Malaysia #3: Sky Mirror

Search on Instagram for “sky mirror photos” and you will see beautiful pics of people in colorful clothes and their perfect reflections on a thin film of water. Malaysia has one of the few places in the world where those pics are possible in Kuala Selangor, about an hour’s drive from KL. We left a little before 6 a.m.

 

The cab took us to the place from where we had to take a speed boat. Another hour on that going into the open sea and I could see no land (or island) anywhere. How much further, I wondered. And then suddenly, in the middle of the sea, we could see a lot of people standing… on water! No land anywhere, in the middle of the sea: how were these people standing in ankle deep water?

 

When we got near them, our boat stopped and we were told to walk in too! Turns out there is a land mass there which starts to show up with the tides. It was a surreal experience, standing in ankle deep water, the sea on all sides, no land anywhere (not even where we stood, at least not visibly). Was this the place to take those perfect reflection pics, we thought. No luck, the water was still too deep and in constant motion to allow for any proper reflections. As the water level continued to drop thanks to the tide, we still couldn’t get any of those famed-perfect-reflection pics.

 

Soon enough, there was almost no water under our feet, just slushy land. And still no perfect reflection. Maybe those just show up if you are very lucky, I thought. And then we saw a bunch of boat boys lying on the land, with tiny tent shaped makeshift contraptions, telling people to come in batches for photos. He had created a small puddle of water and he lay practically on it. He would then take your phone camera phone almost touching the puddle. This was the setup to take the photo. The next step was to direct us to move farther/closer and strike the right poses and voila! Those Instagram worthy photos started turning up.

 

Aha, I realized, this is how those pics are created. Even if those pics involve some neat camera positioning, the surreal experience of standing on water in the middle of the sea is totally real.

 

Those pics and standing-on-water are worth the price, the early morning wake up, and the long ride by car and boat.

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