Diving Sipadan - Day 2

I didn't want my new acquaintance to have to wait for me, so i woke up 10mins earlier to use the bathroom. must be considerate mah. well actually it was coz i wanted to whack the buffet breakfast. hahaha.

but in the end we didn't go down early coz had to wait for the girls. so in my usual fashion, i whacked the measly selection of sausages and eggs, and grabbed 2 pcs of toast and downed 3 cups of very weak coffee.

yesterday's malay-looking chinese guy showed up right on time to bring us to the boat, which was actually sitting on the water just across the road. along with us in the 400hp speedboat was 1 local lady with her kid and 2 angmoh ladies, which we later found out were swedish.

so off we went... holding on to watever we could while we bumped away for 45mins at high speed. we were all sitting on 2 rows of flat slippery seats behind the pilot, and the seat alongside his looked temptingly empty, and temptingly dangerous. the seat was almost flush with the boat's wall, so i would be sitting right next to a huge gap which i could easily fall out of. so i did. sit right next to the huge gap i mean. not fall out.

and it was defintely more exhilarating than holding on to a side of a boat staring at another passenger. i could see our destination far ahead, with my left hand gripping a tiny pole on the roof of the boat, my right grasping my seat itself, my feet bouncing up and down with the boat. after the ride my hands were numb.

as we stepped off the external elevator, we were greeted by smiling staff with a welcome drink of cordial. after filling out the necessary admin forms, with the swedes, we were directed to our rooms and after a while, one of the staff came to call us for lunch - it was cooked chinese style with rice, chicken, fish (of coz), vegetables and soup served buffet style. so in my usual fashion, i whack lah. hahahah.

after lunch we had our check out dive at the in-house reef with Roslan. nice jovial guy. we later found out he's also a malay-looking chinese. his experience really showed as he pointed out to us an octopus in disguise, frogfish, crocodilefish, stonefish, lionfish, and their huge resident moral eel, Elvis. i also encountered a school of triggerfish, flutemouths, some goatfish, a huge batfish and a huge pregnant looking dunnowhatfish, as well as my first nudibranch. it was my 1st dive in more than a yr, so i was kinda unsteady and didn't bring down my camera.

The next dive was with Yong, a DM-in-training, at Pulau Kapalai, called mandarin valley. we didn't see any mandarinfish though. encountered a moral eel, lionfish, cowfish, porcupinefish, pufferfish, trumpetfish, 2 different stingrays, a sleeping cuttlefish, lots of babyfishes among the wrecks, colourful nudibranches and again, lots of triggerfish.

for those bored of all the fishfishfish already, lemme just mention that triggerfish is supposed to be the bane of divers, known to bite a 20-cent sized chunk off anyone who enroached their territory. but maybe it wasn't mating season, so although we encountered many many schools, no one got bitten, and i could get real close to a few of them. ok, so from now on, unless there's anything special, i won't list out the fish i saw again.

for this dive, it was kinda lousy coz visibility was very bad, with lots of sand churned up. it didn't help that i was still unsteady, and had to depth gauge with my BCD. We lost Yong the DM and had to do our own safety stop. He was later found in the boat, and explained that he surfaced coz he was feeling cold.

on the 3rd dive on Pulau Mabul, at Paradise, which was hardly that, the visibility was still damn terok, although i managed to see my 1st turtle, and 1st hermit crab underwater. DM surfaced long before us once again, but not before kinda swimming aimlessly, not pointing out much to us... which showed his inexperience. when we lost the DM, W & M decided to do the safety stop ASAP, but i felt i still had lots of air, so carried on descending. X, who was my buddy, insisted that we had to re-do the safety stop over and over again until i got the idea that i shdn't descend anymore. Once again, on the boat, the DM told us he was feeling cold.

between dives we had a light snack, and after the last dive was dinner on the sun-deck, which was open air and on the top, adorned with colourful lights. very nice really, with the night sky above and strong sea breezes threatening to blow everything off your plate. lunch and dinner was always buffet style, chinese cooking.

at night we gathered in the room I shared with W and talked about what we saw, etc etc. or rather, the others did, as they looked at the photos W had taken. i didn't bring down my camera at all on this 1st diving day, as i wanted to get used to diving, but although i felt i still was a bit unsteady, i thot since he was taking photos, i shd be able to do so as well. thinking abt my own diving inadequacies and inexperience, coupled by the 3 others getting along so well, i fell silent and felt left out. precisely the feeling i hate.

after a while, M decided to turn in and left the room, and with W and X still chatting away, i got into bed and tried to sleep; they didn't seem to notice... heh. but after a while X left too, and soon W was gnashing his teeth away in his slumber. before i fell asleep, i remember thinking that maybe my jokes were a little too cold, that maybe my humour was different from theirs, and that maybe we just didn't have the same topics to talk about.

there and then, i missed my best group of frens, and realised they have spoilt me over the years... always laughing at my damn off jokes, always giving in to my overconfidence, always willing to listen to what i had to say, which at that moment i felt was lacking among this group. hahah. i really, really missed them.

Diving Sipadan - Day 1

I woke up, as usual, a little later than i planned. and i still hadn't finished packing. so i rush down the small little lanes leading from my house to eunos mrt station with a densely packed little monster grappling my shoulders and a dive bag swinging from my shoulder to my quick pace, and the noon sun glared at me being late.

i reach woodlands interchange, and meet W and M for the first time. X was later than me. made small talk with them, but got a little turned off when W started smoking. got even more turned off when X arrived and tok cock with W non-stop.

earlier before the trip, i asked X if W and M were "together". secretly i was hoping they were, and then X and I could share a room again, like the last trip we had together. oh come on... stop thinking bad of me. i wasn't going to do anything evil. just thot maybe then we could hv some quiet time together and then talk abt the past and finish with the dusty issues that still troubled us/me.

but they weren't together. in fact later i learnt that M's angmoh bf had already proposed to her some time back. so i shared room with W, a complete stranger, instead.

i try to make conversation with M on the bus, since X and W were busily engaged. didn't amount to much. same went for the waiting at woodlands checkpt. at JB checkpt a man behind me in the queue offered to take us to senai for RM40, but X and M found a guy who would do so for RM35. so much for showing my resourcefulness.

senai is seriously nice for an airport that's in nowhere. the long corridor leading to the toilets are adorned with wonderful photos of the natural rivers and waterfalls in johor state, surrounded by lush greenery, so by the time u reach the toilet itself u need no effort to go. and if u still do, for guys we can pee into a GIGANTIC drain-type urinal, where u face an entire wall of constantly flushing water. just imagine peeing straight into a waterfall. damn. recalling all this makes me wanna go too.

ok i'm back. yup... we hung out at senai for a while after checking in... during boarding, i asked X to hold a seat for me as i took pics of the plane. so inadvertently ended up sitting with her. not that it matter coz she spent most of the flight asleep while absolute boredom forced me to browse thru "reasonably priced" menus and aircraft safety information cards. for 2 1/2 hrs.



we landed at tawau... another middle-of-nowhere airport. we walked a few steps from the aircraft baggage collection conveyor belts and there was the road... and beyond that, miles and miles empty, undeveloped land. heng our pick up from the dive resort was waiting for us liao... i tried my hand at speaking to him in malay... wanting to practise. then at the end of the ride he spoke to my frens in chinese. he's a chinese!! but he was so dark complexioned i made a fool of myself.

we hardly spoke during the van ride as well... everyone seemed to be sleeping in the darkness. we passed by many brightly-lit kampong houses on stilts, gazed longingly at lighted interiors of small kedai kopis (we refused to pay RM6 for cup noodles), and slowed down at at least 2 police checkpts of ready M16s. but we didn't care. i didn't anyway. we were on holiday. hahha

we reached semporna and checked in at the tallest building in town - the 6-storey Seafest Hotel. it looked like the sturdiest too, with everything else built out of wood. our chinese driver suggested dinner next door, where they had satay. it wasn't bad, but at tourist prices. meanwhile over dinner, i was getting along slightly better with my new frens, albeit with insidious smoke wafting around.

That night, M came over to play cards with W and me. W and I also chatted abt diving and UW photography. i was a noob, he was a virgin. seems like he went to many dive trips with X liao.

at midnite, i went to sleep in my cheap yet comfortable hotel room (3-star hotels are already more luxurious than i need) with an almost complete stranger. in the other bed of coz. no way i was sharing a double bed. dun wanna risk a brokeback.

Plane View in Plain View