Her nickname comes from the fact that she was born in Sabah on the island of Borneo, she loves sea turtles and she is completely at home in the water. Yanni is unique.

She recently organized a heavy-duty dive trip for about twenty of us to an infrequently dived island off peninsular Malaysia’s east coast. The island, Tenggol, is usually dived from a boat and the boat Yanni chose was an experience in itself.

Fresh crab, shrimp and fish for every meal. This group was older than the one on my last trip (to Thailand) with Yanni, lots of people in their 30’s and 40’s, but once again I had 20 years on everyone else and was by far the oldest. They were all very nice to me; such is the eastern attitude toward the elderly!

Diving in Tenggol was a challenge, real adrenalin diving. I had read the warnings that strong currents are common off Tenggol Island and it is certainly true. What we did see a number of times is a fish that is becoming rarer and rarer, the Bumphead Wrasse. One dive expert described these fish as “the buffalo of the sea.” 

They once roamed in huge schools like the plains buffalo but now they have been heavily fished since they are a delicacy in Japan and China. Because they can go several hundred pounds, each fish is worth a fortune to the fisherman who usually uses small doses of cyanide to capture his prey.

There were also a lot of very menacing Titan Triggerfish, one of the few really aggressive fish I have run into. They are the pit bulls of the sea. We steered carefully around their territory and, except for once, when Yanni was attacked, they left us alone with just warnings. 

The currents were still very strong and variable. One group of divers got carried far out to sea by one strong current and spent some scary moments in the deep blue at 30 metres. The best moment of all was seeing a large school of Dogtooth Tuna.

She was singing to the tuna, “Come back to me, my friends. I want to know you” and the most extraordinary thing happened. The school of tuna turned and swam back to us and then in front of us wheeled and headed off on their original course once again. It was an amazing moment. On another dive we saw a big sea turtle and got caught in a scary down current which we had to swim out of. I did eight dives in all at Tenggol. 

We got back into port at Dungun, the port, at about one o’clock and Yanni and I headed south along the coast in my car to Mersing, Yanni was very excited at the prospect of joining her husband, Fadzil who works as a dive instructor on Tioman Island our next destination. On the way driving down the scenic coastal highway we passed through a charming town called Pekan, the former home of the royal family of  Malaysia’s Pahang State. It was really a pretty and charming place, both in terms of its old-fashioned architecture and its natural setting

I loved this place immediately. There are a number of dive shops, restaurants, coffee bars and alcohol bars, plus a few shops. No one is in a hurry; the sun and beauty of the place just relax you immediately. I did two shore dives the first day and the second was amazing. 

We dived on an old wooden fishing boat which was in remarkable condition and full of fish; Batfish, Fusiliers, Glassfish, Groupers Bannerfish and even one Grey Stingray. The other four dives were boat dives at the islands offshore from Tioman. Yanni, my dive buddy, and I had some good sightings; a large school of Yellowfin Barracuda and one solitary Great Barracuda, a deep sea fish which must have been 1.5 to 2 metres long. We also saw some really big Moray Eels.