The Perhentian Islands & sleeping with a bat

Taman Negara was so much fun that I didn't want my trip to end. Simon persuaded me to change my flights home, and to come to the Perhentian Islands with him, just for a few more days. I'm so glad I did, the island we stayed on was stunning, the sand was so soft and free of stones & coral, the water was clear and clean and turquoise blue.

We stayed in wooden huts, with nothing but a double bed and a mosquito net in them. Not even a light, which was interesting at night as I had only just lost my torch. Simon shared with Matt, and as I had no one to share with I got a hut to myself, which was great.

I had a couple of days of just chilling out, then my last day on the island was pretty eventful. I was woken up at 7am, having had around 4 hours sleep. I opened my eyes and saw a fruitbat staring back at me. I figured I must be dreaming, so I closed my eyes again. A few minutes later the fruitbat started flying around my head, inside the mosquito net. There wasn't a lot of room inside this net, it is designed to cover the bed only, and this bat was going mad. I have no idea how it got through a net designed to keep out tiny mosquitoes. After a few seconds of complete bewilderment (I was still very sleepy), my brain told me that getting out of bed would be a good idea. I stood outside my hut, and was going to call the lads to come and help but realised that was a really girly thing to do, so I managed to get the bat out myself.

I was wide awake now, so I walked over to the shower block. On my way, 3 Malay guys ran out screaming. I went to investigate, and there was a huge lizard in the shower, well when I say huge, maybe around 2ft long, so not that big but quite scary.

I walked back to my hut and sat on the balcony, with my walking boots next to me. Suddenly, I saw about 500 tiny ants crawling all over my boots. I thought it was strange, until I felt the reason - a huge, massive, evil ant, the king of all ants, had just wedged its pincers into my big toe. The pain was tremendous, and when I brushed him away his head detached with his pincers still stuck in me. I had to pull him out, and then my toe was covered in blood. This was all a bit too much for me, before 7.30pm in the morning.

I brushed my teeth, and managed to get a bug to fly straight into my mouth. What the hell was going on, it was like the whole of the animal kingdom was against me today. To top it all off, I lost a contact lens. I was in a foul mood when I met the others for our snorkeling trip. The only good thing about the morning is that I had had two breakfasts, one at 7.30am and another at 9am.

The snorkeling made up for it though: we saw sharks, a turtle, loads of colourful fish and coral. In fact I had done a dive the day before, which was terrible - we didn't see anything on the dive, not even any interesting fish. The snorkeling was 100 times better.

I really didn't want to leave the island, it was hard saying goodbye to everyone. It had to be done though, so I got an overnight bus to Singapore & slept the whole way thanks to the lack of sleep the night before. In Singapore I went back to see Mal, an Aussie guy who runs the friendliest pub I have ever been to, in the middle of one of the craziest places I have been to (Little India), in the middle of civilised Singapore. Last night madness was very good, as Mal gave me loads of free drinks, and it was a great end to a fantastic trip.