Snapshot: Snorkeling

My trip to Lankawi this Christmas holiday was great. One of my favorite things that we did was snorkeling. This is a picture of me at the beach there. One of the great things about this snorkeling experience was that I had two friends to enjoy it with. Trevor (12) and Mia (10) stayed at my hotel and we planned to take the trip to Pulau Payar Coral Reserve together. When my family and I signed up, they put a yellow band around each of our wrists (see pic). I was also armed with a red hair tie on my wrist along with the wristband. There were three beaches. The main one that we ate, changed, showered and rested at was in the middle. There was one to the right that I never did venture to, but I was told the coral wasn't as good over there anyway. The beach to the left (where picture was taken) was my favorite. The beach was great, the water was the right level that the sea urchins weren't too close, the fish were beautiful. I loved the water. but my snorkel popped right out of my goggles and into the sea a little after I got in! As I swam into deeper water, I noticed a yellow snorkel lying on the white sand of the ocean floor. Then I realized, the snorkel was mine! Trevor dared me to swim down the 4-5 meters and grab it. I looked down. It was either my goggles were fogging up, or 4-5 meters is a long way down! I sucked in all my breath, let it out (holding a lot of air in your lungs with only make you float more, making it hard to swim downwards), and dove under. No, my goggles were just fine, it was a long way down. I snatched the snorkel, turned my face towards the sky, and pushed off from the ocean floor. For a terrible moment before I reached the surface, I thought my lungs were going to pop! I did make it back to shore alive, though (dramatic much?).

My family and I had been to this particular snorkel site before, so we knew what was good to see. Some of the sights on the list are the barracuda, the giant (I DO mean giant!! Seriously, this thing was like, fifteen gazillion kajilonmeters long!!) grouper, a lion fish (extremely painful. Almost fatal to the touch.), little sharks (cute, they looked like a big scary shark that was put in a shrink machine by accident), and parrot fishes (beautiful). I loved to see all the marine fish!

The way we got to Pulau Payar is by boat. There was a really awesome boat that we took that was like a speed boat but about 3 times bigger. There was a deck with benches that the staff called the sun deck (properly named after the sunburns white people get when sitting there for the whole hour (see my cheeks in pic)!) I spent the whole hour standing on the side of the sun deck, leaning over the railing with the smell of saltwater tickling my nose. As the boat plowed through the blue, blue water, the waves churned, foamed and rippled. Islands in the distance passed over time and small fishing boats with fishers lying on their backs with their caps pulled over their faces came by and the fishermen would startle and then resume their afternoon naps. It was a beautiful sight to behold. I hope to take that boat back to Pulau Payar sometime and relive the experience!