Turtle power

We caught a clean, comfortable night train from KL to Kota Bharu, the state capital of Kelantan in north-eastern Malaysia. This was mainly a stopover for the Perhentian islands, but we stayed a couple of nights at Zeck’s, another eccentric little guesthouse full of kittens and friendly staff, discovering another amazing Indian canteen, wandering round the markets and malls.

In Kota Bharu they love birdsong so much that they play recordings of it from the rooftops, and gather with caged birds for singing competitions. Pretty spooky when the chirping is mixed with the eerie calls-to-prayer wafting out of the mosques.

Then it was time for our tropical dreams to come true. We arrived on Perhentian Kecil on a juddery, vomit-inducing speedboat which plonked us at D’Lagoon, a small private beach and guesthouse. The sea was a startling deep turquoise, teeming with colourful fishes.

The wildlife on land wasn’t bad, either: giant monitor lizards would amble across the rocks, owls would swoop down to hoot outside our room, and tiny baby turtles flipped around in a pond, waiting to be released when they were strong enough to defend themselves. A sign on the wall threatened: ‘Dear guest, we are going to knock on your door when turtle come to lay eggs on the beach. Thank you.’ There was also a monkey on a string and a mouse in our room.


But there was no time to laze around – we had come to learn to dive, so we signed up for an open-water course. We spent the first night cramming half a textbook’s worth of mindboggling theory before we met Pierre, our smouldery Swiss instructor. He informed us that we would be diving to 12 metres that very morning, and I nearly ran off crying, scared of panicking underwater and drowning.

But I was glad he threw us straight in because it gave me less time to worry. Once underwater, the obscene weight of the air-cylinder and weight-belt vanished and we floated in slow motion around the coral alongside parrotfish, barracudas, angelfish, tiny bobbing clownfish and shoals of glittering silvery jewels. It was like flying, or floating through space.

Over the next few days we saw stingrays, turtles and sharks skulking in the depths between learning to save each other if our air ran out, navigate underwater and perform fin-pivots. It was excellent fun, and we recovered from three exhausting days in true beach-bum style.