Kusu Island

Last weekend, we went to this tiny island close to Singapore.
Amanda wrote about it, so I just have to quote :)
check hers for a couple of pictures.

http://chokan.blogspot.com/2009/02/kusu.html
This past weekend Luuk and I took a boat, fashioned like what I would imagine an old Chinese sail boat for royalty used to look like, to a tiny island of Kusu. It is small. I know people who's yards are bigger than this island (no, not in the Netherlands).
Anyway, story goes that years ago some fishermen were caught in a storm and would have died were it not for their rescue by two giant turtles. These men built a shrine on the island where the turtles brought them and today this island contains a Buddhist temple (where a family lives and spends their days watching tv next to shrines, candles, and fat smiling Buddha statues) and a strange haphazard semi-open completely yellow 'building' of sorts on top of what looks like one giant rock. People come to the island to climb the 152 steps up to this yellow place to ask the gods or ancestors or turtles to give prosperity, luck, and/or children. It's especially good luck for a newly married couple to climb the stairs, pay a few dollars, and ring the bell.
The island also contains a turtle sanctuary with seriously a good hundred or so turtles of all sizes. They are not afraid of people. In fact, they scramble straight to you in hopes of being given some of that nasty looking red crap we were handed to share with the turtles. Some of those turtles have some pretty freaky looking mouths. But they are still cute. Especially their little bums, with their fat legs sticking out of their shells and that cute little tail... (Teehee!). If they were more interesting, maybe I'd adopt one.
The website describing the island claimed that people loved to come here to swim in the beautiful lagoons. When I think lagoon, I think lush tropical trees on either side, backed by cliffs and waterfalls, with clear blue fresh water in the middle with perhaps a shiny fish or two... Well, it wasn't exactly that...but good enough. Sunshine, palm-trees, sand, water...what more could we want? And all this with almost no one in sight. We bought lunch from the family at the temple and spent the day reading next to one of the lagoons facing the Singapore sky-scrapers across the water. That's hard to top.
But we are gonna try: 28 Feb, we are on our way to Vietnam!