant to be a routine thinning, turned into a hack job.  Darren says it reminds him of Prince, though I don't know if I would go quite so far.  It is pretty awful as far as hair cuts go though.  When I saw the amount of hair on the ground I was mortified for sure!  Easily, without exageration, at least half of my hair was on the floor of the salon.  :'(  She definitely thinned it out alright.  Most of you know that my ponytail is quite a bushy, curly mass... well now it's nothing more than a thin (thinner than the average person's even) rat tail.  To make matters worse, she thinned too close to the scalp, not really close, but close enough that for a few inches, my hair is thick and full as it is naturally, but after that is drastically fades away into no more than a few meesly curls.  It does resemble a mullet to some effect.  I tried to do a little damage control myself, trimming the base piece which a good three inches longer than all the other layers, but I'm afraid it is beyond hope.  I barely wear my air down long enough to dry now, and whether or not I venture to have it fixed is a constant issue for me.  I'm afraid.  Very, very afraid!  Rachel (my hair dresser from ZZ Cuts), if you're out there, I miss you!  So, do I cut again, or no?

On the bright side, we inadvertantly agreed to having our hair washed, and that was a whole new experience as well.  You know that two or three minutes when you get your hair washed at the hair dressers and they lightly massage your scalp?  Think that but for a good half hour!  Except instead of laying back in a sing, you're sitting in a regular salon chair, with your hair (or what's left of it) piled on top of your head, lathered in some sort of minty, aromatic shampoo.  They massage your scalp, your temples, your neck, your shoulders and some of your back.  The majority of the time is spent on your scalp, but it feels pretty amazing!  They do it twice too.  A five minute hair cut turned into about an hour and it's a good thing for it, because if I hadn't been so relaxed and drunk with pleasant perfumes, the shock of my new hairdo would've made me furious!  There are worse ways to pass the time.


Cherating
Cherating is a bit of a hiccup of a town.  It really is one of the places that you'll miss if you blink.  The beach is about two blocks of the highway and if you weren't inclined to look for it, you'd never know it was there.  There was enough going on there, with internet access, restaurants and stores, but it was sleepy and quiet and even the beach seemed empty.  I think to really appreciate Cherating, you'd have to go during Monsoon season when the storms kick up a bit of decent surf, otherwise it's a little boring.  We only stayed two days, and spent those two days planning ahead for the next leg of the trip.  We booked tickets and made arrangments, but didn't go swimming (the weather wasn't great) and only went to the beach to walk and get out of our room.  It was a stop that probably could've been avoided.

Pulau Kapas
Kapas.  Kapas.  Kapas.  We had heard from some people we met in Salang that Kapas was a great, beatiful beach definitely worth a visit.  We were going to go to the Perhentians, which are supposedly a bit touristy, and settled for the serene beaches of Kapas instead, and serene they were.  When we bought our bus and ferry tickets to Kapas, the woman told us to make sure we bought our snacks and stuff before we went to the island.  We didn't think much of it and only bought a few bottles of water and shampoo.  Well, Kapas is definitely an isolated quiet island.  It's only fifteen-twenty minutes of the mainland but other than the resorts themselves (maybe five or six) there is no store and only one restaurant.  There actually was a store, but it was closed the entire time we were there, and all the resort restaurants were way overpriced!  We ran out of toilet paper within the first day, and resorted to stealing napkins from the local warung.  We only had enough sunblock for one day and had to dilute the rest with normal lotion to try to make it last, and it we had to ration our toothpaste as well.  We had originally intended on staying on the island for eight or nine days, but left a few days early.  There were few English books Darren was interested in reading and by the end of the week we were going a little crazy, and trying to portion out napkins for toilet paper sucks.  That being said, Kapas really is amazing.

Even if there was little to do, the beaches are beautiful, the water is crystal clear, and the snorkeling is amazing.  It's amazing how a beach can seem so completely deserted of life, while not even two feet below the water's surface it's just beeming with energy, colour, and clownfish!  Yes, clownfish!  Just like Nemo!  There were tons of anenomes and at least two clownfish in each, sometimes four or five, and I can't even think of how long I just floated there watching them.  It's actually quite entertaining watching them swim and wiggle in and out and through the anenome.  It's fascinating, and they're so small.  We even saw a few baby ones that couldn't have been any bigger than my thumbnail.  There were also loads of sea urchins, which was  little daunting, but still pretty cool.  We had to make sure that we swam with our arms tucked in to avoid accidental contact.  There were tons of fish though and so many different colours.  Because I don't have an underwater camera, I've posted some pics of the internet to give you an idea of the things we saw.

These pics are actually from Pulau Kapas:

We stayed at a place called the "Captain's Longhouse".  It was an interesting place, raised longhouse fashion with private rooms along the outisde (four on either side) and a dorm room through the middle, and two shared toilets/showers at the end.  There were beds and cussiony chairs and hammocks throughout, as well as strange sailing artifacts and netting, and the owner actually had us call him Captain.  It was a little eccentric but cosy enough.

It was more or less a week of observing various creatures foreign to our colder climate.  There was a viper snake in one of the trees at the KBC down the beach which stayed there for days.  The guests there named it Kiki.  There was a tiny tree frog that got comfortable on the light switch box near our bathroom.  Not sure if it was the right move or not, but after the third day I took it to one of the trees.  We saw a few praying mantises, lots of cool crabs, and some very colourful, though loud, birds.  I guess when you're sitting around not doing a whole heck of a lot, you tend to observe things a little better. 

It was a beautiful island with plenty of life, though not always apparent.  If ever go though, stock up on toilet paper and sun screen before hand!

Kuala Terengganu
When the quiet became "too quiet", Darren and I opted to head to Terengganu earlier than planned.  Our only reason for going there at all was to fly to KL, but the book seemed to have a few nice things to say about it so we thought it'd be worth a look.  We were wrong.  Not to say that it was a horrible trip and that there was nothing to do, but there certainly wasn't much.  We spent a decent amounttime in internet cafes, in part to kill time, and in part to take advantage of their AC.  At least when you're on a beach you always have the option of hopping into the ocean.  In the city, it's just hot.

We did venture to the neighboring island to check out the traditional boat making, but after being there for ten minutes, all we saw were deserted playgrounds and a lot eery quiet.  So we got right back on the ferry and went back to the mainland.  We walked through China town (a block of semi-Chinese shops and restaurants) and went back to the dark air conditioned hole called the internet cafe.  These aren't just regular cafes though.  In fact, they're not cafes at all.  They're actually gaming zones where masses of prebuescant teenagers go to play shoot-em-up video games and listen to a combination of harsh rap music and Justin Bieber.  The first time we went in there, we walked to our designated computer, only to find a guy passed out, practically drooling on himself.  Needless to say, we had to switch computers.  He was still konked out when we left an hour later.

One of the beautiful things about Terengganu though, and of Malaysia in general, is in their religion and mosques.  Some people might find it annoying to wake up and go to sleep to the sound of prayers being aired over a loud speaker across the city, but the langauge and the way they practically sing the prayers is quite beautiful.  Today is the begining of Rhamadan.  Last night, between prayers and such, they had a few fireworks and it was actually quite nice to hear the prayers, watch the fireworks and see the lit up mosque from the roof top cafe of our hostel.


Now we wait.  We are currently at the KL International Airport.  We flew in this morning just before 9, and we don't fly out again until 8pm.  (The cheapest flights are always really early or really late).  KL has two airports, as I may have explained before, but because KLIA is so much bigger, and with more ammenities, we're waiting here, and not at LCCT.  It's off to Ko Phi Phi next, via Phuket, and I for one am super excited for Thailand.  It'll be yet another whole new ballgame!  I'll do my best to keep up the posts from the islands!