Hi all

So, I guess it’s time to tell you all about the fantastic diving and snorkelling to be had on the Perhentians, and also a bit about the beach time we put in while we were there.

Ok, let’s start with the snorkelling. One word. Fantastico. We woke up the morning after the first party and turned up for breakfast looking and feeling like death warmed up hoping against hope that we would be too late to go. However our guide fore the day was a local guy called Matt and as is the way on these islands, he was in no rush to go anywhere. There were two Indian looking girls due to go as well and they looked to be in the same state we were. They turned out to be medical students from London and we’d seen them the night before looking as miserable as sin while two ‘proper’ Indian guys tried unsuccessfully to chat them up. These guys just wouldn’t go away even when the two girls turned away from them and refused to even look at them. Ah well, God loves a trier. Unfortunately these girls didn’t. They were called Mira and well, would you believe I can’t remember the other ones name. Such is life. Anyway, they were still picking at their breakfast when we arrived while Matt was jumping around full of energy and exhorting us to join them. We did.

Now Matt is an absolute love. I can’t put it any plainer than that. He’s probably the nicest guy we met there. Relaxed and enthusiastic. And a sense of humour that was just infectious. The boy could charm the birds from the trees, if not the pants from the birds. Or more particularly Laura. Nothing was too much trouble for the guy and you could see he truly loved his way of life.

We headed down and got our snorkels and flippers and Laura was relieved to find she wasn’t the only pansy in the group and that the other two girls wanted life jackets too. For snorkelling? Weirdos :o) Matt then spent a good five minutes torturing them by telling them there weren’t any, before finally giving in and handing them over. And off we went.

We hopped in the boat and were soon at our first stop of the day. Turtle bay. So called because of the....turtles. Woo hoo. At this point Laura still wasn’t sure she was even going to go in but after much gentle coaxing and encouragement from Matt she eventually agreed to go in if he’d hold her hand. You’ve got to hand it to not just her for doing it, but to him for convincing her. The man’s a saint. She (and the rest of us) were rewarded by the presence of a huge turtle. I’ve never seen a live on up close and this one was beautiful. The length of his shell was between three and four feet long and he happily let us follow him on his turtle errands fo a few minutes before finally having enough and with few bursts of pure power he was gone. I’ve never seen anything like it. Absolutely amazing. We snorkelled around for a few more minutes, amongst coral and hundreds of little fish (and the harmless jellyfish we love so much) and came across a shoal of bump nosed parrot fish (might’ve just made that up but it was something like that at any rate). They are huge. Almost as big as the turtle, but there were loads more of them. After a bit, we got back in the boat and Matt puttered around a bit more looking for another turtle. We found one and we all jumped in like lunatics and did our best to keep up with it as it slowly and gracefully pulled away from us. Me and Mand got a couple of presumably good shots on the girls’ camera for them (it’s difficult to dive down to a turtle when you’re wearing a life jacket) but as it wasn’t digital we’ll never know. Whatever the outcome we both felt like heroes. Nice.

Next up, we headed for Shark Bay. So called because...wait for it....there are sharks there. Blue tipped reef sharks to be precise. After much coaxing Laura again deigned to join us (or more specifically Matt) as we snorkelled around looking to get bitten. Ok they aren’t exactly man eaters, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. We saw nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Back in the boat Matt was obviously feeling more disappointed than we were that we hadn’t sen any and drove us a bit further up the coast for another go. The only takers were me and Mand and in we hopped. With me trailing a little behind, the other two rounded some rocks and discovered to their delight a shark. He took one look and legged it (or finned it I suppose) as fast as his little fins would carry him. Leaving me thinking of the one that got away. But on the way back to the boat it was a different story. With me and Matt in front and Mand slightly behind Matt suddenly grabbed my arm and pointed. And there it was. About 10 feet in front, a reef shark. For the briefest of seconds. As I looked it turned and sped off and in a split second was no more than a distant memory. Although I can now honestly say I’ve seen one it was more of glimpse to be fair. But what the hey. Anyone asks? Yeah, I’ve swum with sharks :o) A few days later Andy, Kimbers and Lau went again and saw loads. But me and Mand saw them first ;oP

Next stop was the underwater garden. This for me was the highlight of the day. On the way there we started heading towards a couple of huge rocks. Absolutely motoring towards them. And getting faster. I saw them and started raising my voice to Matt, but he affected not to hear. As we got right on top of them we were all screaming (me obviously in a butch way) ‘Whoa’. At the very very last second he shifted the rudder to one side, putting us up on what in a car would be two wheels. We skimmed through a gap between the rocks with about 4mm on either side in a proper James Bond stylie. I looked at Matt pale faced and wide eyed. And he just winked and the merest hint of a smile played over his lips. t*** :o) The lighthouse we were headed for was surrounded by shedloads of coral and thousands upon thousands of fish. I was first in and just for giggles Matt started throwing bread at my head. Hilarious. Well, not really as I didn’t notice for a few seconds and started to get a bit windy as thousands of fish started attacking me. Cunny funt. We spent the next half an hour or so exploring the reef on our own, with Matt catching clown fish in his hands and trying to teach Mand to do the same. Pretty much in the same ay we used to catch fish in the weeds in canoe lake when we were kids. Only slightly prettier fish. It was truly mind boggling as hundreds of different kinds of fish, all the most amazing colours zipped in and out of the coral, which was itself absolutely beautiful. Different class.

We then headed for another island that had an ice cold fresh spring which we all had a go at getting under. Except Laura. So Matt chased her and just poured the freezing cold water all over her much to out amusement and her delight. It was here that Mand decided that this season’s must have was a dead jellyfish on your head. Remember, when you see this in Westwood’s next collection (not the wigger, ghetto lovin, home(counties)boy from the radio, Vivien Westwood you fools), remember you saw it here first.

Next up was lunch from a little ‘shop’ on one of the other islands, which we took to turtle island to eat. Laying out in the sun, it didn’t take too long before lunch turned into siesta time. Except for Mand who spent the whole time running around with her camera ‘experimenting’ and broken only by Matt dropping cold coconut juice on Laura and Mira while they were asleep.

Eventually though Matt decided enough was enough and took us off to see the baby turtles which were being protected at the far end of the beach. They pick the turtles up as soon as they make it up from the hole they’re laid in and put them in a box for a few days until they’re big enough and their shells are tough enough to give them a decent chance of survival. Decent being better than the one in a thousand that survives generally. These things are tiny and as cute as anything and we played with them for while, even letting them have a little swim just to get the idea of what was expected of them. Mine and Mand’s conspiracy theory of there not actually being any turtles anywhere has been well and truly shattered. Sweet.

By now, time was getting on and it was time to get back. Trying to help (as I’m prone to doing once in a while) I hauled anchor. Unfortunately I hauled a little too enthusiastically and ended up flat on my arse as the stubborn anchor suddenly gave way. Gimp.

We went out with Matt again the day before we left and although the places we went to were different, the fish and coral were pretty much the same so I won’t go into all that. He did pick Laura up and chuck her in though. He also threw the boat around lot more, performing turns and spirals your average joyrider would’ve been proud of.. It was absolutely quality. And he didn’t charge us for it. He took us because ‘he liked us and we had fun together’. We bought him a friendship bracelet to say thanks and when we gave it to him he started crying. f*****. Seriously though, the guy was a gem and he more than anyone else made our time in Kecil as memorable as it gets.

We also went on two dives while we were there. The first is where we met a couple called Kat and Scott (the ones who are definitely not scummers) and Shayne (one of the divemasters). On that dive we were off to explore the nearby wreck of a sugar boat. Shayne was guiding Scott and Kat and me and Mand were being guided by another bloke whose name I’ve forgotten. Let’s call him Pete. Now Pete was a guy of fifty, fifty five, maybe sixty who still had long golden hair and obviously fancied himself as twenty five. Nowt wrong with that, but he’d started to lose his love of the job a little bit. What makes me think that? Nothing in particular, just a general impression. The jokes he cracked that you could tell he’d told several thousand times before. The way he looked at you like he’d seen your sort a million times. Just his whole general attitude was a bit jaded. But he gave us some memories we’ll carry with us forever.

Before we left for the dive, we had our orientation speech and Shayne explained among other things that there was a strong possibility of us encountering yellow jellyfish. Now these f***ers are the real deal. Not the kind that Mand could put on her head, more the kind that’ll sting you and although not kill you, might well make you wish you were dead for a while. Now this worried me. A lot. Not a lover of the sea as you already know and really not wanting to spend the rest of the day in excruciating pain, I was a little nervous on the way out. Shayne tried to put me at ease saying that they only ‘hover’ between two and three metres down and when you break through this ‘ceiling’ you’re in the clear. Pete pipes up at this point that he’s never been stung and how Shayne got stung the day before and really giving off a kind of understated ‘I’m a hero’ ness. And he showed us his stick. Stop sniggering, I said stick. This stick was about ten inches to a foot long and he blusteringly informed us that this was all he needed to fend them off. At this point I got really worried for my safety. Oh yeah, and Mand’s.

I was seriously considering telling them I didn’t want to get in, but as I get this feeling most times I dive I toughed it out. With a flurry of flippers I performed my first ever backward roll entry and was soon bobbing along with everybody else holding on to the anchor line. Then I looked down. And I absolutely shat myself. There were hundreds (I am not in any way exaggerating) of luminous yellow jellyfish underneath us. Some had tentacles of maybe eight feet. I felt ill, and when I looked at Mand she looked as bad as I felt. f*** it, you only live once, and with a slightly trembling ‘ok’ signal we headed down the rope. Pete was first, Mand second (by accident I assure you) then me. Then Shayne and Kat and Scott. As we approached the two metre mark, things began to take on a surreal quality. There were hundreds of them drifting towards us. It was like some kind of computer game. Only real. They were f***ing everywhere. Most important of all though, they were all over the line. Now, this line is what gets you to where you want to go. Without it, we’d be left to drift in the current and pulled right past our entry point and miss loads of the wreck. So Pete gets out his stick. Way to go, that’ll solve it. He starts trying to flick them off the line. As I watched in horrified fascination he became kind of embroiled with the jellyfish in a game of ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway’. After a few seconds, the jellyfish were swarming round him and I saw one get his leg. Proper dragged it’s tentacles across him. There goes your 100% record Pete old son. As he reacted to the first sting, he took another one right across the arm. Now this f***ed him. His belief in his almighty 10 inch stick wavered somewhat. Not surprising when confronted with the reality of a six foot stinger. Then he did something so unexpected that I momentarily forgot to be scared. He let go of the rope and headed out across jellyfish world holding his stick in front of him like Harry Potter fighting the Dementors. This set in motion in a chain of events that took about 5 seconds to unfold. He beckoned to Mand to follow him and held out his hand. She let go of the rope and started to head towards him (I have absolutely no idea why) and then changed her mind and started heading back to the rope. What made her change her mind was this. A jellyfish had snuck up on our hero, got past his mighty defensive stick and was wrapping itself around his head. Like a huge yellow turban. The last I saw of him before I made an emergency ascent was him trying desperately to untangle his forehead as more tentacles joined the fun. Him and Mand joined me few seconds later and as he tried to pretend the reason he’d come back up was to make sure I was alright, I watched in terrified fascination as he forehead started to redden and swell. I decided it was time for someone to do something about all this and boldly announced that was I f*** going back down there, and that he had more chance of sprouting a fanny. At this point the other three also surfaced having decided that there was no way they were going to dive it either. Back in the boat we got and sat around telling ourselves and each other that we weren’t wusses at all (kinda true) and that it would’ve been stupid and definitely no fun to have continued (definitely true). There was no vinegar on the boat to treat the stings with (more bravado presumably) so Pete then had to sit and suffer all the way back to shore. He bore this with great stoicism and did his best not to show any pain, or moan too much. He had a wedding to go to the following day and was bemoaning the fact that he’d have to go with a big red head. My suggestion that he go out and buy a red suit cos at least then he’d match was met with a long stare. There’s no helping some people.

The next day we headed off on our second dive which was to be a drift dive. Cool. With Pete off at his wedding (presumably dressed as a Klingon to help disguise his head) it was left to Shayne to take us all down. There was me and Mand obviously, Scott and Kat, and a couple of randoms one of whom was going snorkelling. Now a drift dive works like this. The boat drops you off in one place, you drift with the current for a prescribed period of time and then the boat comes to pick you up at an agreed exit point. Sweet. So in we go and it becomes readily apparent just how much weight I’ve lost since we took our PADIs back in Vietnam. My weight belt was set far too light. Now the weight belt is a fairly important piece of equipment in that it acts as ballast and helps you maintain neutral buoyancy i.e.

you stay at a constant level in the water. Mine was blatantly too light and I spent the next forty minutes going up and down and trying desperately to get myself into positions where I could actually see anything. As it happens visibility was piss poor and there wasn’t anything to see anyway. But the point is that all the extra exertion I put in meant I used up my air far too quickly and was forced to come up twenty minutes early. Not a problem usually, but on a drift dive there’s no boat to pick me up. Shayne brought me up, checked I was ok (I gave him an unconvincing a yes as I’ve ever given) and with a cheerful grin and a ‘Watch out for sharks’ he disappeared back beneath the waves while I was left to float and wait for the boat to come past and pick me up. Which should have been twenty minutes or so. Hmmmmm.

As I lay there I thought firk it, might as well have a wee snorkel and put my head under the water. And promptly wished I hadn’t. There were half a dozen or so yellow jellyfish idly waiting around for someone to sting. b******s. Added to this, the sea was getting choppier as a storm began to come in. Grand. So I lay there for a while getting buffeted to f*** and being paranoid about being stung (so much so I actually felt a jellyfish sting me...the power of the mind huh?). Then I lay there for a while longer. By now I guessed I’d been floating there for about twenty minutes (it’s virtually impossible to judge though to be fair) and as yet more minutes passed I started to get really uncomfortable. For one, I needed a piss and was terrified that it might somehow attract the jellyfish. Second, Shayne’s last comment about sharks set off in my mind every scene from the film Open Water. Not good. Not so much the sharks, but the whole left behind and forgotten bit. This played on my mind so much I actually considered swimming to the shore which was about 20 metres away. Then I became obsessed with staying exactly where I was so they’d know where to find me. A deviation of perhaps 1 metre took on terrifying proportions. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was starting to get proper worried. In a vain attempt to lift my spirits I had a little singsong to myself. For some reason ‘Hey Jude’ was favourite and although I sang it pretty loudly, it just seemed to disappear in the wind and rain. But it did make me feel better. Until I spotted a sea eagle gliding above me. The possibility that my singing might attract it into looking down entered my head and I imagined that from up there I probably looked like a slightly hairy fish, or a very bald rodent. Either way I didn’t want to be the only person in the history of the world to be killed by a fish eagle. And it could happen, I saw it in a copy of The Beano once when a short sighted eagle carried off Roger the Dodger’s grandad’s wig by mistake. So I shut up and carried on waiting, in silence. It started to get dark. By now, the soaring eagle was taking on the countenance of a buzzard. I eventually managed to squeeze out a piss (it seems I get stage fright even in the middle of the ocean with no-one around for miles) and felt a bit more comfortable. By now I thought I’d been out there for hours and had entered a kind of bobbing trance and was just about ready to ditch the equipment and swim for the shore. Then I heard it. The most welcome sound I could possibly imagine. Nope, not someone saying ‘what do you want to drink?’ but a boat engine. OUR boat engine. Woo hoo. Screaming like a banshee and waving my arms around like an epileptic at a rave I managed to get there attention and over they came. I swam over handed over all my gear and waited for the ladder to be hung over the side. Either they weren’t going to bother or I just couldn’t wait, but I just grabbed the side of the boat and hauled myself up and over the side. Almost. The boat heaved at the same time I did and it smashed me in the ribs a treat. Beautiful. So here I sit now, with two cracked ribs. Not the best days diving I’ve ever had. Frustrated, unable to see anything, forced to come up early, left in a burgeoning storm as it got dark, surrounded by jellyfish and head hunting eagles and a couple of broken bones. Hmmmm. We picked the others up and it turned out they’d been waiting for twenty minutes for the boat. That means I’d been there for forty minutes. Top day out.

So there you have it. We went to one of the most beautiful diving spots in the whole of Asia, did two dives, saw nothing but jellyfish and I came away with broken ribs. Still, we were just unlucky. Kat and Scott had done a few dives there and said it was fantastic, and they’d just come from Australia, Great Barrier Reef and all. And if the snorkelling is anything to go by it probably is. Another one to go on our ‘Got to go back’ list.

The beach time is easy. Golden sands, beautiful turquoise, bath warm, crystal clear waters. And a proper deserted feel. We spent most of our time just chilling around on it (funnily enough), with Laura showing her, ahem, expertise with a frisbee and denying full bloodedly that Dave as trying to chat her up. This incidentally is something I don’t understand. She’s one of those girls who spends her whole time being ogled and chatted up by a variety of men but still insists they were doing no such thing. Even when they’re drooling and humping her leg (not that Dave was) she’ll swear blind that they are ‘just being friendly’. Self esteem issues, playing it cool or away with the fairies. You decide. Then there was loads of swimming and trying to catch the little fish that feed right up to the shoreline. Loads of running away from the millions of dead and dying jellyfish that were being washed in. It’s ok, they weren’t the dangerous ones but there were so many of them it was just frustrating to have them bump off you, and a pretty disgusting feeling when you trod on one. They were being washed in because after spawning they die. As do the millions of starfish that were also being washed in. Now I find this more than a little strange to be honest. Spawn then die. Surely it would be better if they lived on and spawned more. But hey, I’m not Mother Nature and I’m sure there’s some kind of reason to it.

There were also loads of small dead spiky things on the beach. We were told by the incredibly knowledgeable and red headed divemaster Pete that these were unhatched starfish eggs. The not quite so knowledgeable Mand is convinced that they are sea urchins. Now the argument I have to contend with is this. Divemaster man may well have been doing this for 20 years or whatever but he was still stupid enough to try and fight off two trillion yellow jellyfish with a small stick, and is the only person I’ve ever seen wearing a jellyfish hair piece. Mand on the other hand has virtually no knowledge of the sea, but also seems to have a soft spot for wearing jellyfish on her head. However hers are definitely not dangerous. Round one to Mand, but only by a whisker. Secondly, Mand trod on one. Despite me repeatedly telling her to mind her step and put her sandals on (check me out being right). However the stupidity of trying to dive through 2 metres of poisonous jellyfish is not to be underestimated and I think should underpin any arguments made in favour of the man with the tentacle bandana. I also don’t have to spend the rest of my life with numpty b******s so Mand wins out. But whatever they were, sea urchins or starfish eggs, there were thousands washed up on the beach. And they smelt pretty badly. But they were further along the beach than we wanted to be anyway. So there.

Me and Mand spent a fair per centage of our time in the water trying to reenact that scene from Dirty Dancing where The Swizzle lifts the ugly bird over his head. Oh how we laughed as I was nearly crippled under the weight every time Mand came clear of the water. Other favourite games included frisbee (we bought our own and Mand was almost as bad as Laura), ‘rescuing’ each other (this involved Mand trying to teach me life saving techniques which actually meant me nearly drowning her several times), trying to catch the little fish who attacked us whenever we came to close to their spawn, and Mand using my shoulders as a diving board. Sweet.

Me being me though, I also spent a fair amount of time being bored. I’ve never been much of one for lying aimlessly on the beach getting bored enough to want to eat my own head and inevitably found myself in one of the bars (it was called Lily’s in case you were wondering) watching sport on the television (arrrgggghhhh the horror of the England games) and eating warm tuna mayo sandwiches whilst drinking cold beer and trying to catch the eye of anyone I thought might be worthy of thunder talking. About anything. Whenever there was no even half decent sport on they’d have CNN on which gave me an inestimable amount of s***e on which I could vent my spleen and ruin everyone else’s peace and quiet. Quality.

The only other thing worthy of note was that we arrived with no money. Who would’ve thought that there wouldn’t be an ATM on a desert island. I mean, come on. So we spent the first few days spending all Laura’s cash, and hoping Andy and Kimbers would get one of the 27 emails we sent them and bring us some much needed cash (they had Mand’s bank card that Kimbers’s mum had brought over from England). They didn’t, which meant I had to do a cash run to the main land. Boat, taxi, boat. It took about 3 hours round trip in total. They even held the return boat for me on the way back. Now that’s what I call service. However it did mean that we all had different tickets and therefore different boats to catch when we all came back to the mainland.

This meant that when it came time to leave, I was on one boat, Mand was on another, Kimbers and Andy were on a third and Laura was on yet another. Happily, as Mand was the only one on her boat they put her on mine although it was so rammed by then we were at opposite ends. Andy and Kimbers had come from a different port and so got taken back there, much to everyone’s surprise including their own. They eventually caught up with us via a taxi and we all headed off to Jehrte (pronounced Jer-tay in your best Bo Selecta Michael Jackson voice) and our ‘business class’ bus to Singapore.

On the jetty though we got our last glimpse of ‘model girl’ as we’d come to know her. This girl turned up a couple of days after we had with some guy who thought he had the muscles of Arnie. She promptly whipped off her top and he started taking photos of her in a page three stylie. This is on a Muslim beach. During Ramadan. She then went to the water (still topless) and bent over to wash her hair. Without bending her legs. Followed by a proper shampoo advert flick. She then spent the rest of her time there telling anyone who crossed her path that she was a model. Her boyfriend meanwhile occupied himself by flexing his muscles and very very slowly rubbing suntan lotion on himself. It was astounding to watch. Seriously. I didn’t think people like this really existed. I couldn’t help watching them whenever they were around. Which probably didn’t help. To make matters worse, she was a proper BOBFOC (Body Off Baywatch, Face Off Crimewatch to the uninitiated). That just made it all the more fascinating for me. If she was serious, then air brushing is an art form. Her modelling status was called into serious doubt when she arrived at the jetty on the mainland and seemed to be really really upset that she couldn’t get a refund on her $10 ticket, and that she might have to pay for a $30 taxi to the airport on her own. What no limo? No paparazzi waiting for you? That was the least we could’ve expected the way she’d been going on. She was off somewhere for a shoot ‘you know, not a shoot’ - mimes pulling the trigger of a gun - ‘but a shoot’ - mimes taking a photo. The guy she was talking to at this point just looked at her as if she was an alien and I could see he was thinking what I’d been thinking all week ‘What the f***? What are you - a photographer?’. To make matters worse, when he told her he was Australian she said ‘Oh really, those guys over there are Australian. Do you know them?’ like Australia is a small town on the Shetland Islands. The look on his face had me laughing so hard I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. Not that she noticed the look on his face anyway...

So that was about it for the beautiful desert islands that are the Perhentians (well, Kecil anyway). It really was the most wonderful of places and if we ever make it big enough to buy our own island, this will be it. Mand can spend all day diving the reefs and I’ll keep myself amused all day feeding cats to the lizards. Beautiful.

Laters all

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