Malaysia is not a bad place to have to ride out COVID-19. The pandemic is being well managed here. There was a lockdown from March 18 where we had to limit our excursions off our compound to forays into grocery stores, when we couldn't arrange food deliveries (they were hard to arrange back then, partly because movement controls were in such force that trucks coming from distribution centers in Butterworth weren't allowed to cross the bridge into Penang). For exercise we were walking up and down the 3 towers in our complex, 60 vertical steps in all, but a good 1-hour workout.
Eventually the country got a handle on its covid situation. Deaths leveled out, new cases continued to diminish, and travel between states was allowed starting in June
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Malaysia_movement_control_order.
Eventually the country got a handle on its covid situation. Deaths leveled out, new cases continued to diminish, and travel between states was allowed starting in June
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Malaysia_movement_control_order.
Dan and Lisa at breakfast at Bubbles
The island of Penang had had only one death due to COVID-19 and very few new cases in the weeks before we were invited by Dan Miles to join him and his wife Lisa Low on a dive trip to Sabah. This turned out to be impractical, since it's a detached part of Malaysia on the island of Borneo and operates on rules different to the mainland. In fact the neighboring state there, Sarawak, is one of the few loci of new infections in the country. But Dan and Lisa had limited time for their holiday, so they shifted their plans to the Perhentian Islands and booked a room at Bubbles resort for the week of July 4-11.
Bubbles is in a remote location on Perhentian Besar, both a charm and a drawback, the only way in and out for tourists being by boat. And we discovered it was also filling fast with locals realizing they could travel there at a time when covid was under control and interstate travel was now allowed. We were told that Kuala Besut, the port where you catch the boat for Perhentian, had had only one case of covid throughout the entire pandemic; the Perhentian Islands themselves had had none. So now there was a sudden influx of tourists from in-country, and when we tried to get reservations at Bubbles the day after Dan and Lisa got theirs, we were only able to book rooms for two nights midweek, the 7th and 8th.
Meanwhile we learned that one of our favorite dive instructors, Fizzy in the Sea, whom we used to dive with frequently in around 2013 at Nomad Ocean adventures in Oman, was visiting Malaysia, on holiday from where she had been working for the past several years in the dive paradise of Timor Leste. From her Facebook posts we learned that she had been visiting her family in Kuala Lumpur but was prevented from returning due to covid restrictions on flying there. So the owner of Turtle Bay Divers on Perhentian Kecil had invited her to come help out there for a while. Turtle Bay Divers was on Longbeach on the small (kecil) island, a busy dive and tourist beach, still charming, with an appealing choice of meal options and and despite its being high season, there was still a good chance of finding accommodation there.
So we made plans to fly to Kota Baru on July 6, get a taxi from the airport to Kuala Besut a little over an hour away, and spend the night a Grab ride away from the jetty where we could get our boat to Perhentian on the 7th (as it turned out, the lady who managed our bungaloes gave us a lift there in the morning). We would dive from Bubbles that afternoon and all day next day, do a morning dive at Bubbles on the 9th and get a boat over to Perhentian Kecil that afternoon. Then we could dive with Fizzy at Turtle Bay Divers on the 10th and as it turned out do two more dives on the 11th before getting the last boat back to Kuala Besut and catching an overnight bus back to Penang.
Three days at Bubbles Resort on Perhentian Besar, diving with Dan Miles and Lisa Low
d/Lagoon
This was our first dive out of Bubbles Dive Resort located in a small bay on the southwest corner of Perhentian Besar. Shortly after check-in we reported to the dive center for our first dive with Bubbles at d'Lagoon, in the north corner of the bay just to the north of Longbeach, near the northern tip of Perhentian Kecil, not far by boat, about 15 minutes.
We got lucky, dropping right in on a school of humphead parrotfish gnawing up the reef all around us. This was our best dive of the trip, humpheads followed by blue spotted and Jenkins rays, batfish, a moray concealed in a crevice, wrasse operating their cleaning stations in structures on their way to becoming artificial reef, and many other creatures. At various times on the dive I took to filming clams and clownfish reacting to the ominous approach of an unknown creature.
d'Barge
d'Barge
Next morning's dive was to The Barge, a sunken once-seafaring vessel lying in around 25 meters of ocean water a half hour's boat ride from Bubbles. Due to the depth we were encouraged to dive it on nitrox. I said I could do that if they wanted me to, but I was happy diving on air, and Bobbi wasn't certified for nitrox. No problem, we were told, she could do a discover nitrox course.
This came up at the end of the last dive that day as we were putting away our gear and thinking to get cleaned up for dinner. Everyone was busy, so no one seemed inclined to pull her aside right then, and the dive would be at 8:45 the next morning. In fact they came to our breakfast table and told us they were advancing the meet time to 8:30, which meant we were going to have to rush through breakfast, and briefing Bobbi for a discover nitrox dive seemed not to be included in the time calculation. She wasn't motivated to do it all that much anyway, and when I found out we'd be paying extra for the nitrox tanks, neither was I. Finally we discovered that one of the other divers on the boat was doing a discover nitrox course so he could dive on nitrox with his wife.
Although we'd be on slightly different dive profiles, another part of the calculation (taking 4 divers vs 6 on the trip) was if they wanted us to go we would have to be on air, and Bobbi relaxed a lot when we found that everyone was ok with that. I think I went into a little deco on the dive, though it was the kind that would burn off on a normal ascent with safety stop. Oddly, Bobbi, with the same kind of dive computer as mine, had plenty of no deco time, both of us at about the same depth throughout the dive.
It was a dive well worth going on. The local dive guide Derek showed us where the bamboo sharks were hiding (for the first one, I thought he was pointing out the red-banded shrimp under the lip of the wreck, and I only saw the bamboo shark in the video later - I didn't have to tell you that; you'd have thought I had brilliantly captured both). We saw a scorpion fish in the sand, which I didn't frame properly, and a moray hiding in the wreck. At one point I followed around a black-banded sea snake as he poked under objects in the sand and then decided he might do better if he explored inside the wreck. We also found a fish with its tail bit off lying immobilized in the sand. It was still breathing, so it had been a very recent attack. We looked around for whatever it was that had just attacked it and, as we were at the end of our dive, ascended before it got us next.
I wasn't happy with the thumbnail that YouTube's algorithm selected for the video I posted above. It showed the snake but missed out its head. Snakes are tricky to capture on film because they are constantly moving, wriggling around so much. So I uploaded the original video into Camtasia and sort of took it apart frame by frame in order to find the best image that could serve as just the thumbnail for this video.
Having found what I thought would make the best shot, I decided to take all 8 frames I had teased out and put them here so you could enjoy what the snake looked like as I got a little ahead of it and it headed up at me but not dangerously. It just brushed past me and headed into the wreck. Makes a nice photo sequence:
I would categorize the Barge and d'Lagoon as great dives. I like to joke that diving is a bit like sex: there are two kinds of dives, good dives and GREAT dives. This next video is a compilation of the remaining good dives we did during our stay at Bubbles Dive Resort, starting with videos taken at Takong Laut the morning of July 9, before we moved over to Longbeach on Perhentian Kecil.
Takong Laut with Bubbles
This dive was compromised by very strong current (it had been only 5 days since the last full moon). Consequently we had to stay in the shadow of the current on the south side of the island; every time we turned a corner to the north, we were beaten back. There were a lot of other divers on the site as well; in one of my video clips you can hear tank banging which we believe was one of he nearby divemasters trying to corral and control his divers. We didn't see much of particular interest on the dive, so I didn't take a lot of video. Also my camera had started to take on moisture causing fog to cloud the lens, so the videos were disappointing.
We had a much better dive with Fizzy on the same site two days later, only one other boat on the site, and we experienced a diminished current giving us a wider shadow of still water, though the current was still stiff from the north and prevented us rounding the island, as we had done on two dives on a previous visit there in 2012. Also Fizzy knew where the bamboo sharks lived.
The account of our diving there in 2012 can be found here, though I didn't have an underwater camera at the time: https://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com/2012/06/diving-off-perhentian-islands-malaysia.html. We have some family vacation pictures taken at the time here, where you can see the beach as it was then before the jetty was built there (all boats just pulled up on this beach): https://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com/2012/06/diving-off-perhentian-islands-malaysia.html
Batu Tabir, between Batu Butuh and Siegi, and two video clips on Little Tiger Rock
This video also contains clips from two afternoon dives we did on Batu Tabir and for the last dive of that day in the area in between Batu Butuh and Siegi, after our great morning dive on the Barge on July 8. There wasn't much here to photograph so I focused on clown fish on these dives, testing their reactions to having a camera poking at them almost up to their anemones. One of them attacked the camera; you can hear the clicks when he hits it. Others were more timid.
Clown fish have varied response to divers. There was a dive I used to do off Pearl Island opposite Ras Morovi in Musandam where I would lead divers around the island and then head east on a beeline over the sand to try and reach the submerged reef a couple hundred meters distant. This beeline took us over a lone anemone in about 15 meters of water with some very lonely clown fish living in it. On this stretch, I wanted to conserve air so I used to swim at about ten meters, and whenever I passed over their anemone these clown fish would charge up to meet me. I'm sure I have some videos of that. Some clown fish barely poke their heads out of their protective anemone but others can be almost aggressive (how aggressive can a clown fish be, really?) or in the case of the ones in Musandam, maybe a combination of bored and curious.
Amazingly I found some video of these guys. I've queued to where you can see them: https://youtu.be/-_h6bukCS2g?t=181
The last two clips in the video posted above here are from the dive we did on Little Tiger Rock after our great dive at d'Lagoon on July 7. My battery died after two clips because the time between dives was short, it was my first day there and I didn't know the routine and hadn't brought my recharging gear with me to the dive center on that day, and I had shot so much great video at d'Lagoon I had mostly expended the battery (but I don't recall that much to record on the rest of that dive anyway).
We didn't leave Bubbles over any dissatisfaction with the accommodation or diving there but only because they were about to rent our room to someone else. So after our Takong Laut dive the morning of the 9th, we cleaned our dive gear and stashed it wet in a net bag, and then we picked up our dry gear from where we'd left it behind the reception desk (since we'd had to finish breakfast quickly and check out of our room before diving). They called us a water taxi to take us over to Longbeach, just 20 minutes away on the next island over, and we pitched up on a scorching hot sunny beachfront in front of Turtle Bay Divers, where we were greeted by our good friend in diving, Fizzy in the Sea :-)
The last two clips in the video posted above here are from the dive we did on Little Tiger Rock after our great dive at d'Lagoon on July 7. My battery died after two clips because the time between dives was short, it was my first day there and I didn't know the routine and hadn't brought my recharging gear with me to the dive center on that day, and I had shot so much great video at d'Lagoon I had mostly expended the battery (but I don't recall that much to record on the rest of that dive anyway).
We didn't leave Bubbles over any dissatisfaction with the accommodation or diving there but only because they were about to rent our room to someone else. So after our Takong Laut dive the morning of the 9th, we cleaned our dive gear and stashed it wet in a net bag, and then we picked up our dry gear from where we'd left it behind the reception desk (since we'd had to finish breakfast quickly and check out of our room before diving). They called us a water taxi to take us over to Longbeach, just 20 minutes away on the next island over, and we pitched up on a scorching hot sunny beachfront in front of Turtle Bay Divers, where we were greeted by our good friend in diving, Fizzy in the Sea :-)
Two days at Turtle Bay Divers at Longbeach on Perhentian Kecil, diving with long lost dive buddy Fizzy in the Sea
On the morning of July 10 the islands were being pummeled by rain, and the trees where we were staying at the Cocohut complex were whipping in the wind. We texted Fizzy and ended up sitting out the first dive that morning. Later we found that all dives to the south had been cancelled, and Dan texted us from Bubbles on their south-facing beach that the only way out of there, by boat, was problematic, and they were trying to leave a day early. Also the storm had damaged the jetty on Perhentian Besar, impacting boat transport from there back to Kuala Besut. Nevertheless, Dan and Lisa managed to get away that day, and made it to Kuala Lumpur the next
After chilling in our room that morning, we moseyed on down to the dive center around ten. The weather had subsided by then and boating between Longbeach and the dive sites right across the channel was possible (as you can see from the map, protected by the big island, besar, from the seas punishing Bubbles), so a'diving we did go.
Batu Layar
My apologies for the annoying haze in the center the videos, from condensation inside the lens of my camera, which had been developing since our last day at Bubbles. There was nothing I could do about it at the time.
The video above is of our first dive in years with old friend and dive buddy Fizzy in the Sea, our perfect guide on this by now improving day at Batu Layar, off Perhentian Besar just across the channel opposite Turtle Bay Divers on Longbeach, on Perhentian Kecil. In this video you can see me attacked by a trigger fish, happens occasionally, but rarely videoed. I like to video around fish cleaning stations, and here I got shots of a puffer fish being administered to by wrasse. No one ever gets bored swimming with turtles or pulling up alongside a school of, barracuda, teasing clown fish, or checking out the varied coral formations.
The video above is of our first dive in years with old friend and dive buddy Fizzy in the Sea, our perfect guide on this by now improving day at Batu Layar, off Perhentian Besar just across the channel opposite Turtle Bay Divers on Longbeach, on Perhentian Kecil. In this video you can see me attacked by a trigger fish, happens occasionally, but rarely videoed. I like to video around fish cleaning stations, and here I got shots of a puffer fish being administered to by wrasse. No one ever gets bored swimming with turtles or pulling up alongside a school of, barracuda, teasing clown fish, or checking out the varied coral formations.
Police Wreck
Our second dive the same day was with Fizzy on Police Wreck, The "Police Wreck" is actually a trio of boats sunk by the police off the northwest corner of Perhentian Besar. The diver proceeds from one sunken boat to the other. Rays hide under hulls or wherever they can. Wheelhouses are home to unique pipefish and other macro creatures, and swimthroughs are possible inside the wrecks themselves. In this video, the annoying haze in the center of my Rollei lens was getting more apparent.
Now we've been back in Penang for two weeks, no covid yet, so we managed to thread the needle. We were as careful as was practical in the Perhentians, but there was no observance of social distancing or masking around the dozens of divers we bumped up against each day, and almost no one wore masks in the islands, since they hadn't had any covid. On the other hand, they had visitors from all over the country, where covid is pretty much under control, new cases each day in the teens and single digits. Still, that influx could lead to a first case in the Perhentians, and when the borders are open to international travel, let's hope there is a vaccine by then.
Our second dive the same day was with Fizzy on Police Wreck, The "Police Wreck" is actually a trio of boats sunk by the police off the northwest corner of Perhentian Besar. The diver proceeds from one sunken boat to the other. Rays hide under hulls or wherever they can. Wheelhouses are home to unique pipefish and other macro creatures, and swimthroughs are possible inside the wrecks themselves. In this video, the annoying haze in the center of my Rollei lens was getting more apparent.
Takong Laut with Fizzy
Next morning we revisited Takong Laut, which we had visited two days before with Bubbles, five days off full moon. Now, one week after the full moon Takong Laut still had stiff currents, but not as bad as before, and Fizzy managed to keep us in a larger and deeper shadow from the current than we had experienced on our previous visit. And she knew which rocks the bamboo sharks were under. There were a few morays under those rocks as well, and puffer fish being cleaned by both wrasse and remoras, and clown fish dancing in bright orange anemones. All in all, approaching great diving, our next to last on Perhentian with Fizzy in the Sea.
Turumba Tiga T3
Our second dive that day and last of our trip before being shuttled off to the Longbeach jetty for our trip back to Kuala Besut to catch the overnight bus to Penang, was on one of the Tiger Rocks, which was labeled on our briefing chart as Turumba Tiga T3. On this dive Fizzy led us through a myriad of tunnels between which we found rays, angel fish, gopis protecting pistol shrimp, a nudibranch, and other tiny creatures.
While I was focused on the sand capturing poor images of a pistol shrimp coming out of its hole and brushing past the gopi guarding the entrance, you can hear muffled shouting in the background. That was Fizzy trying to get the words JENKINS RAY past her regulator. Bobbi was with her and saw it, but the two of them had chased it off before I was able to join them. You can see Jenkins rays in the first video posted on this blog, soon after the humphead parrotfish.
Now we've been back in Penang for two weeks, no covid yet, so we managed to thread the needle. We were as careful as was practical in the Perhentians, but there was no observance of social distancing or masking around the dozens of divers we bumped up against each day, and almost no one wore masks in the islands, since they hadn't had any covid. On the other hand, they had visitors from all over the country, where covid is pretty much under control, new cases each day in the teens and single digits. Still, that influx could lead to a first case in the Perhentians, and when the borders are open to international travel, let's hope there is a vaccine by then.
Our best chance of getting the virus was on the bus going back to Penang. Mask were optional, which is to say, not worn. But when we were in Kuala Besut the week before, we had purchased our bus ticket for the night of the 11th, arriving back in Penang on the 12th. Since we had our choice of seats on the double decker, we chose the top deck, two seats in the very front of the bus. There's lots of room up there and we were right above the driver, staircase to our left, and all the passengers coming up that staircase headed toward the back of the bus, so we didn't see any of the other passengers during the trip. We reclined our seats so far back that no one sat behind us either; I don't think anyone was inconvenienced, the bus was hardly half full.
Getting there and away
For anyone thinking to visit Perhentian, you need to reach the jeti at Kuala Besut. There's a bus station there walking distance to the jeti, but with luggage or dive gear you might want to take a grab. Make sure you have the app.
You can fly to Kota Bharu and get a grab or a taxi from there, same price, 80 RM, about $20 for the 1.5 hour trip airport to jeti. Or if you take a bus to Kota Bharu just stay on it if its next stop is Kuala Besut (and if you bought a ticket to there). If staying overnight try and find a place near the jeti for local color, pleasant seascape, and best choices of places to eat and drink (Chinese restaurants have beer; others don't).
On July 6, 2020 we bought plane tickets from Penang direct to Kota Bharu (KBR). We booked online. They took our money and our booking but contacted us later to say our flight was canceled, but we could re-route ourselves through Kuala Lumpur, Sebang. This turned our noon arrival at Penang airport and disembarking a couple hours later at KBR into a dawn departure from our flat to catch a flight to Sebang and a connection to KBR a couple hours later for arrival in KBR only a little earlier than we could have got there by bus -- and we could have slept an hour or two later and then gone from Penang all the way to Kuala Besut (and it would have cost us 50 rm each instead of almost 400 for the plane).
Also when we arrived at Penang airport and saw the departure board, we saw that over half the flights were canceled. All passengers to other cities in Malaysia were being re-routed through KL, and I image the airlines knew this when they took our booking.
If you are starting your journey in KL then the flight from there to KBR is not expensive and it's the least painful way to arrive. Bus distance between KL and KBR is about 450 km. But if you're flying from Penang and have to change planes in KL then you are competing with a bus journey of 350 km due west across the peninsula. If you are arriving in Kuala Besut after 4 pm then you will have to spend the night anyway, and a bus trip would be the most pleasant way to go, especially in the daytime, passing through Bandung Island in the Terenggor Lake district in the center of the country.
Once you're in Kuala Besut you can easily get transport to the islands through one of the many offices at the jeti complex, or you'll have likely arranged transport through whomever you're staying or diving with. That way you'll be taken exactly to the right spot on the islands you're trying to reach, though if you do end up at one of the jetties, you'll be able to get a boat taxi to wherever you want to go, about 35 rm per passenger, under $10.
Just a word about accommodation at Longbeach.
As many of us do when traveling, we use Trip Advisor reviews to help us choose where to stay in tourist locations such as this one. Of all the accommodations mentioned Harrera cottages stood out in reviews. In price they were close competitors with Cocohut just up the beach, but Cocohut had the usual variety of satisfied and dissatisfied customers, whereas Harrera customers raved about the views, the friendliness of the owners, the cleanliness of the cottages. There was nothing bad said about the place, and in case this could be a noisy beach, we didn't mind that it was up the hill behind the beach front. So we booked it for 200 rm a night, around $50.
When we arrived on Perhentian Kecil, the water taxi took us to the beach in front of Turtle Bay Divers, and we left our things there. It was a really hot day and we cooled off before heading down the beach and up the hill, without luggage, to check out our new place. We arrived at a veranda where there was a restaurant and reception and the proprietor, who was indeed friendly, checked our booking and offered water, and told us to wait while his wife cleaned the room. We were then taken to one of the cottages, standing alone on the hillside and were warned about the steep steps. Inside it was bare bones, smaller than it had appeared in the promotional images. There was a bed and a fan. I tried the fan but there was no electricity. Did I mention that it was really hot out? We were informed that we would have electricity only from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. It didn't seem very secure. We could see bright sunlight though the cracks in the walls. That night it poured down rain, really a storm, and I wonder how dry our things would have remained in that room.
We told the proprietor we needed to go get our things. He said he would send someone, but we intended to jump ship if we could find better. Back at the dive shop we told them our predicament. There was someone there who had a room, something similar to what we had looked at but only 80 rm, $20. We thought we would ask at the Cocuhut nearby, the place we had almost booked instead of Harerra. It was well off the beach up a path to the other side of the island. It was a modern cement block complex of rooms. They had a room but only for that night. We had a look. It was American motel quality, refigerator, a/c, 24-hour electricity, comfortable queen bed. The price was 250 a night, $10 more than Harrera. We decided we preferred to stay there and took the room for that night. The friendly manager explained that for the following night if they didn't need all their rooms they would call us. We were eating dinner with Fizzy when Bobbi's phone rang. We could have the room a second night. We forfeited the first night payment to Harrera but it was worth it getting into something slightly more expensive but a quantum leap better in quality. If you go there, be careful with Trip Advisor reviews that seem too good to be real.
The walk from Cocohut to the beach (at the end of the walk in this picture) could be entertaining. Here we've just encountered a monitor lizard coming up the path we were going down. He tried to escape into the jungle but couldn't force himself through the fence. I had to walk around him and drive him back up the path where Bobbi was taking pictures so he could find the gap and make his way slowly and deliberately into the underbrush. It's not unusual to see these anywhere in Malaysia. While eating at Kak Yah Local Food (recommended!) they might pass by our table.
Getting off the island from Longbeach was no problem. The jeti is at the north end of the beach, which is a stretch of hot sand, not amenable for hauling luggage or dive gear over if it doesn't all fit on your back. But Turtle Bay divers had a group of divers they were taking over there to do an open water course, so they just piled our stuff on the boat and gave us a lift across the bay. At the jeti young lads appeared to help us get our gear up the steps. They looked after us and showed us our boat and didn't hassle us for payment, which is how the friendly local people normally treat foreigners in Malaysia. We were really well taken care of by Fizzy and Turtle Bay Divers.
It was an uneventful boat ride the half hour over to Kuala Besut, the best kind. Arriving on the jeti there it was a short walk over to one of the Chinese restaurants to have cold beer and a snack before catching a grab to the bus station for our 8 pm bus overnight to Penang.
We really like bus travel in Malaysia. There are frequent, comfortable buses; you can book online, but all you usually have to do is turn up at a bus station to get one leaving within half an hour. There's a lot more legroom and surrounding space on a bus than on a plane, and our mobile hotspots work on buses, so we have data throughout the trip and can can even connect our computers. Of course if you want to take a really first class bus, like Aeroline, then you need to book ahead and pay more, but it's worth it.
The bus we were on advertised wifi, but there was none, and there was a mains point at each seat, but no electricity there. Often there are USB ports at each seat, but not on our trip. We had our USB chargers and since we slept half the trip, we weren't lacking for power. Back in Penang, we reached home before dawn.
We're really glad we went on this trip. COVID-19 is on the rebound now in Malaysia. People really need to wear masks but the government is only edging toward making that mandatory. People are being detected covid positive on arrival at the airports. They are given pink arm bands to wear and told to go home to quarantine. Their pictures are turning up on Facebook, out in public wearing their bands. I think the goverment might arrest and punish them. It's serious. The number of new cases is starting to inch back up in the country, 20-30 a day. We're so glad we got away when we did.
