Shark, spider, lizard?

April 29th, 2002 at 12:00am

This place is GREAT! Ok, so when I first arrived, I have to admit that I was wondering is it was REALLY worth it to travel for 2 whole days to get here when I was already on a beautiful island…but now that I’ve been here for 2 days I am convinced it was well worth the travel effort. Where to begin? Yesterday was a GREAT day – I give it five stars on the round the world travel scale. We decided in the end not to do a snorkling trip because it was pretty rough in the sea, so Alex (the British girl) and I had some lunch and then decided to walk to the other side of the island to check it out. It’s about a 10-minute walk through the jungle to get from our beach to the beach on the other side. And quite a jungle it is. Firstly it was chock full of spider webs with GIGANTIC spiders as big as crabs, all sitting in their webs, waiting for the occasional innocent bug to fly through and get trapped for a little snack. Then we walked by an area with some rubbish piled behind the trees and I can tell you I have seen the BIGGEST monitor lizard I will ever see in my life. It looked like a crocodile. It was massive. Luckily he saw us and walked further into the woods. Sigh (of relief).

Onward.

We arrived at the other beach and immediately decided to snorkle when we saw how calm the water was there. After hiring some gear we set off around a cove to a small, quiet beach surrounded by rocks on all sides. The snorkling was incredible! The coral was beautiful. It truly was a coral garden, with literally the entire sea floor covered in coral. And I just kept thinking all the beautiful colored fish everywhere were like the flowers in the garden. Before long I saw my first bump-headed wrasse which is a gigantic blue fish with a big bump on its head. Later we saw a school of eight of them!! I mean, you actually feel small next to them – that is how big they are.

We followed the rocks around the cove and just as we were approaching the point to turn around, I saw a very big black-tipped reef shark coming right at me. I am guessing it was about 2 meters long. It was looking right at me! Yes, I was a bit frightened. I got Alex’s attention and then we watched it circle round us and come back towards Alex. Then it swam away and circled back for a second look. And we were the ONLY ones out there. Wow. After that we were just talking about the shark over and over again.

All in all it was a great snorkle with lots of fish, good coral, and actually a total of 3 reef sharks (I saw another 2 smaller ones on the swim back). We also saw a gigantic grouper that looked like a big rock – he was so big actually that he looked like he should have sunk to the bottom.

Last night we had a big group of people for dinner – about 15 or so, mostly all solo travellers, and one cyclist even – an American guy who’s been cycling SE Asia for about 6 months. He was happy to swap cycling stories. Then we met up with some young Malaysians from KL who are here on holiday and we were drinking’monkey juice’ with them. It’s actually the Malay version of Sang Sum, callen Arang Tum. Anyway it was cool to hang out with some liberal Malaysians and get their impressions on life. (It’s a very strict and conservative country here – if you are caught smuggling drugs you get the death penalty and although alcohol is not illegal, it’s very much frowned upon by the mostly Muslim society.)

Then, after that, by about 1am at this time, I suggested a night swim and to my surprise some people actually agreed! So six of us went out for about an hour and had a blast playing in the waves and enjoying the moonlight.

This morning it was raining but somehow Alex, Mannie and I got motivated to go on a snorkling trip and I am SO GLAD that we went! Turtle bay – 4 TURTLES! (my first EVER!) Shark Point – 3 black-tipped reef sharks. And finally the Rock Garden – 2 sting ray, 2 squid, many, many fish, 1 big puffer, 1 orange sweetlips, and get this, another 5 sharks! Talk about a great day. Yes, indeed, it was well worth the journey.

The resident spiders

Snorkling Beach (ie home of the shark)

Alex and I, STILL talking about the shark

Entry Filed under: Kecil Perhentian,Malaysia