So this weekend I completed my Scuba Certification with my family! We did this by going on a Scuba trip to Tioman, Malaysia which is a beautiful island. I, by the way, never even wanted to learn how to dive. My family practically forced me, and as such, I was pretty much what you might call "reluctant" to go. Don't get me wrong, fish are cool and all, but I just don't like the idea of purposefully putting myself far enough below water that my body has to adjust itself to the changing pressure and there is even the possibility of getting stung or, dare I say eaten, by anything with no easy escape! Some might call me paranoid or over cautious, I call myself reasonably sane and justified.
On top of that, we are taken to a beautiful and mysterious island in Malaysia for almost two fulls days, and we spend all of our time going out to the ocean to dive. How about some land exploration, people? But I am getting ahead of myself... let's start at the beginning.
So we were told by Deep Blue (our Scuba Diving Company) to meet by 5:30 at the shop because the charter bus will be leaving promptly. Due to complications in traffic, we decided to be cautious and left at 5 by taxi. As such, we arrived 15 minutes early to the shop. Pretty good, right? Wrong. The instructors laughed in amazement at our over preparedness at arriving so ridiculously early. Imagine... arriving 15 minutes ahead of time! Of course, they had reason to laugh, it turns out, since they didn't even end up heading out to the bus until close to seven... and left around 7:30. No concept of time at all!
Malaysia and Singapore are connected by a causeway with their respective customs points at each end. We disembarked both times and made our way through the lines with relative ease. After getting into Malaysia, the bus stopped for a quick fill-up and we all got to get out for bathroom and snack. My brother was delighted to be able to buy a vanilla coke and gum, both of which are not sold in Singapore, then we were off again! It was a long and dark bus ride, we were unable to see anything of Malaysia at all except for the lit up cities when we passed by. It was close to Midnight when we arrived at the ferry.
We were heading for the Island of Tioman, so all of us loaded onto this ferry... and not the new and spiffy kind, and headed out. I had been under the impression that the ride would last about 20 minutes... instead it lasted over an hour. By the time we finally made it to the Island and into our room, it was at least 2 am, if not nearer to 3. The room was meant for all four of us. There were four twin sized beds pushed into two groups, two plastic chairs stacked up one on top of the other, and a small table with a hanging mirror above it. I was surprised that there was both air conditioning and a fan as well in the room. The bath room was... well, the word wet comes to mind. The floor of it was tiled. In one corner there was a sink with a set of wire shelves so rusty they looked like they could give your Tetnes shots a run for their money. Next to the sink was a small toilet and across from the toilet was a shower. The shower head was a small removable kind and was fixed to the wall above a large bucket, turned upside down, and a plastic pot which was positioned so as to catch the water dripping from the faucet underneath the shower head. There was no actual shower space, but rather the entire bathroom was the space. There was a drain hole underneath the sink which the water drained down. It was literally an all-in-one room. The floor, as I said before, was pretty much constantly wet.
The first day we were woken up at 8am. There was a buffet breakfast of some local foods, which included things like rice, noodles and soup, as well as bread which could be toasted. After that, we met around 9am with our Open Water Group. We had three instructors with us: Jenni, who is actually a certified Instructor and from South Africa, Samuel, the Dive Master, and Allan, the Dive Master in Training, who was actually with us for our pool certification. With us in our group were also the three other people from our certification and then another five or so people.
Now to be certified by Padi, you must complete four Open Water dives. We did three the first day. The first two were very basic. They were in 4-6 meters of water and mostly consisted of the different skills tests we had to know, which include things like being able to take off and put your mask back on while under water, being able to take your regulator out then find it and put it back in again while under water... things like that. These dives were actually shore dives, meaning we just walked into the water with our gear. Our heavy, heavy gear. From top to bottom our gear includes: goggles (mine leaked the whole time, so that I was constantly clearing them), the wet suit (we wore a short one since the water was warm), our BCD (the vest-like thing you often see. They can be inflated and deflated), our Air Tank (which was strapped into the BCD along with our regulators and gauge), our weight belt (mine held 8 pounds) and our flippers. Boy that stuff really dragged you down! (My excellent gear model below... thanks mom!)
For our third dive (which was after a buffet lunch of crab, rice, soup and some kind of curry-like food) we rode out in a boat, the same one which brought us to the island, to a place called Raggis. There, we dived to about 8 meters and got to swim around looking at the coral and fish. We actually saw a sea turtle there, too.
The dive was fun enough, but I have a tough time with my ears whenever pressure changes, so I often have a hard time descending into the water as quickly. It is also tougher than you would think to swim with all that stuff on, and not float too far down or too close to the surface. Even though you can put air into your BCD, you are supposed to control yourself using your breathing, which can take some getting used to.
After spending all day out there, I was pretty worn out. For one thing, my gear was starting to bother me, as would be expected of rented stuff. My flippers were cutting into my toes and ankles and my eyes were dry and stinging from all the salt water leaking into my mask. Plus, we'd been out in the sun all day managing heavy stuff!
There was a barbecue that night... and I discovered Blackcurrent Juice. It tastes like heaven. Okay, okay, maybe that is a little over exaggeration. In this case Heaven = Koolaid. It was so good, especially since 90% of the time I usually am drinking water. The food was pretty good too. They had a lot of seafood, which would be expected from an Island, I guess, and one of their dishes actually had tons of tiny, though whole, octopi in it to eat. You can see them below, in front of the calamari which I thought were actually pasta.
I don't get sea sick while in boats, but sometimes I do get that thing where after you leave boats, you still feel like you are on one. Boy did I have it bad. I pretty much went up to our room and got ready for bed, hoping that the rocking would stop.
The next morning we headed out on the boat again for two more dives. This time the place we went to, Marine Park, didn't have a lot of reef stuff, or any other common marine life other than fish. The floor was silt, too, so visibility was known for being pretty pour, but the spot was known for it's fish life, and for wrecks. There were several wrecks in the area, including one car wreck, but most of them were too deep for our level of diving. I actually enjoyed this dive better than the day before. It was a lot deeper, about 16 meters, so there were points when there seemed like nothing was below or above me, but I was completely surrounded by fish of all shapes and sizes. That was cool. We did get to see the first wreck, since it is located at about 14 meters, and that was cool I guess, though it wasn't a huge one, or one that you could swim through or something... not that we were allowed to do that with our certification level, anyway.
There was another dive that day, it was at the same reef as the day before, but I didn't go. I will admit freely that I was certified, and tired of diving! I sat on the top deck of the boat, which was open on all sides, and island-watched while the others did their last dive. The boat moved to a slightly shallower area while waiting for the divers, and the visibility was good there, so I could see the bottom. I watched as the sailors appeared to release the contents of the boat's bathroom (oh joy!) and also as an entire group of fish began jumping in unison, creating waves of jumping fish on the surface. After the dive, the group headed back to the resort, ate lunch (a buffet of too-spicy-to-eat food for me, which included more of those octopi), packed our bags and readied to leave. We were on the boat back to the main land by 1:30. This time the ride in our charter bus was more enjoyable since it was still daytime. I saw lots of monkeys by the side of the road, stocked up on some of my beloved Blackcurrent juice, got to watch Cowboys and Aliens on the bus (even though it hasn't actually been released yet, thank you sketchy dive people lol) and even a little of the Captain America Movie (which was just released last weekend). We made it through our border checks and back to the dive shop by 8:45, then off to home we headed!
So there you have it, my Scuba trip to and from Malaysia!
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