Perhentian Island

We just got back from a super weekend on Perhentian Island, which is an island off the north east coast of the Malaysian peninsula (west Malaysia). Here's a crappy map, but you can see how far it is!

Basically, getting there SUCKED. It took 16 hours - and we left at 9pm on Thursday, so we didn't get there until about 1pm on Friday. We had time for two dives during the day and then a night dive (my first). Saturday we squeezed in four dives and a beach party, and then today we spent basically the whole time coming back.

I will post pictures tomorrow (too tired and too late), but a few highlights...

Night dive wasn't at all as scary as I thought it would be (though I didn't let Matt let go of my hand for more than a minute). There was also a full moon, which helped.

I shat for the first time with no toilet paper (they don't use that stuff in much of Malaysia).

The BEST part was on our third dive on Saturday - we saw a school of about 15 bumphead parrot fish. They were unbelievably huge and gorgeous, and we swam with them for quite a bit. They were about 1 meter hight and 1.5 meters long. It was unbelievable to be with such a huge animal in the water.

There was a photo contest on our trip - they give us each a camera for three dives, and then we submit three photos each, and we all voted and the judges used the votes to help them decide who won. Matt and I won second prize - which was a Olympus 8500 camera with underwater settings, plus an underwater casing and a 1gb memory card. We also won one underwater photography specialty course (we will pay for the other and both do it).

We did get some great photos underwater - if we get copies of them, I will post them.

Happy to be back with the kitty (and home).