We were told that there were two boats to the Pehentian Islands the night before, one at 8am & one at 9am. We decided to get the 9am boat as we didn't get to bed until almost 1am. We got down to the pier & it was deserted so we went back to the travel agent & she said she didn't know what time the boat was going so we ended up waiting for two hours for the next boat! When it arrived, they warned us it may be a bit bumpy as the sea was rough. It was like we were falling onto rocks every time we went over a wave. Everyone was laughing nervously when the front of the boat went vertical & then crashed down again. It was like going over Tsunamis for 30 minutes & we were all soaked by the end of it!

We decided to stay on Long Beach for the first two nights & you have to walk through the jungle to get to the other side of the island. There was no electricity in our shack & they gave us one candle to last us! So we bought some more. The toilet was disgusting, it was like something from the film Saw & after the first day the toilet door fell off! It was so hot at night as we couldn't use the fan as there was no electric. The beach was lovely though, completely deserted as the season had only just begun & everything had only been open for about a week. It was still the end of monsoon season tho so it was very grey & rainy.

We decided we wanted some electricity (only on at night 7pm-7am) so walked from Long Beach to Coral Bay through the jungle & I fell over & really hurt my ankle. I could hardly stand on it so the next day we went to the clinic by boat & they strapped it up for me. We had to miss out a national park in the middle of Malaysia because of this & we were worried that I may not be able to climb Mount Kinabalu. I rested it for 4 days & we stayed on the island for longer than we had planned & it was fine in the end. Right by our shack was a really mucky pool of water which attacted some wildlife including monitor lizards, which looked a bit like crocodiles swimming about in the water, they are humongous & someone said they saw one that was 6 foot! The had squirrels that looked like they had been crossed with chipmunks & also loads of spiders. We even had a tree frog living in our room! We went on a snorkelling trip here to Shark Bay (luckily we didn't see any sharks!) Turtle Bay - we did see a couple of turtles but we kept losing them as they are faster swimmers than the look! And to Coral Garden where they throw in bread & millions of fish swarm around you!

From here we took a boat over to the mainland & were very lucky to get on a bus within 10 minutes to Kuala Lumpar, it was the most luxurious bus ever. The seats went right back & there was even an adjustable leg rest!