Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Beach addicts: Redang trip!

Wow. Hi, hi, hi after one and a half years. Sooo yeah you might be wondering why I just decided to start blogging again after so long.

I'm not even sure myself but there's just something about going through old blog posts, reliving your past and marvelling at how much you've changed and grown throughout the years (or even months, yes personal experience proves that there's a lot that can change in the space of a few months). And also to admire my own wit in writing (ha, ha.) Nah just kidding ;) I just like seeing the way I think, or used to think, which somehow is so different when put down in writing. Or font on a screen in this case.

In all seriousness though. You always expect that you'll remember all those good times you had, but your memory can only do so much, especially for super forgetful people like me. A personal online diary complete with pretty pictures! Probably the reason why I always start blogging again after long hiatuses. So here goes. Just jumpin' right into it.

So this month has been a little crazy. Redang and Langkawi in the span of three weeks! I'd never visited Redang before this so it was pretty exciting to be visiting for the first time.

Didn't some pretty epic shopping with my aunty Maybelle at Midvalley's Aeon on the day we were leaving since there wasn't going to much to eat at Redang besides hotel food. Bread, cup noodles, fruits - bananas and grapes so we didn't need to cut them, biscuits, tea, milk..we pretty much brought every staple you can think of to tide us over the next four days of food deprivation XD

We took a 10pm bus from PWTC station to Kuala Terengganu, 7 hour bus ride mmhmm stopping halfway at Cherating where we visited just earlier this year! xx Waited around for almost five hours at the crappy bus station where hobos slept near us and flapped their wonderful scents around to perfume the area.

Taxi-ed to the jetty and wasted our life away for a while more until finally, finally! our ferry arrived.

 Starting our rm55 journey! On which we slept most of the time.


Blue, blue sea and we're not even at Redang yet. 



The view as you walk out from the lobby of our hotel.

Accomodation down this way!

Checked into our hotel, the Berjaya Redang Island Resort. After rushing to the washroom to pee, that is! Sixteen hours of not peeing really puts your bladder to the test.

Got a pretty dirty room so we requested a change of rooms. Rooms were chalet style, four rooms in a chalet and we got a room on the upper floor. Stairs to climb and that's fine, but not when you have to lug your uber heavy luggage bags to your new room by yourself in super hot weather. :( *pants and sweats*

And what's more we discover the hotel's private beach was about a hundred steps down, to climb back up and then climb even more stairs to the room really put these unfits aunties to the test :D

Our eensy but beautiful clean beach.

 Maybelle and I!



All beach-ready. You can see one of the chalets here!

 Selfie time! What do you expect.

 All I can think of when I see these pictures is 'Damnnn I was so pale'!

Notice how we all have the same bikini ;D

Spent a lot of time playing with these sea cucumber friends which were in abundance at our little beach! So gross and squishy to touch. They even squirt water out their ends. Which is actually quite.. errrr.. XD


Basically we spent our first day just lounging on the deck chairs at the beach with our beach reads, and eventually falling asleep to the sound of waves and John Mayer. Now that's what I call a vacation!
Also floating tummy up in the hotel pool (cuz you have to get your money's worth using the facilities!) watching storm clouds blow over and coconut trees bending in the wind.

Ran back to our room in the pouring rain and spent the rest of the night how every consequent night was to be spent: taking turns showering, eating cup noodles and the other junk we brought, and eventually falling asleep earlier than any of us normally would. I was the last to fall asleep every single night just reading and even then it would only be just past midnight.

Visited the public beach the next day! but not after revisiting our little private beach.

Girls just cannot miss an opportunity to camwhore.

My two aunties!

The only non-selfie pic we have of the three of us <3 Got a bit confused when I first saw this pic while scrolling through my camera, like wth? who took this photo?


Such a pretty place to take photos.

 In the van heading to the public beach!

Not sure what I was expecting but fo' sure I was not expecting this!

The whole wide beach all to ourselves.

Daz my two aunties in the water!

I can't get over how blue and clear the water is!



Don't be fooled by the pretty pictures though, the sun was scorching (which actually also explains why the pictures were so nice!). Just standing for a little while out of the water makes your skin burn, no kidding!

We only had one pair of goggles between us (Meredith's) which we shared by taking turns going over to the rocks by the side of the beach to look at the marine life. It was an aquarium over there! Lots of little fishies nibbling at rocks, pretty corals and hairy sea cucumber friends (which omg speaking of I didn't even notice until I was swimming over it and then it scared the crap outta me gosh). The fish weren't even scared of humans; in fact I think I was more afraid of them than they were of me lulz.

There's just something about exploring nature. Such a shame we couldn't take pictures underwater!

 Just me being silly. Can we just talk about how my foot kicking up sand makes it look like I have a huge webbed foot..err. Didn't notice until now!

 Excuse me for being vain. But it's just so pretty!



 My silly M aunties! XD

 Aww so romantika.. except for the leaf bits floating around umm.

This was the life seriously. But sunglasses had to be kept on or I would be so blinded by the sun *insert sunglasses emoji*

 Ngghh those blue skies I can't even.
:D

Laughed so hard when I first saw this picture. It was meant to be all silhouette-y and cool. #fail

 Who would've known so much life existed down there!

 Fishes would actually swim all the way out here from time to time.

 Selfie!


 Meredith and I!

 Tsk tsk photoshoot photobomb.

 Super aunty!

#duckface #ducklips

 Forgive me. So gorgeous.


Who knows what she's doing out there :D

Although it doesn't look like it, we did spend most of our time wading, floating and just having fun without the camera. We were there for quite a few hours!

 The view of the beach on the way back.. long uphill walk up the trail.

Stopped to get dinner while waiting for the hotel van to pick us up. Went back to our room to eat. wash up and enjoy our early night in. Nothing like a good warm (real) meal with iced tea after a day at the beach!

 Next day: snorkelling!
Woke up bright and early and applied tons of sunblock before heading to the lobby. Nobody wants to get sunburnt!

 Girls just wanna have fun!.. even with sunblock.


On ze boat. Ready for our first stop!


 Blue blue water.


We took the 4-stop snorkelling trip at a pretty good price. The lady at the recreation counter was nice enough to let us all three have the special price even though the voucher stated for two as our room is supposed to be a two-person room.

Snorkelling was fun! Excluding the fact that the constant paddling while being restricted by a life jacket was a little tiring. Everyone saw a baby shark except for me! A little bummed cuz we didn't get to see a turtle either, which was supposed to happen if we were lucky. Also carried a starfish around a whole stop because we named it our 'friend', and Maybelle held this little clownfish our guide caught in her hands for the last stop :D

Saw a lot of pretty corals and swam among so many colourful fish! At our last stop we even encountered a whole school of them. Remember the fish who would form shapes to illustrate their meaning in Finding Nemo. It was thousands of fish like that, swimming in circles around us (not even exaggerating here!). So surreal. And cute how they would change their course every time you interrupted their path.

 Chilled and had some biscuits by the pool after snorkelling!

Noh. Selfie.

Lazed around in our room recovering from snorkelling and then decided to go back down to our private beach. There was a man rearing baby turtles which would be released back into the wild once they were old enough, and we got to play with them! :)



 Hmph! Whaddya think ya gunna do wi' me huh?



 Look at the little tiny-ness :D

 Turtle fight! Turtle flap!

Turtle acrobatics!

So after spending some time at the private beach, we actually went back to the big public beach! But we only had an hour or so there.

Discovered a shortcut down to the beach! Such a steep way but Meredith and I decided to brave the slope.

Spent our time there at the other end of the beach. Climbed up the massive rocks at that end and freaked myself out seeing some weird small reptilian beings that lived by the water o.O Found another small school of fish there but that was about it. Didn't have much time and didn't even manage to take any photos. :(

Decided to climb back up the slope though! All three aunties. Even while carrying our humongous beach bag. Such a feat to be remembered XD

So that was basically the end of our Redang trip! Do note that at the moment U-mobile doesn't have any signal over there haha. And I did not even mention crazy tan lines! It's been a month since the trip and I still have all of them. Although they're not in obvious places and the actual tan itself I'm not bothered by. I actually like my now brown self :D doesn't make me look as sickly :P

We left our hotel early in the morning the next day to take the 7am ferry and then wait for our bus which was at 1pm ugh. Another 14-hour journey. But totally worth it!

Sunrise as we were leaving.

Ferry selfie!

Pretty much just spent that day travelling. Falling asleep on the ferry, at the jetty, and on the bus. Zzzz... Maybelle and I did open and eat a can of cold baked beans on the bus :D Heinz baked beans ftw!

And that's it! Some photo creds to my aunty Meredith and stay tuned for my Langkawi adventure! :)