Redang was the ON!

Last Friday ST, KY, God, Saint, Suan, Sotong, Margie, The Great Faggot and I left Kuala Lumpur for a diving/snorkelling vacation at Redang Island. It was a blast, nuf’ said. I’ll let the pictures do the talking…

So anyway, I didn’t write much about the trip because I was feeling really lazy. Now that I’ve gotten back from classes and saw all the thorough reports by Suan and ST, I thought I’d just chip in a couple of more cents on the trip.

The 1st day was very tiring as I didn’t sleep the night before. We had to be at the airport by the ungodly time of 5.30am. What’s more, I was on a bikini diet (like no food at all…) for 2 days for vanity reason. That explained the Pringles snatching incident related by Suan in her photo album. Anyway, I was seated next to KY and dude had no qualms telling horror stories about plane crash and about how MAS engineers refuse to board Air Asia planes and stuff (mind you, spoken out loud somemore!). Suffice to say, I was quite nervous throughout the 55 minutes journey. Thank you very much.

Before boarding – Margie, Sotong, me and Suan.

K-unpolitically correct-Y.

From Kuala Terengganu’s airport, we journeyed to the jetty in a very comfortable bus. Man was driving like he’s on Red Bull though. Still, there were plenty of Kancils trying to overtake our bus. That confirmed that it’s really a Malaysian thing, this crazy driving issue.

They won’t let me have Pringles!

From the jetty, it was a 45 minutes journey to Pulau Redang on a speedboat. Nothing memorable except for the stinkyass life jacket. The sight of Pasir Panjang completely took my breath away. The sand was powdery white and the water was just clear turquoise blue. Redang Beach Resort, where we were staying is located right in the middle of the stretch of white sand. ST, KY, Suan and I shared a room. Just in case your mind starts to wander, there were 2 bunk beds, so there. It sure was modest accomodation but there was aircon and hot shower.

The boat ride.

The lodging.

While the scuba diving boys went for their briefing, the rest of us changed into our bikinis. Couldn’t wait to embrace the beach life, hehehe. Basically the whole day was spent frolicking at the beach. Poor Suan got burned though, since the woman fell asleep under the sun for about an hour. Then it was dinner time and it rained really heavily. There wasn’t much to be done so we went back to our room at about 9pm and slept till the morning came. Just sweet…

Beach was the ON.

Woke up at about 7am, had breakfast and changed into my bikini again. We had signed up for snorkelling at the Marine Park. After 20 minutes journey on a fairly slow boat, we finally reached the place. Honestly, the place looked really commercialised, brick jetty and all. There were so many people too. After we’d alighted from the boat, there were still about 2 boatful of people coming in. Madness, I tell you. I was really under the impression that it’d be at some isolated location, with colourful corals underneath a crystal clear sea. How wrong I was. After a briefing in which we were all passed bags of stale bread to feed the fish, we carefully walked into the sea as the beach was littered with sharp and broken dead corals.

I was swimming right behind Suan and Sotong and both of them were each guided by some guy, whom I believed were staff from the resort. After a while, another guy took my hand and I was swimming alongside him as I thought he’s one of the staff too. At first he seemed okay. He took me to the shipwreck which was really interesting and showed me various kinds of fish and corals. Then he asked me to dive into the water to touch some corals but I told him I couldn’t since I was on lifejacket. He offered to hold it for me if I took it off. So I did. That was really stupid of me. After that, we continued snorkelling. I really wasn’t looking where I was swimming to as I was holding his hands and by the time I surfaced, I was at the corner of some rocky walls, far from the beach and definitely out of the designated snorkelling area. We were standing on top of some bigass corals and the waves were really strong. I couldn’t balance myself and he asked me to sit down. So I did and realised I was sitting between his legs. I was like “What the fuck?”, so I immediately stood up but I slipped and he held me, on my left boob. CIBAIMAHAIHAMKACHAN.

Bastard then proceeded to offer to take me to the other side of the rocky walls, which were practically hidden from the beach. I told him I didn’t want to as I was too tired and needed to find my friends at the beach. But he was being really persistent about it. At last, I took the lifejacket from his hands, wore it and started swimming. And he followed close by. Along the way, he picked up a sea cucumber and slipped it underneath my bikini strap on my back. I was quite furious then but I removed the damn animal and continued swimming. Imagine my relief when I saw The Great Faggot and Margie at the beach. I called out to them, swam towards them and effectively losing the Bastard. So yeah, another story to add to my tales of molestation. It’s really disgusting how some men like to take advantage of women in vulnerable positions when they’re supposed to be taking care of them. By the way, there’s another such Bastard in Gua Tempurung and that’s another story.

We left the Marine Park for lunch at the resort, chatted till the sun wasn’t so hot and hit the beach again. Took loads of photo and encountered ST’s lover crab. The crustacean was merely 3 inches in width, but boy was it a fighter. For some reason it was attracted to our dear Tiger and no matter how far we threw it away into the sea, it managed to find its way back to him. Even when I was standing in front of him, the crab would manoeuver its way around me to get to ST. Seriously weird! Finally we put it at some rocks away from the sea, hopefully where it belongs.

Cam ho’ing

ST’s lover crab.

Time passed so fast when you’re having fun, it was dinner time and then a seminar for the divers, which I crashed for some reason. I learned loads from the short seminar, namely the sad conditions of “Marine Parks” in our country, that Malaysia is in the top 12 list of biodiversity and how in name of tourism, the marine ecosystem is being fucked up by corporate bullies. So people, next time when you want to choose your beach resort, do some background check first. Don’t support resorts that have no consideration for the environment.

The whole gang.

And then it was some sleep, breakfast and a flight back to KL.

And I finally got a tan!

More pictures here.

Proper reports from

Suan

ST

KY

God