tioman

yay, just got home and sort of finished unpacking, and before this i was chatting to a couple of friends who just caught me coming online once i switched on my comp and i was animatedly telling them about my trip. i thought it was really satisfying and time/money well spent. in fact at this moment i'm looking at diving becoming a permeanent recreational activity for me! :)

in more ways than 1, this a a really rewarding adventure for me. very thankful to guohao for pulling me along to go get our open-water certification and in the process getting to such an enjoyable trip too. hehe.

well, we went for 5 open-water dives around tioman and saw many staghorn corals, brain corals etc. of course there were alot of fishes too! there were alot of small little bright blue fishes that were hiding amongst the corals, and if u sprawl yourself directly above the coral u can see all these little things scuttling around.

VERY fascinating and beautiful.

actually, the first thing that will strike u when u reach the sea bed are these long, black things that pple call sea cucumbers. haha, cause they resemble something else that is not so pleasant. :) wah i tell u, really very big lar. the biggest i saw was about 1m in length. hehe, then we had gloves, so it all adds up. we were moving the poor sea cucumbers around at around 10m under the sea.

haha.

but it's really quite gross cause u would be staring at the sea cucumbers and suddenly u would find that they are actually alive and moving!! haha. it's quite something to see.

then there were alot of small parrot fish, zebra fish, small other-fish-that-i-don't-know-the-name-of too. :) very fascinating.

oh yes, we saw 1 sting ray too. those brown-coloured ones with dark blue-purple spots on its top. hmmm, i think it appeared on a local stamp before if i remember correctly. tt was quite a fleeting moment, cause the moment i closed my eyes and opened again, it scooted away to hide under a coral.

the coral formations are beautiful. though a little less vibrant in colour than i was expecting. mostly yellow, orange, reddish-brown type of corals. the sea anaemones certainly lightened things up, thought there were not too many of them. :)

and what's the big fuss about "finding nemo"?? over there u have nemos of all sizes. got papa nemo, mama nemo, baby nemo, grandbaby nemo. haha. they're so cute! lots of other small but brightly-coloured, beautiful tropical fish swimming in small schools too. certainly a vibrant display of colour.

and once when i was swimming, then guohao tapped on my shoulder and asked me to look up. WAH. a whole school of barracudas! but quite small ones, about 30cm i think. haha, then i suggested tt we swim together with the school and we could observe them REAL close. very calm, not moving much, but yet swimming with great efficiency against the current. magnificant creatures.

and to think tt when i was young i was told tt barracudas are very fierce fish. haha, maybe they are, but they didn't attack me. :) in fact i was looking out for their teeth tt would protrude out as my divemaster said... hmmm, maybe only the larger ones. i heard from the night divers that they saw barracudas tt were up to 1m!!! wah, i also want to see..........

next time i guess. :)

another dive group saw a black-tipped shark and a turtle too. aiyoh. i was kinda looking forward to seeing a shark, but it was quite mixed feelings lar to be honest. :) i was thinking that i would panic when i actually saw one. haha, but didn't even see it in the end.

took lots of photos of the trip, about 90 for the entire weekend trip. tioman has a spectacular sunset. yep, these photos will serve as a memory as to the sights that i saw and things that i've done on the island and off its coast. :)

but i felt the best thing about the trip was that i got to know so many more people on this trip. first there was randy and pam who are husband and wife. randy is a professor of communications at ntu. really nice couple. haha, randy is all excited about diving, and wants to go on to get his advanced certification (and so do i), although his wife seems VERY reluctant to go since this has been quite an expecience for he, probably need some time to assimilate the experience. :D

then there was dr tan and dr wendy, a dating couple i suppose. both anaesthetists. dr wendy is so very sociable, and she was just telling me all about her diving trips in the past, and giving me tips on where to dive, what equipment to buy etc. she's gone for 107 dives thus dar, and dr tan has gone for even more! wah. they're going for the divemaster course soon. wish them success in both the course and their tying the knot. :D

and it turns out tt it is a small small world after all, cause dr wendy was a student of my mentor, and she asked me to send her regards to him. haha, and she also told me a few interesting facts about prof chen. thinking of organising a lunch to meet up with him together with stella and amy too someday...

*aiyoh, my head is bobbing up and down now... feels like i'm still on the boat... headache arr...

yep, also met liling, a m4 this yr. and it's SO qiao(3), cause she's caohong's gf! (caohong's my scouts senior) very sweet girl. she went to this trip with her other friends - poh leng, who is quite a nice girl too, and is VERY funny, cause she keeps complaining about almost everything. haha, but from the short 2 1/2 days i got to know her, she's actually quite a wonderful character to have to brighten up the whole camp. :)

besides these people were also the 2 dive instructors (kenneth and kelvin), a sia air-stewardess and her friend who works in IT industry, and a guy called young(yang). very nice pple all of them. :) kenneth is actually also quite a nice guy. although he appears on the surface to be a 'macho-i-hate-sissys' type of person, there's actually a deeper side to him - a philosophical, religious, sensitive side.

and he's always suanning poh leng about her kb-ing. (yar, but poh lang kbs about almost everything, which is amusing more than anything else. :P)

yup.

this diving trip has left me with alot of fond memories that i'll always remember; new friendships that i always treasure; and skills tt i plan to use for a lifetime. :) money and time well spent. diving is not about bikini-babes and wannabe-hunks oogling at each other and getting pissed-drunk at night. it's about new and beautiful frontiers to explore underwater and getting to widen your social circle to include people from all walks of life, and a great excuse to travel to various destinations (yes, instead of falling for all the tourist traps when we just go to a certain place and shop/eat). but instead it would be so much better if we on each 'holiday' we could make new friends, explore new places under water, become more and more experienced and increase our enjoyment with each such dive.

cheers! :)