April 22, 2025
When we were in Langkawi a year ago we had no idea we would be back so soon. I had done some research and arranged a dive trip for myself. The dive shop is right on the main beach and I was “warned” that their normal visibility was no greater than 6 feet and most of what you see is small things. No sharks, turtles or rays. Despite the warnings I still wanted to dive Malaysia.
We docked at 7am and caught the sunrise off the balcony.
We got off the boat a little before 8 and there were several taxi drivers right on the pier offering their services. We were not expecting that. We thought we had to walk all the way out of the port to catch a taxi. When we told one of the taxi drivers where we wanted to go he seemed a little disappointed. We then said if you hurry you can be back here before half the boat even wakes up and gets off. At that point we went over and talked to a guy in van and he and Kathy and I got in the van. We agreed upon a price before we got in of course.The van was actually acting as a shuttle and just took us to where the guy’s taxi was parked outside of the port. There was no traffic at that hour of the morning and Langkawi is more a resort town that parties all night, rather than a big city so it took us no time at all to get to the hotel that the dive shop was in.
The dive shop did not open until 8:45 and we had gotten there early so we walked the path along the beach watching all the shop owners and beach vendors and restaurants get ready for the day.
The resort beach area in Langkawi
The dive shop had actually sent me an e-mail that I did not see until we were on the beach explaining that the last several days there had been bad rain storms and there might be less visibility than normal. They offered me the chance to cancel but since we were already on the beach I figured I would go for it.
When we came back from our walk along the beach front the shop was open and the owner, Marta, came over and said you must be Allison. I signed the paperwork and we made sure all the equipment fit and then Marta suggested we come back in 30 minutes and they would be ready to go.
The cruise ship has a shuttle that takes you to this beach area because there are several duty free shops and tons of boutique stores which we remembered from last year. We wanted to walk down and see where the shuttle dropped people off because that was going to be our ride home. Plus we were looking for a place for Kathy to hang out while I was diving.
We did see this cute sign on the beach.
We went back to the dive shop at the assigned time and I got a dive briefing while Kathy headed off to Starbucks. Turns out there were 3 dive masters going out and 4 divers. One of the divers was a young British kid who was doing an exploratory dive to see if he liked it and the other 2 were not very experienced. Plus, since the visibility is some poor in this area they always have 1 dive master to 2 divers max for safety. When Marta did the briefing she explained that they have tethers that they clip to you so that you can’t get lost. In all my dive experience I have never had a tether experience. The dives are also not deep. The maximum depth is 35 feet and the bottom is not sandy it is mud so they warn you about using your fins to close tot he bottom because you will stir up the mud and not be able to see anything. You put on your gear and then walk down to the beach and get into the boat.
To say that this was not my favorite place to dive would be sure. I am glad I did it and it really was very cloudy and since we went into the water as 3 different groups it was weird when out of the gloom people appeared and then disappeared as quickly. I ended up with Marta and the 2 less experienced divers had their own dive master and the discovery scuba kid had his own dive master. Marta used the tether for the first few minutes but then removed it. She pointed out lots of little stuff, some I could see and some I had no idea what she was pointing at. I was happy when I found several clown fish close to the end of the first dive.
My favorite picture of the day
We had a nice 1 hour dive interval between the first and second dive. My fellow divers were from Germany, England and the Netherlands. They were shocked to hear I was on the cruise ship and asked lots of questions so I told them our passport saga. They all said they had plenty of pages in their passports and could they take our place? I asked Marta if the visibility was always like this and she said that today was a better day than most. I could not imagine diving in that every day.
The second dive was at a place called The Stables and the reason is it is known for seahorses. Unfortunately seahorses are usually in the middle of seaweed or protected somehow so hard to get a good shot of them.
This guy was hiding behind a sea urchin.
When we came up from the 2nd dive it was in pouring rain. Marta looked around and saw the dive boat but one of the other groups was getting on so she said “let’s go back down for a few minutes” so we did.
There were lots of soft sponges that were quite large. Since the visibility was already poor imagine it getting darker when it was raining.
You can see all the dark clouds along with the colorful Malaysian fishing boats.
We got rained on going back in and then we ran into a pod of dolphins. They are the only dolphins we have seen this whole cruise and there must have been 30 of them. They were jumping and splashing and all around us.
The dive guys all said they had never seen this many.
We made it back to the beach and unloaded everything and Kathy had spent the morning looking around the shops and then hanging out in an Indian restaurant that had opened their doors when the rain started. The rain had stopped for the time being but dark clouds were hanging over the beach.
After rinsing and drying off and buying a dive t-shirt, (I thought she said the price was 35 US so I was doing the conversion to Malaysian ringgits which was about 150 ringgits). I went to hand that to Marta and she corrected me and told me it was 35 ringgits which is less than 10 dollars.
Kathy and I walked along the store fronts and went in and out of a few stores and made our way back to the shuttle and caught the 2:45 pm shuttle back to the boat. Instead of going right back to the boat we stopped at a resort on the water front that you have to walk by to get to the boat and got some fries, chicken fingers and Kathy had beer and I had a few raspberry mules.
Our lunch stop at resort World.
We made it back to the boat with 30 minutes to spare and had a beautiful sunset to match our sunrise.
Next stop is Phuket, Thailand where we spend the night. We also have our ride to the airport arranged early next Tuesday morning. So now everything is done we just have to pack up but always easy to pack when leaving a cruise because everything in the room must go.