Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia (The Resort)

To wrap up “The Ring” experience, after falling into the raging rapids and knocked off my feet by huge waves, I finally decided to return the ring I found in the ocean to the front desk of the hotel. It was weird, I had no interest in the ring, yet, it was so difficult to part with it (I know, very Frodo). So for whatever reason that the owner of the ring ever gets to this blog, get your ring from the lost & found at the Grand Hyatt Bali in Nusa Dua. And to those of you who’ve been writing comments [check out the post "Bali, Indonesia (Day 1)"] about how those cloudy white thingies on the photo of the ring spell out the word “DIED”, you are FREAKING ME OUT!!! So quit it! Honestly, I don’t see it, but since you told me about it, it now does seem to spell out that word. Is it the owner of the ring telling me of his fate? Did he die of drowning? Was he trying to take me with him when I was wearing the ring? I don’t want to know! Anyway, after Bali, our next stop was Kuala Terengganu in Malaysia. We had to fly to Kuala Lumpur first, then fly from KL to KT. On our flight from Denpasar to Kuala Lumpur onboard an Air Asia flight, I experience my single most petrifying experience on a plane.

As you can see in this photo, the skies were very cloudy and even the ground was covered with a King Kong-ish blanket of mist or fog. The flight was going relatively uneventful, when suddenly, without warning, the plane started shaking violently, and then shot straight up for a few seconds, then went the complete opposite way and nosedived for just as long (but it felt like we were plummeting to our fiery deaths for HOURS). I’ve been riding planes since I was a kid back in the 80′s. I wouldn’t even know how many flights I’ve taken, many trans-oceanic flights. I’ve experienced bad turbulence, including the plane suddenly dropping a couple of hundred feet. No matter how scary, no matter how much the drop, you could still feel the plane on a horizontal position. This time, you could really feel as if the plane was tipped forward, nose first in a steep dive. Even after the plane steadied, many were still in tears, some sobbing hysterically at the close call. Seriously, I thought that was it. Strangely though, the one thing that flashed in my head, more than my actual impeding doom, was: “Shet, lalabas ‘to sa Air Crash Investigation, di ko mapapanood!”

Obviously we got to land safely, shaken, but alive. I reluctantly boarded the second flight and we finally got to the sleepy city of Kuala Terengganu. When we got to our resort, Tanjong Jara, we were blown away. The place was incredible. It wasn’t busy like the Hyatt in Bali; this was the quiet, island-paradise type of resort. The design is very old, it reminded me of the sets in the movie “Out of Africa”.

Apparently, it was originally a resthouse for some Malaysian royal family, so it was constructed in the style of the old Malaysian palaces. The rooms were unbelievably luxurious.

If I didn’t feel like I was wasting my money sleeping a holiday away, I could stay in that room for days! And of course there were the pools. They had two, one near the lobby and which also has the bar:

And the bigger infinity pools by the beach:

But we didn’t go to Malaysia just to swim in some pools (no matter how spectacular they look), we went there for the beach. The beach at Tanjong Jara is quite unique. When the sun isn’t out, it looks like any other beach:

Very nice expansive white sand beach. But what’s odd is, once the sun comes out and hits the sand, the whole beach turns a bright hue of gold!

It’s beautiful to behold! The waves have a way of transforming as well. During low tide, the waters are calm. But once the tide comes in, the waves crash into the shore with a lot of fury, much like in Bali:

As you can probably guess in this photo, yes, I swallowed a lot of sea water that day. I would’ve spit, but many times the waves caught me by surprise. But when we were out of the water, we just loved lounging around in one of the many day beds around the shore, where we watch the sun set.

Believe it or not, I took that photo at almost 8 in the evening. It was so weird, it didn’t get dark until way after 8pm. And in the morning, it would be 7am and the skies would still be dark. It was explained to me why it was so, something about how the time zones aren’t in a straight line from north to south (or something like that), which accounts for the discrepancy in lightness and darkness, but I didn’t really get it. All I knew was, the sunsets were things of beauty. Sunset after sunset, I’d have emoments (emo moments), I guess such mood lighting gets me in THAT mood. Lovely.

(to be continued)

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