I woke up on my last day in Malaysia to a beautiful sunrise. Dad and I went for our final run along the beaches before finishing packing the rest of our gear. We checked out and moved our luggage to the hotel's café to wait for our boat transfer. Several Sudokus later we hopped aboard the boat back to the mainland. From there we had a wait for our taxi back to the airport so grabbed some lunch before our last drive through the coutryside in time for our transfer...

After a uneventful night, Dad and I set off for our run, up and over the board walks, spotting a massive fruit bat hanging out lazily in a tree. We then continued up and down the jetty and along the beach where we found turtle tracks in the sand where she had come up the beach to lay her eggs. A promising start to the day. After breakfast we left for Watercolours for our second day of diving. The first dive was expected to have a bit of a current so I left my ca...

As the boat sped away from the mainland I was reminded of the same trip we made three years ago in much stormier weather. Luckily this time the sun was shining with only a pleasant breeze. We dropped some passengers off on Perhentian Kecil (the small island) and got a view of the Impiani resort as we headed towards Besar. It was in a state of disrepair which explained why we couldn't get accommodation there this time. The boat was too big to take us to shore s...

The next day we cleaned up the flat and finished packing up before setting off to catch our flight back to KL and then on to Kota Bharu. Unfortunately our flight was delayed and we spent several hours wandering the rather small airport before they transferred us to an earlier flight else we would have missed our connection. Finally we made it to Kota Bharu (and thankfully so had our luggage) and caught a taxi to our hotel in the 'Business District'. Crystal lo...

Having been mildly disappointed by the shopping centres so far, probably due to being spoilt in KL, we were surprised to suddenly find a modern mall hidden within the very average looking buildings of the local town. Inspired, we indulged in some retail therapy buying coats, bags (but no lens as I had found it cheaper on Amazon-predictable). Once we had driven dad to complete boredom we let him choose the next stop and found ourselves signed up to a boat trip o...