We arrived in Kuala Lumpur around 5 hours after leaving Singapore. The border crossing was seamless and so was the journey, a lot easier than expected! We stayed in Chinatown again, managed to find the hostel easily and the guy at reception helped us loads with our travel plans for the coming days. We had to go to the bus station to get tickets for the next day then we went in search of food. The food courts really are the way to go as you get so much value for money and loads of choice, although some dishes are less than appetising, eg. frog porridge!! We settled for a satay and sticky rice and found a great juice stall and managed to get through quite a few including; lime and sourplum, guava, mango, apple, orange, pineapple and dragon fruit.

The next morning we had a day of sight seeing lined up as we would leave that evening. First we went to the Petronas Twin Towers, the tallest buildings in the world until 2004, but unfortunately all the tickets to go up had gone for the day but they were still impressive to see. Next we went to visit the National museum but it had been moved to another area. We were just about to head to hibiscus and orchid gardens when the sky turned black so we headed back to the hostel and watched a film before catching a 10 hour overnight bus to the port which would take us to the Perhentian Islands.

The Perhentian Islands are in the north eastern corner of Malaysia and belong to the Pulau Redang National Marine Park. We stayed on Kecil island, smaller than its larger sibling Besar but more beautiful. We checked into our hut (it really was just a wooden shack) and headed to the beach. The beach was absolutely stunning and the water is the clearest I have seen anywhere in the world. The water is fairly shallow for about 30 metres then drops off so is perfect for snorkelling. As I now have my own mask and fins I was straight in the water. There are loads of rocks to the right of the beach and it was absolutely teaming with hundreds of different species of fish. I saw some truly amazing things including angel fish the size of dinner plates! For me the snorkelling was better than the great barrier reef and just when I thought it couldn't get any better, as I was swimming back to the beach I saw ten baby white tip sharks which is an awesome experience - definitely my best days snorkelling ever.

We spent the day on the beach in soaring temperatures just relaxing, swimming and snorkelling. The island is tiny and the restaurants are all on the beach which looks stunning at night. Walking through the jungle paths we saw loads of lizards and even a huge monitor lizard which can be the size of a medium dog!! After dinner we went back to the hut after braving the toilets filled with huge lizards (Ali hated them!). I did a quick bug check with a torch and then when I looked under the bed I go the fright of my life. Now I've been pretty good at dealing with all the bugs and animals thus far but this was a bit of a shock. Under the bed was a SCORPION!! It was probably only a inch long but even I know that the smaller the scorpion is, the deadlier it is. Now these things can kill a grown man in minutes so I tried to attack it but it was too quick and scuttled down one of the numerous holes in our hut. Needless to say, even with the mosquito net tucked under the matress neither of us got much sleep that night!!

The next day was pretty much the same (except thankfully no more scorpions!), we just enjoyed the beautiful surroundings and the peace and quiet that tropical islands tend to radiate.

We left early the next morning as we don't had loads of time left on this trip and Asia, as I'm sure you're aware, is massive!!

On our return to the mainland we would head for the Thai border - next stop Bangkok!