Day 3 of our Malaysian Road Trip (24th July 2020) was mostly spent on the road! We had to get from Kuantan to the Sutra Beach Hotel in Merang, Kampung Rhu Tapai; a journey of a mere 3 hours which seemed to take all day. We had all lost our umph today so we enjoyed a lay-in, leaving just before noon. The check-out time for most hotels was noon, which was rather nice, with check-in around 3 pm. Even so, Lawrence was still uploading the Day 2 video from our car as we set off. We took the coastal road (Route 3) north. Although we could not see the sea, it did have the feel of a seaside area with lots of shacks along the raodside selling food.
Just outside Kuantan we drove past a huge industrial conveyor belt system which followed us on the right for some distance, then crossed over our heads and continued along the left. It was quite extraordinary and sadly I could not stop to take a photo. Kuantan is the location of a controversial rare-earths refinery and is home to the petrochemical industry with many fuel processing plants. These seem incongruous when one of the state's prime industries is listed as tourism.
Our first stop was the Cherating Turtle Sanctuary which was one of the few places where we met other visitors! To maintain social distancing, you were only allowed 15 min inside the visitor centre, but no-one was timing anyone. First you need to head outside to watch a few lonely turtles in rather small pools, then go inside to read about turtles in general. (This place is closed on Mondays and Public Holidays.) I presume that guided tours of turtle hatcheries were suspended at the moment. Hanis’s eldest daughter was currently working at a turtle sanctuary on the Perhentian Islands, which is why we were staying in Merang, closer to the ferry terminal at Kuala Besut so she could come and spend a few days with her family.
Around the back of the visitor centre is the beach, so we checked that out!
Our next task was to meet up with Hanis and family at a cafe on Cherating beach. This was easier said than done, so it took us a while to find exactly where they were.
The Beach Garden Cherating Cafe has an ideal location by the beach and the food was truely excellent. While sate is always a good bet in Malaysia, you might wonder why I show a plate of salad? Well, in Johor Bahru one rarely sees a plate of salad in a cafe, so to find it in a relatively isolated location was unexpected!
You can see that the beach here is very sandy but I think that swimming in the sea is probably only for experienced swimmers (much the same as in Kuantan). There was a little natural shallow pool where families were playing with small children, so this was a popular area.
The balmy breeze of the sea made this a very relaxing place to stop, but it was time to continue our drive north. Much of the wealth of this coastline is based on oil with Petronas being the principal operator. I clearly had not being paying enough attention when filing up with petrol, but if you stop at a Petronas petrol station you will see a Mesra shop selling drinks and snacks, etc. Since Petronas employees are pretty well paid, they needed somewhere to spend their earnings, so Petronas built a huge Mesra Mall in what seemed like the middle of nowhere (actually about 1 hour’s drive north of Cherating). So we made a brief stop here for some minor retail therapy, and since we were on holiday, we found our first ice cream shop of the trip! Our friends will know that we are not officially on holiday until we post a photo of one of us eating ice cream!
As we approach Kuala Terengganu (the capital city of Terengganu), we see a beautiful white mosque on the other side of the road and have the chance to stop to take a photo. This is Masjid Sultan Ismail, completed in 2011. We should have searched out the white floating mosque (Tengku Tengah Zaharah Mosque) but this isn’t something I discovered until after the event. Actually, floating mosques are most photogenic around sunset so you really need to be staying nearby to get the best photos.
As we approached Kuala Terengganu, Hanis and her family decided to stop there for dinner at the Matahari Restaurant. We old folks were feeling tired and did not want to be driving in the dark, so we continued on to the hotel and dined there. We stayed at the Sutra Beach Hotel (Kampung Rhu Tapai) which looked good on the website but disappointed in real life. We had a dismal dinner and returned to our room to work on the day’s video.
Here is a slide show of the photos taken on Day 3 and 4:
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