Swimming With the Fishes
The day began with English breakfast at Scuba Junkie followed by a ride out to Pulau Mabul. Â Lionfish, scorpionfish, frogfish, coronets, and all of the Finding Nemo crew call this island home. Â Off the coast of the island lies a dive site fashioned from an old offshore oil rig.
David and Scott began gearing up for the dives, which would mark the last underwater skill building portions of the open water certification.
Running through the next maneuvers on land, they prepared to take a giant stride off the jetty into the water below.
And before too long, they were in the water giving the “OK” sign.
Having taken a break from SCUBA, I took up exploring the reef by snorkel, which also designated me as the morning’s cameraman, given that the maximum depth of the waterproof camera was less than what the SCUBA team would descend.
The coral reef was magical.
A diverse ecosystem lay below the sea’s surface, with a shallow reef that eased slowly into the sandy depths.
Mabul’s Reef, specifically “Froggie’s Lair,” proved to be a prime location for snorkeling and diving, as Scott and David can attest to. Â Beware of those puffer fish though. Â They look cute but you can’t get too close.
These photographs are, of course, mere approximations of the beauty, given the difficulty of achieving true color in undersea light amidst particulate.  We hope, dear reader, that you may venture to Borneo and witness it with your very own eyes.  The island itself was co-inhabited by a particularly interesting population of dive resort-goers and local villagers.  We searched for a coconut on shore, but neither of the communities were able to manifest one at any price.
As we were eating, the cook, a fellow we later learned was known by the locals as “Fast Eddie” came over to chat us up. He began to regale us with stories of when he was invited to cook for the French ambassador when he was hosting the king of Malaysia. He told us about how many painstaking hours it took to wrap the spring rolls, to get them to be just the right amount of crispy with no extra grease. It soon became apparent that he was not really conversing with us, rather he was performing a well rehearsed ballet of schtick, complete with engineered pauses for us to compliment his food or his achievements. Â We were tempted to provide a litmus test by, say, asking the name of the French ambassador at the time. Â Maybe he would have flinched. Â If he didn’t, we had the WikiReader at our side for validation.
Soon the piece shifted from “tales of a rambling chef†to a kind of “sleight of hand” magic show. He proceeded to do a number of disappearing and reappearing card and lighter tricks.
Fast Eddie’s performance was quite good, but we quickly grew dubious of it’ legitimacy. The more he tricked us with his sleight of hand magic tricks, the more we started to feel like the entire experience was a lie, like we were being laughed at and taken advantage of by this strange and energetic cook with lazy eyes. We were all too glad when he finally returned to his station, to assemble more of this experience for other customers.
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Comments
What’s up with the pool table and the fish hooks? I love the underwater photos. I hope Italy’s illness wasn’t food related!
[…] the odd school of bright red fish, and a number of interestingly shaped bottom feeders. It was no Borneo, of course, but it was a delightful swim. Even given the generally leaky nature of the masks, I […]
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