Warning: Image Heavy.
Back from Dayang. I'm so happy and relieved to be certified an advanced diver. Hello to diving up to 30 metres and to the unknown world of night diving.
Bags of diving gear (super heavy). All our wet suits, BCD (Buoyancy Control Device) Mask and fins are inside. The only humble dive gear I own now, is sadly just a diving sausage, slate and dive torch. I long for the day when I can get my hands on a full set of diving equipment. Shao and Jax, I know you want it too. =P
2nd dive trip together. My most patient buddy. Seriously, I test his patience big time.
Shao: My icecream and diving friend from Open Water days. Shao! I still have no idea how on earth we became icecream buddies but well, here's to many coming years of exploring the marvelous underwater world! Working won't zap away our passion for diving ya? Oh, I am just practising the "I am OK" hand signal to be used underwater for communication.
AC Boys
Pulau Dayang. You are worth the 4 hours' coach ride and another 4 hours' boat ride.
The PADI instructors: A bunch of ah bengs who seriously just eat, dive, sleep and smoke. They look fierce and menacing with their tattoos. But they are very nice and patient people. I was seriously super hopeless when it comes to navigation with a compass underwater and 3 of them took turns to coach me and wait patiently until I finally figured how to navigate correctly. Guess I will always be remembered as the compass girl.
Common area for slacking and eating in between dives. As the slogan says on the divers' shirts, Eat, Sleep, Dive. Thats all we do.
The only girl. The boys I hanged out with on the island. I didn't talk to a single girl cause we are outnumbered. I'm one of the 2 girls on adv/leisure dive.
FYI, Jax took this picture. Anyway, this is Frederick from Sweden. He's quite a character; funny and a great conversationalist. Other than the cool facts that he's a diving junkie, underwater photog and owns his personal diving kit, he provided verbal entertainment during our waits for the next dive.
A glimpse into their 4 bed-bunk. =\ Seriously, you cannot expect much from a divers' lodge. The bare minimums. The 2 bed ensuite room Jax and I got was not any better. Extremely squeaky double decker beds and cold showers (no heater!). But its fine. The diving experience surpasses all the crappiness. As long as I get to dive, I can tolerate all that.
Diving Buddies: Fred and Shao
My diving buddy. Dayang, the same after 3 years. Yet, it just feels different.
Our diving instructor, Vincent. He's 25 (or so he says). He asked me to guess how old he is, and I wanted to say he seriously looks like he's 19. Lol. Super patient instructor; I gave him hell during the navigation course. My directional skills suck big time on land and in water. The only thing I aced, was the underwater nitrogen narcosis test where we had to perform simple writing and mental tasks at a depth of 30 metres to assess if we are affected by the pressure.
Dayang, We will miss diving around you. The place where I dived for the first time in June 2005, which opened my eyes to this amazing world of underwater marvels.
Going back. Ya, we are drained. But yet, happy and eagerly awaiting our next dive trip.
Yes, I am addicted to diving.
Some unglam pictures. Diving is a super unglam activity for girls. For guys, look super good. But not for girls. The no make up, crazily tangled hair and the struggle to get out of my body clinging wet suit without incurring any bikini malfunctions.
Have no idea what I was doing. Perhaps saying bye to the fishies below. There was a baby bumphead parrotfish that was swimming near the jetty.
No pictures please when I am munching on junk food.
Oh, the highlight of the boat ride was the sighting of 3 dolphins!!! SCREAMS!!!! They were jumping in the water. Everyone was so elated to see them. Esp. me. We were all sleeping and drooling away when one of the instructors started blasting in his booming voice, "Wake up! Dolphins!" The way we jumped and rushed to the side of the boat in a matter of seconds was really hilarious on hindsight.
Home (not so sweet) home. Even though it was a tiring and short trip, it was still a getaway and diving is always one of the things I am passionate about.
Supper with Jax and Shao. Frog Leg porridge! HEHE. Fred didn't join us because he's a vegan. He was appalled when we told him we are craving for frog's leg porridge. =\ Since the dive centre is at Cantonment Road, there's no better time to head down to the nearby famous frog leg porridge stall.
You can tell how happy and eager I was to dig in. While Shao and Jax were reminiscing about their AC cyber old school days of CounterStrike and Doom (?), I was just slurping up the good hawkerfood. Sigh, Boys will be boys. I guess they must have visited every cyber lan shop in the entire Bukit Timah stretch.
Still waiting for the underwater shots taken by Fred. Amazing stuff.
A little advert on Scuba Diving:
What does S.C.U.B.A means?
It's an acronym for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. Recreational or leisure diving has sky rocketed in popularity in the last 2 decades. To start off, there are 2 entry level certifications; the Open Water Diver Cert which is essentially the passport to diving and the Advanced Open Water Diver cert. Once you get these 2 certifications, you are free to dive any where in the world up to a depth of 30 metres (for advanced divers only). Open water divers can only dive up to 18 metres and are not allowed to go for night diving.
After advanced, diving doesn't stop here. There are other specialty courses as well such as wreck diving, search and rescue, drift diving, deep diving, ice diving and underwater photography. All these will be steps closer to being a Dive Master (DM) or an instructor. The coolest and often one of the most dangerous form of diving is ice diving where diving extremists will drill a hole in frozen lakes and carry out diving activities for a very limited window of time just to get the adrenaline rush of doing such a crazy thing. Must be an out of the world experience man....
And as divers living in Singapore, we are a blessed lot because we are situated at the gateway to the most amazing dive sites in the world. South east asia is by far, the world's biggest hotspot for recreational diving with many of the world's most beautiful marine habitats such as Sipadan, Phuket, Manado, Layang Layang and many more. Westerners such as Fred flock to SEA just to dive. And definitely, it is my biggest dream to dive at every one of them in the future. The feeling of being submerged underwater and appreciating the beauty of nature is unbelievable. You can only see it for yourselves to believe and trust me, you will be addicted. One of the most common question asked amongst divers is, "When and where is your next dive destination?"
You think diving is expensive and eats up alot of time just by traveling for hours there. And once you get to the dive site, you sometimes get crappy lodging and food. On top of that, you have instructors and divemasters shouting at you to suit and gear up quick (like army all over again for guys), the initial fear of the unknown in a new dive site and the unglam factor (for girls). But once you descend into the water, all that is worth tolerating when you experienced being totally enthralled by the vast species of marine life in the open seas. Out of this world, seriously.
It is so worth every cent, every moment of butt pain getting to the destination, every bed bug bite and every morsel of crap food.
2005 pictures:
The old gang.
*****
