Pulau Gemia . . . Or to the non-Malay, Gem Island

For the past two weeks Malaysia and Singapore have had a school holiday. What does that mean for Jeff and I? That the hotel has been absolutely overrun by large tour groups full of screaming children. In an effort to seek some tranquility and see more of Malaysia, we decided to take an overnight trip to Gem Island, which is about two hours north of here. Gem Island and Kapas Island (its larger, more popular neighbor to the south) are two of the best places to snorkel on the east coast of Malaysia. Kapas is the larger of the two islands and has several beaches and resorts scattered throughout the island. We read that it can be really busy on the weekends and school holidays, so we wanted to avoid that at all costs. Gem Island however is a private island that you can only get to if you are staying at its villa resort. We read that the snorkeling tended to be more accessible on Gem Isle, with less people around scaring away all the fishies.

To get to Gem Island, we drove north two hours to the fishing village of Marang.

From there we took a quick 10 minute boat right right to the resort's front dock. The island is really cool. It is basically a large rock with a few areas carved out for beaches. All of the villas over look the water and are situated on top of the rocks and the beach.Speaking of, the villas at the Gem Island Resort were awesome. I took a ton of pictures of the room because this is what I would love my bedroom to look like some day.

After lunch and a quick rest we rented some snorkeling gear and hit the water. We weren't really sure where to start, so we jumped in on the far isolated end of the island. This was when we encountered the large monitor lizard running into the bat cave (as noted in Jeff’s lizard post). There was a lot of older coral and some really cool fish, but there were also super tiny microscopic jellyfish constantly stinging us. We couldn't even avoid them because you couldn't see them!

Then we moved to the other side of the island where we heard there was newer coral. While the tiny jellyfish were still there, they were not nearly as bad as on the other side of the island. The coral over here was much more vibrant and colorful. We must have seen at least 10 different types of coral. With the different coral of course comes different marine life. On this side we saw "Nemos" and "Doris" (clownfish and palette surgeonfish for the non-Disney aficionados) and dozens of other colorful and interesting species (such as blue ring angelfish, many varieties of rabbitfish and the cool giant clams). Unfortunately we weren't able to get an underwater camera, so we don't have any cool pictures to share.

When we woke up Saturday morning, the sun was shining and it was just beautiful outside. We grabbed the cameras and took a ton of pictures on the beaches. Then we headed to breakfast and did a little bit more snorkeling in the newer coral. It was high tide this time, so we didn’t have to worry about our bellies scratching the coral surface at certain points. With this extra room to swim, Jeff would randomly take-off chasing a fish of his fancy leaving me in the dust (hmm, ok … what is dust in the ocean … fish poop?).

The Gem Island Resort also operates its own turtle hatchery. When giant green sea turtles come ashore and lay their eggs, the hotel moves them to their protected sanctuary to keep them safe from predators. Then, when the turtles hatch they are placed two different tanks where they can grow and develop free from predators. Once they are big enough, the hotel lets them loose and hopes they will come back some day to lay eggs there again.

After that, we showered up and headed back to the Awana Kijal. While it was only a one night get away, it was definitely worth it to have at least one night of relaxation and amazing snorkeling.