The journey to Perhentian took about 30 minutes by speed boat ride. I'm glad that our journey to the island was much better compared to the boat ride back to the mainland (we almost capsized). Our journey back to the mainland was rough due to the high waves. It was raining on Monday night with storm.
Ok upon our arrival, we were greeted by a school of deep sea fishes and the water was sooooo clear. It was as clear as what I have seen on magazines and TVs.
Pulau Perhentian are divided into 2, Perhentian Kecil and Perhentian Besar. Perhentian Kecil is less commercialist so that is one of the reason why we picked our honeymoon here. The Perhentians belong to Pulau Redang National Marine Park, which means that fishing, collecting coral and littering are strictly prohibited. Like Besut, people here generally speak Kelantanese Malay.
Both islands are fringed by white sand beach, and the reefs and crystalline water are host to a wide variety of coral, sea-turtles, jellyfish, small sharks and reef-fish. The islands' maximum elevation is approximately 100 m (328 ft) and they are uniformly covered in coastal tropical jungle, with few interior foot-trails and no roads.
Other than the owners and staff of the numerous cabin-style resorts that dot the islands (many of whom depart for the monsoon season), the islands' only permanent inhabitants live in a small fishing village on Kecil. With the exception of a single mainland-communications tower on each island, there are no structures taller than two storeys.
The highlight of this trip was definitely our snorkelling trip to the shark reef. I was literally swimming right beside the 3 sharks that were there. Our boatman had to catch some small fishes beforehand in order to attract these sharks. They were as big as me and some said, if you're lucky, you could see twice bigger than the one we saw. It was amazing.
The snorkelling trip was part of the package that we took(Steffen Sea Sports). The price is about RM40 for 5 snorkelling destinations. The Coral reefs , Shark Point, Turtle point, Romantic beach, Lighthouse. The Coral reef point is as deep as 7 feet below. You think you are a good swimmer, wait till you swim in an open sea. I had panic attack at 2 points, the first snorkelling point and the Shark point.
At the end of our snorkelling trip, me and Juan continued our swim trip nearby to the shore of our chalet. We managed to catch sunset and it was beautiful.
We didn't know that we're able to bring our hand phones into the sea and take pictures until I saw a few of of them who shared the same boat with us did it. Hence, the reason why you can't view my underwater experience here. But the your boat driver will usually bring his own DSLR water proof camera and you can view your photos later on.
The case looks a lot like the picture below.
