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 of being 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
[…] That was when I became extremely excited at the prospect of getting a lot more information about the story behind the wrecks which I’d dived two years ago. He helped the VBPs track their family members as well as the deceased members’ grave, to which they made such an adventurous trip back in time to trace hospital records & whereabouts they sent the bodies to, before they were buried. By then, I was sitting on the edge of my stool, as attentive as ever, while Kaseng repeatedly asked him to join us & sit down. He went on to tell us about how the VBPs had found freedom in Australia & other countries while maintaining contact with him. He painted such a vivid picture of things that I felt as if I was actually there in the period where they sought refuge in Pulau Bidung. He even published a self-funded book about them. I asked him for his contact number so that I could come visit him & get the book as well as a chance to document this magnimous man’s life & passion for the Chinese people. I was so encouraged to see a person so driven by his interest, to have amassed such knowledge & contributed back in the form of a publication & I wanted to acknowledge him in my work too. […]
Thanks for your warm thoughts. Pulau Bidong will always be in my heart. I have had dream of coming back to see the island just one time.
Nov 2nd, 2007
California, USA
[…] I set my sight on the boats that lay soulfully on the seabed of Pulau Bidung years ago, I never thought I would be interested in how they were sunken. A man called Alcoh Wong, […]
[…] I set my sight on the boats that lay soulfully on the seabed of Pulau Bidung years ago, I never thought I would be interested in how they were sunken. A man called Alcoh Wong, […]