World Malaysia Other Perhentian Islands

Break From the Law

Diving the Perhentians - Day 3 Jul 29, 2009

I am sitting at an outdoor restaurant with a corrugated iron roof at the bus stop here in Jertah. The first of the 2 buses - we unfortunately have to transfer buses in the wee hours of the morning - we will be taking to get to Melaka is slated to arrive here at 9 p.m. Melaka is a historical city in the south of Malaysia. We will tour that city tomorrow and stay overnight there before we continue on to Singapore.

I am writing in the midst of a torrential downpour. Buckets of rain have been teeming down for the last 2 hours, so i'm just glad that it didn't rain like this while we were out on the water diving earlier today off of the coast of the Perhentian Islands. In New York City, the result of the torrential rain I am witnessing here would be havoc and widespread flooding. Here, however, such rains merely are part of the ebb and flow of daily life during the rainy season, so i'm not expecting the downpour to delay our bus significantly.

We enjoyed our last day in the Perhentian Islands today. Vikki and I began the morning with a run along Long Beach before breakfast. As the beach here is relatively short, we had to run back and forth several times. It felt great running on the beach.

The rest of the morning passed quickly. We enjoyed a nice leisurely lunch, planning to enjoy a nice and chilled out last dive in the Perhentian Islands in the early afternoon before catching the boat back to the mainland.

Things grew more tense when our 1 p.m. dive with Turtle Bay Divers got delayed by about half an hour. Thereafter, things became downright hectic when our boat had engine trouble en route to our dive site. As a result of our boat's woes, our boat could only move at a much slower pace than usual. As we had to catch the 4 p.m. boat off of the Little Island - the last transport back to peninsular Malaysia from the Little Island - , this required our divemaster to keep our dive quick and efficient in order that we would not miss our boat connection.

We dove at a dive site called Terumba Tiga T3, a locale characterized by a number of underwater caves and rock formations through which we swam. Many of these passageways were quite narrow and difficult to maneuver through, so this dive required a lot more concentration than is typical on the dives where one merely floats around rather passively beneath the surface and observes the resident marine life. After 55 minutes underwater at depths down to 19.5 meters, we completed our dive. Within less than 2 minutes of climbing back on board our diving vessel, our dive boat was in transit back to the Little Island. We arrived back on the Little Island at around 3:30. Shortly thereafter, we boarded a water taxi out to the boat which would take us on the 20 kilometer trip from the Little Island to Jertah.

As we sit and wait here in the rain - which has now subsided to only a slight drizzle - , i'm sure i'll sleep well tonight on the bus. I have consistently found that for overnight bus trips, the more tired I am, the more soundly I sleep on the bus. And i'm already plenty tired after our full day today...