Our stay at the Redang Holiday villas included snorkelling trips, so we joined the vast swathes of Japanese/Malaysian tourists and boarded the boat to the marine park. It was slightly concerning that everyone else had bright lifejackets on, but knowing that it’s hard to sink when swimming in the sea, it was just put down to a quirk. There were certainly more fish at the marine park’s small cordened off snorkelling area (to protect us from the boats…), alas that’s probably due to them being fed by the tourists. We had a couple of hours to float around, trying to avoid the flailing arms of people trying to swim with lifejackets on, and momentarily losing each other in the thick school of fish (see picture!) Leaving the park, there was the definite feeling that the “park” bit of marine park is as in theme park, not ecological park – half of the area has dead coral, and there was loads of plastic bread bags left floating on the surface, they could do with some Kiwis or Aussies to come and sort it out!
The boat back was on a not so converted fishing boat that couldn’t even get close enough to the beach, so we had to jump and swim for the shore. Already missing the beach, we skipped the afternoon trip and read our books on the beach before seeing what else we could find at the local beach, turns out there was a bigger shark, about a metre long, but it disappeared before I could photo it. (or frighten Caroline…)