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Malaysia

Where to Go Next For Diving?

Most of us have a wish list of places that we want to visit in our lifetime. I have one too and it’s really long. But to be honest, I’m not too sure whether I would have visited all of them in my lifetime. I hope I will!

As for diving, I have my wish list for dive destinations too. They’re all within the South East Asia region because here we have one of the best dive sites in the whole world. I feel really lucky for this. Cheaper flights, cheaper accommodation, cheaper food and all the additional budget can be channeled to diving expenses.

As of writing (April 2010), I’ve only been to Lembeh Straits. I’ll be diving in Anilao in a few weeks time, so that makes it two. I’ve dove many other places, but if I have an unlimited budget for diving, these would be my only places to dive. I’m planning to dive at these places at least once in the next 2-3 years.

1. Lembeh Straits (North Sulawesi, Indonesia)

Bernard & Wife at Lembeh Straits - © Bernard Loke

Top of the list would be Lembeh Straits, better known as the macro heaven or the heaven for underwater photographers. There are just so many wonderful, unique, rare, tiny, ugly, you-name-it creatures in the waters of Lembeh Straits.

Some of my friends even came up with a list of creatures they want to see (and it runs to hundreds) during their trips. And they won’t give up going to Lembeh Straits again and again just to see everything on the list.

I was there back in December 2009 but I only managed to dive there for 2 days. My other 5 days was spread between diving in Manado and Bunaken National Park. That’s obviously too little and not enough. The next time (very soon) I’m going back there, I’ll be diving exclusively in Lembeh Straits. There are a whole bunch of creatures on my list which I’ve not seen yet!

2. Anilao (Batangas, Philippines)

Corals at Anilao, Philippines - courtneyplatt@flickr

Anilao is another macro heaven for underwater photographers. It’s one of the favorite dive destinations for many of my diver friends especially those who are into underwater photography like me. One of them even dove there more than 10 times and he is still not bored of it yet. So how can I not dive there for at least once?

I’ll be there in a few weeks time, so I’m really looking forward for it.

3. Raja Ampat (West Papua, Indonesia)

Raja Ampat Islands in Indonesia

I’ve heard of Raja Ampat even before I started diving back in 2008! Some of my friends were saying, You’ve to go to Raja Ampat when you have the chance!, and I was like, where the hell is this place?

For most divers in the South East Asia region, Raja Ampat is among the top 3 destinations for them besides Lembeh Straits. Some would call it the excotic dive destination. The good (and bad) thing about Raja Ampat is that it’s mostly accessible via Live-on-Boards (LOB) which are usually 6-8 days. And that would mean I’ll be disconnected from the hectic world and it’s just diving all the way!

4. Komodo Island (Indonesia)

Komodo Island - thejerk@flickr

Komodo Island made it to the headlines in 2008 when 5 divers got lost from their group during their dive. It became even scarier when they came face to face with the Komodo dragon, the world’s largest lizards.

Diving in Komodo Island is usually via Live-on-Boards (LOB) which would bring divers to some of the most secluded and exotic dive sites.

5. Pulau Sipadan (Sabah, Malaysia)

A School of Barracudas at Sipadan

Ask any Malaysian diver whether they’ve been to Pulau Sipadan and you’ll probably get yes for an answer. Rightly so. Pulau Sipadan has always been the forefront of scuba diving in Malaysia since it was mentioned as one of the top 10 dive destinations in the world quite some time ago. And since then, divers have been flooding the island until a point that they need to close down the resorts in Pulau Sipadan and moved them over to the nearby Pulau Mabul to preserve it’s ecosystem.

Wait. Why have I not been there? I’ve actually planned to go there. I’ve my air tickets booked and almost booked my accommodations. But I decided to give it a miss so that I can go to Lembeh Straits.

The reason?

There are only two things that you won’t see in your Lembeh Straits trip (including Manado and Bunaken) compared to Pulau Sipadan – school of barracudas doing the famous tornado and jacks. Other than that, Lembeh Straits has a lot more – Rhinopias, Mimic Octopus, Flamboyant Cuttlefish, Electric Clam just to name a few.

There are other destinations on my list as well, like Maldives, Tubbataha Reef in southern Philippines, Malapascua for sharks, Bali for manta rays and moola moola, Palau in Micronesia..and the list goes on and on.

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Dive @ Pulau Tioman

Less than 3 weeks after my trip to Perhentian, it was Tioman this time.

I thought I’d better go for another diving trip before my next overseas assignment that most likely will end towards the end of August. By that time, I would have missed the best part of the diving season this year.

So, Tioman it is.

Boarding Pass For Ferry to Tioman

It was my first time to Tioman, so I was surprised with the ferry boarding pass system they have there. Gave my ferry ticket to the counter, register myself and they gave me a boarding pass. All I did with it was to walk some 15-20m and pass it to the other personnel. And now, there’s only 1 ferry operator to Tioman since the accident in the middle of the sea last year.

It was a 2.5 hours boat ride from Mersing to Tioman. The ferry stops at a few jetties there and mine was the third. Kampung Tekek jetty to be exact. It’s also the only duty-free jetty there. Not the whole Pulau Tioman is duty-free.

Babura Resort's Colorful Van

My Small Long House Room For The Next 4 Days

I was greeted by a colorful van, courtesy of the resort (I would say wooden long house) that I’ll be staying for the next 4 days; Babura Seaview Resort.

Dumped all my bags into the room, the diving bag with all my gears at the dive center at Tioman Reef Divers. It’s just next door and is owned by a Malaysian husband and his Japanese wife.

Then, we had our super quick lunch and immediately geared up for the first dive at 1430.

Tioman Reef Divers

The first of our 8 dives was at Tiger Reef, some 20 minutes boat ride away. Lots of nudis down there and other small creatures. The best thing was seeing other divers cam whoring for the whole 60 minutes dive with their new cameras.

The worse thing? Having the new divers with camera kicking up all the sands at the bottom. And even worse, scaring the hell out of the fishes with me ended up with no fishes to see.

Then we had our 1 hour surface interval before dipping ourselves into the water again at Labas Island.

Dive Sites in Tioman

The second day was reserved for the best dive site. Before I came, I asked those who dove here often which is the best site. They all have the same answer. Chebeh. To go the Chebeh, it’s a 20 minutes boat ride from the dive center.

Not a good thing if you’re a seasick person.

Once we’re there, the signs weren’t that good. There were quite strong currents. We wanted to dive the pinnacle. But to do this, we had to swim from the descent line was which some distance away. The current might take us away from where we wanted to go.

So, change of plan. We dove the lagoon there instead.

Then we had our usual 1 hour surface interval before jumping into the water again at Malang Rock, just behind of Chebeh. It was a shallow dive, 15m max. On average it was 11m as we already had a quite deep dive earlier.

Myself At Chebeh During Surface Interval

Had our lunch and 3 hours of surface interval between before jumping back into the water. This time it was Renggis. One of the best dive sites. Visibility was very good. 15m maybe. I encountered a really big green sea turtle, the resident there. Then we have 2 blue spotted ribbontail ray, scorpion fish and the titan trigger fish.

The third day, we dove at Soyak Island in the morning. Visibility was very bad. I would say it was like 4-5m at best. It improved a lot towards the end of the dive at 7m depth when I was at the coral garden. If I’ve known (as if I do) this earlier, I would have stayed at the coral garden from the start of the dive. And I wouldn’t have stayed elsewhere at 20m for 45 minutes getting lost and having nothing to see!

It was Chebeh again and Genting Bay for the third day as I didn’t really dived Chebeh the day before.

Okay, what’s so good about Chebeh that I wanted to dive there again?

Besides the varieties of creatures living there, the underwater landscape is simply amazing. There are rocks you can swim through, small caves you can enter, and then exit at a beautiful coral garden at 6m depth. Sorry, no underwater photos of Chebeh. Maybe next trip.

So, which was the best dive site?

Chebeh has to be one of it. No doubt about that. The second would be tiger reef. I would really love to dive Tiger Reef and Chebeh again this August with my camera!

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Dive @ Pulau Perhentian

So we drove 6.5 hours the other day from PJ to Kuala Besut during Labour’s Day weekend. If it’s not for diving, I probably would think twice to drive that far and for that long! And that’s only half the journey.

We stayed and dived with Watercolours Dive Center. I can’t remember exactly how I ended up with this dive center but most probably it’s because I can’t get 4 nights of accommodation on other resorts on this super peak weekend.

Nevertheless, I would say it’s a great, professional dive center.

The guides are from all over the world; German, French, Swiss, American, Spanish, Swedish, Danish and English and they’re a friendly bunch of people. The one thing I like about them is that after each dive, they helped us to fill our log books with what we saw during the dive. We’ll sit together for like 30 minutes, refer to a few books filled with pictures of fishes, nudibranches and coral reefs and try to identify what we saw. Sometimes I couldn’t even remember what I saw (especially those common fishes you get at every dive sites), but thanks to them, I have all those logged in my log book.

All other information like in/out time, bottom time, surface interval time, max depth, pressure group, visibility and water temperature are shared as well. But since I have a dive computer, I can log them myself.

So, here’s the 9 dives we did for 4 days. No photos as I don’t have a underwater camera with me, yet.

Dive : #1 (Day 1)
Site : De Lagoon
Time In : 17:05
Bottom Time : 50 minutes
Max Depth : 14.8m

Dive : #2 (Day 2)
Site : Batu Nisan Reef
Time In : 11:55
Bottom Time : 60 minutes
Max Depth : 7.2m

Dive : #3 (Day 2)
Site : Lighthouse
Time In : 17:05
Bottom Time : 50 minutes
Max Depth : 11.7m

Dive : #4 (Day 3)
Site : Tanjung Besi
Time In : 10:05
Bottom Time : 35 minutes
Max Depth : 30m

Dive : #5 (Day 3)
Site : Vietnamese Shipwreck
Time In : 13:45
Bottom Time : 35 minutes
Max Depth : 24m

Dive : #6 (Day 3)
Site : De Lagoon
Time In : 19:25
Bottom Time : 55 minutes
Max Depth : 15.6m

Dive : #7 (Day 4)
Site : Batu Layar
Time In : 09:45
Bottom Time : 63 minutes
Max Depth : 16m

Dive : #8 (Day 4)
Site : Tanjung Besi
Time In : 13:38
Bottom Time : 60 minutes
Max Depth : 16.8m

Dive : #9 (Day 4)
Site : Batu Tabir
Time In : 16:40
Bottom Time : 60 minutes
Max Depth : 17.6m

If you have dived in Perhentian before, you would realize that I didn’t dive at Tokong Laut (Temple of the Sea), the best dive site in Perhentian. Some dive centers call it, the superstar. It’s a real shame that we didn’t dive there.

This morning, I found out that the day I wanted to go to Tokong Laut was also the day the people from Watercolours found a big fishing net covering the corals there.

What’s a marine park when there are illegal fishing there?

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Getting From KL to Kuala Besut

Last Labour’s Day weekend, we had a 5 days, nothing except diving trip to Pulau Perhentian. Dived at Pulau Redang and Pulau Dayang/Aur last year, so I thought Perhentian was worth a visit for a budget local diving trip (Tioman’s next).

There are actually 2 routes that people from KL/PJ use to get to Kuala Besut, the gateway to Pulau Perhentian.

KL/PJ – Bentong – Cherating – Kerteh – Dungun – Kuala Terengganu – Kuala Besut

Total Distance : About 560km

This is probably the preferred route to Kuala Besut as the road conditions are much better, especially the KL/PJ – Cherating stretch using the East Coast Expressway. From there onwards, it’s a 300km+ scenic drive along the coastal road up north to Kuala Besut.

The usual time take for this route is about 8 hours, depending on the number of stops and the traffic on that day.

I chose a shorter and much faster route.

KL/PJ – Bentong – Raub – Kuala Lipis – Gua Musang – Kuala Krai – Pasir Puteh – Kuala Besut

Total Distance : About 460km

Started my journey after the Barcelona – Chelsea Champions League Semifinal match around 5am. Drove to Bentong using Karak Highway.

From there onwards, it was a 380km drive on trunk roads until we reach Kuala Besut.

It was still early in the morning, so there wasn’t much traffic from Bentong to Raub. However, this did not mean that we could speed. Even the sun was already up at this time, I could hardly see the car in front at certain stretches of the road.

That’s normal for a road where oil palm trees are on both sides of it.

From Raub onwards to Kuala Lipis, somehow, my GPS brought me to drive through an oil palm plantation. I think it must be a shortcut.

There was a police checkpoint at the entrance and exit of the plantation. There were many pot holes along the 25km stretch of the 2 lane tarmac road. To make driving even more difficult, the road was narrow, full of bends, uphills and downhills.

Definitely not a good driving experience.

From Kuala Lipis onwards, it was a smooth, scenic driving to Gua Musang. The stretch where we were nearing Gua Musang was simply beautiful. There were hills of rocks almost a hundred meters high, caves and tree covered hills.

Kuala Lipis - Gua Musang highway (Road 8)

The stretch from Gua Musang onwards to Kuala Besut was smooth driving. Nothing much to see.

Just drive, drive and drive.

All in all, it took me 6 hours of driving from PJ to Kuala Besut, with 30 minutes of resting time in between.

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Dive Pulau Dayang & Pulau Aur – Dive & Dive!

The next day was all about diving again. Some of the guys went for a dawn dive at 0700 but I was too lazy to wake up that early. Got up later in the morning, had breakfast and geared up for my first dive of the day at 1000.

The dive site is called The Pinnacles. They are 3 dive sites in The Pinnacles, but we were only going to dive in 2 of them; Pinnacle 1 and Pinnacle 2. It’s about 30 minutes boat ride away since it’s on the other side of the island. Since it’s a long journey to The Pinnacles, we’re going to make 2 dives before heading back for lunch.

Pinnacle 1 was the first. It’s famous for it’s big waves and current. Once the boat stopped, it was already rocking so hard from side to side that everyone has to immediately gear up and jump into the water to avoid feeling seasick. So, one by one we went.

Because of the strong current, we were suppose to hold onto the buoy line on the boat and swim towards the other buoy line to descend, otherwise we might miss the dive site and got drifted away. But the descend buoy line was still some distance away and the waves were big!

Slowly swam to the descend buoy line, dipped my head into the water and I could see the bottom clearly which was about 20m deep.

It was the best dive of the trip despite the strong waves.

Pinnacle 2 was much easier. No strong waves and it was a relax dive.

Dive #5
Location: Pinnacles 1
Start Time : 1000
Bottom Time : 45 minutes
Max Depth : 25 metres

Dive #6
Location : Pinnacles 2
Start Time : 1130
Bottom Time : 50 minutes
Max Depth : 12 metres

Dive #7
Location : Pulau Lang
Start Time : 1530
Bottom Time : 50 minutes
Max Depth : 17 metres

Dive #8
Location : Dayang House Reef
Start Time : 1800
Bottom Time : 50 minutes
Max Depth : 12 metres

Next : The Journey Home

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Dive Pulau Dayang & Pulau Aur – Let’s Go Diving!

pulau dayang dive sites

By the time I unpacked and got on the bed, it was already 0630. Tried to sleep a little but woke up at about 0800 after only 1 hour’s of sleep. By then, breakfast was already ready and we quickly finished it and went off to unpack all the dive equipments on the boat for the first checkout dive at 0930.

After a short briefing, off we go for the first dive of the trip.

I couldn’t remember exactly what I saw during all the dives. All I could recall is there are nemos, turtles, nudibranchs, a school of yellowtail barracudas, cuttlefish, scorpionfish, angelfish, groupers, moray eel, etc.

Dive #1
Location : Dayang House Reef
Start Time : 0930
Bottom Time : 50 minutes
Max Depth : 12 metres

Dive #2
Location : Crocodile Bay
Start Time : 1100
Bottom Time : 45 minutes
Max Depth : 16 metres

Dive #3
Location : Captain’s Point
Start Time : 1500
Bottom Time : 45 minutes
Max Depth : 16 metres

Dive #4
Location : Dayang House Reef
Start Time : 1730
Bottom Time : 35 minutes
Max Depth : 12 metres

Next : Dive & Dive!

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Dive Pulau Dayang & Pulau Aur – The Journey There

Pulau Dayang location The long day started off with a bak kut teh lunch in Bukit Tinggi, Klang where we collected some dive equipments from the dive shop.

Then off we go for a 5 hour car drive to Mersing. There were 2 routes from KL to Mersing and we chose to use the Kuala Pilah-Kuala Rompin route. Exited the North South Highway at Senawang and it was all trunk roads from there onwards.

I wasn’t 100% sure about the route. But luckily enough my Garmin Nuvi 200W was reliable as ever, and it did a great job bringing me all the way to Mersing and back.

Reached Mersing at about 2100 hours, had a short dinner and headed off to the jetty to wait for the rest of the group. The departure time was supposed to be at 2200 hours, but some guys got lost on the way to Mersing (blame it on their GPS) and we only boarded the boat at 0000 hours.

The tide was low and the big boat couldn’t come into the jetty. So, we got to board a small speed boat to the middle of the sea and change boats. By the time we reached the big boat, the waves were quite strong and some people were already feeling sea sick when the journey to the Pulau Aur/Dayang did not even start yet!

There were 2 islands; Pulau Aur and Pulau Dayang, and they are just opposite of each other. These 2 islands are just below Pulau Tioman and famous among Singaporean divers because it’s the nearest dive site available to them. They’re about 65km off the coast of Mersing and it usually takes about 4.5 hours to reach there, depending on how strong the waves are.

We stayed at Pulau Dayang and dived both islands.

The long boat ride started at 0030. The journey took longer than expected because of the high waves while we were halfway in the middle of the sea. By the time we hit the island at 0530, almost everyone was tired and some were having headaches due to the sea sickness.

Checked into the resort, had a short nap and get ready for the first dive at 0930.

Next : Day 2 – Let’s Go Diving!

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