Where is Pulau Perhentian? That's the reaction which I got from my colleagues and some other friends. I think Pulau Redang is probably more popular than Pulau Perhentian who is a close neighbour to Redang. But it was a long journey from Singapore to Terengganu. Thankfully on the way to Merang Jetty, we took Konsortium. The seats were pretty comfortable and I could sleep for about a good 8 hours. I must say I was lucky to be able to sleep well compared to my friends... Well Tres had to climb over me to get out in order to get out..ahhaha
Thats Cheryl and I on our way to Pulau Pehentian on a speed boat. The speed boat ride took about 30 min. I'm sure the boat could go faster if not for the number of people we had onboard
oooo... can see the clear blue water!!!
My dive trips... I did a total of 5 dives instead of the paid 6 (erhmm was too lazy to do 3 dives in a day!!!) Refresher dive was pretty fun and a good recap for me. Much needed since the last dive I had was in March 2000.
here's a map of the Perhentian islands - Kecil (small) and Besar (big). We stayed at New Cocohut Chalets which is located on the big island.
This is the Scubaholic dive sites board and the daily dives. So every morning, we will come here to check out our dive sites, dive masters and dive mates... or at least for me. Cheryl and Tres did their Open Water together so it was always just both of them and their dive instructor, Mikiko Ando
Here's the Instructor signing off in our log books.
Dive 1 - Puah Reef which is located about 5 minutes away from Cocohut. Maximum depth was 16.3m. Not that fantastic corals and fishes. We didn't see any exciting marine life such as sting rays, sharks, giant turtles etc. I only saw the usual red sponge corals, algae spikeweeds, the typical tropical fishes. I did this dive with a british couple and my dive buddy is the dive master.
Dive 2 - D'Lagoon. Shallow place with pretty nice marine live. The maximum depth we went was 13.5m. I did this dive again with the british couple and dive master.
Dive 3 - Romantic Reef. Pretty shallow place but not all that romantic as the name. Our Dive master picked up seacows from the seabed... which looked like worms. Again I saw nothing exciting at all.. At almost every reef, we saw the clown anemonefish (it's nemo!!!)... but we saw the various colours of anemonefish. There are actually various colours of the anemonefish and they normally blend in with the reefs that they hide in.
Dive 4 - D'Lagoon. Was getting bored diving with the British couple so I decided to dive with my dearest friends at the reef which I had been to on the first day. Any how, it was fun seeing my friends diving. Guess that's when I found out Cheryl is a sucker for oxygen... she can finish tank of oxygen in 30 odd minutes considering most of us would have at least a third left... and our dearest Tres swims like a seahorse...aahahhah ooops.
Dive 5 - Tokong Laut. Located 30 minutes away from Besar. This had been an exciting dive. It was full moon that day and the current was really strong. I felt like a 5-10 knots in sailing terms. Descending and ascending requires the anchorline. We definitely held on to that line for our lives too. Through my mask I could see clearly how fast the current is sweeping the plankton away.
As we are all only open water divers, the maximum depth that we could go was 18 m. So we hovered around that depth. There were lots more to see at this site. We saw 2 box fishes - shaped like a box as the name says, big trigger fish, big star puffer, bluering angelfish, spotted porcupine fish, lots of clown fishes, yellowback fusilier (think was the kind that nimbled at tres twice and left love bites on her..hehhee)
We could have stayed longer under water but all thanks to our oxygen sucker... had to 'borrow' oxygen from our instructor.... but nothing lost... we manage to catch glimpse of beautiful marine life in this site.
Besides diving, there was nothing much for us to do in the evenings... as usual, we had our entertainment - card games and DVD player / TV (with courtesy from Tres - brought in from Singapore!!!!)
and that's us at breakfast time....
We checked out of CocoHut @ 2pm and hang out at Tuna Bay for our drinks.. the only 2 beer that we had in this whole holidays. Diving has definitely controlled our alcohol content...ahaha. Our bus back to Singapore was @ 9.10pm. So we had lots of time to kill... and thankfully the owner of Cocohut brought us to her house and offered dinner to us too.
Bus ride back was horrible... No more Transnasional buses for me ever again!!
For whatever reasons, I didn't feel rested at all. In fact, I had some infection and subseuqently become kidney infection by today. o well... it's back to reality again!!!
