Hello there,

Ah is nice to be back on the net! Our time at Cherating was amazing. So so beautiful. It's basically one long road running along side the beach with a few shops and restaurants. The beach was absolutely stunning and absolutely huge! It seemed to go on for miles and miles (it did!) We stayed at a lovely place a few mins from the main stretch in a very nice and large chalet hehe. There were children playing outside in the sun and baby goats skipping around and bleeting at god knows what time in the morning lol. At first it felt quite backward, no phones, tooo slow internet and hardly anyone spoke english..... bit of a change from the westcoast, and Singapore, where almost everyone spoke English, international phones everywhere, and really fast internet! It was really nice though, first 'proper' destination of our trip down the eastcoast of peninsular Malaysia, and it was pretty cool to see rural Malaysia and live the 'simple life'. While we were there, we spent a fair bit of our time beaching it up (even when it was raining lol), and just generally chilling out.. to the max! If truth be told we didn't do a great deal while we were there. We found an amazing restaurant, serving Malay, Chinese and Thai cuisine... it was right on the beach, and the food was the best we've ever eaten so far (so much so that we ate there most nights). For my (Ben's) mum and dad, the food was actually better than at the 'Red Tablecloth', which I never would have thought could be possible. We also found a really cool little reggae bar, which served Pizza & Pasta, and was right next to Sungai Cherating (Cherating River)..... it was a great place to chill out, the Malay owners were all Rasta's, and reggae tune pumped out all day long, including an impressive selection of Malay reggae, which was really cool.... we wouldn't have imagined there to be a Malay reggae scene, but they even had a little stage where once or twice a year a small reggae festival would be held! It was amazing to eat some Pasta & Pizza, as bad as it sounds, as we hadn't in what feels like for ever.... getting some mega cravings for a full english breakfast atm (Hint Hint for when we get home lol)!!

One of the days, we caught a bus to the nearest town 'Kemaman' as we needed to shop for a few bits, and use a proper internet connection. We were the only white people in town which was quite cool and odd at the same time!

The day after that we caught a bus down to the turtle sactuary. It was so cool. They had some massive turtles swimming around that had been injured (missing flippers and such) and they were soo beautiful and very gracefull. Then they had some turtles that were 1-3 months. They were super cute and the really tiny ones were flapping about learning how to swim. Very funny to watch. hehe. We also went into a room with a box full of water that had loads of newborn turtles in it. They were incredibly small as were only a few days old. I could have fit about 20 in my hand! Was really nice to see as it seems quite hard and costly to spot them on the beach and even if you pay for a guide its just pot luck really. Was quite sad to see them all in a little swimming pool though, they should have been out swimming in the sea! :( On the way back we bumped into a couple of other travellers which was nice as haven't seen many along the way. They were an interesting couple as had been travelling for 5 months out of a year and had lots of advice and stories to tell! They had done the route we are doing but in the opposite direction so good to swap stories.

Other than that we read quite a few books (Nin read about 4 and Ben didn't even finish one!) and lazed around on the beach. Had a walk down to the end where it joins with the river which was very pretty, lots of little fishing boats milling around and such!

Anywayz, Have added lots more photo's to the Cherating album so do check 'em out. Will update again very soon as have lots more to tell but its now time for bed me thinks!

Huge love to all

xxxxxxx