From Highlands to Islands

Last Sunday (the 20th) I made my way to the Perthentian Islands (Kecile) with Jine (my little Chinese friend) in tow. We picked an out of the way "resort" called D'lagoon which sits on the eastern end of the island, in a cove all by itself. The main beach (Long beach) seems over crowed and loud, good for a party but not so good for lounging around in my hammock. D'Lagoon however is extremely hammock friendly. After being shown to my dorm style bed, in a room shared with 16 other people (but you get use to this) I set about to find the perfect spot for my hammock, which turned out to be two perfectly placed palms.

I spent many of my hours lazily hanging around in the hammock napping, reading, listening to music, and sometimes just staring out to sea. Actually one night I even slept out in the hammock under a cloudless starry night with a huge full moon hanging in the deep black sky. The full moon arrived with me and made for great photographs.

During my time on the Island I became friends with most of the staff , playing Volleyball and telling stories. D'Lagoon also has two very friendly pet monkeys male and female, B.J's the male and the females name I did not learn both seem to have a sort of monkey separation anxiety and nip at your heels if you try to leave before they get bored with you. The island is also home to many monitor lizards, some just babies and others seem to be giant dinosaurs, I even got to see a monitor on monitor fight which resembled Sumo wrestling rather than a territorial struggle. Another day was spent snorkeling with "friendly sharks" in the morning and turtles in the afternoon.

At one point almost everyone I had met (and liked) in the Highlands showed up at D'lagoon, we had a dinner table most nights filled with about 10 people. I along with Andy from England and Othman a French Moroccan from Paris hiked over to L.B, not bad but something I only wanted to do once. A few days I did absolutely nothing but laid in the hammock took naps and read. I started and finished a novel in one day ( A horribly crappy Christian book about the world ending and Jesus' return, never name a main character Rayford; what kind of name is that?) But other days I was actually active and a bunch of us kayaked around the entire small island it took about 5 hours which included stopping at various beaches to snorkel or swim around and we checked out a fishing village. It was fun and we stopped by Long Beach (LB) for a relaxing break before returning to the lagoon.

The place I stayed could hardly be called a resort, here I was introduced to my very first squat toilet experience. The bowel is sunk into the floor and you have to place yourself over it, making you wish you had been a gymnast in high school. The food was descent but over priced and so was the beer but the time and experiences were priceless. All and all I only spent about $150 US staying on a private beach eating, drinking, snorkeling and kayaking for an entire week - and oh yea $30 of that was spent getting my bus to the jungle where my next installment takes place.