Diving is so blooody fun... I really wished last weekend would not end.. missing the beautiful white sandy beaches and clear blue waters now. But most of all, I missed the peacefulness of the underwater world.. where everything is just slow and serene.
It all started on Thursday, after work, where we (the divers) gathered at Gilldivers at Tanjong Pagar. There I met our instructor, Rory and the rest of the diving team. Monica went along with us as the guide for the leisure divers (Jenny, Dennis, Alan) while Rory guided us open water divers (Mun Siong, Duncan, Shab, Panos and I. Masdi, another diver for the advanced course went with us but followed another grp for the dives. From Gills', off we went to Woodlands and finally hit Johor.
The bus ride to Mersing took 5-6 hrs. We arrived at Mersing around 3 am in the morning. Tired and groggy from my sleep, I went to collect some equipment bags to load it onto the ferry. We joined a few other groups at the ferry... all equally excited as well. A few teams were using the 3day weekend to extend the dives too... so Pulau Dayang is going to be well populated. I was hoping then that The dive sites wont be over-dived though..
Finally arrived at Pulau Dayang at 645 am in the morning.. arr. The first thing that struck me was how beautiful the place was. I fell in love with it immediately. Dennis then told me to take off my sandals and keep it nicely, I wont be needing it for the next 3 days.. and he was right. There was never a need to wear sandals as the whole place was filled with soft white sand..even up to the resort.. sigh..wish i could play in the sand right now. Jenny went to sleep..and so did everyone else except Dennis, Alan, Duncan and I. I guess we were just all too soaked into the atmosphere to sleep then. Sunrise was not really magnificent as it was hidden behind another hill on another island.. but to feel the peacefullness there... I was just too happy.
Next, I made a good cup of 3-in-1 coffee and sit on the bench to relax while awaiting the dive to start. Breakfast was a simple continental buffet style - great fried eggs. One by one, all woke up (Jenny gave the morning dive a miss) and joined us for breakfast. Finally, at 930am Monica woke up... AHHH I'm late!!... haha... she was shouting on her way to the table. haha... anyways, we quickly finished up and off the the boat we went.
I was all jittery before the first dive. As I set up the equipments (including salivating on the mask to prevent it from fogging up), Rory gave us all a short briefing of what we were going to do. We were going to do some hovering skills as well as to get used to being underwater. Another group from Orpheus Dive was on the same boat as us, and they were doing their open water dive as well. Set up regulator on the tank... Put on the BCD jacket... (the wetsuit felt snugly tight) and off I went and jumped into the sea...
The first jump was exhilarating!!! With the BCD inflated with air... I floated on the surface of the water. The regulator tight in my mouth, I kept reminding myself to breathe through the mouth.. the nose is stuck under the mask, anyways. Once everybody is in... Rory signalled for us to go down... with one hand pressing on the BCD descend button... glup glup glup..down I went.
All at once, everything started to move slowly. The water at the dive site had great visibility... almost up to 15m. slowly slowly I reached the ocean bed... filled with dead corals. We did our hovering practice there... it was hard..I kept bouncing up and down... need to control breathing as well ...darn..still can't get it right. Oh well, short practice, and off we went, slowly fin-ning our way through the sea... looking at the ocean creatures along the way.
to be continued.....
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