Perhentian Smiles

We managed to make it to the Perhentian in one day and got there about 3-4ish. It was much cooler on the island than on the main land. It was 38 degrees on the main land and we had to sit in a taxi with no air con for nearly two hours to get to the boat port. So we were pleased it wasn't so hot. As ever the islands were beautiful, a bit like Koh Rok only with resorts and more busier. The bay where we stayed is very shallow and there is coral right up to the shore practically, which is great for snorkeling but not for swimming. The place where we stay is called Flora Bay and this is where we learnt to dive and spent just over a month last time we were in Malaysia. It was great to see everyone again. Juju who is now the wife of Azman who runs the dive shop was so pleased to see us. She is very pregnant and was only on the Perhentian for another week before going to KL to have her baby so we were lucky we got there when we did.

We had planned to stay for two weeks but unfortunately the weather turned bad after about 3 days being there. It was good for the island as even though the rainy season had just finished it hadn't rained for 3 months!! This then made the diving not so good. It wasn't spectacular anyway as it was the beginning of the season and the sediment in the water had not yet settled from the rough seas of the rainy season. We did have a couple of really nice dives though. One in particular we saw a turtle, a honey comb moray eel which we have never seen before and an enormous hump head parrot fish. It was the biggest one i have ever seen, it had to be over a metre! The day the rain came we still went for a dive as we figured we were going to get wet anyway. Unfortunately the boat ride was pretty hairy. They use small speed boats and the swells were really big making it a very choppy ride to the dive site. I'm not keen on choppy boat rides so wasn't enjoying it much. After about 20mins the boat driver and dive master decided there was no point carrying on to this particular dive site and we turned around and went to another one which we had not been to before. It wasn't great as the viz was about 3-5m and not many fish about. The way back to shore was pretty miserable again and i was freezing. Hence we decided to stop diving there at that point. We had done 5 and are going to go back there at the end of July before going home which will be during peak season and when the diving is the best.

We spent the next couple of days in the restaurant watching movies, playing scrabble and cards before leaving exactly a week later to head to Kuala Lumpur (KL).