We decided to make life easy on ourselves by booking a minibus transfer to the Perhentian Islands rather than take 4 seperate buses over 2 days. 5 hours cramped in a minibus with 7 others isn't that easy though we soon found out! However we met a cool guy called Alex (a teacher from Wales) who made us laugh all the way.

The speedboat to the island was like something out of a James Bond movie ... we think we actually took off at one point! Very funny - especially the elderly travel journalist from Dubai whose attempts to get a picture taken of him in the mad speedboat nearly lost him his camera to the dolphins!

The Perhentian Islands themselves are absolutely stunning. Completely unspoilt, white beaches, turquoise sea, jungle interior. A ten minute walk took you completely across the island to another beach...though Mark kept getting spooked by Monitor Lizards along the way thinking they were snakes!

We spent a very relaxing 4 days on the beach, having dinner with Alex and drinking beer at the beach bars. Our only exertion was to go on a snorkelling trip which was fantastic - we swam with a large Green Turtle and 7 black tip sharks. We were told they were vegetarian before we went in but later found out they weren't but had already had brekkie (another tourist we wonder???)