Under the surface of Malaysia

Now, after a day of work, I am writing this whilst sitting on a beach at a candle-lit table waiting for the BBQ to be ready. The afternoon was spent lying in the sun, finally getting a few hours sleep, enjoying the air, sun and sea views. I chose one of the medium-size beaches on the Perhentian Kecil island, with about 6 restaurants/cafes/bars, 5 chalet style accommodation options and 2 dive shops. Of course most people are couples, but they are all friendly and open at the bar!
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Yesterday was my first wreck dive which was pretty cool, although the visibility was not that high. The second dive was a traditional 'coral and fish' dive and had more to see. A night spent sitting on the beach at the 'bar' with candles in the sand, chilled out music playing and slightly drunken conversations followed.

The last dive was the best, seeing some sharks, turtles, stonefish and generally swimming around amongst scholes of fish the entire time; swimming eye-to-eye alongside many of them is very cool... somewhat humbling as the fish show how superior to humans they really are - and truly beautiful, of course the corals are stunning too. And everything down there has evolved in its own way, with own colours for a reason.

I took the bus to the airport to fly back to KL and, as the area near the islands is particularly Muslim, found my fellow passengers to be entirely Women dressed with a headscarve and beautiful, flowery dresses. Malaysia is a great example, even more so than Turkey, of a country with many Muslims that can successfully modernise and where Muslims can live in harmony with Chinese, Christians, Hindus and so on.

Having said that it seems they are not really creating a single Malay identity (as the UK tries to do with its immigrants) but allows them to live separate identities alongside each other, to some extent -a policy the UK tried and declared a failure...leading to a segregation of ethnic groups and conflicts. I'll have to find some Malaysians to ask more about how they think their ethnic groups coexist, or otherwise.

The last day was spent (well, 4 hours of it -which is enough) exploring KL's squares, mosques, buildings, shops, ethnic quarters and so on. It seems a delightful city, easy to be in and get around in, clean and simple, relatively small and cheap. Only the heat and humidity bothered me, which was really high on the last day.

The flight back was packed with chinese tour groups (either Chinese from China or Malaysian Chinese), most of whom had never flown b4, and this is always an interesting experience as they struggle to adapt from the Train to the Plane... not turning phones off, standing up 10 secs after take off and touch down (only for a hostess to rush over and shove them back into their seats), sitting next to their friends rather than in their allocated seats (and walking back up the plane to find their friends while everyone else is still boarding) and so on. Well, its good to be back, I suppose!