Exciting Stuff

When I was Skyping Ondra in Langkawi he asked me a question to answer the next time we spoke: what's the most exciting thing I've done over here. I've been thinking about it, and although I've seen some amazing things, stayed with and met amazing people and eaten some pretty amazing stuff I wouldn't necessarily call much of what I've done "exciting". Then I went to the Perhentian islands... I arrived at D'Lagoon Chalet by speed boat and you could see from the boat the clarity of the turquise water, something I didn't have in Langkawi. There were lots of us on the boat when we left the mainland but by the time we reached the last stop - D'Lagoon, a tiny secluded lagoon with one chalet right at the very North of the smaller island - it was only me and a Finnish couple. I checked into the dorm for four nights (only three of us in the twelve-bed dorm, a little fuller than the ten-bed dorm in Kota Bharu I stayed in on my own, and here in Kota Terengganu I'm all alone in a five-bed dorm. Brilliant!), got changed into my swimming shorts, rented some snorkeling gear from the desk and took my first paddle in the lagoon.

With the bright sun shining down the water was as clear as anything. I wasn't expecting too much in the way of coral and wildlife, thinking most of it would have died from seeing all the skeletal debris on the shore, but after swimming out only a few metres it was obvious that the lagoon was very much alive. The colours of the fish and coral were quite spectacular and it really did feel like I'd entered an entirely different world. Even after looking down at this new world for hours I was still seeing new corals and new fish, getting up close to them and spending enough time to get to know their personalities: the territorial ones, the shy ones, the curious ones... and with my underwater camera I snapped away at it all.

I spent a long time in the waters around the islands, sometimes in the lagoon, sometimes off the beach the other side of the island and once off a beach on the other larger island after kayaking there. Over there there was even more coral, even more fish and two things I'd been looking forward to since arriving: turtles and sharks! During my good three hours in the water off this island I only saw one green turtle and although I saw plenty of black-tip reef sharks they were all juveniles. There are some big two metre-long ones that come to the beach a short walk from the lagoon for about an hour in the morning and although I tried to see them twice I'd failed both times.

I was talking to my dorm mate Steve from Northumbeland and a couple from Germany and Finland while we were eating some barbarqued squid they'd caught earlier about what the most exciting thing I'd done would be. I said that I wanted to see the big sharks just so that I could say I'd seen them, becuase that would definately be something I could catagorise as "exciting". But then they pointed out that seeing turtles & small sharks in the beautiful water, having monitor lizards running about the chalet freely on their way to and from the surrounding jungles, having geckos crawling about the dorm (one of which woke me up in the middle of the night as it clambered down the windowsill to the floor via my face), catching squid for supper (which I tried to do but didn't even get a bite!) and waking up to look out the window and finding yourself a mere twenty metres from the sea with only coconut trees, sand and hammocks in your way is all pretty exciting stuff. And they were right.

And when the excitment got too much, I found a hammock underneath the coconut trees and slept . Oh, and I wrote a song about lying in a hammock underneath the coconut trees, which the other guests and locals seemed to like when I sang it in one of the nighly sessions, accompanied by goat-skin drums and brass gongs. I'd have rathered steel drums and a couple of trumpets, but there we go. And on the last day, just to protect my back that had seen enough sun during all my time spent head-down in the water, I stayed in the common area and watched all five Harry Potters. Man, I love being able to do whatever I like!!