Saturday 17 May Pulau Tulai

We wanted more diving and got it in spades at the island of Cebeh one mile north of Pulau Tulai.

You can see Tulai from the main anchorage at Tioman. It's about 7 miles north west with a deep bay on the west side suitable for dropping the hook. It's deep in the middle (up to 20m) with shallow reef on all sides. We dropped our anchor in nearly 20m and settled back to 8m in the prevailing wind but the holding is good.

Within half an hour of arriving Mark and Rosie from Canadian boat Merkava stopped by to say hello and let us know they were off to dive the island to the north as it was coming up to slack water, would we like to join them? Yes. It doesn't take long to pull the kit together but it does take a while in the dinghy with only the 5HP engine.

A lovely dive in a sheltered indent. We dropped down on to hectares of hard corals and a large cuttlefish waiting for us. Again there are anemones everywhere, schools of batfish hanging out in a cooler current off the end of the island and supposedly a whale shark hanging out in the blue somewhere. Dive guides have reported seeing one in the last two days but it was cruising another part of the sea today.