Paradise Island?

Now that I have my diving certification I'm interested in trying to get as much diving in on this trip as possible as a) there's a lot of opportunity; b) it's awfully inexpensive; and c) it must be better than diving in Boston. That said we headed to the east coast of Malaysia to the Perhentian islands. We had high hopes as we headed this way - awesome diving, relaxing beaches, cool little bungalows.

Getting here was a bit of a chore. Required two minibuses and a boat. No big deal for us at this point, but everything seemed to be running just a bit late which is a drag when you're trying to get somewhere, especially an island with no cars or transport other than boats, before sunset. I suppose the problems really started when we arrived at the jetty and the boat we were supposed to take didn't even exist. So we bought new tickets for the "fast boat." This boat is supposed to take 45 minutes but 2.5 hours later we were no where close to our destination. Factors including crew seasickness (not particularly confidence inspiring) and really rough seas resulted in us arriving close to our destination but not quite close enough. The rough seas are an issue as there are no piers and you need small boats to come meet you on your big boat to bring you ashore. Given the bad conditions no one would come to meet our boat so we were dropped off on the Big Island at the Paradise Island Resort. I only mention the name because the place was anything but paradise. Dingy rooms complete with cockroaches. Not our first cockroaches mind you but it's really just about the last thing you want to see after 12 long hours of travel. Here Mr. Cockroach is seeing the toilet after been squashed by Michael's flip flop.



The next day we managed to make it to the Little Island, our original destination, where we secured a little bungalow and set about finding a good dive for the next day.



We settled on diving the Sugar Wreck, which is the remains of a cargo ship that was carrying sugar that sank in 2000. While the visibility was not great it was very cool to swim around a wreck. We even got to swim through big hatches which was a little scary as I am new to diving and certainly not used to diving with anything hanging over my head. Michael and I were dive buddies for the first time and I only abandoned him once which I thought was pretty good for our first time out.

The real excitement came on the ride home. We were diving off a tiny boat - held only 11 people and our dive equipment. It had been raining a bit when we originally descended but was clear when we surfaced. Once we were all ready to go we headed back toward the Small Island. We could see rain ahead but were truly unprepared for the huge storm that we rode in to. We were totally exposed on this boat and it was raining so hard that it felt like hail. People had their dive masks on because it was the only way to see anything. Visability was almost zero and, no surprise, we got lost. Somehow the boat got totally turned around and after 30 minutes we were back where we started at the dive site. When someone finally got a compass out we moved in what we hoped was the right direction and finally found our way home, very, very cold and wet and an hour late. While I was never worried about making it home the experience illustrated how easy it is to get lost at sea and lose your bearings. Why these boats don't have GPS or even a compass is a little mindboggeling.