To get to the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia we had a bit of a travelling nightmare ahead of us. We left our hotel at Asia Divers and got a taxi to the boat port. We then got the boat which took 3 hours to a place in Thailand called Champon. The boat journey was quite nice and we sat on the deck to catch a few rays! When we were getting close to Champon we had to pass through a fishing port area which stank and was really polluted. As we were looking at the water there was old shoes, baskets, bikes and then we seen a dead dog upside down with its legs in the air floating down the river too! Anyway we then had to get a huge tuk tuk type taxi to the train station which was half an hour and 25 of us were packed in like sardines! We had to wait 3 hours for the sleeper train so we just grabbed some tea and wandered around to kill some time. We didn't really want to do another sleeper train but we thought to ourselves it can't be any worse than the Vietnam sleeper train! How wrong we were! Instead of separate rooms with beds in, this was just one carriage with around 24 beds in it and crap fans on the ceiling! We had the cheaper top bunks which were really small especially uncomfortable for Ady being so tall! We were also right next to the stinky toilet which wasn't the most pleasant thing to be sleeping next too! The train journey took us 14 hours which was long when you're cramped in a smelly bed on a rackety old train! In the morning we were up early as it was hard to sleep properly and when we got out of bed the train was full of normal day time passengers and most of the overnight passengers had got off! We must have looked a sight to them crawling out of our beds! So we put our beds way and converted them to seats! Then we bought the only thing we could at that time of the morning - special fried rice!

We eventually arrived at the border of Thailand and Malaysia and ended up sharing a taxi with another couple to a place where we could catch a boat over to the Perhentian Islands. The boat was a speed boat and very bumpy and it dropped us off in the middle of the sea were we had to get on a tuk tuk boat! Yep a tuk tuk boat! I managed to fall into the tuk tuk boat on my knees and badly bruised both of them!

So after all that hardcore travelling we were so glad that the Perhentian Islands lived up to our expectations, it was paradise on a stick (as Ady called it!). We didn't even know about these islands until we heard about them from different travellers who had been to them, they are situated off the east coast of Malaysia.

We eventually stayed at the Panarama Bungalows which was on long beach the backpacker and party beach after an hour of me going to every hotel trying to find a nice room! The accommodation here is very basic for the price you pay for it, and most resorts were fully booked so we had to settle for the Panarama Bungalows which weren't too bad just very basic(a bed and a grubby mosquito net!)

Outside our room we had massive monitor lizards walk past and many squirrels in the surrounding trees. The beach was just a 2 minute walk away and was the most amazing beach we had seen, even better than the ones we saw in Thailand! The water was so crystal clear and as warm as a hot bath!

After few days of tanning ourselves we decided to check out the local fish talent and do a fun dive at a dive site called D'Lagoon. The boat was a lot smaller than the one we got used to in Koh Tao and we had to do a backwards roll into the water which was scary! There was only 3 of us diving plus the dive master which was nice and our first destination under water was to the beauty salon where we got a manicure by lots of little cleaner shrimp who took away all of our dead skin from around our nails!!! We also saw the usual suspects like trigger fish, butterfly and angel fish etc. The dive was to 12 meters and was really nice and clear.The next day we booked on a snorkelling trip around the islands. It was the best snorkelling we have ever done we saw lots of black tip sharks and went to an area were massive turtles live and got to swim alongside them when they came up for air. Ady's feet got harassed by the cleaner fish that were nibbling away at his sore blisters from diving in Koh Tao! We also decided to do another dive the next day to a place called Tanjung Basi. The dive was amazing, it was a really cool place with big stone hills under the sea. I felt a lot more at ease as I was more comfortable and because the dive master thought we were confident enough we got to dive to 22 meters which was great although we ran out of air quite quickly! We did get to see lots of different fish this time like moray eels, stingrays and other weird but wonderful fish! We were chilling on the beach the next day when a couple we met on the slow boat in Laos came over to us. We couldn't believe we had seen them again after so much time and in such a small place, the travelling world really is a small one! We ended up going to one of the two bars that's here and getting some illegal beers which were expensive as it's a Muslim country and drinking is forbidden! All in all we spent 6 days here of sun sea and sand (and great mango shakes!) and we really didn't want to leave this beautiful place but we knew we had to sooner or later. We got told by some people we met here to do a jungle trek to see the orang-utans in Indonesia and I thought hey why not I'd love to see the orang-utans in the wild. In all the excitement of wanting to see orang-utans I seemed to forget however, how hard jungle treks are in South East Asia!.......