About Malaysia
Malaysia is devided into two parts: West Malaysia and of course East Malaysia. These are separate islands. West Malaysia is located between Singapore and Thailand. East Malaysia is attached to the north of Brunei and Indonesian Kalimantan (former Borneo). Only East Malaysia is known as a malaria-area, so take your shots and pills!
Both islands are govered with jungle, so if you are a real nature-lover, this country has it all: wild monkeys, snakes, and a lot of creapy animals that'll try to give you a bite or a sting.
The west coast of West-Malaysia, is the most touristic. For divers, we recommend the east coast. There are a lot of islands along the coast, like Pulau Perhentian, Pulau Rendang and Pulau Tioman. We visited Perhentian and Tioman.
West-Malaysia / Pulau Perhentian
On Pulau Perhentian Besar (the big island), we stayed at the Coral Vieuw Beach Resort, one of the better places on the island. There is a divecenter next to the hotel, 'Pro Diver's World'. Directly in front of the divecenter, is the housereef. Shorediving is possible here, but stay in the circle of lines, that keeps the speedboats of the beach. It's a nice shallow dive, and we saw three Black-tip reef sharks and a giant green sea turtle in about half an houre.
The rest of the divespots are about a 20 to 30 minutes boatride away. In spite of a bit poor visability, we liked diving at Perhentian a lot!
West-Malaysia / Pulau Tioman
At Tioman, we stayed in Salang Beach, at the Salang Beach resort. All the wooden chalets or rooms on this island are very basic. There are a few good divecenters. We did our dives with 'DiveAsia'.
The divespots around Tioman had the greatest variaty in corals and underwater landscapes, we saw in hole Malaysia. We saw real giant gorgonia's and tube sponces. On almost all our dives we saw our favorite animals: Turtles! The most common turtle in Malaysia is the green sea turtle. If you'ld like to rent a camera, do so on Tioman, because there's enough to focus your lens on.
