Friday, December 7, 2012

Day 46 - Langkawi Snorkel day

This morning we woke up early to go on our snorkel day trip but when we went down for breakfast the driver was not there - we could actually see him across the street eating his own breakfast!  When the pick-up was 45 minutes late we were finally rounded up with the other tourists and got onto the Greyhound bus outside the hotel.  It took another 90 minutes to pick up the rest of the tourists and then once we got to the Kuah Jetty (ferry port) we waited around for another 15 minutes and by 11:30am we were finally on Pulau Payar Marine Island!





Before being allowed to snorkel we were told not to feed the fish as the baby black-tip sharks are very skilled at latching onto and then removing tourist's fingers and that the nearest hospital was at least 90 minutes away.  We were also reminded NEVER to step on the coral.  Unfortunately both of these instructions were ignored as we could see tourists splashing around and screaming as fish nibbled at them and sharks swam by. 

Our first bout of snorkeling was really challenging; the tide was out so at times there was only two feet of water between the surface and the coral - YIKES!  Our masks were definitely not high quality so after about 20 minutes we had to re-adjust while treading water.  Even the tourists wearing life jackets were struggling; I think a lot of coral died that day!

We took a break for lunch; which was a plastic tub that enclosed a bit of soggy but also dry fried rice, a bag of chips and a can of Iced tea (the best part of the meal).  After lunch we wandered over to the other side of the beach; which was deserted!






Enjoying a rum & coke with my view


Ty snorkeling with the black-tip sharks!




Could have stayed here forever!


Baby black-tips just off shore





After a few hours of snorkeling and relaxing on the undisturbed side of Pulau Payar we did have to go back and again took the 2-3 hour trek back to our hotel.


back to Langkawi


That night we did our best to finish up our the ten dollar bottle of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum before leaving for Kuala Lumpur tomorrow morning!

No comments:

Post a Comment