Shobha and Paul spent a month traveling some regions in South East Asia. They invited us to join them on any leg of their travels. Not being able to take much time off work, I chose to join them at Lang Tengah for a few nights and so did the rest.

It was my second time to Lang Tengah. The first time was with 28 (!!) friends in 2007. You can read about that trip here. We stayed at a place called Lang Sari. It wasn't too shabby but it surely wasn't a fancy resort either.

On one drunken night, we followed a boatman (who was high on many substances) to a secluded beach. Getting there involved walking through the resort next door called D'Coconut Lagoon, climbing through some dark jungle and almost peeing in my pants out of fear. But as we were walking through D'Coconut, we were all like "Wowwww!" in comparison to where we were staying.

Fast forward three years. Shobha and I had spent many hours in front of the computer trying to choose islands and resorts to stay at. Top priority: Hot water and air-conditioning! We read so many reviews and then picked our favourites from there. Having personally seen D'Coconut (though at 3am in darkness and drunkenness!) I knew it looked nice. At that point in time , it was also the most expensive and lavish resort on the island. Reviews were also pretty good, at worst - average.

And so we booked our rooms at D'Coconut Lagoon and looked forward to it for months! However, the reviews we read seemed like it was for a different resort. The resort in its heyday would have been beautiful and still has huge potential. But it is poorly maintained, under staffed, and run down.

1) Toilet seats were broken and discoloured. Shobha however had a really nice toilet.
2) Water was brown and smelt like pee.
3) Water pressure was bad. Mell and Cheryl had to come to my room cause they had no water to shower one day.
4) The beach is never cleaned. It is full of dead coral and rubbish. Going into the water would have you squealing "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!" till you walk to an area without dead coral.
5) The cushions on the deck chairs were torn and thrown around
6) The beach towels were stained and looked gross. So we always chose the dark blue ones. What we can't see won't hurt us...
7) The people at the reception were unfriendly and unhelpful (inside joke for Shobes and Paul: "Ok. Ok." - haha!)
8) If you wanted anything, you would have to ask several times and several different staff before getting it.
9) Mell's shower curtain was moldy and gross. And according to Andrew, their toilet had seen "better days".
10) Housekeeping conveniently didn't clean my room for 2 days!

And the list goes on....

We complain and are disappointed because we expect to get what we pay for. If we paid some cheap rate, we would expect some crappy place. But considering that until recently, this was the best and most expensive resort on the whole island (a new resort called Sari Pacifica has now taken over), we expected a LOT more. For East Coast rates, we coughed up quite a hefty sum (almost double compared to some other resorts!).

There are two wings. The East Wing, and the West Wing. The East Wing had bad reviews so we knew not to stay there. The West Wing was the newer wing with the most expensive rooms on the resort. We chose to stay there. Imagine if we actually stayed in the East Wing?!

The food at least was good. Dinner was always yummy. Lunch was not bad, and breakfast was simple. If the food was bad, this review would have been a lot worse than what I'm giving it.

Like I said earlier, D'Coconut Lagoon has the POTENTIAL to be such a great resort. It has all the elements there! Don't get me wrong. It is not a shabby disgusting place. It is actually nice and the rooms are very big. Its just run down, poorly maintained, and not worth the price. We spoke to the staff one night and he said they are planning to refurbish when they close for the year. Let's hope they do a good job cause it's a shame to see such a beautiful place go to waste.

As I am typing this, I just read some of the latest reviews about D'Coconut Lagoon. All the reviews in the last two months have been crap. Anything prior has been good/fair/average. Some even called it paradise! Did something happen over the last two months or were we just unlucky?

Anyway, the point of the whole holiday was to spend time with my friends and our partners. The company was great and we made the best of our holiday and had a FANTASTIC time! After copious amounts of alcohol, who would notice peeling paint on the walls??

Shobha and Paul were at Redang so they took a boat, Mell and Andrew flew to KT, while BAD, Cheryl and I decided to take a drive! We needed to arrive at Merang Jetty by 11am to catch our boat to the resort. Never having driven this far before, not knowing the way, and putting all our trust in GARMIN, we left PJ around 3am. After stocking up on snacks and petrol, we were on our way for the road trip!

Cheryl fell asleep after 10 minutes. Seriously, she was out cold by the time we hit the Federal Highway! And literally didn't wake up till we pulled into the Jetty! So I stayed awake keeping BAD company by playing silly games.

The drive was long and rather scary at night. Once you get off the highway, you have to drive through the coastal roads which are narrow and have no lights whatsoever. Once it was dawn though, it was actually quite a beautiful scenic drive.

We got there at 8-ish in the morning. Way ahead of our estimated time thanks to BAD's zippy driving! We got there at the same time that Mell and Andrew's flight arrived. We were all so tired, hungry, and terribly grumpy. If we had to wait till 11am for the boat, we might have chewed each others heads off. Just our luck that one boat was leaving the jetty at 9am!

And so began our four days of sun, sea, and fun!

We brought our own supply of booze and snacks. Wines, Whiskey, Tequila, Rum, lots of Oreos, Tim Tams, Kacang, etc. The resort charged us a corkage for the booze we consumed at the restaurant, but considering how much we had, it really was a negligible fee! We created such a reputation that by the second night, the waiters would bring out the glasses and ice without us even asking (service at the restaurant was the only one that was good).

Andrew got trigger happy with my new camera. He took heaps of terrible shots using the fish-eye effect which made us look like aliens. The boys thought it was hilarious but the girls hated it. Since it was my camera, all those shots got deleted! (Hurray from the girls! Boo from the boys!)

The snorkeling trip turned out to be quite a disaster. Firstly, they crammed all of us on the boat like a herd of cows. Some had to stand cause there was no place to sit. There also wasn't enough life jackets to go around.

After the first snorkeling site, Shobha and I got seasick. We weren't the only ones. Many other people looked like they were about to hurl too. I didn't get into the water for the second stop and I'm glad I didn't cause there were baby jelly fish and some people got stung.

It took awhile for us to recover once we got back to land. We just collapsed on the nearest deck chairs. Then when we felt better, we invaded the serenely quiet East Wing pool and the fun began! The boys were so embarrassed by how much noise we were making, they pretended not to know us.

Cheryl, Shobha, and I are/were all dancers. However, we failed miserably at our attempt of synchronized swimming!

This might look easy but it ain't!



Then the boys gave in and joined the fun!

Our holiday had finally come to an end. The next day, we sadly packed up our bags and had to get back to our daily grind.

Till our next holiday!