19
May
Kuala Terengganu
So… eventually yesterday we decided to go to Cherating instead of the inland lake that we were planning to visit. It is now apparently ruined by a dam and the local forest clearing to put in palm oil plantations. We thought seeing as it is 30 minutes up the road a visit to Cherating would be nice. Some people love it, some hate it - but its always nice to see for ourselves.
We march with our rucksacks back through town to the bus station. Its not really too far but the heat makes it worse. Once we get there, none of the bus companies say they will stop in Cherating. I ask around for a while until eventually I find one that will, but they won’t sell us a ticket to Cherating. Instead of the 30 minute journey, we have to pay for the full 3 hour bus journey to Kuala Terengganu. We decided we didn’t want to see it that much so decided to stay on the bus and just get closer to the Perhentian Islands.
The town itself is… odd. On the whole it is fairly run down but, apparently due to the discovery of oil in the area, all of the coast has been replaced with a modern sea front. Its clean, tidy, but not particularly amazing. There are nice touches at night though, and strange decision to add fake light up multicoloured trees along the waters edge kind of works.
There is also the obligatory Chinatown, which even though its compact is actually pretty nice (we had dinner in one of the restaurants in this area which was delicious).
Hopefully tomorrow we can just get up and go to the bus. Hopefully there IS a bus. And hopefully our next update will be from the Perhentian Islands.

