Monday, August 30, 2010

Discovering Cherating, 11~12 June 2010, Day 1 & 2

Wow ... I've not written here in a long time eh! Just goes to show how much strayed I've been :)

This reminded me of a friend from childhood who recently said, and you should take this in proper context, he said that sometimes our teacher allow us to make mistake so that we could realize it, learn from it, and come back to the path. Much like flying a kite, sometimes you let it fly away a bit before you reel it back.

But I digress :)

Anyway, so the recent school holidays we got to talking. Not much money to go to Krabi or Ko Lipe, so we thought Cherating would be alright. Not better than Tioman but certainly closer. So googled and facebook a bit and some friends suggested Ranting Beach Resort coz it's close to the beach. Well, putting the word 'resort' to its name is stretching too much for me but its location by the beach is great.

We planned to go on Saturday and called the place, he said Saturday might be full so we went there Friday instead. Took us an hour to get to Gombak from Puchong and another 3 hours to get there.

We got there around 4 pm and after checking in & relaxing a bit, we decided to check out Kemaman town. This is a good thing about GPS, with it you feel like locals driving in nooks & crannies of the town; and we end up at a place called Benteng Kastam Lama (I think that's what the guy told me) which has a bit of benches by the river, people fishing, and a few warungs.




























So it was good to have your hot soup and see the
sunset over the muara.















We went back to the chalet and ask the guy where to have a good seafood. He suggested a few and one is this place called Awang Ikan Bakar.














I thought it was good value; the bill came close to RM60 for 3 of us but we had few crabs, sotong, shrimps & fish.

We hit the beach early in the morning the next day and one thing good about this Ranting is that its right by the beach and our family room face the sea.

You could read a book on the porch while enjoying the ocean view and breezy wind on your face … and while smoking weed or gudang garam for some people, not that I’m into any of those.


Beach wise, Cherating is not Redang but she made up for lack of crystal clear water & powdery sands with great location, places to discover in Kemaman and all those satar & keropok lekor warungs.

For lunch, we went to Kemaman town and thanks to Garmin in my wife’s E71, we tried that famous Hai Peng kopitiam. But we were late there and they don’t have anything much; after all, it’s school holidays.



























On the way back, we stop by the Turtle Sanctuary to see turtles and ask around where we could see one laying eggs at night. There’s a travel shop near our guesthouse that quotes RM25 per head with our own transport; that’s way too expensive for the 3 of us. The reception said we could try to be there around 9 or 10 pm and if there’s a turtle nearby, they would inform us. What’s nicer is that entry is by donation only. We couldn’t take pictures of the turtle coz … it’s not nice isn’t it. But here some photos at the sanctuary. There's a signboard for you to exit into this place and it's nearby Club Med.

















After getting back to our room, we hit the beach again and later went out for dinner; can’t remember the place but somewhere on the road to Chukai/Kemaman. We didn't choose Awang Ikan Bakar coz we wanted to try different places but in hindsight, I thought Awang was a good place.















Ahh ... it has been good, productive, and enjoyable two days so far.

No comments: