Perhentian Islands

After the overnight bus to Kuala Besut I haggled my way onto a ferry (at a cheaper price) to get to the islands. Luckily, I was the only foreigner on my boat, and had a big group of Malaysians to talk to, but half way there the police pulled us over and turned us back for not having paperwork. Then since I told them I haggled a price (they payed full) I was told to get off the boat and wait for another, as they were over the limit of people (of course). After a grueling couple hours, I arrived on the island and took the first room I found, up a hill for 5 bucks. Dorm room. Fans. Humid.

The island is really peaceful and nice. It's not the drunkard topless party beach like Thailand, and because of that I think I liked it even more. You go to hang out, dive, eat and relax. There is no electricity running through the island, and everything is on generators. This makes it cool because power is limited to nights and during the day you just roam around and drink cool drinks, swim, snorkel, dive, kayak, etc.

The first day I walked around, and talked to some dive shops about diving. I met a girl Holly who 'worked' at one of the shops and liked her attitude and approach, so I checked out their shop and decided to go with them. They reminded me of people from UCSB, and I liked that. So I booked a course with them and decided to move into the Bungalow that was adjacent to them, to make it easier in the mornings.

I took my Advanced Open Water course with them, and also a refresher course (its been nearly 3 years) and also two fun dives at the end.

The dive sites were amazing, and it was like diving in some rich person's fish tank. They had thousands of fish, schooling and swimming around, fish bigger than my torso, and some decently sized sharks. We saw some really cool stuff. We also got to dive two different wrecks and do some deep diving and some technical stuff too.

Dives:

Sugar Wreck- This is a sunken ship, and you can swim through parts of the outside, and even surface inside it (still over 7 meters deep) and have a conversation without the regulator's air. It's got loads of fish and coral and life all over. Probably my favorite dive I did (I did it twice)

Temple- from the surface of the water it's about 1-2 meters of rock just barely poking out of the sea. Below it's a 25m pinnacle teeming with all sorts of crazy stuff, and we even had a big shark circle us checking us out. You see thousands of schooling fish and nemo's and all sorts of really great stuff

Vietnamese Wreck- An old boxy ship that is in an area of current, so if you're lucky (we weren't) you can see some seahorses chilling out (as they have no real fins or means of transport) and use the current to feed.

D'Lagoon- We stayed in the sand doing all sorts of exercises to increase my skill at buoyancy. Mission Impossible drops, floating on your head, swimming though hoops, upside down, flips, taking off your tank and sitting on it like a rodeo bull... very fun

Tombstone- I did my refresher and navigation dives here, and it's a little reef you can dive straight from the beach and has lots of fish. not the best, but its perfect for teaching.

I really enjoyed the islands, and dove during the day, did a little reading and studying for the course in the afternoons and evenings, and went out for dinner a couple nights with people from the dive shop, day dives, or that we'd met along the way. Its a very nice environment, and I can see how people just stay and enjoy the island for weeks and months.