Dive Trip 2 Lang Tengah Island

Well, Van and I are definitely addicted to scuba diving. We had a wonderful dive weekend on Lang Tengah Island (between Rendang and Perhential Islands). We got to experience two new dives. We did a night dive (my first and Van's second). We also went on our deepest dive so far (25 meters or 75 feet). Both were a great experience and something that can be credited toward our advanced open water certification if we choose to pursue it. This blog will kind of be a hodge-podge of photos.

Left. Sea Turtle tracks where she hauled her heavy bottom up the shore to lay her eggs in the sand above the high tide line. She was a very old and large turtle judging by the width between her flippers. The eggs will take about 2 months to hatch and then the babies will have to run the gauntlet of predators to make it to the ocean where they will face more predators. I love sea turtles and can't wait to see a baby!

Left - Very creative use of old fins!

This is Kamal our master diver on most of our dives. On Sunday Van and I got to go out with just Kamal. We saw Giant Grouper, Sea Turtles, Trigger Fish, a Giant Puffer Fish, etc. It was one of the best dives ever. Kamal calls Van and I "Mom and Dad" and constantly gives us hugs!

It made us miss our kids (Joe and Laine) even more!

The beaches are beautiful and I enjoyed walking in the white sand collecting "heart shaped" coral.

Oh, a cute little green crab playing on the rocks!

The beautiful clear blues and greens of the South China Sea. We are so blessed to live by such wonderful places. Every time we go we meet people from all over the world. They marvel at our good fortune to live so close to all the places they can only visit on vacations.

So, the bathrooms have plants growing in them and you have to pay 30 sen to use the open-doored tandas. As I was lining up this shot, a guy came around the corner and started unbuckling his pants. I was polite and turned around until he was done. I don't think he ever saw me he was so intent on the task at hand.

Oh, my nieces would be so excited to see "Little Nemo's" in the ocean! This photo was taken by Kelvin who was in our group and was nice enough to share his underwater photos with us. Van and I haven't invested in an underwater camera yet, but we are planning on it soon. Kelvin gave us some great suggestions on what to buy. Thanks, Kelvin. You are a great man!

Part of the fun is learning to really look for stuff! It's very easy to look right at something and not realize it's alive. This "Rock Fish" was well named.

This is a Leopard Shark! It was our very first Shark siting! It was amazing! We are busy learning all of the hand signals for the different types of fish. A shark symbol is holding your hand up on your head like a fin! It's quite fun learning underwater sign language!

Here we are the happy diving couple! Van never wears a wet suit and I usually don't, just happened to have one on because I thought I might get cold on our deep water dive earlier in the day. It was cooler for sure, but not cold at all.

Here is a yellow margined Moray Eel. How cool is that? I love them. This one is purple with kind of yellow gold markings. They are very hard to see and like to hide in cracks and crevices. They are nothing like they were portrayed in the movie "The Deep" that's for sure. I think they got a bad rap!

Here is a small blue spotted ray. It was very shy. This is one of the smaller ones we saw, but we did see some that were a lot larger.

Here is a little cleaner shrimp. The colors on his pincher's were beautiful.

Oh, here is a beautiful Hawks Bill Sea Turtle. It wedged itself in beneath the rocks and was taking a nap. I'm sure it was resting and getting ready to lay it's eggs soon.

Here is a very fuzzy hermit crab. If I didn't see the eyes (which look like candy cigarettes) I never would have thought it was alive!











And, last but not least, I saw this sign and truly felt that it was listening to my soul. I love pictures and I love leaving only bubbles!

Until our next dive trip...

We've arrived. Tioman Island. Theresa, Ken, Robert's Mum, and Robert disembark the Berjaya Airlines Dash-8, that safely deposited us on the island.

The Berjaya Air plane leaving. It makes you want to shout "the plane, the plane" as you see it exiting. The plane flies straight at the jungle hillside and makes a 45 degree turn to the right to land. Also, if you don't stop in time, you run into another hillside at the end of the runway.

Traveling by shuttle bus to the Berjaya Resort, you pass the staff apartments. It seems to me scooters for the 3 miles of road on the island and TV dishes for entertainment are high on their priority list.

I saw this sticker and thought of my son Joe. He loves pirates.

For the shuttle to the dive shop, they crammed us in a really ancient van. The doors wouldn't open except from the outside and barely closed. When it started up the hill the driver burned the clutch out and it was smoking like crazy and smelled hot. I pictured the contraption starting on fire and us burning to death stuck inside. I wanted out and with the language barrier the driver just wasn't getting the fact we were serious. He finally figured out that we meant business when we started exiting via the windows. We laughed about it after, but it was a very uncomfortable trapped feeling while it was happening.

Although I don't particularly like cats, this one had the most amazing gold eyes. Cats here are treated very well. I try to take photos of the more unusual ones.

Melang Rock is another dive location we explored. It was amazing to think about how such a large rock ended up perched perfectly balanced on the rocks below it.

We have to spend so much surface time in between dives to get the excess nitrogen out of our systems. While you are sitting there waiting there are any number of things to do to while away the time. Here, Robert, out dive instructor, makes masks out of watermelon rinds. Robert is hilarious. He makes the surface interval time go amazingly fast with his antics.

This is the view of Melang Rock from Coral Beach. Coral Beach is one of the most amazing places I have ever been. The water is gin clear, a beautiful blue, and has the whitest sandy beach. I would love to camp there some time.

Our dive boat waiting while we made a quick "pit stop" at Coral Island.

Life at Charlie's age is all about discovery. If you ever feel like you've lost the curious part of your nature, all you have to do is spend some quality time with a two-year old at the beach. We were so lucky to be able to watch Anne and Mike Schultz's boys (Charlie and Thomas) while their parents took a diving lesson. What beautiful children. It made us long for the day when we'd be grandparents, but I think Van and I would both like our kids to get married first. In the meantime, we will treasure our time with TT (Thomas) left and Charlie (above).

This beautiful example of a monitor lizard was sunning himself after a brief downpour on the driveway pavers. He had some pretty nasty looking claws. Good thing I had the long lens on the camera and he wasn't moving very fast.

The sunsets were beautiful. This sailboat was moored off the beach for several days. I envied the skipper that was sitting on the back dangling his feet in the water watching the sunset. Every night the masts would be lit with lights and it was awesome to see.

Ruben our happy dive master. It seems all dive masters here smoke like chimneys before and after each dive. It's crazy. I don't think I've had a dive master yet who didn't smoke. This location is Labas Island. There were a bunch of swim throughs, but Van doesn't like them since he is about 1.5 times the size of everyone around here, he's worried he'll get stuck. We swim over and watch the bubbles escape so we know where they are below us. It's fine with me even though I actually like swimming through most of them. Since Van and I are dive buddies, we stick together. That means if one of us doesn't swim through the other one doesn't either. It's a good system designed for our safety and we honor it.

Well, as the sun sets on our last night it makes me marvel at the beauty we've seen since coming to Malaysia. We are truly blessed with great abundance and beauty.

Until the next adventure...