We pretty much had to pry ourselves away from Annie's homestay. We felt like it was paradise and exactly what we needed at this point in our trip. But all good things must come to an end. Both of us were looking forward to sand and sun in the Perhentian Islands on the East side of Malaysia.
One of the sad things about leaving Annie's was that we had to take yet another night bus. Never are these rides ever fun. This busride was especially craptastic because the bus would stop at random stops throughout the country side and the conductor would yell something out. Being all groggy from our sleeping pills, we would walk up in a panic every single time. To make matters worse, the bus was freezing cold. The Asian addiction of A/C is sometimes unbearable, especially on buses and in movie theatres! Of course it's too hot outside to even think of bringing a sweater, so Joey and I always suffer. Such a hard life!
We arrived in Kuala Besut around 6:30, just in time to buy a ticket for the 8am boats leaving to the islands 15 km off the coast. The boatride was quite calm and when we got to the islands the water was amazingly clear. blue Even being in 8 metre deep water you could see the bottom. We arrived at our resort and had a much deserved 3 hour nap so we could deal with the rest of our day of lazying on the beach.
When we woke up Joey and I went on the search for a diving place that had cheap dives for our Advanced open water certificate. We decided to dive with Alu Alu. The owner seemed kind of slimey but our dive instructor Karl seemed really cool and down to earth. The dives we chose were a wreck dive and a dive to practice our buoyancy.
Our first dive involved a 330 foot long ship wreck (Sugar Wreck) in open ocean. I was quite nervous at first because the waves were choppy and the current was strong. When we began our dive my fears were lessened because the ship looked so neat. It is only a 10 year old wreck so it isn't totally taken over by coral but you can see how fast the sea works to make something unnatural part of itself. So many fish and other sea life surrounded the ship. Our plan was was to dive around the side into the cargo areas that were open instead of actually penetrating the inside which is too advanced for Joey and I at this point. It was kind of eerie to go through the small passage and see all the fish that were hiding in the darkness. The dive was great aside from the poor visibility. The dive season in the Perhentian islands just started so visibility is still not at it's best.
The second dive was at Shark Point quite close to the beach where our resort is. The coral was stunning. Just like in a movie. We saw lots of different coloured fish. First we had to do some boring stuff like float upside down and work on our breathing and buoyancy. Then we go to go through an obstacle course to prove our skills to our instructor. It was kind of neat, but what I really wanted to do was see some sharks and some sea turtles. After the instructional stuff was over we did a bit of a fun dive. We ended up seeing lots of cool fish and a reef shark. I was sad that we didn't see a sea turtle though. Hayley and Tim went on two fun dives and saw turtles both times! No fair!
The next day we had a lazy day on the beach and hung out with Hayley and Tim who had arrived a day after us. We knew this would be our last beach for a while and we wanted to savour every moment of it.
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