Me: 911

Okay so it has been quite a few months that I actually avoiding myself to grief of quitting my pupillage session. Now as I sit in my bedroom, the cut is so deep that I just refuse to do anything.

It is so hard to accept the fact that I gave up my dream and surrender myself to love. Well, as I grew older, nothing would make me happier than to enjoy a plastic glass of chocolate frappe. Ya know when someone did hurt me, so the best I could do to heal myself is by diverting the hurtful emotion to the things that actually tasted so good – for instance, as I said before, the chocolate frappe.

As the social media were busy sharing stories of few successful women these days, I am just sitting here and think of how am I going to survive for the next 10 years. I have zero debt, well exceptions for my current ShopeePayLater account and of course my previous student loan when I was in IIUM.

I am pretty sure that, at this stage of age, I am not going to wake up in the morning and heading to work. I just need to figure out how to make a living by working from home.

So yeah, instead of torturing myself, I need to do something. I need to refresh my bedroom first cause it is the only place that I have to clear things out – my personal space of course. Right now, it is all in a mess but I am in the state of whatever.. So lucky me that someone really do understand the grieve that I am grieving of. I am so sorry to put you through all these mess. Thank you for these whole week I am so grateful to have you even though sometimes you were such a pain in the ass.

Love ya!

Travel: PERHENTIAN KECIL Island, Kuala Besut, Terengganu, Malaysia – DAY 3

August 14, 2019.

So we had enough hours of sleeping last night and today by noon, we had to leave this island and went home.

We took our morning shower (it was pretty cold and there was no such thing as water heater provided), and went to the restaurant for our last breakfast. Pretty sad.

BREAKFAST BY THE BEACH

Due to the fact that we will be leaving this island in the afternoon, we had made a special order for our breakfast meals.

I had scrambled egg and cheese with fries and Fara did had some toasted bread with jam.

I had requested to have our breakfast at the beach, sitting by the white sandy sea shore while appreciating all the tranquility of the island.

I will definitely miss all the memories in here.

Petani Beach, Kampung Pasir Petani

We took about half an hour to finish our breakfast meals and it was actually the best morning through the year of 2019 for me.

I took a deep breath before leaving such a perfect breakfast spot and whispering to myself that I can do this.

Life may sometime be hard to me but it doesn’t mean I have to give in so easily. I deserved to be treated as other human being too especially as a woman. To be loved, and to love till forever. Let’s do this!

WALKING TO MIRA BEACH

We handed the room keys at 10am and decided to walk to Mira Beach.

There were a foreign couple asking us for Mira Beach’s direction on our first night in here. We let them asked the Island Man straight away.

Fara on the other hand, kept asking about the stairs located just besides the restaurant.

Today, we will discover about where the stairs will take us together.

As we need to take a boat to the jetty at 12pm, we had about 2 hours to walk to Mira Beach and be at the restaurant for the boat exactly on time.

We climbed up the stairs and followed the old passages slowly. After 5 minutes walking, there was a huge tree blocking the passage which will took us to Mira Beach.

I tried to walk across the fallen tree and I saw the passages again. Nothing will stop us this time.

We kept walking and we met some foreigners walking along the passages as well.

We were finally reached at Mira Beach after walking for 25 minutes. There were actually water taxis available to go to other beaches nearby but it was quite wonderful to actually take a walk and discover the nature ourselves.

We did saw a very unique butterfly with black laces covered up it wings flying in front of us. It was actually too late for me to take a picture of it as it did flew away inside the bushes.

Mira Beach is a lot more like a private beach compared to the Long Beach that we had been to yesterday. There was not a high traffic of people in here.

There were only few wooden chalets decorated with a hammock in every balconies and also a private restaurant for the travelers staying there.

From my observation, all of them here were foreigners except for the chalet owner and the staffs of course.

Mira Beach, Kampung Pasir Keranji, Perhentian Kecil Island.

When we were there, most of them were enjoying themselves sunbathing by the beach. There was also a family with small children playing by the beach.

We took some pictures here and walked back to Petani Beach as we had only an hour to be on the boat.

IT’S TIME FOR US TO LEAVE THE ISLAND

We had finally made it to the Petani Beach on time. While we were waiting for the boat, and enjoying ourselves munching some Classic Lays, and taking photos, we saw a boat coming towards us.

We quickly got inside the small boat and headed to the larger boat. There were only two of us on the boat.

As I thanked the old man for sending us to the larger boat, my tears started to roll down my cheeks.

It was extremely sad to say goodbye to such a wonderful place and people.

DRIVING BACK HOME

At around 1.30pm, we had arrived at the Kuala Besut Jetty. We spent some time to look for souvenirs. I bought a t-shirt written ‘PERHENTIAN ISLAND’ and a black fridge magnet with some ‘I love Perhentian Island’ on it.

We started to drive and planning to stop by a beach in Terengganu for lunch. There were plenty of restaurants along the beaches.

Penarik Beach

We were also made a stop at the new bridge situated at Kuala Terengganu city centre.

It was almost dawn and we were still there in Kuala Terengganu. We were then drove off to find a local praying place and made a stop there.

We were also having a dinner there enjoying some local burgers.

It was around 10pm that we started to drive across the main highways and reached at Genting-Sempah R&R before Subuh.

We had learned so much through this short vacation.

One of the most vital thing was regarding proper inflation of tires. As we were about to enter the highway, we felt that the air pressure of the tires get pretty low. We decided to head for the nearest petrol station and had this one man who was parking right next to our car to help us inflating one of the tires. So, we were successfully inflating the rest of those tires ourselves! Bravo!

Breakfast at McDonalds Genting-Sempah

I had also learned on how to ride a small boat with a high speed with an excellent balanced and looked just like a professional fisherman.

The Island Man taught me a simple trick to maintain a body balance by inserting my finger inside the small hole beside the seat. I did managed to ride the boat without having to lower down my body and just sit there like a normal fisherman while the boat was moving on a high speed.

Alhamdulillah. We were finally arrived at home around 3pm.

We were extremely exhausted and we took lots of rest for a couple days.

There were lots of pictures and videos exchanging for days too!

SPECIAL APPRECIATION

In this post, I want to thank these people for making our vacations extremely meaningful.

Travel Agent: Instagram (@perhentian.my)

Accommodations – Chalets, Boats, Meals : Instagram (@petani_beach_chalet) / Facebook: Petani Beach Chalets

Rizqin Holidays, the Island Man, Mr Azrol and his families.

Thank you very much for your kind hospitalities.

Yours truly,

Sharifa Mastura S M Shah

Travel: PERHENTIAN KECIL Island, Kuala Besut, Terengganu, Malaysia – DAY 2

August 13, 2019.

After we had fallen asleep for just few hours last night, we woke up at 6.30am to perform Subuh prayer.

We had refused to continue our sleep as the sound of the waves hitting the shore outside of our room were fascinating and I had decided to sit outside at the porch to enjoy the morning view.

As our breakfast will be served on 8.00am, we did took an early shower and got ourselves dressed and also preparing some important stuffs to bring along for snorkeling activities later.

We had a very delicious local breakfast which was my favorite fried bihun (bihun goreng) served with sunny side up egg and of course, a cup of local breakfast tea.

We were sitting in the restaurant facing the sea. It was such a lovely morning with some windy elements.

Mr. Azrol (the chalet’s owner) told us to be at the beach around 9.15am for our snorkeling activities.

SEVEN POINTS SNORKELING TRIP

After finishing our breakfast meal, we then headed to our room to pack some important things such as, small towel, camera, phones, some medication, water bottles, and of course our sunglasses.

I put on a diving suit which I borrowed from my former H&M colleague, Sabrine. I was lucky enough that the diving suit fitted me well. Thanks Sabrine.

Once we were on the boat, we headed to a wharf at another beach. It was at the Perkampungan Nelayan, I guess. We need to fetch a family to complete our snorkeling trip together during that day.

There were a total number of 14 people on the Rizqin Holidays boat, consisting of 2 boys, 7 adult locals, 2 female foreigners, and another 2 snorkeling instructors.

For the first point, we were able to swim with a large turtle.

I was actually expecting that we were going to snorkel at some shallow water by the beach.

As the instructors saw a large turtle swam across the deep blue sea surfaces, he stopped the boat and offered us to swim inside the deep water with the turtle.

We were being provided with snorkeling gears as well as safety jackets.

As I jumped into the deep blue sea, one of the instructor took me closer to the large turtle and he even insisted me to touch the turtle.

I was so excited at first but then I stopped and just watched the huge turtle swam away. I was suddenly too scared to go nearer to the turtle as I was worrying that the turtle might kicked me off as what I have seen on TV.

As for Fara, I had never knew that she was not really prepared to be inside the deep blue sea as she seemed quite panic when she were inside the water.

I felt quite terrible to leave her behind and kept enjoying myself in the water. Somehow, I felt relieved when one of the instructor taught her basic swimming tip and started to motivate her with some “water confident” moved.

After about 20 minutes swimming with turtles, we continued our boat ride to another checkpoint.

I could not actually recalled the names of each checkpoints.

We were able to see beautiful coral reefs and some weird ocean creatures through our snorkeling goggles. The water is very crystal clear and at some point, the temperature of the water changes according to the depth of the waters.

We were also brought to a shark point to see some sharks. Again, I got scared after some time swimming at the shark point. I was quite shocked to see a man “fishing” for some sharks with small fishes bait just to capture a closer picture of them. It was totally scary.

We were also stopped by a very white sandy beach to capture some photos. I saw lots of foreigners taking pictures as well. There were few of them sunbathing for a while.

At about 1.30pm, we headed back to our chalets as we need to prepare ourselves for lunch and for some hiking activities.

HIKING TO THE FAMOUS KINCIR ANGIN HILL

After filling up our tummy with such a heavy lunch meal, we were riding on the boat to the famous Long Beach to hike up to the Kincir Angin.

As I had read online, the Kincir Angin was the best place to have a very perfect view of the whole island.

We were following another group led by an instructor to climb up a hill for a distance of 15km. It took us about 20 to 30 minutes to reach up for the top.

As we reached at the Kincir Angin spot, we had to walk for another new path as the old path will lead us to an old stairs that were too dangerous to step on.

The new path however, allowed us to see the island from the top of the hill and it was extremely fascinating.

We took few pictures there and decided to walk down and went back to our chalets.

PERKAMPUNGAN NELAYAN

On our way back to the chalets, the instructor (well, I would loved to call him the Island Man since he seemed way too expert living on this island). My bad for forgetting to ask for his name actually.

So this Island Man took us to the Perkampungan Nelayan to see the real daily life activities on an island and the places where locals were much more to be found in here.

Indeed, in this village, there were lots of small shops selling foods mostly, and some swimming gears and souvenirs as well. There were also places for backpackers to stay. I did tried the local burger here and it tasted much more tastier than ever especially when I took the last bite while riding on the boat back to our chalets.

BARBECUE FOR TWO

We reached at our chalets during late evening and we had some free time to relax our bodies on the beach before dinner. We took lots of pictures and videos.

I started to think that it would be seriously wonderful to settle down in such a beautiful and tranquil island.

Tonight, our dinner will be included some barbecue for two. So, we had some grilled chickens and squids.

We had some serious talked on that night during dinner and it was actually kinda sad to leave the island tomorrow.

I loved this island so much.

PACKED OUR THINGS FOR TOMORROW

We will be leaving this island by noon and we started to packed our things back. We did have some serious discussion while packing and for some strong reason, we had both agreed to take some traveling pill in order to fall asleep easily. We need to have lots of quality rests to drive back to Melaka.

It was pretty tiring to do lots of activities during the day but thankfully, we felt very happy to be here.

Thanks Fara for being with me.

Yours truly,

Sharifa Mastura S M Shah