Back to Nature

Well, not really. It's not really "nature" when you are experiencing it from the sanitized location of a resort. But at the very least, it's much more than anything you could get in Hong Kong.

A friend and I went to Redang, Malaysia, for a couple of days, just to chill out and relax. Maybe we just got there at a lucky time, but the sea was absolutely calm and the waters crystal clear. For somebody like me who's terrified of waves and also claustrophobic, it was swimming heaven.

The day after we got there, we went on a snorkeling tour. There were tons of sealife to be seen, the best of which were sea turtles. We saw three of them and actually got to see them interact with each other. Okay, sea turtle interaction isn't all that exciting. They just kind of stop being oblivious to everything around them and swim in the direction of each other, then swerve aside at the last moment.

Another exciting sealife moment was when we ran across a humongous ugly-looking fish with really sharp teeth that we later identified as a "Titan Triggerfish". Now, I don't scare much where animals are concerned, as a rule, but this one scared me badly. I had been fish feeding when all of a sudden I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I had known that he was in the vicinity -- I had been warned about him -- but still it was enough to really scare me. He gave me the evil eye and I threw all the bread I was holding in his direction and swam frantically off in the other. Apparently they are really territorial and aggressive, and they have a habit of chomping on divers.

Apart from that, I also saw a random monitor lizard hanging around on the beach (who kind of took off as soon as I got close to him with a camera -- so much for the Komodo Dragon reputation), and a bunch of bats which I mistook for birds at first. Having been closer to wildlife for a few days is making me really realize how completely artificial and sterile Hong Kong is. We hardly see any non-pet non-bird animals in HK. Well, except for the pests. So the general feeling is that any living non-human and non-pet is a pest and harmful to humankind, and deserves to be stomped on and killed.

Not quite a healthy view to have.