*Continued from Island Hopping – Part 1*

The next destination of the island-hopping trip after visiting the Lake of the Pregnant Maiden is the Beras Basah Island. Beras Basah Island is a small island located west of Dayang Bunting Island. Here, the boatman will drop visitors onto the white sandy beach of Beras Basah Island and allow the visitors to pursue their own activities for about 2 hours. Visitors should take this chance to fully enjoy the sun, the sea, and the sand here. The cool and clear waters here are ideal for a leisurely swim because the beach is rather sheltered and currents are not strong. The soft silky sand is also very inviting, and it’s hard to ignore the temptation for a nice sunbath here. Visitors can also opt to explore the island interior, but trails are not very clearly marked, and caution has to be exercised in order to avoid losing the way inside.

Once the 2 hours had passed, the boatman will signal the visitors to board the speedboat once more. The boat will then zip over to the next island—Singa Besar Island. This island had been designated as a wildlife sanctuary, and hence, human structures are kept to a minimum here. Paths and wooden walkways had been constructed round the edges of the island, and a round trip will take approximately 8 hours. It is said that the island has a very high diversity of birds (more than 90 species) and insects, and various small mammals and reptiles can be seen. Unfortunately, we did not get a chance to get onto the island, probably because of time constraint. Instead, the boatman steered the boat into an estuary on the island and switched off the boat’s engines. We then saw the boatman threw a bucket of small fishes into the water.

We were wondering what was happening when all of a sudden, dozens of large birds appeared out of nowhere and circled above us, shrieking. We looked more closely and those were—Eagles! Lots and lots of them! There are quite a few different ones but we were only able to identify two - the White Belly Sea Eagle and the Brahminy Kite. These eagles then started to swoop down simultaneously and grab the floating fishes thrown out by the boatman. It was such an impressive sight to see these majestic birds of prey in action, at barely a stone throw away! It was like watching National Geographic, but this was real-time and definitely felt far more intense. Those birds were fast, and I barely had time to take out my camera before the whole show is over. We asked the boatman whether he had any more fish, but he said no. We tried to fool the eagles by throwing bread and crackers, but they were too clever to take the bait. I would suggest bringing a video camera to record the fast action because normal cameras may not focus and record fast enough.