After the beautiful but uncomfortable stay on Kecil we felt we deserved a little luxury. We had heard that Redang Island comprised of several luxury resorts and decided that this would be our next stop. To stay on Redang you go through a travel agent and book a 3 or 4 day package, all-inclusive. We were determined to find a resort with a pool and settled on Coral Redang Resort. After a 3 hour local bus to Terengganu (where we were stared at unashamedly the entire way by locals, some openly laughing at us) we found ourselves a cheap hostel to stay the night before we left for Redang. Terengganu was not a very nice place, the locals stared and even jeered when we walked around, and after a long search we finally found Chinatown, which turned out to be a rather depressing, empty street with a few dirty looking restaurants.

Despite our bad feelings about Terengganu, we woke bright and early the next day and had a mad dash to the Redang ferry. The ferry trip was a couple of hours and we watched a funny (but crappy) Malaysian film and I felt sea sick. As we approached Redang, we were breathless by how beautiful the island was. It was covered in thick jungle, and the beach was spectacular. Our resort, Coral Redang, was idyllic and pure luxury. The pool was lovely and overlooking the beach. We could get iced coffees or crushed ice fruit juices on request. All meals consisted of a buffet and were delicious. The best part, however, was when we were shown to our bungalow. It was only a few minutes from the beach/pool, but looked into the jungle. Right in front of us was a small lake full of huge monitor lizards (so big, I thought they were crocodiles at first). Flying squirrels ran up and down the sides of our bungalow and flew around the trees. Finally, the trees in front of our balcony were filled with monkeys. On the second day there, I hand-fed a flying squirrel Pringles. Every time it finished its piece of crisp, it would come right up to me on our balcony and beg me for more. After a few minutes of this, a large monkey appeared out of nowhere, grabbed the Pringles out of my hand and started eating them himself. Then he decided he didn't like them and threw them on the floor. The squirrel was still begging and getting irate at this point, so I had to rescue the Pringles from the ground and feed the remainder to the squirrel. Surreal!

On our last day, we were sad to leave Redang. We were sat in the bar, waiting for our ferry, when we noticed lots of police hanging around. Suddenly, there was a great commotion and we saw a boy and girl walking through into one of the chalets, surrounded by bodyguards holding umbrellas over them. People were taking photos and the resort staff were falling over themselves to ensure everything was in place for the new visitors. We later found out that the two kids had been the son and daughter of the King of Malaysia (Prince and Princess). The only part left of Redang was the ferry trip back to Terengganu, which I don't want to remember. I was even more seasick than the outward journey. And Clout was taking photos of me heaving, instead of offering sympathy. Typical!!