Perhentian Island Dive

A lot of people think that diving is an expensive and dangerous sport. OK...i've to admit that it is really expensive sport for me as a medium income group. As for dangerous.....No no...i don't think so. As long as you follow the rules and instruction, it is safer than driving your car on the road. Last weekend, i've went to Perhentian Island to take my advance open water diver license while Andry went there for fun dive.

Before i went:

Somebody: Hey, it is month of 7(ghost month) in chinese Lunar calendar, you still want to go?
Me: Haha...i don't care. I want to dive. There is nothing to worry about.

To complete my Advance Open Water license, i need to pass 5 test.

1. Peak Performance Buoyancy

2. Night Diving

3. Wreck Diving

4. Navigation Dive

5. Deep Diving

My 1st day 1st lesson was about peak performance buoyancy. It was a hard time for me as this was my 1st dive after 1 year not diving and still need to play with Buoyancy Game underwater. My instructor was very strict and request me to redo and redo until he satisfied. However, it was really a good lesson as a good diver must have a good buoyancy control. So, being tortured for 45 minutes also nevermind la.....Haha..

As for my night diving, they brought me to Romantic Bay. I was requested to go down from the boat 1st by the instructor.

Instructor: Bell, you go down 1st.

Bell: Ha? Me?

Instructor: Why?

Bell: I scared....

Haih...really embarassing. Have to thanks to my colleague for keep on frightening me before i went. Scared was not a good excuse for them, so...without giving me any choice, i have to jump 1st. I can't say "You jump i jump" as night diving is part of my course. I just did not want them to find any chance to fail me(...thinking too much). After everyone reach the bottom, i tried to use my torch light to point around me....Too bad...no fish or coral was spotted. I only saw a lot of worm!!! Damn....So geli....I told myself that i was not going to do any mask cleaning down here although it became very foggy. But, when the intructor brought us swim around the coral, i already forgot about all those disgusting worm. What i seen, was a scenery that i've never seen before during day dive. It was a regret that we did not bring our camera together as those fish that was very active during day time was resting and hiding under the rock and coral. We saw 2 big size turtle hiding under the rock and we slowly approaching them and given them a gently touch. There was a lot of plankton this night. We could see the Sparkling Blue color shining like thousand and thousand of star when we moved our finger around. It was so beautiful.......

Second day, after complete my course review, i was out for my wreck diving. Our destination was Sugar Wreck and we was told that this wreck was sunk on year 2000. Now it had become a home for thousand of marine life. When we did our decent, we could feel that the visibility was getting bad and bad when you went deeper. There was a thermocline when we exceed 15m of depth and the visibilty was only 2-3 meter. But, with the guide of experience dive master, we still able to see a lot of things. We saw razor fish, scorpion fish, star puffer, map puffer, box fish, School of baraccuda, file fish, sea snack, nudibranch, scorpion fish, big eye snapper, cuttlefish and etc.

In the noon, i was brought to romantic bay sand area to perform my navigation lesson. I had did some stupid stuff due to too nervous and was question by my instructor underwater. I was really a bit down at that time. While we were on our way back, my instructor show us a lot of Nudibrach at this sandy area and we also spotted 1 seahorse cliging it's tail at the soft coral. It look like very shy and not moving when we look at it. It was my 1st time being so close to a seahorse.

I only left 1 last lesson on my 3rd day which was deep diving. We was brought to 30m depth and perform some simple task. Example, write my email in reverse direction underwater and it was time and compare it with the time we complete it on the ground.

Since i already complete my Advance Open Water Course, so in the afternoon i could join the fun diving team. We was again heading to the Sugar Wreck Dive Site as i really love this place very very much. It was really a amazing dive site.

My last day o the island, we'd did another 2 more dive at T3(Terumbu Tiga) and Temple of sea before we took our boat to go bk. At T3, we saw different type of shrimp and diffrent type of pipefish. Emperor Angel Fish can be spotted here as well. As for Temple of Sea(Tokong Laut), we saw a lot of brown bamboo shark, puffer fish, procupine fish and a school of trvalis and squid. This was the 1st time i saw squids underwater and i was very excited and tried to approaching them to take some picture. But the squid are just too smart that i don't even have change to get close to them.

We took our boat back at 4pm and went to Jerteh Town to take our dinner.

I wish to share all the photos here, but the line is just too slow...Too bad..