Perhentian Islands: The Sounds of Sex on the Beach, Late Nights, and Snorkeling

4:56 PM Thursday September 13^th, 2012 Nyaungshwe, Myanmar

On my way out to the Perhentian Islands I stupidly thought I’d keep my fedora on my head on the speed boat, but of course lost it in the wind overboard.  It was still useful at the time for covering my mismatched hair lengths as a result of my healing scars, but I’d just have to go sans fedora until I left the islands.  Once I arrived on the smaller of the two Perhentian Islands, walked off the boat and onto the beach I knew I’d made a great decision coming there.  Island time was just what I wanted.  

Long Beach from the boat.  Our dorm was the building with the four peaks.  Walking out onto the beach.

Long Beach was pretty nice.

I got my things into one of the only dorms on the island and started the now familiar process of immediately attempting to meet whoever was around at the hostel.  My time on the Perhentian Islands was primarily spent snorkeling and relaxing on the beach right in front of my hostel.  In my five nights on the island I think I stayed out until about 4:30 almost every night.  As the air conditioning in our room was broken we were all usually awoken around 9:30 by the overwhelming heat.  The beach where all of the accommodation was located was known as Long Beach, though it’s not that long, but it is beautiful.  There were enough backpackers on this beach to make every night an interesting time, but few enough that you actually recognized faces each night.  The island was small enough that you’d normally run into someone you knew even if you weren’t looking for anyone.  It was pleasantly tiny.  

A massive monitor lizard that just patrolled around and under the hotels and guesthouses.

Here's the monitor lizard swimming through some disgusting trash water.

My first morning on the island left me with no sandals.  That was two times in three days that my sandals had been stolen.  Between getting stolen, lost, engulfed and abandoned in mud pits, and worn through I had already gone through five or six pairs of sandals in just two months.  This left me with no sandals to wear for a trek to a beach about 45 minutes away to go snorkeling.  I was told it was through jungle, so I assumed that meant a smooth dirt path and some roots and vines to avoid.  After refusing sandals from a friend I decided to walk there without footwear.  It turned out that the path was at least half rocky, mostly painful and tortuous.  That first day snorkeling I managed to see a blue spotted ray and a tiny black tip reef shark swimming around in the shallows by the beach.  The return journey on the devilish path was equally shitty.  After a night of Chinese alcohol and intense dancing I awoke to two feral cats inside the dorm room playing on my bed.  I went out snorkeling again the next day, July 29^th, and decided to do some free diving to test myself.  I can’t say that I really had a personal best in terms of depth as my attempts in Hawaii a few years prior resulted in problems equalizing my ears and nothing more than 15 feet.  This time I started off slow, going down 5 feet, staying there for 15-20 seconds then coming back up.  I went to a deeper area, 10 feet or so, doing the same.  I worked my way progressively deeper and deeper, exploring the sea life underneath until I was at the edge of the snorkeling area, and was nearby some scuba divers surfacing.  I asked the dive master how deep the area was beneath us.  As the bottom wasn’t really visible from the surface I couldn’t get a good grasp of how deep it was, but the dive master informed me that it was 12 meters.  I took some slow deep breaths to prepare for the dive down, and managed to make it all the way to the bottom, about 40 feet down, hang out for about 15 seconds, and then slowly ascend to the surface.  I definitely gave my risky side a little pat on the back as I smiled on the surface.  Now of course I’ll have to beat that record sometime in the future.  

Doing a flip from the dock.

I switched to the other side of the island and again found some reef sharks and some more blue spotted rays.  That night as I walked to go swim in the ocean at around 4 in the morning I passed by a couple having sex on the beach in a mostly darkened area, but was alerted to their presence by the sound of skin smacking skin.  I went into the ocean about 100 feet down the beach, where the couple was completely invisible, giving them their privacy, and enjoying the phosphorescent algae in the ocean that was visible as I waved my arms about.  When I finally walked back towards the hostel the couple had just finished and the guy performed what all guys understand is the naked side to side shake, making an audible sound.  I calmly said, “Good show,” to the patch of darkness as I walked past, clapped a couple times, and heard both parties laughing behind me as I continued on.  

I guess I wound up with a party hat one night.

The result of one of my friends swimming in the ocean at 3 in the morning and not removing his clothes before going to bed.

Another day of snorkeling left me seeking some excitement, so while I was far away from other people I decided to snorkel in the nude.  Sadly some other snorkeler kept getting closer to me so I had to seek shelter in further away places until my follower turned back towards the beach.  I went out to watch the sunset with some of my friends from the hostel on the other side of the island, grabbed some fish barbecue and headed back for another night out.

Again I found myself swimming in the ocean around 4 AM.  I guess that sort of became my thing.  The next day I went on a boat trip and stopped at four different snorkeling locations (that was sort of all I did), getting to see a large turtle, many black tips, and a large hump head parrotfish.  

Look mom a snorkeling boat.

That last night I had told myself I was going to climb the radio tower for sunrise, but after I finished off about 200 mL of Chinese medicine and Mariska, a Dutch girl who I’d be travelling with for the next week or so, and I shared a couple smaller bottles of rum I’d consumed around half a liter or more and was in no state to climb anything.  Although I tried to keep myself awake for the climb, I succumbed at 5 to exhaustion and woke up at 10 to get ready to leave the Perhentian Islands.  A large group from the hostel left on the same boat back to the mainland, leaving behind the beauty of the islands.  Mariska and my sandal-less ass headed in the same direction, Penang.  Once we arrived we got settled in a dorm room and ventured out into the mecca of food that is Penang.  Without hesitating I can say that I could spend at least a week in that city and do nothing but eat and be extremely content with everything.  After exploring the largest Chinese style Buddhist temple in South East Asia I sat down at a street food stall serving laksa, a spicy fish soup.

This statue was easily 80 feet tall.

For some reason these little critters were at the Buddhist temple.

I had on my Buffs t-shirt, and one of the food stall attendants came up to me and asked me if I was from Colorado and then explained that he had studied chemical engineering at Kansas State University before he had returned to Penang to work at his father’s food stall.  He explained that Anthony Bourdain, host of the Travel Channel’s No Reservations, had sat right where I was sitting five months prior at that very food stall.  If you know anything about No Reservations you know that Anthony Bourdain never eats anything but the most spectacular food.   So I was treated with that brilliant meal and many others in Penang.

The laksa was amazing.

Tasty black egg.

Street food at its best.

In heaven.

Sadly my time there was cut short, as I wanted to spend more time eating my way through the city while Mariska wanted to get on to Langkawi and back to island life.  So after only a two day visit to food heaven and the acquisition of a laptop I was convinced to head off.