I love romcoms. There always seems to be a romantic trip to a beautiful island in South East Asia. But how in the hell did they get there? Cuz ours was a hell of a journey.
At 11pm we board our flight in Sri Lanka for Malaysia. We get a disappointing nap in before landing in Kuala Lumpur.
We stumble into a bus and have a much better nap before we pull into the Central Station downtown. By this time it’s after 7am. We walk into multiple hotels and ask to have a room for the day.
We try and explain—“we’re catching a bus tonight, we just want a place to sleep and shower”. After several misses we walk over to a backpacker hostel. It opens at 8, we lay our packs down and wait.
The hostel understands what we want and offers us a room for 70 ringgit, $15. At 8:40am we’ve showered and are asleep.
At 2pm we’re starving and make our way down the block to the food stands we’d seen earlier. We devour our food.
Then we’re off to the mall to buy SIM cards, back to the hostel to get some packages we need to mail, and across town to a haircut I made thinking today would be a great time for it. H heads to the post office.
2 hours later I’m done—H has sent all the packages—and we race back across town to get our bags, track down a taxi, and get to the bus station.
We buy tickets, store some luggage, eat dinner, and get on our red eye bus north at 10:30pm. The driver clearly has somewhere to be, the ride is fast and unpredictable. Sleep is fleeting. And there is no toilet onboard.
We get in at 4:30am and at this point are more zombies than humans. We agree to take a taxi to Kuala Besut even though we need to use the bathroom and can’t find one. Our driver hears our need and 10 minutes into the drive he pulls up in front of a mosque. He says “toilet” and points.
We both wonder if we’re allowed to use this bathroom. But not enough to question it.
We get to Kuala Besut around 5am. Our driver tells us “his friend is coming to give us ferry tickets”. We’re wary of what that might mean but we sit in the dark and wait. At 5:15 his friend shows up and gives us tickets that we can use at the terminal—we pay them, not him. He also tells us where coffee and food are. We eat delicious food and drink two coffees before heading back to the terminal around 6:30.
The ticket friend had told us the ferry will leave at 8am OR whenever it’s full.
The terminal is packed and by 7:15 we’ve managed to secure our spot. There’s been a lot of yelling and hand waving by the ferry folks but it’s all appeared kind and seems yelling is necessary when boat engines are constantly running.
We speed across the water and by 7:50 we’ve arrived at our destination Pulau Perhentian Kecil—a remote island on the east coast of Malaysia.
BUT THE FUN AIN’T OVER
Because we don’t have a place to stay. We split up, I go to the first spot—a diver camp setup where you get free housing if you do their certification. But we aren’t doing the diving certification so they don’t care about us much. We don’t blame them and move on.
H has asked at a restaurant and we idle around waiting for confirmation.
After what feels like ages—but is probably 15 minutes—we secure a cabana (read: beach shack) for two nights that’s 150 Ringgits for each night (roughly $60 USD total), has a bathroom included (though I wouldn’t be surprised if someone had been murdered in it), and is beachfront.
We ask about a mosquito net. The guy looks around the room and says the thing we’ve already noticed, “this room doesn’t have one.”
He leaves.
We’re already getting bitten so H installs the mosquito net he had us buy in Portugal—I love this man for thinking ahead.
By 9:30am we’re asleep.
And then the romcom begins, right?
