Redang Trip - Day 1

Hello peeps!
Today marks the 2nd week anniversary of our Redang Trip!
As promised, here's the updates of the wonderful family trip!


6 June 2011 (Monday)
Minds filled with excitement, we packed our belongings and started with our journey! 8pm plus, Daddy drove us to Larkin and left 4 of us there to wait for the KKKL bus, it was only 9pm! The bus will be coming at 10pm. So we sat there and waited patiently while daddy drove to Tun Aminah to pass the car to his friend. It was nearly 10.20pm plus and the bus finally arrived! According to the bus driver, they will only be 5 of us sitting on this bus for the whole journey @_@ So 4 of us(dad's waiting for us at Tun Aminah) boarded the bus and headed to Tun Aminah to fetch Daddy. After picking up daddy from the bus stop, we continued our journey to Terengganu, with only 5 of us as the passengers, and 2 drivers. It was quite weird to see so many empty spaces in the bus, but we felt more convenient as we no need to considered about other people, can just chopped any seats we wanted and spread our bags all over the seats! :]

The whole journey would be taking around 8 hours. So we spent our night in the bumpy bus ride, trying to force ourselves to sleep in this shaky and noisy(bus engine) condition. But luckily I had Big Bang's songs to make me feel slightly better :) Along the journey, we paused at Yong Peng at 11.45pm and some other Rest Station at 2am plus.

7 June 2011 (Day 1)
It was 6am in the morning! Finally, we arrived at Merang Jetty. The ferry will be coming to fetch us to our Redang Bay Resort at 9am. We still have plenty of time. Thus we found a hut nearby and sat down in the dark, with lots of mosquitoes wondering around us =_= Saw a bunch of Chinese youngsters opposite us, wondered which resort are they heading to? I had no idea but definitely not the same as us, because we don't see them in our resort later on.

Eating some bread as breakfast.

As the day turned bright, lots of stalls started to begin their business, selling breakfasts and souvenirs. We walked around the single street until the ferry arrived at 8am, earlier by an hour. Happily, we boarded the boat one by one, excited to reach the destination! The ferry ride took about an hour. At first we enjoyed the scenery and the breeze. But perhaps we were lack of sleep in the bus last night, we fallen asleep for a short while.

And then, Ta-Daa!

 Here we are! The sea water was crystal clear and you just felt like jumping into it! Thrilled and Delighted. We put our luggage into a mini truck and went in to the resort to check in. It was just 9am plus. We've got 2 chalet-typed rooms which numbered 2 and 4 at first, where room no. 3 belonged to someone else. Thus daddy went to require for room changing so that we could have 2 rooms side by side, in the end we managed to swap to room 8 and 9! But too bad I was too urgent at the moment and did some "big business" in room 4! haha sorry to the next resident! :S

We still had ample of time till our first schedule, which was lunch at 12noon. After unpacking our stuffs, me and my 2 younger sisters decided to go out to the beach for some photo shooting! While daddy and mummy were too tired so they decided to have a nap in their room.

some weird fruit that tasted like starfruit near the canteen area!

 

 

The sun was scorching hot, almost got myself "evaporated" while taking those pics under the bright sun! But it was really a beautiful island, the clear blue sea and the fine white sand, how fascinating! We walked passed different resorts to capture those shots! After an hour, we had enough with our photos session and decided to head back to the room. We napped a while. 12pm, our whole family went to the canteen to have our first meal! The meal was a buffet style, served with main dishes, desserts and soup as well! Tasted not bad! :)After the meal, we went to collect our life jackets and masks for 3 of us! Dad n mum not taking cos they wanna save money. Then, me n my youngest sis, Fang decided to go for a basketball session near our chalet! Daddy joined us after that! Another sis, Joo was too tired so she stayed in the room.

"Ring, ring, ring" the bell rang, it was 2pm! Hinting us that it's snorkeling time!(Everytime when there's time for an activity the bell will ring, reminded me of my National Service days) Anxious, we quickly gathered at the hall, really eager to set off! This was my 2nd time snorkeling(1st was at Pulau Pangkor with my sec school friends). Pangkor's snorkeling was only one time and there weren't many fishes. I believed Redang would be much more exciting because lots of people recommended this place!

2.30pm...the boat arrived, we will be heading towards an open sea for snorkeling! Everyone was so excited and can't wait to hop on to the boat! Pushing here and there, especially those aunties! And you can see from the picture below that the water level was actually quite high, we can't reach the ground at all. Those who brought bags including daddy had to lift it up high to avoid them from getting wet. I decided to throw my flip flops up to the boat first before climbing up. But I failed to do so as I aimed wrongly, one side of my slipper fell into the sea instead! I struggled to save my beloved Ripples, but luckily there's a handsome guy beside me helped me get it real fast! hehe :]

on the way!

Daddy mummy rent the life jackets in the end cos we MUST have a life jacket while on the boat! But they haven rent a mask though, decided to use their goggles instead. At last, we reached our destination! Hopped down the boat and started our snorkeling session! The water here was really clear as we can see corals right down at the end!

I spotted lots of sea cucumbers down here and shouted aloud in English, guessed the lifeguard heard me and dived down to get one for us to see! LOL saw one in Pangkor but didn't get to touch it, now I got the chance! The feeling of handling it was pretty yucky and slimy! It was semi-hard shell feeling at first but after a while, it kind of turned fragile and soft! Which totally "eww", so I quickly throw it away! haha my sis caught it though :D Besides, we spotted different species of fishes, they were a group of 6-7 of colourful coral fishes swimming around, and we stalked them! Among them there was Parrot Fish(will upload web pics of them on the next post as I don't have underwater camera) There were a few seagulls perching around the rocks nearby as well. There were also a school of mini fish passing by us! They looked like they are sparkling! The sad thing was, most of the corals are dying...how pity!

It was about time so we had our journey back to the resort. Surprisingly, one of the lifeguard came to 3 of us and told us there are baby sharks on the other side of the resort! WOW I was so surprised and happy to know that! After confirming the exact venue, we decided to go and seek for it after our tea break session! We enjoyed our tea break session at 4.30pm with yummy banana cakes, the bread not really nice though. Then, daddy n mummy wanna have a nap again.

So 3 of us, the Phang sisters headed to the sea to start our new adventure! The place was just at the right side of our resort, beside the cliff. There were quite a few people snorkeling there too. The beach here was quite dangerous as there were plenty of shells and dead corals along the beach. We MUST stepped through all this shell to reach the sea water. When we reached the sea water, there were lots of rocks underneath, we must be really careful not to slipped or cut ourselves. Upon reaching the deeper area, we started to swim and WOW there were more fishes than the previous snorkeling session at the open sea! The only thing about here was that the water was milkier so our vision distance was only less than 8m away. After confirming with the lifeguard there, we swam towards the rock area where he claimed the sharks would be. It was roughly 50m from the shore. Further and further 3 of us swam, and in the end only 3 of us around that area. Excited with some hidden tension, we looked into the water eagerly, expecting any hint of baby shark! And then, Fang shouted! She saw it! Me and Joo getting more eager, we looked around again but to no avail. A music that normally played in the movie when shark's coming was playing repeatedly in my mind! And OMG...I saw it! It was quite far away and the moment I faced up to tell my sis it was gone! Joo was even more anxious because she was the only one left haven seen it. We continued to swam around hoping to get any trace of it again, but to no avail. And I accidentally cut my finger by the rock beneath me, bleeding, worried that shark might attracted by blood, we decided to go back to the resort!

Went back to the resort but our parents weren't there, so we don't have key to go in! Thus, we went back to the beach to look for them! After meeting them, we continued our snorkeling at the other side where the water was clear and without baby sharks! There weren't many fishes here, quite a few of them actually.

The day was getting dark so we went back for dinner. The dinner was not bad either. We planned to go for a night walk after that but unfortunately it rains. Thus we went back to the room and went to bed early at 9pm plus, since it will be a packed day tomorrow!

End of Day 1...to be continued

Link to Day 2
http://tales-of-littlemee.blogspot.com/2011/06/redang-trip-day-2.html
Link to Day 3
http://tales-of-littlemee.blogspot.com/2011/07/redang-trip-day-3.html