We did two days of diving while staying on Perhentian Besar. The two days are the perfect illustration that one’s choice of dive operators and dive sites can make or break one’s experience of diving at a destination.
Today, we did two dives with Alu Alu Divers:
- Our first dive at the Sugar Wreck had only 5m of visibility. We could hardly see the ship; only the bit that was immediately in front of us. We were told to expect certain barracudas and also to look into the Captain’s bridge for red snappers. We couldn’t even make out the bridge! We couldn’t see any sign of fish due to he poor visibility either. Apparently the visibility was quite good as far as this site goes and it gets worse much worse. Why bother! All of us agreed this was a shit site.
- The second dive was at Tanjung Tukas Laut. Visbility was much better but the sea life and coral there was unexciting. The most interesting stuff we saw was Parrot fish and Clown fish; that’s a pretty sad situation! I thought this sight was poor while others thought it was average. Talking to other dive masters later, they all reckoned it is a boring site with not much interesting sea life. Why on earth were we taken there?
In the evening, I enquired with the dive master as to the dive spots for tomorrow. He told me the names and I asked “Are they good sites?” He replied “They’re all good here.” I replied “How do you explain this morning then.” He said that this morning was good by most people’s standards. I admit I have been quite spoilt with Sipadan, Bunaken and Weh in my short time diving.
I didn’t think the British dive master was particularly vigilant. I didn’t see him look back very often like all dive masters do, to make sure the group was still there. I had to swim up to him to report my tank levels as he didn’t turn back to ask. In general, there wasn’t very much attention in general and if I had been a less experienced diver I would probably be rather nervous. The two dive masters appear quite overworked with four dives a day and the last few days have been particularly busy with large Singaporean groups.
By the way, don’t just avoid a particular dive centre because I didn’t have a good experience. Dive masters come and go, and in larger centres they may not all be alike.