I'm licensed... to dive ^_^
And that was my photographic evidence to prove it! :P
In continuation of my last post, my weekend at Perhentian Island came and went, did 4 dives without a hitch and am now a certified open water diver! Which means I can officially dive down to up to 18m... which I found is actually not as deep as I would have liked, and so I'm very much looking forward to continue on with doing my advanced diver course after which I can dive up to 40m, and also do go into shipwrecks or caverns (which I can't do now coz' I'm not trained on how to deal with the associated hazards of being in enclosed areas underwater, and that's where bad accidents happen :P) as well as learn other adventurous diving skills. But that will come later, once I amass a bit more wealth to afford it and find the time to do it too. :)
But basically I'm a diver a now and hyped about it, so that's just about the most important thing I have to say on this post.
Getting to the island is part of the fun. I was on the same flight with two others in my diving group, and so we took the same boat to Perhentian, which was half an hour of really choppy boat ride. So choppy that taking photos was a bit of a challenge. But at least only my camera strap went flying and not my camera itself.
Hang on tight to this crazy boat!
At least we got there in one piece and this place was to be my residence for the next 3 days and 2 nights.
Almost immediately after arriving in late morning, I got together with the rest of my group (all of whom I met during this course itself, and they're all a pretty fun bunch). A group of 3 had arrived earlier in the morning and already had gone with another instructor to start their first of 4 dives. So I ganged up with another 3 of the later group, and we started our first dive in the afternoon.
We wannabe divers met our friendly island diving instructor, Mat Yie, who would be guiding us over the next few days to apply the basic skills we had learned during our pool dives to the big ocean, and making sure none of us drowned in the process. Thankfully, he succeeded. At least in making sure no one drowned.
Oh yeah, if you're thinking my wetsuit looks a little weird, it's coz' I was wearing a full body swimsuit under my rental short sleeved suit (called a Shorty). It bought the swimsuit the week before as I thought it would be handy as extra protection against accidental cuts or scraps underwater (corals are nastily sharp buggers), plus it's easier to slide a wetsuit on with a swimsuit under than without. And it also helps to reduce sun exposure and getting more tanned on uncovered areas than covered parts, which results in your colleagues giving you weird looks the following week. So functional-wise the full body swimsuit under the wetsuit thing worked great. Style-wise, I think I looked kinda weird. I was almost considering buying the top of my swimsuit in another colour instead of black too. Luckily I had the good sense not to do that. Still, for future dives, I'm now lusting for a cooler looking full-body wetsuit. They're a bit more of a pain in the butt to put on compared to a shorty, but they really look much cooler. I have the camwhoring pics to prove it. Taken from a dive shop in Summit with a changing room that doubled as a meeting room (hence the whiteboard and office chairs).
I haven't bought it, was just checking out wetsuits, and of course I will fall for anything with red on it coz' RED IS COOL.
So anyway, back to the island dives, all our dives went well. For me, I was totally comfortable in the water and my diving gear, with no big complications, although some of the others had a bit of problem with equalizing their ear pressure when going underwater, and some also couldn't get used to clearing their diving mask underwater (we need to do this if water gets into our mask or it gets fogged up and we allow water in to clear it). Only problem I had was that after some time of breathing though my mouth underwater, my nose tends to get clogged with mucuous, and although I don't need to breathe through my nose, it feels uncomfortable and gives me a slight gagging feeling. Hopefully that problem won't happen in future dives, but anyhow, I could still manage underwater.
Since I was busy learning to keep myself alive underwater, I couldn't take any photos of what we saw (learning underwater photography is in the plan. One day. When I can afford the big ass camera). And even though we didn't dive to any particular amazingly beautiful corals (most of the ones we saw were quite bleached, which is sad), we still saw quite a few cool marine creatures that I would never be able to see while snorkelling. Here are some of the fishes and other creature we saw during our four dives (photos stolen off the internet):
1) Sharksucker: A very streamlined fish about 25 - 30 cm long and likes to glide along the bodies of sharks and other fish to clean whatever little marine bugs are off them. And they did the same job for us 'dirty' divers too. One of them came right up to my flipper and as I held up my foot to watch it, it glided up and down my flipper, cleaning it up and looking like it was dancing on my flipper. I couldn't help laughing coz' it was so dang cute. Of course, laughing underwater just means extra bubbles released and some weird sounds of 'glub glub glub' coming through my regulator. Even more cute it was when we continued to swim and I watched the little bugger continue to glide over and nibble away at the legs of my fellow diver.
2) Swimmer cleaner shrimp: These are also pretty tiny buggers. We found them inhabiting a crevice in a coral, and my dive instructor, seeing that I was somewhat able to control my buoyancy (very important skill in diving, to ensure we can control when we move up or down in the water without accidentally crashing into corals below), invited me to put my hand on the surface of a rock near where the shrimp were moving around. After a while, they were crawling on my hands, apparently trying to to clean it off (which is why they're called cleaner shrimp), but I couldn't feel anything. It was still cool having little shrimp walking on me.
3) Boxer cleaner shrimp: Much bigger than the swimmer cleaner shrimp and a lot prettier too. We didn't touch these though, just saw them.
4) Razorfish: These little fish swim with their head facing down and tail pointing up and it just looks really funny, like they're super drunk or something.
5) Spiny devilfish: A fugly little fish that is camouflaged to look like the sandy bottom. And I was wondering if it's actually a fish coz' I never saw it swim, but it was actually crawling along the bottom with manny little legs. It was weird.
6) Short-tailed pipefish: A close relative of the horsefish, and the one we saw was male coz' apparently it was pregnant, but it was so thin I couldn't really tell. :P
7) Reef cuttlefish: It's really tiny, only about 8cm long. But apparently it can change its colour to match its background, but all the time I was watching it, it didn't change colour. Or maybe I missed it. :(
8) Zebra lionfish: We saw this one hiding in a coral, and it was really purty!
And the cutest little fish of them all...
9) Yellow boxfish: Yes, it a fish shaped like a box. And also really small. It made me wanna grab it and snuggle it coz' it's just too damn cute for words.
We also saw two hawkbill turtles (one was happily munching away at a coral while we divers were watching it and it wasn't bothered with us at all), a couple of pufferfish, and some tenggiri, plus all the other fishies I would normally see while snorkelling. The thing we didn't see while diving were sharks, even though we dived at a place called Shark Point, which as the name suggests, has a shark population. I was a bit disappointed with that. But that disppointment was resolved later on, and will be explained later on.
After completion of our four dives, on the last night we were there, our diving instructor gave us a crash course on Chapter 6 of our diving manual. Officially our diving manual has only 5 chapters. Unofficially, every diver has to learn Chapter 6. And we didn't know what the heck he was talking about until the night itself.
It turned out to be a 'mandatory' stunt to be carried out by all newly certified divers, involving wearing a snorkel (with the lens taped up so you can't see through it) and attempting to drink a can of beer through a snorkel in one breath (note that you can't breathe through your nose when wearing a snorkel).
I think the snorkel made my eyes look bigger, don't you?
It was crazy, we cheered each other on, I wish I had video but I didn't (dumb camera of mine was out of batteryyyy! These pics are from my diving buddies), and all of us got through our can of beer in one snorkelled breath. Which officially officially meant we were divers. Yay!
After that we were treated to a cool fire dance by one of the lovely female dive instructors, who will appear here as a fiery blur swinging her two fire-on-a-chain whatchamacallit thingies around.
And AFTER that, another one of the instructors ambushed us with an unexpected magic card trick, which turned out to be even more unexpected awesome. Worthy of his own magic show on tv, I would say. :)
All in all, it makes me think being a dive instructor is such job for them to have time for this stuff. So that's it. Mummy, I wanna be a dive instructor when I grow up.
Anyway, as I mentioned before, I was a little peeved at not being able to see sharks on my first few dives. However, since we could only dive up to the 2nd day (this is to prevent ear pressure complications that may arise from flying on the 3rd day), I had some free time on the 3rd day to chill on the island and decided to do my usually crazy thing, which is go snorkelling off the beach. By myself. Even though it's nowhere near and potentially dangerous as diving alone, it's also usually not a good idea to snorkel alone lest something happens to me out there and there's no one around to help me. But as I mentioned earlier, we didn't get to see sharks, and Shark Point was quite close to the beach. And so crazy me had to go shark hunting just to satisfy myself. I had actually seen a pretty big shark off the beach at Redang before, and just for those readers who think I have a death wish, sharks in Malaysia are quite safe compared to say, sharks in Australia like Great White sharks which can and have killed people. Malaysian sharks are much less psycho with people, coz' they're smaller and probably are more scared of people than we are of them (and they should be! Just think of how many of these buggers get killed for Chinese wedding dinner soup!).
Anyway, long story short, after shorkelling off the beach for about 40 mins, and I was far enough way from the shore than no one would hear or see me if I was in trouble, I saw what I was looking for. A lovely black-tipped shark... and bigger than ones I'd seen before at Redang which were babies. This one was at least 1.3 m long... definitely not and long as I am tall. But big enough to be cool, and I was saying to myself "Yessss!!!!". Followed it around for a while before it swam away, but then a few minutes later, while I was chasing after a big Parrotfish, I saw TWO big sized black tipped sharks swimming together. Weeee!! And these guys seemed a little curious of me coz' instead of swimming straight off, as I swam towards them, they swam in a big circle around me... kinda like they were watching this slow-poke creature with bright coloured flippers to check me out. But then they swam off too. But I was already happy at that point. Sharks were observed. Mission accomplished and after that I headed back to the beach. Still funny that I saw them snorkelling instead of diving, which is why I guess snorkelling still has its plus points (no need to worry about running out of air, for one thing!)
Still, I'm hyped to I finally got myself certified as a diver and can't wait to see what other awesome possum stuff I'll at my next dive trip. And meet more cool fellow divers and entertaining dive instructors. And learn underwater photography. I foresee this becoming an obsession. Hyuk hyuk.
Diver down! Yeaarrgh!
