Let's take a closer look....
OMGWTFBBQ! PADI DIVER CERTIFICATION!!!
Chunhowe hor, is now hor, A QUALIFIED OPENWATER SCUBA DIVER!!!!
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For the past weekend, 6th to the 10th of October, my family and I dropped by Pulau Tioman the tiny island off the coast of Pahang. The scuba diving course was the brainchild of my dad, who wanted to fulfill his 20 year old wait to be able to dive... And aku, aka the fillial and obedient son and his daughter agreed to take the 4-day-long course with him, while my mum, scared of depths, tagged along too.
Leaving the house at 430am Saturday morning, my dad drove up to Mersing on the winding road bypassing Kota Tinggi. The boat at the Mersing jetty arrived around 730am, and off we went to Pulau Tioman, where my underwater nightmares started to unfurl.
A map of Pulau Tioman.
A map of Salang, showing all the places of accommodation to all tourists.
Our destination was the area called Kampung Salang, at the northern nose of Pulau Tioman. As you might know, P.Tioman is very famous as a diving heaven for recreational divers. Salang can be said to be the diving central of the island, due to its close proximity to many chunted dive sites.
Well, Kg Salang isn't a very nice place to stay. The place is kinda dirty due to pollution and development of the surrounding area. The beach isn't pretty; the corals near the beach weren't that nice; but the place I stayed at was superb.
Introducing.. Salang Pusaka Resort!
It was a kampung themed resort, a very clean, friendly place with wooden houses on stilts, completed with its own kampung restaurant overlooking a tiny dirty river. The boss there very chinchai and the staff were damn jokers. I can't find a picture of it suddenly, but when i do, i will post it gua. Dunno leh, too many cameras were in the process of this holiday already.
But there was a baffling sign near the river, which we didnt really understand.
"Boss.. nii apa maksud?"
"Ohh.. you tengok pokok sana.."
WTH! MONITER LIZARDS?
Eh, apparently, the river was always visited by moniter lizards of all sizes. The boss there told us that these guys would always appear, swimming down the river or be seen sunbathing on the banks. And every of the 4 days, I'll see these fellows striding down the river drooling. Must be I too handsome, either that, or I looked tasty. Yikes!
This was my diving school, B&J... Ignore the monkey hanging in front.
Oops, that's my sister.
Damn, when I thought that I'll get a break for the coming few months, it would never get me that I would have to start reading again. My scuba diving course required me to read a big blue book of theory. SIENNED!
Study lo~
But lucky PADI was clever. Although the video made it easier to study, it also threw me back to the times when i dozed off in college. Zzz...
Also, got exams ah, dun "pray pray". Lucky I passed the final exams on the first try - 94 marks ok? Considering that I slept during video classes... *whistles proudly*
Night life at Salang was extremely little. We were told that now was approaching the offpeak season in lieu of the seasonal monsoons, so there was little nightlife. For example, the regular fortnightly bonfire was last held a week before we came. In other words, the area was slumping to a rest, with us being told that the entire Tioman would close down for holidays from the 2nd of November onwards. See? Tourist also need to holiday one.
Dinner at one of the few restaurants there. See my lansi face?
Overall, I couldn't get pictures of my diving gear, nor did I managed to get a picture of what we saw underwater. We have a diver's log - which I like to call my diver diary. At my very last dive at Pulau Renggis (off the coast of midway Tioman), I wrote that I saw a huge school of barracuda, a few cuttlefishes, a fish called a "boxer" fish and another small red and white flipping fellow which my Dive Instructor, Louisa, called a "Juvenile Squidlips Fish".
I was like, what the hell? SquidLips? What kind of fish is that? Then, I uncontrollably thought of my own lips. SWEAT.
"You called me SQUIDLIPSs..!!??"
"No! it isn't ME!!"
I love this picture of swarming barracudas. (wiki) He might be screaming "ARGHH~!! PLEASE DONT EAT ME!!!! NOOO!!!" But it will all just come out as bubbles. Muahahaha...
Oh well, back to diving. Diving isn't easy, but it's all fun anyways. At first, I felt that I almost died trying to breath underwater while staying on the seabed. But later on, when you get the gist of sinking underwater and controlling your breathing, it gets you sinking down 14m within a minute. The average person can hold their breath for a minute. But when you even float just underneath the water surface, you tend to take just *a few more* breaths.
Ya. consuming 140 bars of oxygen in 50 minutes could probably sign me up for the Guinness records.
Underwater, you hear nothing except the hitting of water current against your ears echoing. Bubbles blob off, occasionally the noise of speedboat arriving a distance overhead. Other than that its nothing. Communications underwater are more of handsignals, like "hi! im out of air and gonna die if you don't lend me your oxygen lo" and "BIG FISH! BIG FISH!".
Scubadiving is nice and is kinda my kind of sport. The course itself is RM 950 which you will get your basic PADI openwater diving license (site). Another license which you can consider is the ITDA license (site). A set of scubadiving gear might cost from RM 2k to 6k, varying on the quality and type of gear you buy. But you can slowly buy one mah, rite?
Go take up lah. Then maybe we can maybe go ice diving or even cave diving together-getheran! =D
