Hello to all,

Wow, we're actually starting to catch up on everything now... crazy how much there is that you 'need' to do after being away from modern luxuries such as a computer for a couple of weeks. Half tempted to become armish and live in the woods lol!

After leaving Cherating, we thought we would break up our trip to Pulau Kapas by stopping in a small village (kampung) called Rantau Abang for a couple of nights. We thought it would be a cool place to chill out, and maybe catch a sighting of some nesting turtles, as Rantau Abang used to be one of the few places that leatherback turtles came to nest.... although they don't any more as number have dwindled in Asia =(. Other turtles still come to nest, but we didn't see any! Still there was another beach, and we found a place to stay where you could step out of your door and get sand between your toes, so all was good!

Rantau Abang itself was a very small place (being a village and all), and didn't have the traveller amenities that we have grown used to.. such as a few restaurants, shops etc. so I don't think we could have stuck around eating in the same one or two restaurants (that all sold the same dishes) for much longer than we did. On our first night there, we ate at a place around the corner, and had quite a few different local sweetie bits for pudding... not sure of the names, but there were peanut cookies, bright green pancakes filled with coconut, fig roll type things but filled with chocolate, and a rice and golden syrup bar... mmmm! After dinner, we went and sat on the beach watching the stars twinkle to life, which was quite romantic, but also quite strange on the eyes as the whole sky was twinkling with stars that were starting to come out. We stuck around for a bit, hoping to spot some turtles, but didn't stay for too long as we seemed to be providing the local mozi's with quite a nice feast! For the rest of our time there, we relaxed on the beach and hunted for shells, which there were literally hundreds of thousands of, as far as the eye could see. The beach itself seemed to stretch on forever, so far that we couldn't even see where it ended, but we probably strolled for a good couple or few kilometers. On our walk, we also found a couple of bottles that had been washed in all the way from Vietnam, which I suppose isn't all that far away... shame to see rubbish on such a beautiful beach!

It was a very quiet couple of days. You could tell that the locals were not used to seeing travellers. We had an old man come over to us at every opportunity going "makan, eat, makan" and "Nasi goreng nasi goreng" (fried rice). He was a bit odd, just sort of stood there watching us eat lol.

The next day we flagged down a passing bus and went to Marang (transit point for Kapas Island). We stayed a night there as wanted to have a whole day at Kapas and make the most of it. Marang was a very funny town. We thought we would get some cash out, get some supplies as there is not much on Kapas but when we got there the mini-mart was closed and the cash point didnt take international cards! It supposedly used to be quite a beautiful and rustic place but was quite a dissapointment due to very poor modern development. We went to find a room and the only place we found was pretty shabby. We hung around for ages at reception shouting 'hellooo'. Eventually someone came and took us to our room. There were holes in all the floorboards, perfect for cockroaches and smells wafting up from the dark underneath! We gaffa taped it all up (thank god for gaffa tape!) We also discovered we had lost our hanging kit for the mozzy net and invented a brilliant solution. We put some holes in a bottle lid, looped a bit of string through it and super-glued it to the ceiling haha. Poor Ben had to hold me on his shoulders for ages, balancing on the bed whilst i stuck it to the ceiling!

We then had to get a bus to Kuala Terrengganu, the nearest big town to get some cash and shampoo and such. Wandered round for ages trying to find an internet cafe to no avail, and when we got to the bus stop we had missed the last bus and had to get a taxi back :(. Bit gutting having to spend money doing that c'est la vie! lol.

The next day we headed down to the jetty and got a very small and very unstable boat to Kapas Island wahoooo!!!!

Check out next blog on that.

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