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Published: June 19th 2007
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Night Dive
Getting ready for our night dive on Pulau Perhentian - Pepijn, Tom, me and our instructor Bryan
- June 19-20 - Kota Bharu
- June 21 - 26 - Perhentians
We took one of the scariest flights imaginable from KL to Kota Bharu - I've never experienced such terrifying turbulence which lasted for what seemed to be an eternity. Thoughts crossed my mind like - does a budget airline like Air Asia have the same standards for safety - are they used to flying in such awful weather - our hearts were racing and we were so thankful to touch down in Kota Bharu. We split a taxi with a Chinese guy from KL and found a budget guest house where we just chilled out for a little bit. We met some other travelers - Peter from Munich, a friendly guy, but he took the winey German stereotype to a whole new level, and Tom from the UK, a teacher who had been living in Spain for the last 6 years. We ended up staying in Kota Bharu for an extra night - ostensibly to take in a bit of Malay culture in what is actually the most Malay part of Malaysia and in one of the only places where the muslim Malays are actually in the
majority (Malaysia has a huge Chinese population). I got out for a little bit of sight seeing with Peter who may have been annoyed that I insisted on speaking German with him the whole time, but kept laughing at my Austrian accent. We walked around town to the mosque, the market, etc, while Jen caught up on her blog for about 8 hours straight! Peter, Tom, Jen and I decided to split a cab in the morning down to the jetty in the town on Kuala Besut and took a speedboat over to Pulau Perhentian Kecil.
It took us quite a while to get to Long Beach because we stopped at nearly every other beach on the 2 islands before this last stop. We had met this couple in borneo who told us we should come here - They were divemasters at Quiver dive shop - one Austrian girl who had been traveling and met her boyfriend here and never really left. When we arrived Peter and Tom took off across the island to find accommodation (That was the last we saw or heard from Peter, but it seemed he was on a mission to find his AC luxury
Bryan
My advanced course dive instructor - 17 years as a commercial diver in Malaysia repairing dams and pipes, etc. He had even gone to 150 meters at one point! room with attached bathroom etc - this being full of budget backpacker accommodation I think was probably beneath his standard). Long beach on Perhentian Kecil is really just a beach - no paved roads, only dirt trails, no hot water anywhere, just little beach bungalows. We found a place at Lemongrass - it even had a fan which would work only if the generator was turned on (They turned it off every morning at 7am after which the room temperature would rise to oven temperature and it was time to get up). It was pretty basic, but good enough.
The weather was overcast for pretty much the whole time we were there. The first day we went around to different dive shops to ask about their advanced courses - we kind of figured we'd end up at Quiver, but we thought we'd do some research. The big difference between Pulau Tioman and here was that most of the dive shops were staffed with foreigners, mostly westerners who had just ended up staying for a season. We asked the standard questions at each place and asked one Scotish divemaster how long he'd been diving there. 'Oh, I've been here for
Snorkellaholics
Sign on long beach, Pulau Perhentian Kecil a really long time - nearly 2 months now.' We were happy to find Quiver because most of their divemasters and instructors are local. We even arranged to do one on one courses for our Advanced Open Water Diver courses. My instructor, Bryan, had been diving for over 17 years - most of which he was a commercial diver, which meant he worked underwater sometimes at depths of 150m on dams or pipelines. He eventually stopped doing that and went into teaching - the point being to teach people to have fun diving safely. I actually learned a great deal about diving with him. The diving itself wasn't so impressive, though I think we had been spoiled. When we told people at the various dive shops we'd just come from Sipidan, they all had the same response - 'oh, this isn't sipidan, it's still good diving, but don't expect sipidan.' Visibility wasn't so great overall, especially on the wreck dives at Sugar wreck and Vietnamese wreck. Actually, visibility seeme the best on the night dive I did. Bryan led a really fun night dive as part of the course. At one point, we all turned off our torches and as
we moved our hands through the water we saw the twinkle of the bioluminescence underwater. It was as if the water was twinkling with a billion little stars. With the half moon above, I was surprised at how much you could see even without the lights. It was the strangest feeling - in a sensory deprivation kind of way - without so much light and just the flashlights. It was amazing!
A couple nights we'd go over to the other side of the island to watch the sunset (though most nights it was too overcast) and visit our friend Tom who was staying there. Our friend Pepijn who we met in Mabul joined us briefly for a few nights before heading back to Holland to start his new job as a psychiatrist for borderline personality disorder - hmmm, I still wonder what he thought of us :-) We had a lot of fun, but most of it was focused on the diving. I think if I hadn't have done the course I probably wouldn't have been as happy with the diving - but it was a little accomplishment...
We decided to make a move and decided to go
straight to Koh Tao, Thailand instead of first heading up to Bangkok. We met these two canadians on the boat back to the mainland and decided to share a cab to the border and travel with them up to the Thai town of Surat Thani where you get the boat to the islands of Ko Samui, Ko Pha Ngan and Ko Tao. We just barely made it in time for the train - which ended up taking over 10 hours. Immediately you could tell that Thailand was very different from Malaysia. We just got a seat in 3rd class and there were these very loud Thais getting wasted off of the rum a couple seats down from us. It was impossible to sleep, and when we got in to Surat Thani, we found a room and just slept. We were going to go to Ko Tao in the morning.
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