Malaysian beach holiday

I normally approach beach holidays with the kind of enthusiasm I reserve for minor surgery. I don’t mind spending an afternoon on the beach and I like swimming but I have far too much energy and too little pigment to spend a week lying down, soaking up rays.

However, there was a holiday quid pro quo here – my wife had trekked in Borneo, so I had to lie on the beach. Besides, I reasoned, I now have a toddler and we could entertain each other by building sandcastles. Still, as our speedboat bounced across the strait between Peninsula Malaysia and the Perhentian Islands, I was busily totting up how many unread books I had with me.

Perhentian Besar is the larger of the two main islands. Smaller Perhentian Kecil tends towards a backpackerish clientele while Besar is more resort-y. This is all relative though – both are part of a national park and only developed for short stretches of their coastlines. Anyone who comes with their expectations informed by Thai islands should think again. Malaysia is Islamic and, on its stricter east coast, somewhat ambivalent about alcohol.

We chose to stay at the Perhentian Island Resort, the best resort on the Besar. This may sound flash but Malaysia has a glorious dearth of silly, self-regarding boutique hotels and what we were really paying for was the best beach on the island. It was a perfect horseshoe bay with limpid turquoise water, a few small cliffs to provide interest and all backed by the ubiquitous Malaysian jungle. Our fellow guests were largely continental European – for a former British colony, Malaysia is curiously absent from most UK holidaymakers’ itineraries.

While our resort was a very good choice, the food on offer – a kind of dumbed down Italian menu – was disappointing. For Malaysian food, at its best, is wonderful, fusing influences from India, Thailand and China. We soon discovered the restaurants 10 minutes away, across a rickety jungle boardwalk (where at night you were buzzed by shrieking bats). These places were livelier, cheaper, and offered dishes made with local produce. By day three, I was taking not only lunch and dinner round the corner but breakfast too – roti canai (a unique Indian-Malay dish of pan-fried Indian-style layered bread served with a sauce) may just be the greatest breakfast in the world.

We were on a paradise island. The white sand beach was as good as it looked and there was plenty of coral and fish within snorkelling depth in the wonderfully clear waters.

And for those, like me, too restless to spend all day on the beach, the island had a surprise. At 11am on the second day, I wedged my daughter into her backpack and walked to the rear of the resort. There, a rather mildewed sign promised jungle trekking. It looked a little underwhelming. But on the Perhentians, where few leave the beaches, the interior jungle is pretty much untouched. As we entered, we were immediately surrounded by the screeching of dozens of monkeys in the trees. Soon, we were alone in a rainforest that could have been on Borneo. About 40 minutes later, we exited the jungle at the other side, skirted through some scrub and followed a brackish creek heavily populated with huge monitor lizards.

The following day, there was an offshore storm that made the water cloudy and turned our normally placid cove into an unlikely surfing destination. Then a German, a fellow curry fan, told me that the best underwater sights were now actually out in the bay. I put on a pair of fins and a mask and, about 100m from shore, a couple of giant sea turtles were grazing on sea grass. I snorkelled a respectful distance away and watched these huge creatures enjoy their leisurely lunch.

The day after my turtle encounter, we enjoyed our last roti beach breakfast before heading off to the speedboat back to the mainland, feeling we could easily have stayed a few days longer. So, I have to hand it to the Perhentians – they reminded me that beaches can be fun. Now, if only that resort would learn to cook a decent roti.