KL to Kuala Terengganu

We decided to split our journey from KL to Kuala Besut over 2 days, as we did not want to exhaust ourselves upon reaching Pulau Perhentian. Thus, we decided to put up a night in Kuala Terengganu.

We left Gombak at 2 pm, and entered the Karak Highway. Paid the RM5 toll, and basically just drove along the E8 highway. Same general direction as going to Genting.

Speed limit is 90 km/h, with a couple of winding stretches. It's a 4-lane highway (some spots are 6-lanes), so overtaking is easy. Upon reaching the Karak junction, we paid a RM3/- toll, and shortly after that, entered the East Coast Highway (E8).

Again, we just followed the highway all the way to the last exit, which was the Jabor exit. We reached there at 4:30 pm, after taking a 15 minute break at the Temerloh rest area. Speed limit along the highway was 110 km/h.

Toll charges for the East Coast Highway was RM21/-, and total distance traveled was 228 km (from the beginning of the journey to Jabor).

We took a 30 minute break at Jabor, and continued our journey along route 14, which was the inland route. We decided to take that route as we heard that the coastal route (route 3), was experiencing heavy traffic.

To get on to that route, just keep left after the Jabor exit, and slip left at the roundabout i.e. take Jalan Jabor-Al Muktafi Billah Shah.

Route 14 is a 2-lane federal road, with some spots being 3-lanes for overtaking. It is very much more winding compared to route 3 (which we took on our way back), and there isn't much of a road shoulder should you need to perform some emergency maneuvers! At some stretches, we were stuck behind some heavy vehicles for quite a while. It was already difficult enough driving along this route, but it had to pour in some areas too. I wouldn't take this route in the night, as there aren't many areas where it's lighted.

After almost 3 hours, we finally reached our hotel in Kuala Terengganu at 8 pm. Total distance traveled was 182 km. We stayed at a basic hotel, the KT Traveler's Inn, paid RM78/- for a room. Was ok except for the air-con, which made sounds like waves pounding the shore, but just got more irritating in the middle of the night. We did have a nice dinner at the nearby Ocean View Restaurant.