April 3, 2013-
Up and at 'em! Mark needs to be at the dive place a little before 8:00 am so we're eating breakfast early. Still no waffles but thank goodness there are omelets.
*************
Mark is off and running! I bet he'll really love learning how to dive. He's only been talking about it since…forever? At least since our last trip to Hawaii. I'm glad he has this opportunity to try it out.
*************
We're going back to the room for some more napping and do some catching up with blog posts. Pretty darn nifty having my laptop with me….maybe this is the way to keep up my blog!?! Maybe not as there is NO wifi in our rooms and barely enough in the reception/restaurant building to check Facebook. I haven't even been successful in uploading any photos to FB. At least I'm staying up to do date with the writing. Perhaps there's a way to write posts (complete with photos) offline but I haven't figured it out – yet.
************
It's suit up time! Slather on some sunscreen and let's head out to the beach.
The tide is super low so that means if we go snorkeling now we'll be more up close to the fish. Here I go! Want to come snorkeling with me? What is it about sea anemones and clownfish that I find so irresistible???? I'm a little nervous swimming as I feel that the water is so far out that I might accidentally touch the coral (which I didn't but I just felt like it). So many fish! All sorts of shapes and colors and sizes. The girls are having a blast with their snorkel masks on and watching the fish as well. It feels wonderful to go swimming. I really need to get a new mask to replace the one that broke the other day. My Costco special broke! Darn.
****************
Hey- there's Mark over there getting his first scuba diving lesson:
ding!
That's the one-hour bell. Time to reapply sunscreen. We're so close to the equator and we've all got too much sun that I'm going to be a bit of sunscreen nazi for the rest of this trip.
Swimming, splashing, playing….just having fun.
Mark is back! He sounds soooo excited! They just swam around in the coral reef close to our resort and he got to see Moray eel and a sting ray. And very poisonous scorpion fish (under the pier off in the distance).
Cool!
Remind me not to snorkel too close to that pier!!!!
**********************
He needs to get something to eat quickly as they're heading out the a place called Shark Point to do more diving. Awesome!
****************
Let's dry off and head over to the little souvenir shop and see if they have snacks. Hmmmm….how about some of these interesting Malaysian BBQ flavored potato chips? And some cold Isotonic drinks.
Oops.
**************
Mark is out of time!
**************
Time for him to get ready and head out on the boat.
Mark and his diving instructor (he's from Spain):
*****************
The girls and I will head off to get some lunch instead. Pineapple and watermelon lassis, chicken satay and an Asian noodle-y dish. Yum! My tummy is FULL. I hope you had enough to eat as we had enough to share.
The sun is out in full force so let's head back to the room for some down time.
I'd rather us stay out of the mid-day, oven baking temperature sun shine. I bet you could fry an egg using solar heat!
****************
Mark is back from his dive!
He said the water was a little bit cloudy but he did see a black-tip reef shark, sea turtle, Moray eel, bat fish and barracudas.
I can't remember the last time he was so excited! I think this is going to turn into a life-long hobby/pursuit! 🙂
******************
He did say that the diving center would take us all out- the girls and I would go snorkeling while he did another dive with an instructor. Let's go sign up! ….oh, but first let's let Mark get something to eat. He's pretty hungry and he really didn't have much of a lunch.
We just signed us up for this combo trip tomorrow at 3:30pm. At 10:00am we're going out on a snorkeling trip to Rawa Islands (they're a cluster of very small islands to the northwest of Perhentian Kecil – the small island). That should be an interesting trip!
*******************
Time for a bit of reading time back in our room. We're not as interested today in being in the blasting hot sun.
**********************
Time to suit up!
********************
Let's go sit in that giant swimming pool- called The Ocean. No, this resort doesn't have a pool but who needs one anyway when you've got this:
Ah.
Doesn't that feel great??
******
I want to try out that new mask I just bought (since my snorkeling mask strap broke a couple days ago. boo!). What do you know? It works great!
Boy the water clarity is pretty bad this afternoon. Mark learned from his diving instructor that due to unusually high and low tides that it's causing the surface sediment to churned over and lifted up.
writing Chinese characters in the sand:
It says: Ni hao! (hello)
I smell the BBQ. Time to take a shower, dry off, get dressed and head to dinner! We're ready for some food!
Oh my.
Oh my.
The service tonight is particularly and painfully lousy.
We have been sitting for here at least ten minutes (or has it been more than that?) and nobody has brought us menus. I think I'll go grab our own menus. Another ten minutes + pass by…still nobody comes to talk to us, say hello or – gasp- take our order. I wonder if I walk up to the counter if they'd take our order. Nope. I got rudely told to go sit at the table and wait until someone could come around and take our order.
We're still waiting! For some reason I'm extra cranky tonight. And there are a horde of screaming German children running amok with no parents in sight. Great. Just great. And I can't even get a stinkin' drink!
Finally a waiter!
Pretty please take our order.
He said we'd have to wait 30 minutes for our food to arrive. So, in theory we could have gotten thirty minutes ago if they'd taken our order when we first arrived. Grrr….
Mark and Annika are passing the time playing a game of chess on the iPad. I'm browsing the internet as the wifi signal seems to be cooperating tonight. Ava is playing with one of her iPod apps.
Our long awaited meals are finally here!
Mmmmmmm…I ordered fish and prawns. Yum!
Annika got steak and prawns. Sadly her steak was so overdone that you could barely chew it. Yuck. Not good. Mark beef tandoori (skewers of meat) and Ava got the salmon fillet.
So, now we've got our meal how about getting the drinks we ordered first? Hmmmmm???
Perhaps we should see if there is a different restaurant to eat at tomorrow.
While I do understand that places can get busy and that things might be slow but there is definitely a different way to treat your customers. I'm guessing they don't care if they get repeat customers? Or that their customers give glowing recommendations to friends? Hmm…strange way of doing business. Still, I wish I wasn't feeling so grumpy tonight.
**********************
It was a *very nice* day and I'm going to try very hard not to turn into a Grouch because of the lousy service at the resort's restaurant.
*****************
How about we end the day by sitting on one of the beach chairs and watching the lightning storm happening on the main land of Malaysia?
It's certainly more impressive than the one we saw last night.
Wow!!!! Did you just see that bolt of lightning? Beautiful! (and where the heck is our camera when we need it????)
********************
And the stars are brighter tonight. We can even see the Milky Way.
And there's an Islamic chant we can hear coming across the water from the neighboring island (a man is chanting – it sounds like it's over a loud speaker). It sounds so exotic, so foreign.
****************
Ah, this makes up for the lousy service at the restaurant. Now I can breathe again.
****************
Time to turn into little pumpkins and head to bed.
Tomorrow we'll go on TWO snorkeling trips!
***************
I haven't done any jogging on this trip (to prepare for the Great Wall 7.5k run which is happening May 18) but I have done quite a bit of swimming on this trip. That counts as exercise, right???
Good night!!!!!