Pulau Bidung Monument

I had wanted to visit Pulau Bidung’s wrecks for a long time. It was out of bounds to civilians until the 90’s but then, being an enthusiastic diver wanting to go to a forbidden place may not receive similar response from dive operators & fellow divers. I was asked to conduct a Rescue Diver course for Lindy Edwards on board a ship on one fateful weekend of August 2003, where the ship had no other customers except us. Somehow, some of their bookings were cancelled & the ship was docked in Pulau Bidung, with a chaser boat sending us out for every dive. I was still in primary school when the Vietnamese sought asylum in our country. I barely understood the significance of the boat people then but when I made the dives on the wrecks just at the bay of Pulau Bidung, images of the lives of these people flashed in my mind. There were lots of crockery, some buried in the sand. And I am guilty of picking up a souvenir. There were old cauldrons. An earthen stove that’s before my time. Oil drums. Anchors. Household utensils which I’m sure, many had been salvaged by other divers before me. The boats were of a different shape, unlike boats from our country. To have the boats sunken in such a haste really struck me. They must’ve been so afraid to be made to leave the island that they destroyed their own mode of transportation to be marooned. A sense of grief struck me. How fortunate are we Malaysians not having to worry about running away from our own country. I felt grieved & relieved at the same time as God said to me I was born here for a reason just as the Vietnamese were born there for another. To have lived the extremities & tasted the bitterness, not many lived to tell. Since the story had been highlighted in the newspaper, it just confirmed everything that I had felt while I was amidst the total wreckage (more than 15 boats)then. May God grant the survivors favour & blessings for all their future undertakings. You can see my underwater pictures here