Jerejak: A weirder island than the one in “Lost”

We FINALLY met up with Chris Hunte, our third team member, in Penang. He had spent the last two days in Singapore waiting for us to cross out of Indonesia since they denied him a visa to join us there.

We managed to time it so that we are here for Deepvali.

There are amazing elaborate decorations made from colored rice everywhere. We even watched a woman create one of them and it was incredible. Such detail work and one wrong breeze and the whole thing is messed up.

Yesterday we took a boat out to a private island off the coast called Jerejak and spent the night at the only resort out there. We were also the ONLY guests as if everyone else knew how haunted and odd the island was - except us.

To be honest, the resort was very nice and we

had a great chalet… but everything else about the island was WEIRD and CREEPY . We went for a bike ride and then a long hike in the thick jungle across a very shaky suspension bridge (that about did me in) and it was nice to be outside and being active. But the island just got weirder and weirder as we went along. Odd sounds. Odd sights. No-one around. Weird things that popped up.

This island has been used as a leper colony and then a prison so there are broken-down buildings all over the island. The old prison felt literally doomed by ghosts.

Each cell was so small and dark and dank... can't imagine what it must have been like to be locked up in there for years on end. We all stood in the cells (which have only 4 inch slits at the top of the wall for light) and felt so grateful for our own lives.

At the end of the long hike - and after we had literally been climbing up and down small mountains - we came upon a deserted beach where we found a recently killed dog. Odd part of it was that the only tracks leading to the body were hand prints.

It took us a while to realize that there

were drag marks between the hand prints and that the dog had been killed by some giant, carnivorous dragon or water lizard.

The dragon-lizard has hands as large as mine. Chris looked out to the water and there it was ... looking right back at it.. and then the creature ducked underwater. I slept all night with one eye open waiting for the man-eating dragon to rip me from my bed.

This afternoon, after we got back from Jerejak, we went and got our feet nibbled on by fish at a fish spa. Chris was very brave and even put his feed into the big-fish aquarium where the fish bites don't just tickle.. they feel like piranha on the attack. Tonight we also got to taste a strange kind of ice-cream called Ice Floss. It is a similar texture as candy floss but with ice-cream and it melts in your mouth sort of the same way.

Tomorrow we pick up Kady from the port and start heading for Thailand. I hope she survived the crossing in one piece!!!