The Dangerous Side of Beauty

I've always been in love with the beauty of the wide ocean; a scerene, sparkling blue, its' creatures and corals living below, the mystery and wonders it holds. The ocean is like a whole new different world that have not been discovered yet, and it has always been my dream to discover more about the ocean.

But, ever since the most dangerous and scariest experience in Pulau Pangkor last Thursday, I now realised that the ocean is beautiful yet, dangerous.

What happened in Pulau Pangkor?

It all started when my family and I decided to go fishing in Pulau Pangkor. We even brought two of my cousins, Samantha and Jonathan to come along with us. We were so excited! Little did we know that our fishing trip wasn't going to be like any typical fishing trip....

When we've finally reached Pulau Pangkor, we enjoyed ourslves immensely! We played at the beach while I flew my kite which I brought along. The people there are friendly and hospitable. The owner of the resort was a famous badminton player who used to represent Malaysia.

The weather, however, was not as hospitable as we had hoped. The sky was dark and at night, it rained heavily. The rain gave me hope that perhaps it'll clear up those clouds in the sky so that we could have a sunny day for our fishing trip the next day.

On the day of the fishing trip, we were accompanied by Mr. Tan, an experienced fisherman who has been fishing for years. We soon noticed that the clouds began to get darker, yet, we decided that we might as well enjoy ourselves, rain or shine.

As we headed out for our first site, it began to rain at the island. Slowly, the rain caught up with us, so, we had to endure the cold winds and rain. Luckily, it was light, hence, it wasn't so bad.

By the time we've reached our site, the sun came up, but the waves were a bit too rough, which made the boat rock to and fro repeatedly till for the first time in my life, I actually fell sea sick. While everybody started fishing, all I could do was sit still as I really did not feel like moving about because of the way the boat rocks to and fro and left and right.

After a while, some caught a few fishes, mostly Tau Foo fish, which is the right size for eating. My mom actually caught one of them, and as she began to reel it up, there was so much of struggling going on for a while, then, all of a sudden, there was no struggle. As she continued to reel the fish up, we had the shock of our lives! Instead of a whole fish, there was only half a fish, being cut neatly in half! (Plus, its alive!) We suspected that perhaps a Baracuda must've eated it on its way up.

As our fishing trip was about to end, everybody caught a fish (including me, I soon got over my sea sickness). We were about to head straight back to the island, but to our dismay, it began to rain heavily, the waves were extremely rough and we had no choice but to hide behind and island where its calmer.

We were stranded.

It was the worst storm that ever hit Pulau Pangkor in history! Even Mr. Tan, who has been out to sea for many years have never in his life experinced such a storm like that! We were battered down by the heavy rains as we endured the cold, howling winds and raging waters. The boat rocked furiously and we held on tight to whatever was firmly on the boat. The waters splashed against the boat, equipments were tossed about, parts of the roof of the boat flew out and chairs were being thrown about everywhere, hurting a few people.

For the first time in my life, I was afraid of the sea.

When we've finally thought the waters were calm enough, we headed off to another island to hide behind so that we were nearly closer towards P.Pangkor. As our journey began it was even rougher than before. Things began to fly out of the boat, and the boat moved about so violently that I was afraid that the boat might capsize as we battled the mighty waves which were almost 3m high! The scariest part was when I was sitting on one of the chairs, the boat jerked in such a way that I slided towards the edge of the boat where I could've fallen overboard if I had not used my legs to stop myself just in time.

As we've stopped at the island where we could hide again, we saw several fishing boats; they were afraid too.

During that time while we were being stranded -again-, I looked towards the island and started recalling what I've read from the story 'Robinson Crusoe' about how he survived the shipwreck and lived in the island for 24 years.

My imaginations began to grow wild as I started imagining ourselves living our lives on the island without civilization when I spotted a wild boar walking along the beach. I began to imagine how we'd follow the wild boar and eat it's offspring.... mmm.......

Well, there are the fishes we caught on the other hand, but, that sounds way too easy and too boring.

We've soon come to realise that the storm wouldn't calm down until dark, and that sounds a bit too risky to ride back, as we couldn't see the waves. On the other hand, the storm was still pretty bad, but at least we still got to see the waves so that we'd know where we're going.

It was a pretty tough choice, but in the end, we decided to head back while there's still daylight; we wouldn't want to take the risk of getting washed off at night.

Once again, we battled the raging waters as we held on for dear life. The ride was so rough that both Sam and Jon got seasick and vomited twice from the boat. Ewww........

In the end, we all got back safely and we showed everbody our catch:

Although it was the worst fishing trip ever, I thought it was the best experience at the same time; not only were we part of P. Pangkor's worst storm in history, we caught some yummy fish and I now realise that all this time, the good Lord has always been watching over us.