When I awoke the outside light was still streaming in through the window above the door, the same as it had done last night when neither of us could be bothered to get up and switch it off, only something was different. Only a trip to the loo and a glance at my watch could tell me what. It was broad daylight and 10am. We decided to skip breakfast and looked to follow on of the cross-island trails.
First we had to find the trails, not easy when the map was painted on a wall and positions were indicated in the broadest sense. In the meanwhile we found a reasonable amount of wildlife including the largest spiders (yes, more than one variety) we'd seen in the wild (bodies and inch and a half long) and a two and a half foot water monitor lizard stalking across the path in front of us and in behind a hut. We found our path and started following it up the hill. Rather like at Bako the hill wasn't very high but the heat and humidty reduced us to dripping wrecks. Twenty minutes of various sized ants later (the largest being an inch long) we decided that not only were we not going to complete the two hour trek but we weren't going to see anything from the top of the hill. And Helen had been bitten by 1cm fire ants. So we gratefully returned, showered, changed and had lunch.
After lunch Helen wanted to switch to a nicer room specifically one with a hot shower which we did before I went off to hire a mask and snorkel to try and improve on yesterday's pictures. Which I did, rather easily. It's amazing how much better a mask is than a pair of goggles (which let in less light, reduce perspective and don't let you equalize). Anemonefish Anemonefish Anemonefish and in the bottom left blue and white Christmas Tree worms Unidentified
That wasted the rest of the day. Eventually, when the battery had gone flat (a dismal failing for the P9) a cuttlefish swam past us. I later followed five small squid in a neat line before being surprised by a five foot black tip reef shark. I reported this to the diving guy who said Oh yes, every day the snorkellers report it. There's a turtle over there too.
Well, that's tomorrow sorted. It doesn't look like we'll do much diving as the visibility is pretty atrocious. Even just around the reef at the beach it varies from 4 to only 7m.
Dinner was a pretty hopeless affair -- the food was good but we appeared almost invisible to the waiting staff. Once they'd "found" us they seemed to forget we were there. The final act being them knocking on the room door an hour after we'd left the table wanting us to sign for the desserts which hadn't made it onto the bill. Kind of odd when the bloke on the next table had a (probably very irritating) personal service. Almost replacing each mouthful of rice with a fresh one on his plate as he ate it. Not to worry, it's a nice warm place to relax.
Coral View Island Resort, Pulau Perhentian Besar N5.90228 E102.74043 Elev. 20m Deluxe air-con (being cleaned -- I was too slow taking the photo on the last morning), Coral View Island Resort, Pulau Perhentian Besar
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.
