*This entry and its sequel (I’m Back From Redang P.2) contains some photos from the trip that are not from my own camera. If you are the owner of the camera that took the photos, and do not wish for the photos to be displayed here on this website, please contact me and I will have them removed.
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I’m back from my trip to the breathtaking Redang Island!
Organised by the Tourism Club of MMU, we went in a rather huge group of 80 students! But when it comes to trips, it’s always the more the merrier, isn’t it? 
This Redang trip is all about snorkelling, snorkelling, and snorkelling. So if there were a killer shark, giant octopus or sea monster in the ocean that prevented us from getting into the water, this trip would be as boring and pointless as attending mathematics lectures in campus.
Altogether, we took more than a thousand photos and it will definitely take some time to gather and sort them out. I’ll upload them to my photo album when they’re ready!
Now, I think I should record down the chronology of the trip before I forget!
Introducing our 2 tour leaders:
Jon…
… and Alex!
Oh I just love to take photos of people when they’re sleeping! They simply look soooo great! : )
Anyway, we departed from campus late at night around 10PM on Tuesday. 2 MMU buses were used to take us on an excruciating 9-hour journey from Cyberjaya to the jetty in Kuala Terengganu.
In my entire life, I have never been able to sleep well in buses. So I was staring blankly out of the window the whole night while everyone else was comfortably snoozing on their own seats.
Having sat in the first row of seats in the bus where the bus clock was just in front of me, I was extremely conscious of how ridiculously slow time was moving.
12.00am… Everyone is getting quiet…
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1.15am… Oh it’s so dark outside…
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2.30am… The driver is whistling…
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3.45am… *Shivers* The air-cond is very cold…
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4.15am… Eww, the houses and trees outside look scary…
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5.30am… Someone is snoring…
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6.00am… Are we there yet…?
Oh it was inhumane torture!
At around 6.30am, 1 hour earlier than our estimated time, we arrived at the jetty parking area in Kuala Terengganu. Finally! Some fresh air!
We went for a stroll near the pier and when the sun had risen, we had breakfast at a rather shabby coffee shop near the parking area. We heard that there’s a Chinatown near the area, but we were just too tired to walk…
We had to wait for a frickin’ 2 hours because our speedboat to Redang Island was scheduled at 9am. Things went a little messy when people walked-off in groups to different places, Jon and Alex were busy getting them back.
We actually prepared some ‘breakfast’ for participants who didn’t want to leave the bus to have breakfast – Two cartons of bread! Almost like those given to flood victims! Hah!
At 9AM, we took the speed boat and headed towards Redang Island. The boat was quite comfortable with air-conditioning and on deck movies. They were showing a really funny Rowan Atkinson movie but I was just too sleepy to watch it…
Some time later, my friends started taking photos of people sleeping and it became too dangerous to sleep. So we went to the super windy and sunny upper deck where we had a great view of the ocean and took pictures!
At first some of the boat’s crew actually wanted us to buy some of their expensive food or soft drinks before we’re allowed to get on the upper deck, so greedy! But in the end we just slipped past them without buying anything… Hehe!
At around 11am, we arrived at Redang Island.
If there’s only one thing that I can praise about the island, it’s definitely going to be the insanely crystal clear water!
Almost like it’s a glass of purified water but magnified thousands of times! Even the water in swimming pools are not as clear as this!
After docking, we checked-in our rooms at 12.30pm and had our first activity at 2.30pm. The first activity was, as expected, snorkelling.
We had to rent the snorkelling equipment ourselves as they were not provided. And to tell the truth, they were quite disgusting… You’ll see why.
In order to breathe underwater, we had to bite into the mouthpiece and keep it in our mouths as long as we’re in the water… And God knows who and how many people have used it and had it cramped into their mouths, richly staining it with saliva and whatever that’s left in their teeth before we got to use them… I doubt the rental agents ever sterilised or even washed them. And we’re passing it on, to the next victim… Ewwww!
Disgusting things away. The snorkelling experience was phenomenal! The underwater view was something like those that you see on Discovery Channel and I thought those views were only observable through diving!
Nope, that guy’s not me!
The corals, rocks, fishes, and every other undersea creature, were getting along together in a place where all sounds from the outside world are completely filtered. The only sounds left are those of the water current, bubbles and your own breathing (you can hear your breathing really clearly!).
Here, I saw a baby shark that no one else saw. Baby sharks are known to be seen in the waters in front of our resort, but not here. I was lucky!
Some of my friends grabbed a couple of living, black, slippery, squirming sea cucumbers from the sea floor and were scaring people with it! Haha! The sea cucumbers were really quite revolting at first, they look like gigantic, black, wet dog shit, but wriggling like a worm.
We went back to our rooms at around 5pm and took our showers. Some guys went out for more snorkelling in the sea area in front of our resort where it was said to have baby shark sightings.
With no sleep at all during the previous night, I was tooo tired and sleepy to go for any more optional activities. So I went for a nice quick nap on one of the beach chairs located along the beach.
Dinner was quite remarkable as we were served Chinese food! I actually thought that we’d be served typical Malay food as we did during our previous trip to Taman Negara. The food was not bad at all, considering there were 80 of us to be served! I couldn’t even get decent Chinese food in Cyberjaya, but we found ‘em in Redang! Yay!
There was an ‘open air disco’ held at the beach at around 8pm. It was quite enjoyable but not a lot of people were dancing though, so me and my friends went to play pool at Laguna Redang Resort.
Later at 9pm, there was a search for ‘blue sand’ led by the Trip Programmes Director, Pegan. When I first heard that we were going ot observe ‘blue sand’, I thought we were going to watch from a high place, and somehow, all the sand on the beach will become or seem blue… Haha…
I found out that ‘blue sand’ actually refers to one tiny speck of sand, and it’s extremely hard to find. You’ll have to rub the surface of the beach sand in dark places, and if you’re really lucky you’ll find some. It’s basically a speck of sand that emits a calm, blue light, pretty much like a small LED. It glows a mysterious blue light but fades in a few seconds. Fascinating!
*Note: There’s no blue sand in this picture, don’t bother to look for it! =)
We went to bed quite early that night, because most of us didn’t sleep well during the previous night in the bus. It was a strategy: get enough sleep at the first night, stay awake for the entire second night!
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Note: This entry is too long so I seperated it into 2 parts. Please click Here for Part 2.
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