Pulau Lang Tengah, Terrenganu Malaysia
Pulau Lang Tengah - Eagles resting in the middle Island
30th March - 3rd April 2007
It happened almost a fortnight ago. It was a trip full of good and bad experiences for some of us. Honestly, my personal review of the overall is a mere disappointment - save for the wonderful company of friends which I had the privilege of diving with.
It had been 5 years since I returned to visit this small island off the coast of Terengganu in Peninsular Malaysia. Alot has changed. The pristine reefs were much reduced to mostly dead corals in the western bay of the island where we resided. The fond memories of numerous colourful thriving reef fishes and swarming blacktip reef sharks swimming in close proximity to the Blue Coral beach was significantly circumcised. Pulau Lang Tengah is a very small island located between Pulau Perhentian and Pulau Redang. This little island is accessible by a 45-minute boat ride from the Merang jetty. According to locals, Lang Tengah takes its name from 'Lang' which comes from 'helang', literally translated as 'eagle' in the Malay language, and 'tengah', meaning 'middle'. Thus, Lang Tengah means eagles resting on the middle island.
Although the resorts have reopened their doors after the passing of the North-east monsoon, the season was not in its full fledging state. The peak usually occurs in the months of June to August annually. There have been significant thwarting effects caused by the El~nino. We generally enjoyed sunny weather and calm seas but ocassional storms whipped up crashing waves, spewing rains and gusting winds. The visibility of the waters at most divesites was bad and there was not much marine diversity.
The Dive Guide and my Khakis - From left: Lingjun, Yijie, Me, Aung('DM'), Alex, Jingwei, Xiangyi and Daphne.
We put up at Redang Lang Resort. It is situated in the middle of a long stretch of white powdery sand beach. At the south-western shore of this beach is the now defunct Blue Coral Resort where I used to stay 5 years ago. There is a wide range of amentities and services at Redang Lang Resort, including the Delang Dive centre, Karaoke Bar, Minimart, TV hut, massage services, Mahjong, pool table, volleyball courts and etc. Although I would not term the resort as very good, it is definitely comfortable. Rooms were well furnished with air-conditioning, double beds and attached private restrooms with hot showers. The food was an overall acceptable but not fantastic. Resort staffs are subjectively exclusive. We had a few minior hiccups with some of them but most were accomodating - except for some patronising individuals...
On the day of arrival, we were already greeted with disorganised and uninformed system of operation. There was no proper information about the time of the 1st dive, equipment rental, person in-charge and etc. Check-in was at own time own target. There was no introduction to resort amenities and urshering to our rooms was done by ourselves. Basic resort management and customer service seemed to be lacking. To our further dismay, the dive centre did not prepare enough equipment for rental despite us confirming our trip details months ahead of arrival. Planning for equipment sharing was done at the last minute. The most horrible part was that one of the resort employees mentioned that our diveguide was a non certified 'divemaster' because the dive centre deemed it is cheaper to pay a guide rather than employing a DM. What was worse is when our 'DM' told us he had never been on a night dive before throughout his 3 years of diving experience. That was abit hard for us to swallow. He insisted that he did not have any divelight for that matter and implicitly tried to dissuade us from going on a night dive. Throughout our stay, we sort of discovered more unpleasant details such as the dive centre allowed their customers to use our own personal equipment, restricting the night dive to only at the house reef and our dear guide's lame excuses to avoid working overtime on our arrival day- that and all resulted in his tips slashed half the initially agreed amount.
Evening sumptous BBQ Dinner and Early morning Shark watching were some of the good times we had...
I logged my 100th dive this trip but sadly it was a far cry from anything spectacular. There are only a hand full of divesites around Lang Tengah. Our bromidic diving was further limited to divesites running along the western coast of the small island only. Out of the 8 dives, only 1 dive was considered satisfactory.
Diving and Snorkeling Fun!
Nonetheless, I enjoyed great companionship with fun-loving friends. Lingjun had done a good job organising this trip although deplorable incidences happened unexpectedly along the way. It was unfortunate for Daphne and Jingwei for their monetary loss at the Malaysian customs even before fun commenced. We were glad that somehow, they managed and even decided to continue with the trip. We shared many good times at diving, snorkelling, sun-tanning, mahjong, photo taking, beach volleyball, dive logging, meal times and other social communion where laughter seemed perennial.
The Eagles leaving the middle island.... but not before a group Photo (Yijie running in the background)
30th March - 3rd April 2007
It happened almost a fortnight ago. It was a trip full of good and bad experiences for some of us. Honestly, my personal review of the overall is a mere disappointment - save for the wonderful company of friends which I had the privilege of diving with.
It had been 5 years since I returned to visit this small island off the coast of Terengganu in Peninsular Malaysia. Alot has changed. The pristine reefs were much reduced to mostly dead corals in the western bay of the island where we resided. The fond memories of numerous colourful thriving reef fishes and swarming blacktip reef sharks swimming in close proximity to the Blue Coral beach was significantly circumcised. Pulau Lang Tengah is a very small island located between Pulau Perhentian and Pulau Redang. This little island is accessible by a 45-minute boat ride from the Merang jetty. According to locals, Lang Tengah takes its name from 'Lang' which comes from 'helang', literally translated as 'eagle' in the Malay language, and 'tengah', meaning 'middle'. Thus, Lang Tengah means eagles resting on the middle island.
Although the resorts have reopened their doors after the passing of the North-east monsoon, the season was not in its full fledging state. The peak usually occurs in the months of June to August annually. There have been significant thwarting effects caused by the El~nino. We generally enjoyed sunny weather and calm seas but ocassional storms whipped up crashing waves, spewing rains and gusting winds. The visibility of the waters at most divesites was bad and there was not much marine diversity.
The Dive Guide and my Khakis - From left: Lingjun, Yijie, Me, Aung('DM'), Alex, Jingwei, Xiangyi and Daphne.
We put up at Redang Lang Resort. It is situated in the middle of a long stretch of white powdery sand beach. At the south-western shore of this beach is the now defunct Blue Coral Resort where I used to stay 5 years ago. There is a wide range of amentities and services at Redang Lang Resort, including the Delang Dive centre, Karaoke Bar, Minimart, TV hut, massage services, Mahjong, pool table, volleyball courts and etc. Although I would not term the resort as very good, it is definitely comfortable. Rooms were well furnished with air-conditioning, double beds and attached private restrooms with hot showers. The food was an overall acceptable but not fantastic. Resort staffs are subjectively exclusive. We had a few minior hiccups with some of them but most were accomodating - except for some patronising individuals...
On the day of arrival, we were already greeted with disorganised and uninformed system of operation. There was no proper information about the time of the 1st dive, equipment rental, person in-charge and etc. Check-in was at own time own target. There was no introduction to resort amenities and urshering to our rooms was done by ourselves. Basic resort management and customer service seemed to be lacking. To our further dismay, the dive centre did not prepare enough equipment for rental despite us confirming our trip details months ahead of arrival. Planning for equipment sharing was done at the last minute. The most horrible part was that one of the resort employees mentioned that our diveguide was a non certified 'divemaster' because the dive centre deemed it is cheaper to pay a guide rather than employing a DM. What was worse is when our 'DM' told us he had never been on a night dive before throughout his 3 years of diving experience. That was abit hard for us to swallow. He insisted that he did not have any divelight for that matter and implicitly tried to dissuade us from going on a night dive. Throughout our stay, we sort of discovered more unpleasant details such as the dive centre allowed their customers to use our own personal equipment, restricting the night dive to only at the house reef and our dear guide's lame excuses to avoid working overtime on our arrival day- that and all resulted in his tips slashed half the initially agreed amount.
Evening sumptous BBQ Dinner and Early morning Shark watching were some of the good times we had...I logged my 100th dive this trip but sadly it was a far cry from anything spectacular. There are only a hand full of divesites around Lang Tengah. Our bromidic diving was further limited to divesites running along the western coast of the small island only. Out of the 8 dives, only 1 dive was considered satisfactory.
Diving and Snorkeling Fun!Nonetheless, I enjoyed great companionship with fun-loving friends. Lingjun had done a good job organising this trip although deplorable incidences happened unexpectedly along the way. It was unfortunate for Daphne and Jingwei for their monetary loss at the Malaysian customs even before fun commenced. We were glad that somehow, they managed and even decided to continue with the trip. We shared many good times at diving, snorkelling, sun-tanning, mahjong, photo taking, beach volleyball, dive logging, meal times and other social communion where laughter seemed perennial.
The Eagles leaving the middle island.... but not before a group Photo (Yijie running in the background)Labels: Trip Summary
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