Last weekends we organized a family trip to Redang, the island paradise that I’ve been quite a few times, when it comes to Redang, it is always an expectation of bright sun, crystal clear sea, and white sandy beach. In another word – everything that Redang Island Resort is not.
the chalet style rooms at Redang Island Resort
Redang Island Resort is not without its plus points. It is relatively close to the airport and they provide free transfer. You never need to see the beach or get your feet wet to get to the place.
Touted as a 3 star hotel with 98 rooms, the resort usually place you in a block of 4 rooms, with mostly wooden interior that’s masterfully painted in the dullest color imaginable. If you are here to relax your colored eye sight, it is the place to go.
For a resort that is situated at the tropics, the room also comes with air conditioning that takes an hour to reduce one Celsius, be thankful to the ceiling fan provided.
Outside the room, expect a lawn and garden that would fit right in any primary school too, very nostalgic.
beach? what beach?
For those who hates beach, this is the perfect place to be. The hotel is built within the jungle at the southern tip of Redang island, on a small hill. To get to the beach, you’ll have to track through some challenging terrain. Climbing down perhaps 50 meters or so, you’ll be rewarded with a small and pretty dismay beach facing the busy harbor. The water is slightly clearer than those in Port Dickson though.
The swimming pool is actually better than the beach, and the swimming pool was quite bad.
For food, there’s a single restaurant at the hotel, I didn’t check if McD would deliver though. Oh, food isn’t included in the package (RM 250 per room via booking.com).
If you want to incorporate a little bit of drinking at night, rest assure that the bar does offer beer for RM 18 per can. No cocktail, whisky, wine, or any of those nonsense.
Other activities offered by the hotel includes a round island trip (RM 800 for up to 7 pax), and even snorkeling (RM 35 per trip or RM 45 for 2 trips, etc.). Bicycles are also available for rental, and I’d think is quite essential as the room and lobby is otherwise a bus ride away.
I would however, advice against their jungle tracking offer since you can just do that by going down to catch a glimpse of the beach.
In short, if you want an experience at Redang that you would expect being in a cheap hotel at Fraiser’s Hill minus the cool temperature, this is the place to go.
It wasn’t the type of holiday we expected, hence we checked out after an hour and went to Redang Holiday Beach Villa, and everything got back on track.
P/S: Berjaya Vacation Club: thanks for the sleight of hand. You got us this time.
Following last year’s positive experience at Lang Tengah, we made a returning visit to the same island again. After Similan Islands live aboard and the trip to Pulau Sembilan (had good seafood, not so great diving), this is my third diving trip for the year, and that’s 24 dives logged this year. Can’t say I’m complaining. 
arriving at Redang Lang Island Resort’s Jetty
We charted a bus and left KL at around 10pm on Thursday night. After spending a night largely freezing our asses off in the bus and had breakfast at Kampung Cina’s kopitiam, we hopped on the transfer boat, and 45 minutes or so later, we arrived at Paradise.
The fine white sand and crystal clear water always has a way of making the journey worth it.
and here’s a slice of paradise here in Malaysia
After lunch, we started diving. There were 5 dives in two days, and they are:
finally, a photo of us underwater
We were pretty fortunate on our dives and managed to spot leopard shark on two separate occasions. First at Tanjung Terunjuk on day one and again at Karang Baha on our last dives. However, the sharks were pretty shy, and on both occasions swam away before we could approach close enough for a Kodak moment.
By rough estimates, the sharks were at least 8-9 feet in length, and absolutely stunning.
a shy green turtle hiding beneath a boulder
This was also Haze’s first real diving trip, the two leisure dives at Pulau Sembilan she did (and I participated) had visibilities so poor that there isn’t actually any hint of leisure in them.
On these dives, we were blessed with visibilities in excess of 20 meters on all dives except the two occasions when we veered off to the slightly more challenging areas to spot leopard sharks.
those elusive razorfish
At Redang Lang, like most other resorts, food is included, they are edible and very average. Breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner served at the “canteen” area everyday, and dives are usually scheduled in between meals.
a relative of bad joke eel is found here too
Luckily for Haze and a few others, Redang Lang’s rental gears are all new this year. Often times at budget dive trips the rental gears can be quite… disappointing. This was one of the reasons I bought everything I need sans weight belt and scuba tank.
Lydia making friends with Nemo and family
It was a good couple days of divings. We boarded the bus again on Sunday and left Paradise reluctantly. It was another 10 hours or so before we reached KL (traffic was a bitch, and we made too many stops).
Guess it’s time to plan another trip.
nemo, sea fan, plenty of fish, and this interestingly shaped dead coral.. ermm
James helping out divers taking off their fins before boarding
KY, Haze, Terence, Celine, James, baby and mom, Lydia & the rest
p/s: all photos taken with Olympus E-PL3 with this set of gears.
The biggest appeal of diving to me is the calmness I get when underwater, listening to nothing but the breath that I take and the bubbles flowing out from the regulator, the sense of weightlessness and the ability to move about without restriction in 3 dimension. It is a form of freedom you never get on land.
The magnificent seascape and underwater creatures, well, they are just a huge bonus. While no picture can convey that sense of liberty, here are some underwater pictures I took from various dive sites at Similan Islands.
My gears were Olympus E-PL3 with the underwater housing coupled, Inon UWL 100 & Dome port, and a single Sea & Sea YS-01 external flash.
swim through, Deep Six
I logged 14 dives over 4 days of diving living aboard M/V Vilai Samut operated by Liquid Adventure. (previous year experience here). The boat departs from Khao Lak at night, so night one started before day one. The sites we went to were:
Day 1:
tiny black reef fish atop table coral at West of Eden
We were lucky to have excellent visibility of at least 30-40 meters in more than 70% of the dives, and had at least 20 meters in the rest of the dives too. Comparing with Pulau Sembilan/Lumut’s 5-10 m visibility…
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pics, and say no to shark’s fins!
giant spiny lobster, night dive at West of Eden
sea snake, Koh Bon
the reef at Koh Bon
clown fish in anemone, night dive at Elephant Rock
an unnerving cuttle fish, night dive at Elephant Rock
lion fish, night dive at Elephant Rock
Dave convincing a lion fish to pose, Richelieu Rock
cleaner shrimps, Richelieu Rock
chevron barracudas, Richelieu Rock
star fish on coral, night dive at Koh Bon
boxer shrimp, night dive at Koh Bon
porcupine fish, Bon Soon wreck
Bon Soon wreck
ghost pipe fish, Bon Soon wreck
Here’s a short video compiled from the video clips I took during the dive trip to Similan Islands. Looks like I’ll need a video light or shoot almost exclusively on shallow water under bright lit condition to make this better.
Most clips were shot with Olympus E-PL3 (except those not underwater, shot with Sony Xperia Arc), using Inon wide angle converter with dome port, no red filter (which I had and probably should have made good use of.. gah!)
Hope you enjoy!
It is always a mystery to me as to why there are so many people who insists on eating the things they are used to eating at home while traveling to another country. The phenomenon must be very prevalent, so much so that at most touristy places, there are more Western restaurants than there are local Thai places.
Khao Lak is more of the same, the small resort town (approximately 100 km north of Phuket) where we spent the day after liveaboard to Similan islands for degassing purposes. For us, that was of course a perfect opportunity to eat everything Thai.
Fire in the hole!
motorbike is the best way to get around
While Khao Lak is relatively small and there are cabs available pretty much everywhere, the best mode of transportation is a scooter. You probably don’t even need a license to rent one, but do make sure you know what you’re doing.
Our scooter cost 200 baht per day, and you can refuel from plenty of places by buying bottled gasoline for 40 baht per liter. If you value your life, ask for helmets, they provide them without extra charge.
som tam by the roadside, I had it last year too
If you love sour & spicy stuff, som tam is a must try. Made of unripe papaya or green mango, bean sprout, peanut, chili, dried shrimps and more. Comes with a kick, we paid 40 bath, would be cheaper if this stall wasn’t parked right outside hot tourist spots.
breakfast was this rice/noodle with extremely spicy broths
On the day of departure, we decided to forgo hotel breakfast and try something a Thai would have. After riding around a bit we arrived at this kopitiam with a couple Thai ladies operating a stall that offers rice or noodle with a selection of dishes with broth.
Thai: spicy haa!
Me: we kon Malay, spicy no problem!
I was mistaken. These shit was tasty, and really, really hot. Lucky for us there were fresh cucumbers & a variety of vegetables on the table to cool things down. It was a good meal, what do you call them anyway?
noodle soup is the yums, choices of beef, chicken, or pork
A day prior to departure, just before dinner, we stopped by one of the road side stalls right on the main street at Khao Lak for some “snacks” that turned out to be really delicious noodle soup.
Here you get to choose any combination of 3 ingredients: pork, chicken, and beef. I had mine with chicken & beef while Haze opted for pork and beef. This reminded me of Vietnamese pho, and had the same basil/bean sprout on the side too, but as with anything Thai, the flavors were stronger. Yums.
50 baht for each, water was free. 100 baht well spent.
pad thai wasn’t bad, the fried oyster tho, disappointing
Our last meal there was at this little restaurant a couple kilometers away from Khao Lak (scooter brings you places!). We had pad thai with prawns & squid, and another plate of fried oyster to share.
The pad thai was rather average, and the fried oyster.. well, after the experience at Penang’s version, this was a complete disappointment. Each plate was 50 baht, with 15 baht each for coca-cola t hat comes in those classic glass bottle.
Yes, my stomach is still recovering from all those chili overload, but of course it was worth it.
