Back from Pulau Redang

Day 0, 16th May

At 1pm, CP sms and said he got a friend to replace JH. Ok, whatever that friend is, I have to socialise with him/her. *Prepared myself* Took MRT to Lavendar. Halfway on the MRT, CP sms and said meet at Golden Mile instead of at the MRT station. So I walked along that dark Beach Road myself. A bit unsafe at night cos' of the lack of lightings and many indians and malays there. Reached there eventually *safe*. Haha. Met CP's friend - Bing Jie there. A tall, skinny, dark-skin and bluey-bespectacled guy. He and CP are good brothers since sec sch. By the way, he isn't shuai. Keke. We were allocated seats 3ABC and boarded bus JHJ 2624. The bus was a 24-seater and only 18 seats were filled. I sat alone, and both of them sat together cos' a row in the bus have seats in the manner of 2 + 1. We set off at 10pm.

Day 1, 17th May

The bus got very cold, made worse with the silence between us. The air-con was blowing directly into my face. It was freaking cold. Passed the customs and went onto the NE expressway. 2 hours later, we stopped at Yong Peng for supper. It was 1230am. I bought a small packet of HL milk, cost me RM$2.60. It was bloody expensive. The food they sold have quite a variety, but cost RM$4.50!! My goodness! It was then that I found out they had bought quite a lot of food for the bus trip. And they didn't include my share. And I actually brought chocolate fudge brownies I made in the afternoon for them. My heart was hurt. It was shattered when they didn't even want to touch my brownies. Obi loh, who ask you to be so good? In the end, get nothing in return. Only disappointment.

Set off again on that freaking cold bus. Snuggled in my windbreaker, hoping for some warmth, but it was useless. Cos' that freaking aircon was blowing into my face!! And I can't change seats cos the seats were allocated, and I didn't want to sit all alone at the back of the bus. Managed to catch a few winks, waking up a lot due to the coldness. The bus stopped at a number of petrol stations, but no one went toilet. So I didn't go too, cos' I was afraid the bus will leave without me. Bladder 50% full at 2am.

The coldness never left me. A HERO rescued all of us from the North Pole at 3am. Bladder 70%. He requested the driver to OFF the freaking air-con. OH YEAH!! Had a peaceful sleep for 2 hours! Then we had another petrol station stop at 5am. Change of driver. He turned ON the aircon!! Bloody hell. Heck care. We all began to freeze once again. Bladder was already 80% full.

Feel asleep again at 530am. With a quite full bladder and freaking aircon blowing into my face. Woke up at 630am. Then again at 715am. This time could not fall asleep again because my bladder was like 95% full!!! ARGH. The driver told us we would reach Merang Jetty at 730am. Ok, bear with it for another 15 mins and I shall reach my toilet. I didn't!!! There were so many cars along the road to Merang Jetty. Feeling my bladders were going to burst any moment, I walked up to the driver and requested him to stop at the next petrol station cos' I wanted to go toilet! He replied," Don't worry! 3 more mins!" I was nearly 8am before we reached Merang Jetty and I dashed off the bus to the toilet!! Before going into the toilet, I had to waste another 2 sec (considered a lot of time wasted if you have a very very full bladder!!) listening to the stupid aunty said,"Tiga-puluh sens." (meaning 30 cents for that usage of toilet) I spent a minute or two in that cubicle, emptying my filled bladders. Relieved.

We waited for our ferry till 9am to Kalong Resort. I slid on the boat and had these blue-blacks on my right leg.





A hell lot of pain. CP and BJ were already sitting comfy in the jet boat, and were expressionless and motionless when I slid on that bloody slippery stairs onto the jet boat. What type of guys?! The jet boat was super fast, half of the time flying above the waters. Think the boat was going at about 150km/h!


Jet boat

Reached Redang island at about 9:45am. Could see the bottom of the sea while nearing the beach. There were small fishes too, corals and black sea cucumbers! We checked into our room 601. Changed and unpacked some stuffs and feel asleep on the bed. We had like 2 more hours to lunch. So we decided to sleep.


Stairs leading to our room

My bed

The window

What it looked outside the room

Canteen

It was a good and refreshing sleep, after all the "hardships" we went through throughout the night. Lunch was at 1300. We finished the lunch very quickly. To me, the meals were all quite good, compared to those I ate at Pulau Tioman more than 10 years ago! After lunch, we changed into appropriate attires for the first snokelling trip at 2pm. We each paid RM$40 for the power masks and life jacket. Then we took a speed boat out to sea, and changed to a bigger boat to go deeper into the sea. Reached somewhere out there, and the malays told us to jump off! A few jumped off, and I was looking at them initially cos' I was kinda afraid of the sea! Well, you never know what is underneath right? Eventually I jumped in too, kicking water hard, cos' I wanted to kick away fish near me. Silly me. Haha. The actual fact was that the fish was more afraid of us, humans! Haha. I choked on a few mouthfuls of salty sea water cos' I never snokelled before, and didn't know how to get use to the mask and breathing pipe. (Is it called breathing pipe?) After a while, I was ok, and was happily feeding fish with bread. No more choking, and no more fear of the poor fishes. It was a wonderful sight looking at fishes of all sorts swimming around me. But the corals were not very nice, cos most of them were already dead and were brown in colour. Again, CP and BJ left me swimming alone. Felt worse, cos' I felt out of place. One of the malays blew his whistle, asking us to go up the boat. He caught a BIG sea cucumber, and letting us take photos with it. I wanted to touch it, but sadly didn't have the chance to. It was really huge and squirting lot of water. I didn't take picture with it cos' I don't have a camera. (Time to add camera to my wish list.) Not long after we were back at the resort.

I went canoeing with CP first. Then there was no more kick in canoeing, so I asked BJ to join CP while I happily could take my time to bathe. Hehe. After I finished bathing, they came back and bathed. Without realising, we feel sound asleep AGAIN at 530pm on our respective beds. Guess we were too shacked out by the torturous bus journey.

Dinner was at 730pm. I didn't finish the rice, cos' I wasn't very hungry. Then, it was free time. We played Carrom and Daidee. It was only a while, and we felt quite sian. So we turned in at 1130pm. *snore*

Day 2, 18th May

We woke up at 7am. Had breakfast of eggs, beans, fried bee hoon and fish cake. I had coffee too. The second snokelling trip was at 915am. I sat under the sun on the beach overlooking the blue blue sea. Nice. The sun was great too.





We went another place for snokelling. The fish was almost similar to those in the first trip. However, I saw clown fish (yes, Nemo) this time. They hid in the weeds and were really very cute!! Exactly the same in the movie Finding Nemo, except, they are not so orangey. Again, they left me snokelling alone.

Went back to the island, squeezed dry my clothings and baked in the sun. Didn't want to change cos' there was a third snokelling trip in that afternoon. But this last trip would be going to Marine Park, which we had to pay RM$5. We set off after lunch.

It was such a clean beach and waters! No wonder they had to collect money from us again. The fishes were bigger and more varieties. Was a bit afraid at first because the fish were really much bigger. They were aggressive too. Couldn't hold the bread in my hand like the last two trips cos' the fishes here will bite!! I tried to catch a fish holding my hands still but the silly fishes bite me instead!! GRRR! The corals here were more alive and in colours. Haha. I saw a small swordfish swam past in front of me. There were promfets (those we eat), clown fish, lots of sea cucumbers and other fishes which I don't know their names. Lucky we didn't meet jellyfish. Neither of us saw sharks too. They said if you're lucky enough, will be able to meet a shark or two, and sea turtles.

Went back to the resort and cleaned up. Then together with the rest of the people from the same batch, we walked to Laguna Resort, where the "Xia Ri Mo Mo Cha" was filmed, starring Richie Ren and Sammi cheng.





Took some photos there, and had close up with squirrels! Yes! Those shy creatures were so close to us! They were feeding on bananas and were really very very cute. By the way, their tails are not curved up like those in the cartoons. The beach at the Laguna Resort was so much bigger, sand were so much finer, and the waves were bigger, and also the crowds were bigger. So much more life there!

We walked back, just in time for our BBQ dinner. And along the way back, dark clouds loomed the skies and lightning could be seen over the horizon. BBQ dinner was food that were already BBQ-ed, so when it rained after that, we could still enjoy our dinner. It rained very heavily, and all of us were stucked in the canteen. All the games from the counter were borrowed, each group engaged in Jenga, carrom, board games and chatting. CP and BJ played Otello. I was feeling so bored watching them, I went to shop in the small gift shop. Bought a keychain that had the wordings - Redang Island. Haha. Then went to socialise with some of the trip people. Got to know some of them, but didn't get their contacts. One of them currently from NIE! Haha.


Took this while feeling real bored

It was a real boring night. The rained became smaller at 10pm. Went back to our room to play Daidee. I kept losing. Humpf. Packed a bit of stuff and slept at 1230am. Bored night but had quite some laughter from our daidee games. Also the time when I had more conversations with BJ.

Day 3, 19th May

Woke up at 7am again. Had roti canai for breakfast. Packed and ready to go. Clothes did not dry cos it was drizzling the whole night. We took the speed boat out at 8am to mainland Trengganu state. We waved goodbye to our hosts. While chatting in the gift shop on Day 2, one of them said she only started to work on the island 2 weeks ago. She had 4 days leave in a month. And she stayed in KL. Was a bit sad to leave the island, after getting used to the people and sand and sun.

Boarded the same freaking cold bus back to Singapore. I was hoping it would be a different bus, but neh, it was the same. An even more torturous journey back cos' the idiotic bus did not take the NE expressway! We were jumping on our seats on that bus with poor suspension. Luckily the roads weren't very bumpy. I took toilet breaks at every place we stopped, not wanting to test my bladders further. The bus stopped for lunch somewhere in Trengganu, which sold expensive home-cooked nasi padang. I didn't buy, cos' it didn't look appetizing and wasn't feeling hungry. It was a very very long time before we reached Yong Peng at 6pm. Yes, the same place we stopped for supper on Day 1. Hungry, I grabbed a bowl of mee soto. RM$4.50.

Then, the bus geared on the NE expressway finally. We reached JB in 2 hours. Crossed the customs and CP and BJ went off from Woodlands checkpoint together without bidding goodbye to me. Sad. Didn't see Joy and Caroline (friends made from the trip). Didn't get their number too. Sigh.

Walked back the poorly-lit Beach Road again. Reached home nearly 1030pm. Took a good bathe to get rid of all the salty smell. The water on Redang island had a funny smell, even after bathing, the smell is still there. Enough of blogging. Very tired now man! Still have the "shaky" feeling, machiam still on that jet boat! And I'm all burnt.

Going Taiwan tomorrow. I have asked JH to bring camera. CP only takes pictures that he likes. And I shall bring toothpaste cos CP said he only going to bring a small tube that is already 3/4 used. Better to depend on myself. Shan't lend him toothpaste when he runs out of it. Lesson learnt. Never be so good to him anymore again.

So did I have fun at Redang? More fun with the fishes.