Scuba Diving at Batu Batu, Pulau Tengah
The beautiful beach & coastline at Pulau Tengah
Another weekend, another public holiday here in Malaysia and another opportunity to go scuba diving! The country celebrates independence or “merdaka” day at the end of August each year and falling on a Monday it presented the perfect opportunity to jump into the car head over to the east coast and go for a few dives while enjoying a break from city life. This trip had been planed for some time, before the COVID lockdown, in fact and it was the only pre-planned trip that hadn’t been cancelled - we were pretty excited as we’d be staying the the luxurious and exclusive Batu Batu Resort on Tengah island in Johor. To be completely honest, the trip had been booked as a weekend escape from KL and not primarily as a diving holiday, but I was delighted to find out that there was a fully equipped dive centre on the island and that i’d be able to indulge in a couple of cheeky dives without lugging all my gear there.
Due to it being a long weekend we decided to head to Mersing on Friday afternoon in an effort to beat the rush that would surely accompany a long weekend and stay the night there before catching the boat in the morning. I’d previously stayed in Mersing and not had the best of experiences but was pleased to find out that the resort had a guesthouse we could stay at on the Friday night call Kakaktua. We were greeted by a member of staff when we arrived in the evening after an uneventful drive down and shown our room which was really lovely and traditional. After dropping our bags we headed out into the town and found a bar serving decent food and cold beer which helped us to unwind after the long drive. The next morning we went for some delicious roti canai for breakfast and then headed over to where we needed to meet the boat. After a 30 min boat ride we were setting foot on the island which was absolutely stunning
The beautiful coral at long beach, Batu Batu Resort
The dive centre at Batu Batu
Being a privately owned and run resort and island it means that they can spread things out a little bit so that everyone has space and can enjoy the tranquility. We checked in and dropped our luggage at the room before heading out to explore the island. I quickly found the dive centre and stopped by to talk to the dive instructor there, Sheldon. He mentioned that the water was pretty shallow but that it should be no problem to do a couple of dives and with that I signed myself up to do a couple of dives the next morning. Having achieved this most important of tasks I headed off back to long beach to do some snorkelling, read a good book and enjoy a cold beer whilst lapping up the sunshine. I have to say, Tengah island is quite simply breathtaking. The chalets and resort in general have been well built and set back behind the tree line so that it doesn’t spoil the natural beauty of the place. The food offerings are also top notch - over the course of the visit we were treated to traditional Malaysian curry, beef rending baguette, baked salmon etc. There were always a couple of choices on the menu along with a starter and desert too - for island cuisine during a global pandemic this was right on the mark.
Phyllidiella nigra nudibranch in the shallow water at Hujong Reef
The next morning straight after breakfast i put together my camera and wandered along the beach to the dive centre and stared to assemble my gear. As I was travelling light I had only brought my own mask and it felt a little odd to be putting together gear that wasn’t my own. Once we had everything together we walked towards the boat and had a short trip of about 1 minute to the dive sport, Junior Reef. The depth was only about 10m at most and the visibility wasn’t the best, maybe 5-6m at most but the coral was in surprisingly good condition. We were greeted by a reticulate moray eel poking its head out of its hiding spot. The usual selection of anemone and clownfish were also in abundance and even found shrimp in the one of the corals too. While I was happy to see the coral in such great condition it was a little sad to see a fisherman’s net draped over some of the coral. After around 45 mins we surfaced and took a short ride round to the bay just in front of a neighbouring island. After the surface interval we again jumped in, this time it was seriously shallow and I think we maxed out at about 4m! Again the coral was in great condition and we saw a number of nudibranchs including a couple of the largest phyllidiella nudibranchs I had ever seen, there were huge! Again after about 45m mins we came up the short distance and climbed back onto the boat. Whilst a very shallow dive it was good fun and also a test of my buoyancy skills which was a win. We headed back tot he dive centre to wash everything down and put things away. We also had tot dodge the wreck of a Vietnamese boat that was showing as the tide was out a little. Back during the Vietnam war the island had been home to a number of refugees and you can see the remnants of their camps and structures they built scattered around the island.
A skunk clownfish hides in an anemone
The afternoon was spent snorkelling around the island and checking out what it had to offer and again it came up trumps as the corals were in good healthy condition. The only drawback was that number of boats from neighbouring islands were bringing a lot of snorkelers, hopefully this won’t damage the coral in the long run but one does worry based on the amount of traffic we saw. After this I was able to sit back on one of the sun loungers with a good book and relax with a cold beer or two - absolute heaven! The rest of the day flew by, my only worry to remember when to reapply sunscreen to make sure i didn’t get burnt!
That evening we again went for dinner in the communal dining area and were treated to fantastic service and great food, just what was needed to replace the calories burnt diving. The next morning we went for breakfast and checked out and got the boat back to the mainland ready to drive back to KL. Everything ran smoothly and we were away to join the queues back to KL!
Reticulate Morray Eeel
Batu Batu is a fantastic resort - the rooms are spacious and luxurious, they even had a bath in our room which for those of you who live in Asia know is it a bit of a treat. The service was impeccable , they had really thought about the new norms of life these days and implemented it well and as mentioned the food was a real highlight. The scuba diving is pretty good too, healthy reefs await those who do dive and you won’t go deep so not too much to worry about fin terms of no dec limits, also great for those with a camera or GoPro as there is a lot of natural light available to photograph your subjects. The islands is also home to a conservation centre that hatches turtle eggs and releases them and teaches people about the delicate marine eco system. I would thoroughly recommend staying here, is a little on the pricey side of things but really worth it.