Well I have had some really bad dives that I wish I am back in the office...

Taking advantage of season-opening Early Bird Promotion (see another post here), I visited Redang Island again from 28~30 March 2009. No diving this time, only signing up for the standard 3D2N snorkeling package, but nevertheless as tired if not more.

Redang Island, a beautiful tropical island retreat, is located 45km off the coast of Terengganu state, about 400km from Kuala Lumpur. It can be reached either by air (http://www.airasia.com, http://www.malaysiaairlines.com) or by road. Either way, you will en route Kuala Terengganu, the state capital of Terengganu. Besides that. Berjaya Air operates Dash 7 flights directly touching down on the island from Subang Airport, Kuala Lumpur.

Sharing some of the transportation details from my March 2009 Redang 3D2N trip:

Getting There & Around

Kuala Lumpur (Putra Bus Terminal ) -> Kuala Terengganu Bus Terminal:

• The bus departed on-the-dot at 10.00pm from the Putra Bus Terminal near PWTC, streaked through the night with its air-conditional at full power as usual. I was shivering under a thin jacket. The bus stopped at a rest area at around 1:30am, for 30 minutes or so. We reached Kuala Terengganu Bus Terminal at 4:30am.
• Whole journey: 6.5 hours.
• Bus operator: I used Trans National. There are many other operators plying the same route, some have better repo than the other. But do expect the bus, regardless of which operators, to be heavy on the right foot at night trips. Just sleep it through or you will start to have weird thoughts.
• Cost: RM 38.00 one-way
• On the final day of the trip, we took the 1pm bus from KT back to KL. It was boring. Too early or bright to really sleep.
• Notes:
  • warm clothing is required to survive the bus trip for normal human beings
  • long distance bus runs on schedule. Be on time or see your bus leaves without you on board. 11pm bus might be better for this route so that you will be reaching at 5:30am. The Redang resorts operator normally arranged ground transport to reach Kuala Terengganu Bus Terminal at 6:30am, so the wait tme is shorter. Do check with resort operators before booking.
  • There is a McDonald’s just beside the KT Bus Terminal, and now it starts to serve breakfast at 4am – what a godsend! Just order some food and take a nap there waiting for the ground transport to arrive.

KT Bus Terminal -> Merang Jetty (ground transport):

• the resort can arrange this, but this normally is not included in the published package cost.
• The journey from KT to Merang takes about 45mins.
• Cost: depends on the resort, as the resort helps to arrange this. Redang Holiday Beach Villa charged RM20/person for two-way transport.
• Note:
  • Some resorts are not using Merang Jetty. Best is to leave this to be arranged by the resort.

Merang Jetty -> Redang Island (boat transport):

• resort package includes this.
• Boat journey: around 1 hour.
• some resorts are using better boats than others. The resort that I was staying with overloaded both ways to and fro. Worse yet, no life jackets were distributed! People have started to forget about the Oct 2007 Bluewater ferry incident where it caught fire and sank near Pulau Tioman killing 4. Government has vowed to enforce strict regulations, but WHERE???

Snorkeling Trips (fishing boat transport):

Snorkellers swam to embark the boat

• Redang Holiday Beach Villa uses probably the worst type of boat for the snorkeling trips – it looks like one of those fishing boats. Due to its size, it can’t be moored to the beach, not to mention it travels so damn slow. All other boats zoom pass it.
• To embark an disembark, we have to swim to it, about 20m from the beach.
• Standard 3D2N package includes 3 snorkeling trips where 1 of them is scheduled at the Marine Park (Park Fee: RM5/person)
• I envy those resorts that use catamaran…

On the Long Beach (Pasir Panjang):

• Stroll. Enjoy the beach. And anything on it.
• From one end (Redang Holiday Beach Villa) to the other (Laguna Redang, Redang Reef Resort), it takes less than 20mins.

Long Beach - white sand, pristine water

Redang Holiday Beach Villa - Seaview Semi-D Bungalow

Visited Redang again last weekend, 28~30 March 2009 to be exact. No diving this time, just 3D2N snorkeling pacakge. This write up is not really about the trip as a whole, but just about the resort we were staying during the trip – Redang Holiday Beach Villa.

This resort is the at one of the extreme ends of the Pasir Panjang, while another grand resort, Laguna Resort, is at the other end. The Redang Holiday side of the beach is more laid back while at the Laguna side, there are stage set up for live bands at Laguna Resort and Redang Beach Resort. The music runs late into the nights especially during weekends.

We chose the Seaview Semi-D Bungalow, which offers arguably the best view among all Redang resorts.The bungalows are built at the side of the hill slopes. The view up here is superb – half of the Pasir Panjang Beach and the unlimited sea view just outside the doorstep literally. On top of that, the semi-D bungalow units are built among the woods, making one feels really close to the nature. Can’t say the same to the grand Laguna Resort – it is huge, contemporary, classy and happening, but I just don’t see it fit into the Redang settings. Maybe it is just me, or sour grapes – I can’t (and won’t) afford the Laguna pricing for seaview rooms.

The Seaview bungalows are built in woods, providing a nature setting.

The Redang Holiday Beach Villa, like most of other Redang resorts, offers Early Bird Promotion annually. From mid February to end of March (some resorts even runs into mid of April), the package price is 20~30% cheaper. This is to attract more business as the island is just opening up to tourists after the monsoon close-down period (November ~ mid February), and the sea is still relatively choppy during this period.

The buffer-style is OK, not excellent but adequate. One of the 2 dinners is BBQ buffet dinner, and I love the BBQ lamb chop!

Service from the staff is great, they wear the smiles more often than not. There are a couple of India-national workers too in the restaurant. However, the snorkeling trip is a bit messy – the resort uses a big fishing boat for snorkeling trips. Due to the size of the boat, it can only anchor about 20m from the shore. This makes getting on and off the boat a havoc, especially some of the tourists are not good in swimming. Luckily no big incidents happen, but this can certainly be improved by using catamaran or smaller boats.

At the surface, Redang is still great. But down under, corals are bleaching and damaged...

On top of the package price, here are the extra costs

• RM20 for 2-way Kuala Terengganu Jetty -> Bus Terminal van transport
• RM5 for Marine Park entry (applicable if joining snorkelling or diving trip to Marine Park)
• RM10 for life jacket rental (for the duration of the stay)

Redang Holiday Beach Villa - Early Bird Promotion Package Price

To me, a really nice resort is those that can blend well with the local settings, but in the same time contains the ‘nature’ factor, as well as make it simple. Rhetoric is unnessary.

3 words for Redang Holiday Beach Villa: Keep it up!

4 words for Laguna Redang: KISS! (Keep it simple, Stupid!)

But… it is not all that rosy for Redang Holiday Beach Villa as a whole…

The boat transfer to and fro the island is overloaded, and making matter worse, it doesn’t have enough life jackets. The boatmen don’t even make an effort to distribute them anyway. This is really bad. Tioman Bluewater ferry case in Oct 2007 came into mind.

Another shortfall is that they are using fishing boat for snorkeling trips – see my other post here with further details.

So, make your own informed decision whether to select this resort. I love the place but hate the attitude to not go fix the boat/life jacket issue even after the Tioman tragedy.

It was May, and it is almost a crime to not visit the one of islands of East Coast Malaysia. This is the best time of the year to enjoy the sunny beach and calm South China Sea.

We’ve been talking about this trip since Feb and I really can’t wait anymore. Arriving the island on 25th May (Friday), I was put off by the throng of tourists (and almost all are Malaysian Chinese, go figure) on the Pasir Panjang but hey, I couldn’t care less as long as I can get my diving doses.

I’ve visited Redang Island once 1.5 years ago and was staying at Berjaya Beach Resort, which is very nice but secluded in its own lagoon. This time around, we will be staying at the ever popular and crowded Pasir Panjng (pic) for a change…

See mome photos (mostly underwater) here: http://travelgaia.com/gallery/redang_2007/

We had a pretty relax Friday afternoon, did some snorkelling at the Tanjung Tengah house reef at Pasir Panjang and sighted a nursery black-tip shark among others curious fishes, and I fiddled with the underwater camera casing to be more familiar with it. It was at least 6 months ago that I last used it!! The house reef is under threat by the sheer amount of snorkellers here and I saw some of them stepping directly on the hard corals! It is only a matter of time that the house reef to be badly damaged and the dead corals are already all over the the seabed right now.

Blossoming tourism, like in so many other places in the world, is a double-sided sword. Sad sad sad. We also went out to a snorkelling site by boat with others from the same resort. It was nice too with crystal clear water and bright sunlight – we saw a cuttlefish running away from us among other usual suspects. I was trying hard to capture a photo of my buddy Bill with his head and torso above the water and the rest of the body under, along with some coral reef in sight. This is my best effort. The wave made it super hard to have one half of the small lens above the water line and another half below.

The next day we had 3 dives with Redang Pelangi, led by divemaster Jan Shir, a pretty nice, balding Chinese. 3 of us were the only divers that day so we were pretty much going with our own pace, which was what I prefer. We did an unconventional (and not recommended) dive sequence, from easy to hard:

- first dive is an easy 12-18m Mak Cantik not far from Pasir Panjang (5-min boat), kind of like the checkout dive for the dive master to judge our diving skills etc. We should have done the checkout dive the day earlier but we were just too lazy then. We did around 50mins here. I wish I have long memory for the fishes and corals that I’ve seen but I didn’t (underwater camera helps, but it is time for me to read up some coral and fish identification books!). I had my favorite photo of the trip taken here: 2 commensal shrimps (Periclemenes Brevicarpalis?)!

The always photogenic clown anemonefish (below) was also captured here. 40bar left in tank when the dive was concluded.

- 2nd dive is just GREAT. It is so great that it deserved an entry all for itself. One of the best dives I have had so far, in my limited diving experiences of less than 25 dives to-date. It was an 18m straight down Sandy Bottom dive in the middle of the sea, and there isn’t any buoy or mooring line. It was around 50mins too. 40bar left.

- 3rd dive is at Black Coral Garden near Pulau Lima. This one is a bit further out and about 15min on boat. We went down to 31.5m and stayed around that depth for about 10-15mins before ascend gradually. I wasn’t aware by then what a ‘Black Coral’ (Antipathes sp.) is, but I will have long memory of the eerie, cold and bad visibility of the 30m depth, and the encounter of a huge triggerfish there. It charges from ~5m away towards me face-to-face and decided to swim away just about ~2m from me. Lucky me!

This was my personal deepest (for my AOW certification we did only 26m at Deep Dive), nothing to brag about but nevertheless a personal record. We stayed for a reputable 46mins and I left 30bar. The camera, mystically, was jammed on the lens cover and couldn’t take any photos of this dive. We had a fun encounter with a group of Jacks that swimmed with us a bit at ~15m.

I was having problem to equalize on all the 3 dives and I guess my technic is not correct. Got to google some site and read more on equalizing. I was also the ‘air hog’ among 3 of us and always using ~30-50bar more than the rest. Using underwater camera probably is one of the reasons, but I would have to go the gym more often to improve my cardio. Now, I am serving my ‘surface time’ while waiting for my next dive trip, and hopefully it won’t be a long one .

More photos here: http://travelgaia.com/gallery/redang_2007/

It was after our first dive at Mak Cantik that the dive master Jan Shir was asking, “Do you guys wanna see something different?” and let us think about it during the surface interval. The ‘different’ site is called just ‘Sandy Bottom’ (and I heard the divemaster calling it ‘Twilight Zone’ but I might be wrong) and there will be no corals and no big fishes, but he guarantees we will be seeing something different. Even though Redang is not known for great muck diving site, Bill and me are all game and we want to see something different than the coral reefs.

We started to get prepared for this special dive after our lunch at Redang Pelangi. Our friend Gan didn’t show up on time at the dive shop so after a bit of waiting and briefing we start our journey to the dive site. JanShir talked about the normal stuff but put emphasis on lost buddy as well as underwater navigation. In this type of terrain (Sandy Bottom) navigation can be assisted by observing the sand pattern, the current flow direction (coolness on the left side or right side, if any), and the sun orientation (sun over left shoulder or right shoulder). Well I was like, aye aye, and can’t wait to get to the dive site.

It was about 10-15min of speed boat journey to the south. I noticed we went pass the Marine Park island at our right hand side. The boat slowed down in the middle of the sea and Jan Shir was like, “Lets get prepare divers!”, and there is no buoy or mooring line in sight! We slipped into the fins and did giant stride into the water and start to descent.

I had problem equalizing, just like in any other dives, but eventually get over it. We went straight down until we reached the sandy bottom which is 18m depth. There is literally nothing insight except seemingly unlimited stretch of sands, and not a single drop of coral exists here. This is probably what a Muck Dive is. I had experience another similar muck dive at Tulamben, Bali where we descent over a slope of black valcano sands before reaching the USS Liberty Wreck (and we were lucky to spot some pretty nice stuff there too), but I have never done a full 50mins of muck dive.

We started to explore the sandy bottom and visibility is not great but about 10m. I had my first enconter ever with a sea hare, which can swim gently with its big flaps. This creature is really fun to observe, where some will be crawling at the bottom while others trying to swim away from all our attention. We saw at least 20 similar sea hares during the whole dive. It seems to be this species Aplysia sydneyensis but I might be wrong. We see a few different species of the sea hares but it is really hard to distinguish between them. After spending some time playing with some of them we moved on along the seabed searching for other stuff. I see some tiny vegetation that I just couldn’t identify for now. Everything here seems to be in minute scales.

Moving on we were treated with what I would call ‘Oasis of Anemone’. It was in the middle of sandy bottoms (similar to desert on land) that suddenly we came across a patch of anemone, lesser than 20cm in radius, along with a few saddleback clown anemonefish swimming within. The saddlebacks swim a bit awkward, and it gets really funny when they tried to hide within the short anemome fingers that almost the whole body is exposed. This is my first encounter with saddleback clowns too. And when look closely, there are actually many tiny shrimps, mostly almost transparent, living in within the anemone too!

We saw a few more of these patches of anemone with clownfishes throughout the dive. I was wondering whether this is how the aliens/ETs see us, strangled in a small planet in the middle of no where?

Fire urchin – 1st encounter for me, too – is really beautiful but dangerous to be touched. We saw 2 fire urchins, one of them is home to a tiny little Zebra Crab. Too bad the photo that I took of the Zebra Crab (Zebrida Adamsii) living in the Fire Urchin was out of focus — did I tell you that I hated the super slow, hunt-and-miss focus of the Canon A620 in Macro mode? –  I should have stayed a bit longer here! Lesson learnt: always take a couple more photos of the same subject! There was a pretty snail (don’t really know its real species name ) too, and a big shell that I’ve seen mechants selling at some of the beaches.

Last but not least, we came across a rather well preserved fish skeleton. It is only possible here, at this deserted Sandy Bottom, that the skeleton can remain in such a good condition. It seems like it just died not long ago, where some of the fleshes were still intact. JanShir was elated when seeing the skeleton. He wrote this down with his pencil on his plastic slate, turned it and showed to us: ‘fish skeleton’, as if we couldn’t tell. And this was the ONLY thing that he has written  down at all on the pad throughout the 3 dives! We spent some time inspecting this rather lonely death before venturing away.

All in all a very fascinating 50min dive on the 18m Sandy Bottom. I am sure this is not even close compared to other great muck diving sites elsewhere but seeing so many new and rather bizarrre stuff to me are good enough to counter my ear pain. The photos were all taken with ‘Underwater’ white balance setting in the Canon A620 but it certainly is not good enough to cure the color tint, and I made no effort to have them fixed up in Photoshop too… Laziness is setting in.

When can I go muck diving again?

Link to more trip photo: http://travelgaia.com/gallery/redang_2007/index.html

Expenses

Transnational Bus: RM60/pax for 2-way KL->KT, 33-seater, comfortable reclining seats. Do wear long shirts/pants or a jacket as the night journey can be very cold as the aircon is quite strong. It is recommended to buy bus tickets (2ways) few weeks ahead at Putra Bus Station.

KL->KT: We bought the night bus on Thursday night 11pm and bus arrived at KT on 5:30am. 1 stop at Chenor.

KT->KL: Sunday 2pm starts but the bus was damn slow and arriving at Putra Station, KL at 10pm. 2 stops, one at Chenor and another at Termerloh R&R.

Redang Holiday 2D1N Package: RM180/pax (including 2-way boat transfer from Merang<->Redang Island). 2 Stars.

Redang Pelangi 2D1N Package: RM120/pax. 2 Stars.

Taxi from KT -> Merang: RM40/car (i.e. RM10/pax)

Bus ride from Merang -> KT: RM10/pax (see item#1 below)

Diving package @ Redang Pelangi: RM200 for 3 dives. Normal pricing is RM50/dive w/o equipment rental. Equipment rental is RM25/dive, and flat rate RM50 for 2 or more dives. Nice people here (our dive master is Jan Shir).

Total Cost for the trip: ~RM600, which I think is pretty reasonable considering this is the super peak season (starting of school holiday and at weekend). A few other friends booked Laguna Redang Resort and that set them back almost the same amount like us, but they were snorkelling package (3 snorkelling trips) while ours included 3 dives and we sneaked in a snorkelling trip as well. Of course, Laguna is more luxurious.

General Information

1: if you don’t have pre-arrangement (well, just like us :p), just go
to the end of the Merang Jeti area where you can spot many tour buses
stopping on roadside waiting for pre-booking clients. The drivers
mostly will be having tea and ‘lepak’ at the gerai there. Approach any
of them for a bus ride back to KT, it should set you back for RM10/person.

2. Most of the Redang resorts offer 3D2N package, which includes all the 3 meals plus a tea break, 2-3 snorkelling trips and 2-way boat transfers (Merang <-> Redang). Snorkelling gear rental normally is not included in the package price and it ranges from RM20-30 per set. Fin is not recommended to be used especially for shore snorkellings to avoid damage to the coral reef. There is no discount to the package price even if you opt to not go for the snorkelling trips (well you will save the equipment rental cost, of course). Most tourists have booked tour package before coming to Redang. 4 of us probably were the only ones that didn’t have any packages and do walk-in.