Before leaving the UK, Beth had discovered the quickest and surprisingly the cheapest way of getting to the Perhentian Islands from the island of Penang was to fly.
At the boarding gate we were all surprised to see the plane didn't have what we are all so used to seeing - jet engines. Instead it had the 'old fashioned' propeller type. The plane was also fairly small, but the one hour journey was quiet, smooth and passed very quickly.
At the airport Amelia, Beth, and I paid for a combined ticket (taxi plus boat) transfer to the Perhentian Islands. The first leg of the transfer was by taxi, it was around an hour to the jetty. The second leg from the jetty was half-hour by speed boat.
After the back-jarring half-hour journey, we made it to our island of choice 'Kecil' (backpacker island). The other island called 'Besar' is apparently catered towards families and holidaymakers.
The speed boat dropped us off at 'Coral Beach'. As the name suggests the beach was partly made up of dead coral - not comfortable to walk on compared with soft sand, but this part of the island had been recommended by another backpacker in the boat terminal. Apparently this side of the island was much quieter than the 'party side' - just fifteen minute walk away (no roads on the Perhentian Islands). The sea was beautifully clean and clear and very inviting but first things first.. accommodation.
As we stepped off the jetty a guy with dreads and a very 'Captain Jack Sparrow' demeanour approached and offered us some advice on where to find reasonably priced accommodation. Luckily 'Captain Sparrow' let us leave our big heavy bags at the dive shop he was working at, whilst we took our valuables with us.
Unfortunately the first place he recommended was full and so were all the others (we could afford) on Coral Beach, so we ended up going back to the dive shop for more advice and to collect our belongings. 'Captain Sparrow' said "I have one more card up my sleeve" and led us inland. He took us into the sticks, past half a dozen monitor lizards and up a fairly steep hill to a place called 'Bintang View'. We were extremely sweaty by this point so were very pleased to hear they had availability. The rooms were clean and comfortable hillside huts with shared bathroom facilities.
Amelia's best friend Lizzie was also in Malaysia, but with a broken phone. Somehow they'd managed to arrange a meeting point on long beach for 5pm. So we sat waiting on the much busier but softer sands of Long Beach. 5pm came and went, but we still sat patiently with our stomachs grumbling. Eventually we saw a group of backpackers walking down the beach. I spotted that Lizzie was among them and Amelia went running, a few seconds later all we could hear was screaming (mainly from Lizzie). A few hugs and an introduction to Beth later, I suggested that Beth and I could hunt for some much needed dinner whilst Amelia took Lizzie to see the room.
All the restaurants seemed similarly priced with almost the same menus, so we all decided it was best to pick one of the busiest ones with tables on the beach.
Dinner was great, we sat on the beach and enjoyed some delicious Malay seafood whilst having a good catch up. After dinner we carried on our conversations with a couple of beers by a very well choreographed fire show.

With all of us being fully qualified scuba divers we decided to go on the hunt for a decent dive shop, but not before some Malay/Indian style breakfast. The breakfast was the cheapest we could find on the island (4 ringgit). It came in a brown paper parcel and consisted of rice, curry sauce and a choice of meat or fish - all to be eaten with your hands. It was very messy, but fun too, we all felt like kids again eating with our fingers!
There are plenty of dive shops on the Perhentian Islands which makes for some very competitive pricing, in fact it's some of the cheapest you'll find in the world! After looking around a few shops (including Captain Jack Sparrow's) we soon got the impression there were three 'must do' dives ('Temple of the Sea', 'T3' aka 'Terumba Tiga' and 'Sugar Wreck').
Beth hadn't been diving in over two years so she was needing a 'refresher' dive. Diving can be a nerve-racking experience for some so it's not always about price, you have to feel very relaxed and comfortable with the shop and people working there. We all sensed that one of the most professional outfits was a place called 'Turtle Bay Divers'. Beth booked on to do her refresher dive that afternoon and Amelia, Lizzie and I booked on to do a couple of dives (Temple of the Sea and Sugar Wreck) with Beth for the following day. Unfortunately Turtlebay divers didn't have T3 on their schedule for that afternoon, so we went to a place just next door called 'Oh La La'. They were a smaller shop with smaller boats so were more than happy to cater for our needs. We were all very excited with how things were panning out so went to get some lunch before preparing for our dives.
T3 dive site was located about half an hour away by small speed boat. Beth had already gone off to Turtlebay Divers for her refresher. So we, along with our dive guide 'Chantal' got all of our gear sorted on dry land before putting everything on, trundling clumsily across the beach, to climb aboard the small speed boat - a new experience for us, as we were all used to a bigger boat and getting prepared whilst on the boat and on the way to the dive site.
The sea was a little choppy so the journey was a bit bumpy at times but we made it intact and ready to dive. As the boat was small we took a seated 'back roll' entry into the water and waited for our guide Chantal to lead the way.
As soon as we went under we noticed the visibility wasn't good (less than 10m), and the currents were fairly strong. Luckily the deeper you go, generally the weaker the current gets, so by the time we reached the boulders and rocks of T3 at twenty or so metres it was easily manageable. T3 is known more for it's fun 'swim throughs' and macro life, so the lack of visibility didn't effect the dive. Chantelle felt comfortable enough with us to lead us through some of the narrowest tunnels I've experienced. It was great fun and a real test of our skills, but at times it was a little unnerving hearing the grinding of huge boulders being pushed around by the current (something Chantelle had pre-warrned us about). Aside from the hair-raising swim throughs, occasional thermocline, and some strong currents on our ascent, we saw some beautiful fish including - Emperor Angelfish, a huge pufferfish with its own remoras, lots of nudibranches and some fish even our guide couldn't identify. Diving with Lizzie was great, there's always the 'unknown' when diving with someone new as they could end up being a fast breather and/or have bad buoyancy control, Lizzie had neither of these bad traits, so our dive lasted almost an hour and went very smoothly despite the varying conditions.
Back on dry land we went and found Beth. Unfortunately things for Beth hadn't gone so well. She'd not been able to equalise the airspace in her ears properly, causing excruciating pain and dizziness descending deeper than five metres or so. Any mucus in the airways can cause equalising issues during scuba diving and Beth had been a little bunged up and sniffly since she arrived so it was likely this triggered the issue. After the issues Beth encountered she sensibly decided to cancel her dives for the following day. We also followed suit, but after a short discussion with Beth who said she was more than happy to spend the morning trying to catch up with our sun tans, we decided to rebook the morning dive at the Temple of the Sea dive site. But as we loved our dive at T3 with Chantal so much we booked with Oh La La instead who were also cheaper - win win!
Earlier in the day, whilst hunting around for a dive shop, we found a place called Ewan's cafe, they were very popular and had reasonable pricing so for dinner we paid them a visit. I had barracuda served with a tomato based spicy sauce, Amelia, Beth and Lizzie all had the same dish which was barbecued chicken served in a coconut curry sauce. All of the food was outstanding and some of the cheapest on the island.

Lizzie, Amelia and I awoke to an early-ish alarm so we had enough time to get ourselves ready, eat breakfast and give our stomachs chance to digest before going out to dive. Being up just before 8am is very early for island life! We could only find the one out of dozens of places along Long Beach open and serving breakfast. Amelia and Lizzie played it safe with an omelet, I had Roti Canai (cross between a pancake and naan bread served with curry sauce).
After a short re-acquaintance and dive brief from our dive master Chantal we were out on the boat for a half hour journey to the dive site.
Temple of the Sea is a pinnacle that rises twenty five metres from the sea bed, this pinnacle can draw in an array of sea life including schools of snappers, blacktip sharks, bamboo sharks, boxfish, moray eels, pufferfishes, turtles, triggerfish, scorpionfish and lots more!
The boat was exactly the same as before, but this time we were also joined and crammed in with a group of three. Using the same back-roll entry we waited by the buoy for Chantal to prepare herself and lead the way.
As we descended down our reference line (buoy line) to the site I was ecstatic to see and feel the difference in conditions, it was like chalk and cheese compared with our previous dive - barely any current and at least 25m visibility! Obviously you can't communicate in the normal way, but we all expressed our excitement and happiness with lots of OK signs and smiling as much as one can with a regulator in your mouth. As always with diving it's all down to luck, and we'd struck lucky as we saw pretty much all there is to see at this particular site. The conditions and marine life all contributed to one of the best dives to date. As we circled the huge pinnacle we saw giant pufferfish, a nocturnal bamboo shark (which was sleeping under some rocks), a huge double headed parrot fish, some great yellow finned trevallys, poisonous and well camouflaged stonefish, big schools of yellow snapper, a hawksbill turtle (which Amelia made sure we stayed with for a while), a blue spotted stingray munching away, a funny looking filefish and loads of white eyed moray eels! Some of them were even out of their rocks and slithering around on the hunt, one of which took a particular interest in me and the GoPro - getting within a few millimetres of the camera! The dive ended in the most perfect way - we were joined by the hawksbill turtle breaching the surface for a gulp of air whilst we completed our safety stop at 5m.
"It was an easy day in the office" - Chantal said to us on the way back to the shore. The perfect conditions and abundance of sea life allowed her to take a 'fin' back and just watch over us, whilst we were in awe of the stunning dive sight. We felt privileged, especially after hearing about how bad the conditions had been over the last few days.
Back on dry land we found Beth laying on the beach soaking up the rays - trying her best to catch up with our tans. During her morning Beth had discovered a cafe/restaurant on Coral Beach called 'Amelia's Cafe and Chalet'. So it goes without saying where we had our lunch. Unfortunately the service was lacklustre, Amelia had to wait over an hour for her chicken tom yam soup. The food was good but not that good! We did however manage to book our snorkelling trip with them, but being one of the cheapest for snorkelling we could find, we hoped the service would be better than that of the restaurant's.
Lizzie was unable to join us on the trip due to an upset stomach. So just myself, Amelia and Beth boarded 'Amelia's' small boat, a private tour all for just 25 ringgit each (£4 ish). It was now mid afternoon and very hot, so our boatman tried to erect the tarpaulin roof on his boat for a bit of sun protection and shade, but he had trouble keeping it up! All of a sudden it collapsed right on to mine and Beth's heads, whilst Amelia sat giggling and unscathed.
Our first snorkelling stop was at 'Shark Point'. Even though Amelia has now swam with the world's largest shark, dived with thresher sharks and just seen a bamboo shark she was very nervous about getting in and seeing the harmless black tip reef sharks that cruise around this 'point'. Another group of snorkelers were just leaving as we jumped in so along with the boatman we were the only ones there, we swam around looking for them to start with but then decided to just hover in the water and wait. We didn't have to wait long until we saw a few, the first was no bigger than a metre long the second was a possibly twice the size but Amelia would have you believe it was the size of a great white! Watching sharks whether on the discovery channel or up close and personal is something I don't think I could ever get bored of, so I was a little gutted when we had to clamber back in the boat to head to the next destination.
'Coral Point' was the next stop, unfortunately we were far from the only snorkelers there, it was packed from buoy to buoy with fluorescent orange jackets aka the non-swimmers. We weaved ourselves through the crowds and found some nice coral and a fair amount of fish considering the masses of people. It seemed the cleaner wrasse were definitely not fazed and had a taste for us humans at this spot, a few were happily munching on the dead skin from my legs!
The final stop of our short trip was at 'Turtle Point'. This point was a lot less busy and we're glad to see one group leaving as we were entering the water. Our boatman/tour guide soon spotted a gigantic turtle grazing on sea grass about 5m below us. Unfortunately Amelia and I were unable to dive down because of the residual nitrogen left in our blood from scuba diving. So we sent Beth down with the GoPro. Beth seemed a little out of practice, she shot down like a bullet from a gun and soon surfaced incurring a little bump on the head from someone's fin in the process. Feeling a little put off she was reluctant to try again.
Mine and Amelia's persistence waiting at the surface eventually paid off, the huge turtle slowly began to surface. It's one of the biggest we've seen and we were literally within touching distance as it came up, breached the surface for a breath or two and plummeted back down. As always we were left grinning from ear to ear after seeing one of our favourite aquatic creatures.
Luckily by evening Lizzie's stomach had settled so we all went out for our final meal together. Using Chantal's recommendation, we went along to the 'Chill out bar' at the quiet end of Long Beach and ate some very tasty chicken rendang. Before we called it a night, we paid Oh La La's one final visit to have a farewell beer in their lively beachfront bar.

We loved our time on the Perhentians and only wished we could've spent more time together there. But unfortunately we all had our tickets to leave, so we boarded a speed boat back to the mainland at 8am. We said our goodbyes to Lizzie (who was going to the airport) and caught our bus to the Cameron Highlands..