So after a day of blobbing out at home we got up very early and left for the drive east to Redang.  Dad had programmed in the destination to the GPS for the quickest route - which happened to be right through the middle of a palm plantation, and on not terribly good roads.  We were flying at breakneck speeds because we had to make the 1.00pm ferry.

Of course time wasn’t so tight that the smokers couldn’t stop for a smoko.

But the problem was that although J had checked the ferry time on the island’s website the night before, the website had no bearing on reality.  In fact there was only one ferry per day to the island, and it had been at 9.30am.  Then followed an extremely tense couple of hours where dad got on the phone and yelled at the travel agent several times, then at J, and Nick and I just didn’t say anything in the backseat.  But we slowed down, eventually were able to get the resort to move our booking later by a day, and decided to stay the night in Shahbandar, rather than catching the public ferry which would take two more hours to get there.  I think it had been a shrewd move, as there was a huge tropical thunderstorm early that evening, which i’m pretty sure we would have been caught in if we had made the mad dash for the boat.  We went and had burgers and root beer floats for a late lunch and everyone calmed right down.  Which was a relief.

There wasn’t much to say about Shahbandar.

Next morning we just managed to catch the ferry from Merang jetty (again, another strange bit of miscommunication - when we were told the ferry left at 9.30, it actually left at 9.00).  I was feeling kind of sick and tired by then so just hunched down in my seat and didn’t pay any attention to where we were going.  After about 45 minutes we arrived at the Redang jetty.

And it was glorious.  I have never seen water that colour.  So unbelievably turquoise and clear.  The sand was blinding white and almost spotless - no rubbish washing up on the beach like at most Malaysian beaches.  A handful of ‘resorts’ were scattered along the waterfront, and ours was one of the closer ones.

The accommodation at Redang Bay Resort was...basic, to say the least.  The room stank of urinal cakes, which were placed on the window sill out of reach in the bathroom.  The bathroom itself I hope to soon put from my mind.  The food was deplorable - by the third day even dad didn’t want to eat it anymore.  But when you’re snorkelling or reading in a hammock by the beach for most of the day, and there is decent and cheap local food available a couple of resorts down the beach, you can pretty much ignore those things.

More later.