Redang Getaway.
My trip to Redang was absolutely fantastic. The beach is stunningly beautiful, the service at the resort is impeccable, and the food, oh boy is the food awesome. However, the journey back home was torturous. We took a coach and travelled for about 15 hours from 9-ish in the morning and only arrived in Singapore way past midnight.
The time of arrival back home on the itinerary is 10PM, but we were horribly delayed for a couple of hours due to the toilet breaks. Imagine 8 coaches parking at the same spot and over 200 hundred people queuing to use the toilet. There were only 2 cubicles maximum and in the end, the women even had to resort to using the male toilets because there were too many of us. We were also supposed to have lunch at 2PM, but ended up combining both lunch and dinner together into one meal because we only reached the mall at close to 5PM. I've never had a worse experience and wouldn't want to go through that kind of torture again. I really hate public toilets in Malaysia. Everytime I go on a trip there and take the coach, I dread stopping for toilet breaks the most. The cubicles are awfully dirty and stinks worse than garbage, and to top it off there's no toilet paper! At all. Not even in the big shopping malls. Travelling to and back from Malaysia by coach is always a complete nightmare.
I haven't been on a cruise in a very long time, and I was pretty excited to board the ship. We were at the cruise centre a couple of hours earlier and at 8PM, the ship sailed away from the dock and we were on our way to Redang Island.
My mum and I shared a room with my uncle (dad's best friend) and his wife. The room's pretty small but comfortable. I slept on the floor since I'm the youngest. It felt good to stand on the open deck, listening to the sound of waves crashing against the side of the ship, and letting the wind blow gently across our faces.
Food wasn't all that good, but it was satisfactory. I like the dimsum breakfast that we had on the 2nd day.
In the afternoon, we gathered on Deck 7 for disembarkation, and transferred by tender from boat to Redang. Upon reaching the island, we were received by the resort staff and were given a short briefing on the facilities, rules and regulations, etc. We had to walk a few minutes to the resort lobby. There we were given welcome drinks, collected our luggages and room keys, and proceeded to our respectitive rooms.
Our room consists of 4 beds, the toilet and shower rooms are separate, and the view from our balcony was...a stone wall. Not the best view, but I like our room. It's very spacious, and we even have a stand on the balcony to hang our clothes to dry.
It was a gorgeous day out with the sun shining brightly above, so we immediately donned our swimsuits and headed towards the beach. I actually didn't bring my suit, so I had to borrow my uncle's wife's spare to wear.
Isn't the beach just beautiful? The sea looked so inviting with the waves glistening under the sun, and the feel of soft sand under our feet was heavenly. It didn't take us long to plunge ourselves into the water; we leapt into the waves as they came and paddled around. Soon, it was almost time for dinner and we went back to our room to wash up.
The meals at the Sang Suria Restaurant are complimentary, and the food is simply divine. It's buffet, so I took a little bit of everything to try. I looked forward to breakfast, lunch and dinner the most while we were there (I'm such a glutton).
The highlight of the trip: Snorkeling! We gathered at the Recreation Centre early in the morning for a briefing before departing on boats to the Marine Park. There were many fish there and we fed them with bread. I even got bitten because they would come to you in a huge group to get a piece of bread, and they would bite you if you're not careful. We had a great time and were so reluctant to leave. But there was another snorkeling session scheduled in the afternoon - this time to the deep waters. We travelled to a spot about 10 minutes away from the shore and jumped right into the sea. It was very deep and there were more coral than fish there. I mostly swam around and relaxed while floating on the surface. I want to learn how to dive next time.
This trip was actually organised by the radio station 100.3 together with Five Stars Tour, and on our last night they told us to gather at the ballroom for a game session and prize presentation. We played human jackpot, and they got 3 ladies from the audience to go up on stage. They were blindfolded, and when a player says the codeword, they would have to each display an action. If the actions displayed are the same, the player would then win the money that other players deposited into a bag to get a chance to play. It was pretty amusing, and we played it 3 times before moving on to a birthday celebration for those in the tour group whose birthdays fall in August. After that, it was lucky draw time and the winners each won a tour package to either Kuala Lumpur or Genting. The grand prize was an all-expense paid trip to Korea worth over $2,000. Sadly, we didn't win anything. But the DJs were very entertaining, and we all had a great time.
The trip was enormously fun and I was sorry that my dad had to miss it. But good for me because I got to go, and I definitely want to go back there again.