Mette Lousia taking it easy on Mira Beach.
I'm sat on the seat.
Mira beach is an incredible place to chill out! You don't get many people passing through. It's a 25min hike through the Jungle path to Coral bay, taking in a couple of the other bays on the way and probably a ˝hr trek in the other direction to the fishing village. A few stop by who have paddled round in a canoe (it's quite possible to paddle round the whole island and I think some do) to have a snorkel or to chill on the beach for five. If they aren't stopping, they will often wave. Infact, if you wave at any kind of boat they'll nearly always wave back. 
Many an evening spent chatting on the beach under the starry sky and the Milky Way or looking out to sea at the distant electric storms - quite incredible at times! In the twilight the lightening sometimes produces the most incredible colours - too far away to hear though. We'd first noticed, what looked like a line of whispy clouds across the night sky, starring up at the heavens on Ko Samui (on Ko Samui... 
). But despite, at times, seemingly gusty winds they didn't seem to blow away! And besides, it was the same every night! We concluded that this was indeed... the Milky Way! Corrr....
A view from the restaurant - Sunset at Mira
On Weds 31st July we traipsed along the Jungle path to Coral Bay. It's a sweaty wander, but you're greeted by a grand view of the bay at the other end. We wandered the length of Coral and uptowards a shop I'd seen the day before. We were on a mission; to get waterpistols!
Aside... I'd heard that blasting a Gecko with cold water (ie. from a waterpistol) caused it to fall off (the wall) since it is a cold blooded animal, it kinda locks up and loses traction! Obviously not causing any harm to the little gecko itself - it's just like night time came early! It was an experiment worthy of playtime! Thing is, I couldn't find a small gecko; I could only find a big one! And even draining two double barrelled waterpistols at the bugger, it didn't budge! The experiment still remains unfinished, as the only lizards we saw on the Perhentian Islands were bl**dy great big ones!!
Anyway, once we'd gotten our waterpistols, we filled them up and continued our now ducking and diving wander round to the next beach. Watching where we stood, for there seemed to be an unnaturally large number of sea cucumbers in the shallows (NB: they don't appear to kill you if you accidentally stand on one - although I can't imagine they like it!), I will never forget the perplexed look on the snorkelling ladies face as Mette Louisa crept up to her in the shallows and pummelled her with blasts from her waterpistol!! 
After something to consume on the beach that night, we walked over to Long Beach (about a 10min walk along a reasonably clear path from Coral Bay) to see what we could find. Time was getting on by this stage and with a heavier load (2 x 750ml bottles of Vodka), we decided to get the boat back to Mira.
An entertaining evening on the beach ensued. The natural lime juices from the Mira Restaurant turned out to be very good mixers - better than the cans of coke we'd bought earlier (we hadn't got enough anyway!). I was introduced to the 'card on the head' game - who has the highest card?! And the well known game they call 'Sh*t head' - it's very popular in Australia apparently!
Thurs 1st Aug... Hhmmmm... an easy day I recon with perhaps a bit of snorkeling around the bay with Adrian. There was an assortment of masks and snorkels that we could hire at Mira on an hourly (4RM) rate (the daily rate, however, was twice that of Coral bay). We saw some great fish whilst we were out there. There was a puffer fish that spent most of it's time hiding in a rock crevice, although I'm sure I saw it at least once swimming around. There were a couple of small stingrays darting around from rock to rock too. There was one much larger one that seemed to spend most of its time hiding under a rock just to the right of the bay - kinda got spooked when I first saw that one as I swam over this rock in quite shallow water and all I saw was this rather large tail extending out the other side, just a foot or so below me. All I could do was keep going - but it didn't move.
You do, however, get the occasional jelly fish bobbing around the bay - somehow brought in by the storms. They aren't incredibly bad, but they do sting, as Denise would be all too willing to point out! The're pinky coloured and have almost invisible tentacles that go on for about a metre. Another strange phenomenon are the minuscule, albeit invisible, little stinging b*s that at times float around on the surface.
In Brief... (To be continued...)
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Mira Beach, Pulau Perhentian Kecil (Small Island). Off the north eastern coast of Malaysia in the South China Sea.