1 week getaway to Perhentian - Let's Go Diving!

Perhentian - My island paradise



14 superb dives, loads of nitrogen fix, paradise island, beautiful clear blue waters, rich in marine life, kaleidoscope of colours and forms undewater.... Simply Breath-taking! My Diving experience at Perhentian was indeed wonderful, one week of just diving and lazing around in the sand and the sun and paddling in the crystal clear waters was an intoxicating feeling, together with precious friendships made over there, what more could I ask for? To Sunny, Lisa, and Soren, I miss you guys already, I miss that place so much! Sunny, Lisa and Soren are our dive instructors in Perhentian, it was really great to know them, they're really professional, inspirational and very friendly people, most of all, they make our stay there very memorable.




Soren (above), Sunny, Zam, Lisa (below) are our dearest friends and dive instructors. I miss you guys!

When I first arrived at Perhentian islands after a 10 hour bus ride, I was taken in immediately by the beauty of this island. The waters were like crystal blue and so clear, and the resort was situated right near the sandy white beach. The whole feeling it gives is like we're stranded in a lost paradise, set apart from the world, set apart from the hustle and bustle of city life. I was feeling very excited then, I can't wait to jump into the waters for my first exploration dive!


Flora Bay Divers


Our dive gear before launching


Sunny giving pre-dive briefing


Launching on our dive boat


Ali, our faithful boatman




One of our dive sites - Batu Nisan


On our first dive to Tanjong Basi, I started seeing marine animals I've never seen before. I saw a huge Potato Cod (Epinephelus tukula) with large ovate dark brown spots against its light brown body swimming lazily against close to the corals at the sea bottom. Then we spotted a big and fat Map Pufferfish (Arothron mappa) about 40cm long. As we approached the 'T-Zone' which Sunny calls a Trigger's Bombfield where Triggerfishes forms depressions in the sandy bottom as their nests and covers their eggs with pieces of dead corals, we saw many huge triggerfishes, some reaching the size of your bedroom pillow!! Triggerfishes are known to be aggressive especially when they're protecting their nests, and in one of the dives we saw 4 of them fighting and a few laying motionless in their nests. Most of the time, in other areas, Triggerfishes are common sightings and usually found swimming solitary. In Perhentian, in every dive, most probably we dive into huge schools of fusiliers, damselfishes, and trevallys sometimes coming up to hundreds of them. Its a spectacular view when you are right in the midst of them, and they dance in front of you with beautiful formations. For a few moments I floated motionless in the water, taking in the beautiful scenery, enjoying all that was around me. I stretched out my arms, trying to embrace the beauty of the hundreds of different fishes against the beautiful landscape of rocks and corals. At this moment, I knew I was in Paradise.



Looking up at the water surface, squinting against the rays of sunlight shining into the water, we saw schools of Crocodilian Longtoms which I mistaken as Barracudas. They have elongated jaws, slender bodyshape, with black streak across the base of their gill cover. Also, not forgetting the many species of Parrotfishes we saw there, and the Golden, Scarlet-breasted Maori wrasses. I also spotted a giant moray eel here, and the orange-spined unicornfish.



That's me getting my daily dose of nitrogen fix.


The big fat Map Puffer


Banded cleaner chrimp



Clownfishes and their 'anemone dance'

The next day, we dived Sugar Wreck. The visibility of really bad there, I could only see the fins of the person in front of me. However, we still had our fair share of discoveries. Becasue of the bad vis, I nearly swam right into the face of a huge black-spotted porcupine fish. It was really cute, I think it couldn't see me as well! haha...I was shocked when I suddenly saw it in front of me, I had to struggle to back off. Its interesting to sometimes see these fishes being so curious about divers that they really come up so close to us. Especially the small damselfishes, they just appear beside your mask sometimes I get startled. We also saw sweetlips, schools of yellow-tail barracudas, a couple of scorpion fishes, lionfish, one solitary, big, fat cuttlefish, shrimpfish, Gold-saddle rabbitfish and big-eyed snappers. Awesome!



Cuttlefish

At Batu Nisan, we spotted more interesting creatures like the really small yellow Boxfish, it is really cute and adorable..maybe only about 6cm long? Then...we saw the Green turtle! It was beautiful! Along with it, we saw schools of Blue and Yellow fusiliers, Blackeye thicklips, huge Blue-ringed Angelfish, many-lined sweetlips, scissortail surgeons and Titan triggerfish.

Blue-ringed butterflyfish

One of the dive site called Ian's Ball was the nearest we had to the resort. It was only a 5 mins boat ride out of flora bay. It was a very good dive! When we descended, Sunny brought us to a patch of anemone on the sandy bottom. He signalled for us to kneel aound the the anemone and stretch our hands towards it. DO you want to know wat's that??? Its a carpert anemone housing a few Panda Anemone fish. On sensing us, the little ones hid in under the cover of the anemone, while the parents performed the 'dance' trying to warn us off, Jeremy took a video of this little 'anemone dance'. It was really pretty. Well, the gist of it is not only the anemone fish, its the tiny transparant anemone shrimp (also called cleaner shrimp), which crawled unto our fingers and started their cleaning routine!! They started cleaning out fingers, thinking that we're fishes waiting to be cleaned. Well anyway, we got a free manicure!!! Then, Sunny led us nearer the rocks, where we entered a rock crevice and he pointed out the hingebeak shrimp to us. It was a beautiful shrimp, accompanied by the streaked blue and orange Indian blue-striped pipefish. Just outside the entrance of the rock crevice, we caught sight of a school of small baby yellow-tail barracudas hiding within the 'sea-fan' like coral. Other than these, there are huge Golden trevallys, honey-comb grouper, many shrimp gobies on the sandy bottom, razor fishes, Star Puffer, Procupine fish, freckled goatfish, slingjaw wrasses, golden rabbitfish, Demon stingfish, blue-spotted stingrays, banded boxer shrimp, banded mantis shrimp that's only shy enough to poke out its eyes from its sand mount, a spotted bristly hermit crab, circular batfish, and one huge huge bumphead parrotfish! Oh and one more thing, we saw squid eggs lying on some corals on the sandy bottom.


Hingebeak shrimp


Demon stinger...YOU CAN'T SEE ME...


Bumphead parrotfish


The Anemone shrimp giving my hands a manicure! Sweet little things!


Hermit crab


Squid eggs


Honeycomb grouper

At a dive site called 3 Brothers because of the 3 huge rock formations, we spotted the hawksbill turtle. We got really close up to it because it was curious and wanted to check us out before it slowly swam away from us. Then we spotted some macro-life like the nudibranch (Pteraeolidia ianthina), (Phyllidia ocellata).



Nudibranch

One of the best dive sites in Perhentian, called Tokong Laut, there is FISH, FISH, and more FISH everywhere, diaplying beautiful formations, especially schools of blue-yellow fusiliers and trevallys. We also saw lots of Seychelles bamboo sharks, the Indian Ocean nurse shark, and white-eyed moray eels hiding beneath the rocks, and a huge school of about 50 squids dancing graciously past us. Other than this, we saw the Map Puffer, blue-spotted Puffer, huge black-spotted porcupinefish, many blue-spotted stingrays, circular batfishes, razor fish, bannerfish, Titan tirggerfish, banded coralfish, surgeon fishes, huge school of one-spot snappers and scaly chromis, anemonefish called Skunk anemonefish and Clark's anemone, and a yellow-tail sergeant. Its really some sweet diving in Tokong Laut, and its Soren's favourite dive site too! haha...

Next up, Tanjung Tukas. Star of the day, its the Talang Queenfish, huge silver queenfish which is supposedly rare to see? To add on we saw lowfin drummers, Pennant Bannerfish, small-spotted darts, 2 playing procupine fish, spotted coral grouper, red snapper, lots of trevallys and fusiliers.

One interesting thing to note is that there is a place called the Shark point within snorkeling distance from the beach where they are lots of blacktip reefsharks. Its worth taking a look!

At the end of the one week getaway, its hard to say goodbye, because there's too many beautiful memories...We'll be back soon!




That's all for now, oh man one week non-stop diving, I'm tired. I'll upload the pictures once its ready, will put up pictures for the fishes I mentioned too. So keep a lookout. Haha, its good stuff, a treat to all sea-lovers out there!