Discovering Cherating, 13 June 2010, Day 3 & Epilogue

We didn't do much on Day 3 since it's time to check out. I think we hit the beach again and was surprised that even though it's school holidays, there are not that much crowd. Granted that Cherating beach is pretty long but I had thought it would be more crowded since on the first night, we checked out other lodgings and most of them were fully booked.

I must single out this one website for giving us much info on Cherating and Pahang in general. The info has helped us to plan a good and productive mini holidays. The site is:

http://www.pahang-delights.com/

So to En Yamin Nuruddin of Pahang Delights, thanks a lot sir.

If it weren't for the site, we would not have explored other smaller beaches within our driving routes such as Pantai Chendor or Pantai Batu Hitam.

Here's Fateh at Pantai Batu Hitam where we stop and had lunch here. There's quite a few warungs by the beach.

I thought I would give my few cents or suggestions about Cherating, starting with lodging.

Rooms
I guess depending on your travelling style, by that I mean proper hotel type or guest house type, then I would suggest the following. If you like to spend the night in a good hotel room with cool & quiet air condition and wake up to fluffy white towels, then go for Holiday Villa or the like there. Not that I've been to Holiday Villa but from goggling a bit, they are certainly a few levels above Ranting Beach where we stayed.

Ranting Beach is not that bad for its price. Sorry but for the life of me, I can't remember how much we paid for it. But we got a family room with queen & single beds, not overly spacious but good enough. Air cond and water pressure not like Hilton but you get what you paid for. And on the plus side, our room is right by the beach.

There are many establishments around the beach area so much that I think, you could just drive there and take your pick. Of course, doing that during school holidays is a bit like gambling but we survived alright :) And if you want a bit more assurance in life, you could reserve one night at a particular place and explore your options once you get there. There's a bit of story for us on how we adopt this tip/trick.

We learned this tip while travelling to Padang/Bukit Tinggi in Sumatera Barat in August 2006. Airasia made travel affordable for me and somehow, I never tried and doesn't have the interest to join group travel. I think reading this book by physicist Richard Fenyman in college somehow made a mark on me. I like to do things my way. So we got cheap tickets to Padang and met this lovely couple (Pak Aziz & wife) at the airport and end up sharing the same MPV to Bukit Tinggi and decided to rent the van together for the next few days.

The difference was that I had read up on the internet a bit about Bukit Tinggi and look in forums & websites for a cheap guesthouse type to stay and got to this old single storey bungalow converted into guesthouses. Being our 2nd travel oversea (first was Balikpapan!), we book the whole place via internet for the whole week there. Little did we know that Bukit Tinggi is cold and their water heater didn't work! Ouch .... tak fikir nak mandi wajib beb!

So nowadays, when we travel, we go with the flow :)

Here's some contacts we managed to jot down:
Ranting Beach Resort: 013 931 2371, 09 581 9068
Cherating Bay: 013 909 7542, 09 581 9988/9749 www.cheratingbay.com
Tanjung Inn: 09 581 9081
Cherating Tone Resort: 019 957 2709, 09 581 9378

Marketing

Granted I didn't spend much time on the net searching for info on Cherating, I do think that the tourism stakeholders in Malaysia have much to learn from our Thai neighbors. You could use Google Earth and go over Krabi and see how many guest houses/hotels are placemark there and compare it to our Cherating. And I also think that our neighbors do have better internet presence to promote their places and its attractions. The few guest houses that I went, I didn't see that much brochures on things to do in Cherating. Would leave you in the dark if you don't know how to explore.

Customer Service

At the place I stayed, I witness how the reception treat potential customers with little enthusiasm. The guy wasn't rude or anything but I do think he should have been more helpful and informative.

I guess this is our problem in general. I read somewhere before that even though we try to promote tourism as income earner, we don't have much in terms of training our workers in this industry. I'm no expert in this area and I'm not bitching, far too old for that, just sharing my thoughts.

That's all ... god blessed and if you are looking for a quick getaway, Cherating is not bad :).