Diving fun

I know I've said this before but the Perhentian Islands really are the most beautiful places you can imagine. There are 2 islands, as usual a large and small one. We stayed for 2 nights on Perhentian Kecil, the smaller and busier of the 2. Long beach is the expensive area so naturally we went for the cheaper area of Coral Beach, which was much nicer anyway, as a lot less busy. We went on 2 dives while we were there - Sea Bell, where I got completely lost. We were at 18m and my bloody mask kept misting up, so my visisblity was crap. As I cleared them for the 3rd time (filling and emptying them with water)we were just entering quite a strong current. I blew out of my nose to clear the water from my mask and a load of water went up my nose. Had a panic for about 10 seconds when I reminded myself I had a large cylinder of air strapped to my back and calmed down a bit. Anyway by this time the current had pushed me upwards, and when I descended again to 18m, my group was gone...Looked around for a minute and then had to surface....gutted. The second dive was at Temple of the Sea - we went around a massive rock, where loads of coral and fish live. Saw a bamboo shark, but he was pretty shy of us. Saw some huge trigger fish, which don't like divers in their terratory, they can get aggressive, so moved away from them...No turtles this time sadly. Was generally pretty fab.

Sunset on Long beach

Went to the full moon party that night on the busier beach, but it wasn't exactly happening, everyone was quite happy sitting on the sand with a milkshake, rather than dancing around with a bottle of vodka. We fit in just fine...

The Perhentians

In order to get back to the mainland we had to get a tiny little speed boat. The man wanted to squeeze as many of us on in as short a time as possible and the waves were quite strong. Cutting a long story short, as the last person got on, the boat almost capsized one way, then the other, then the other....Became filled with water and we were all sinking. Bags on our backs - cameras/ipods/diaries/phones not to mention all our clothes drenched!!! Was quite hilarious once we knew no one was going to drown. Sadly, though my camera didn't make it - but think the memory card will be ok and it seems to be the only fatality amongst the four of us and our stuff!!!

Wild Sea Eagle