Redang Day One: He-eee-llo-ooo-!!

Location: Room 7, Redang Campsite and Resort, Pulau Redang, Terengganu
Mood of the day: Tough and beefy, like Arnold Schuarzenagger Swuasenagjer Susah-nak-eja :P

Here's the first post of the Redang Report! We set off at 2.30am and hopefully get there by noon. It's an all nighter drive between my mom, dad and sis. On the new Kuantan highway, mom was falling asleep so dad took over. Dad drove so riskily in the dark and misty road that NOBODY slept.

We arrived at Cukai at the crack of dawn and a brief Venus gaze for breakfast at one of these roadside half-city-half-kampung café where we ate chicken as the street-wise live ones boldly joined us under the table (don't worry, they ate rice, not their masak-merah brethren).

The view from our veranda...

Arrived at the jetty early so dad herded everybody to a pasar raya (were corridors and shops are small but their wares can knockout any KL prices). He just wanted an original Terrengganu nasi dagang but mom, sis and me could only see hundreds vibrant coloured batiks in delicate hand-painted Thai silks. But if we stick around to our girl's heart's content, we'll miss the boat. Dad had to drag sis kicking and screaming (but he promised full shopping experience on the last day).


A hermit crab visiting his girlfriend with a gift. Can you see the faint heart-shaped trail marks?

There were other families on the package we took but we're the only ones without primary school kids (school holidays-le). My lil' bro's packed half his school with him because of the SPM trials by Monday (poor dude). The trip to PR was eventless save for this lil' baby gal who's terrified of the rocking boat. PR Resort was only a balcony jump away from the beach (not that we actually jumped off the balcony into the sea) so after checking in, we SWIM!!!


Architect freak. Lil' bro's rebuilding the Great Wall of China grain by grain

There were no fish in our area cos there were no coral reefs for fish to live in. Redang got all sorts of weird names for their area. There's Pulau Tengkorak, P. Yu Kecil and Tg. Cina Terjun (supposedly, where a lot of Chinese can jump and shout "Goodbye, cruel world!"). The catered food's bland and so for flavour, the family brought out the Mister Potato, Mr. Chips and (gender not defined) Double Decker Chicken munchies. There's actually Astro here! They got the electricity turned on in the evenings. Laa~, no holiday seemed to be safe from Astro ;).


A cloudy sunset at an island is better than smog-filled one back home...

The swim was an exercise for tomorrow's marine park extravaganza. The other family also joined into the water. The waves were unusually huge at this time of the year (must be the Taiwan Typhoon). The waves could have been bigger since each comes on twos or threes, broken up by the shore.

I saw one lil' gal went running to her dad with a mask-snorkel set before being knocked off her feet by a mini tsunami. She tried to get back up before the second after-wave went 'Peekaboo' right into her face. She must have gave up and just sat at the shallows to recover before a third water-brother sent her sprawling back on the beach. Reminds me of my first island paradise trip ;).

Signed: *Ophie, falling asleep to the sounds of she thought at first, were the waves on the rocks but in fact, her dad was snoring loudly from the other room.