After the stress of the MELTA conference (!) we felt a weekend on the distant island we can just see from our apartment window would be just the trick.
While Kuala Terengganu has beautiful beaches, they are wild places with all kinds of rips and tows, and no one can swim there - kite-flying seems to be the only acceptable activity.
We did a practice run to make sure we could find the right jetty at Merang - about half an hour north of here - just as well because there were no signs as such and it would have been frustrating looking for it on the actual day. We were glad we arrived early because we scored a spot on the first ferry out, others had to wait several hours.
We arrived at the resort - Laguna Redang - and the first thing we wanted to do was get into that water! All the red life vests - people here wear floatation vests to go snorkelling and swimming! (Yeah, they are generally afraid of water, and nobody knows how to swim. Gotta love Oz!)
We had a lovely big room, cool and spacious.
In fact, between swimming outings it proved a great place to veg out with the iPad!
Meals were, of course, a buffet, and the food was mostly Chinese - the other guests were almost entirely Chinese - but we were allocated a nice table with a view of the beach at every meal and it was very pleasant.
The resort offers (everyone) a 3-days-2-nights package, which includes 3 boat outings for snorkelling. We went on the first one, but were so disappointed by the dead coral and minimal fish life that we then went snorkelling off the beach in front of the resort.
In the resort they sell a packet of frozen white bread (60c) for feeding the fish ... It was amazing! A huge cloud (school) of many varieties of fish - from small-fry to quite large (scary big in fact) instantly gather around, pecking eagerly at the bread - and fingers, toes, arms, anything that could resemble bread!
When we first arrived they served everyone with a (complementary) salty-plum drink, something we had never tasted before (although we have eaten salty plums before). It was milky looking, with limes as well. On the last day, waiting to catch the ferry back, we treated ourselves to another salty plum drink at the bar.
We have already booked a return trip for when Bea comes to visit at the end of June.
Soooo loooking forward to it!
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