In Paradise

I must make the same recommendation about the Perhentians that I made about Naithon Beach: if at all possible, go there. Wow. These two little islands are gorgeous and nearly deserted, which means their water is glittering; the low key native way of life continues (the fishing boats remind me of Howl's Moving Castle: colorful with all manner of useful items hanging off every square inch. We ran across one fellow two beaches over who spent a whole two days burning bits of an old vessel. Whenever we passed him, he was staring pensively into the fire, poking stick in hand. What must it be like to have a lifestyle like that: "Honey, I think I'll spend a few days burning the old boat."); the corals have been growing undisturbed for eons, the fish and general marine life are enormous and plentiful and happy.

We saw animals here we've never seen in the wild elsewhere, like blue spotted rays, yellow boxfish, hundreds of parrotfish feeding in a school, cushion stars, schools of foot-long needlefish, a three foot long barracuda, more stonefish (this time a more comfortable distance away), a grouper more than three feet long moving ponderously and accompanied by a coterie of blue cleaner wrasses (who probably feel they've hit the jackpot work-wise). And it was charming to see all the anemones of many kinds dotted with blissful clownfish of all types. Laura discovered a condo arrangement in one place: about 20 large anemones all right next to each other, packed with clownfish big and small. They must have trouble figuring out whose anemone is whose. All these were accompanied by dense clouds of tiny little fish, some of whom swam along schooling in the shape of a bigger fish. (And you thought that scene in Finding Nemo was fantasy.)

The land-based animal life is quite healthy as well, living in a beautiful loud jungle filled with flitting birds, huge dragonflies and monitor lizards about five feet long. We went for a trek over to another beach through the jungle and it was miserable - buggy, filled with mosquitoes, narrow, slippery, crisscrossed with trippable roots and platoons of army ants. We were not enchanted - until we saw the family of dusky langurs heading our way. Four sizeable gorgeous black furry monkeys with white goggles on, accompanied by a smaller juvenile. They were using the path, too, coming from the opposite direction. They saw us, paused, and then advanced matter-of-factly. They veered off the path just a few feet in front of us to eat a mushroom. We watched them eat as they checked us out, too, then they headed off into the dense jungle. Last night, we slept through the commotion of a six-foot long python wandering onto the resort grounds - it took the staff about an hour to wrangle him off the property and safely back into the forest.

At least for marine life, Malaysia seems to have figured it out: protect your pristine wild areas, people will pay lots of money to see them, and everybody benefits. They have many national marine parks, they distribute much comprehensive and easy-to-understand information to their people about why they should protect their wilderness. They also apply creativity, such as banning flippers when they discovered that protected feet make people more likely to stand on/contact corals. They also have recruited teams of volunteer divers to remove the invasive and damaging Crown of Thorns starfish from reefs. This contrasts rather sadly with Cambodia, where we took a half day snorkel trip and saw gorgeous coral - and no fish. In fact, our boat captain fished while we snorkeled and we watched his catch expire on our trip back (we went to the market in Cambodia also, and were very disappointed to find they were fresh out of fried bugs). When one is desperately poor and hungry, what else is there to do? But it's such a sad cycle.

Anyway, back to our forest hike: we reached the new beach quite mosquito-bitten and sweaty and hot, so we quickly became another uncomfortable, virtually continuous state since we arrived: salty. I think we've spent at least 75 percent of the time here damp and/or salty. We've managed to avoid serious sunburn, but Jeff has had to employ a unique sunscreen that was nonetheless extremely effective. It's always with you, it completely block the sun's rays, you can get it off with ease though it deploys in an instant and it causes no allergies: his hand (which sat on the top of his head when he forgot his hat). We're leaving tomorrow and perhaps it's for the best: we've all got itchy rashes that only a luxury hotel in Kuala Lumpur can cure.