PULAU PERHENTIAN KECIL, MALAYSIA
Life here in the islands has been pretty agreeable; for the past few days it's pretty much been all diving, snorkeling, eating, sleeping, and reading, which ain't a bad way to spend a week!
The best diving was on Tuesday, when Chris and I, along with about eight other divers, did an all-day excursion to Pulau Redang, about 20 kilometers away. The reefs at Redang are a lot more pristine than the ones here in the Perhentians, with some massive staghorn coral forests, large sponges, and clusters of big anemones.
As I've traveled to different regions, it's interesting to see how the variety and concentration of sea life varies. In contrast to Sipadan, for example, the diversity of species in these islands is a lot lower, but certain species are in much greater abundance. Here there are incredible numbers of anemones and clownfish, for example, but you'll only see two or three kinds of angel fish (as opposed to the dozens of species I saw in Sipadan). The underwater landscape is very different here, too: Most of the coastline of these islands consists of massive boulders which spill down to the sea floor, creating some cool swim-through arches and caves, and providing hard surfaces for coral and giant clams to grow on.
Anyway, we dived at three locations at Redang, the most interesting being a place called Terumbu Kili. This was partly because I saw three decent-sized blacktip reef sharks there, but mainly because we had to abort the dive after a strong current caught us all by surprise and whipped us up, down, and all around like a washing machine! It was a good thing that nobody panicked, because it was a little hairy for awhile, but we all managed to keep our wits and ascend to the surface together (after a three-minute safety stop). After getting picked up by the dive boat, we then continued the dive in the shallows near the island, where there weren't any currents!
We had another little bad luck incident today when our dive boat's engine conked out en route to a dive site, and we had to be "rescued" by more boats--thank god for cell phones! No big deal; we just transferred to another boat and continued on to Temple of the Sea, a cone-shaped rock pinnacle covered in coral and anemones that's probably the most striking dive site in the Perhentians. There were a lot of fish there, and I got to see at least six bamboo sharks hiding under rock ledges, which was very cool.
And last Sunday we dived at a location known as Three Reefs on the east side of Perhentian Besar, which frankly was a little disappointing due to bad visibility, although there were three swim-throughs, which are always kind of fun.
Today is also Chris' birthday, so I bought him dinner and gave him the book Land Below the Wind by American writer Agnes Newton Keith, a somewhat famous account of her life in northern Borneo during the 1930s. (Okay, I had never heard of it before going to Borneo, but it's pretty well-known there.)
People met today:
Life here in the islands has been pretty agreeable; for the past few days it's pretty much been all diving, snorkeling, eating, sleeping, and reading, which ain't a bad way to spend a week!
The best diving was on Tuesday, when Chris and I, along with about eight other divers, did an all-day excursion to Pulau Redang, about 20 kilometers away. The reefs at Redang are a lot more pristine than the ones here in the Perhentians, with some massive staghorn coral forests, large sponges, and clusters of big anemones.
As I've traveled to different regions, it's interesting to see how the variety and concentration of sea life varies. In contrast to Sipadan, for example, the diversity of species in these islands is a lot lower, but certain species are in much greater abundance. Here there are incredible numbers of anemones and clownfish, for example, but you'll only see two or three kinds of angel fish (as opposed to the dozens of species I saw in Sipadan). The underwater landscape is very different here, too: Most of the coastline of these islands consists of massive boulders which spill down to the sea floor, creating some cool swim-through arches and caves, and providing hard surfaces for coral and giant clams to grow on.
Anyway, we dived at three locations at Redang, the most interesting being a place called Terumbu Kili. This was partly because I saw three decent-sized blacktip reef sharks there, but mainly because we had to abort the dive after a strong current caught us all by surprise and whipped us up, down, and all around like a washing machine! It was a good thing that nobody panicked, because it was a little hairy for awhile, but we all managed to keep our wits and ascend to the surface together (after a three-minute safety stop). After getting picked up by the dive boat, we then continued the dive in the shallows near the island, where there weren't any currents!
We had another little bad luck incident today when our dive boat's engine conked out en route to a dive site, and we had to be "rescued" by more boats--thank god for cell phones! No big deal; we just transferred to another boat and continued on to Temple of the Sea, a cone-shaped rock pinnacle covered in coral and anemones that's probably the most striking dive site in the Perhentians. There were a lot of fish there, and I got to see at least six bamboo sharks hiding under rock ledges, which was very cool.
And last Sunday we dived at a location known as Three Reefs on the east side of Perhentian Besar, which frankly was a little disappointing due to bad visibility, although there were three swim-throughs, which are always kind of fun.
Today is also Chris' birthday, so I bought him dinner and gave him the book Land Below the Wind by American writer Agnes Newton Keith, a somewhat famous account of her life in northern Borneo during the 1930s. (Okay, I had never heard of it before going to Borneo, but it's pretty well-known there.)
People met today:
- On our trip to Redang, we met a super-nice young British couple, Kimball and Gemma, who we've been hanging out with some since then. They're traveling the world for seven months, to many of the same destinations as us. As a matter of fact, they started their trip on the same day we did--January 15th--and were in Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia around the same time as us, doing a lot of the same things! We've probably seen each other over the past few months; I suppose it was only a matter of time before we officially met....
posted by John Kuge at 11:35 AM
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