Monday, April 23, 2007
-4/23/2007 10:21:00 AM
just came back from my diving trip! i had a blast of time over there, all of us were reluctant to go home :( one guy even said that we should go to sentosa today to slowly recuperate to prevent any "beach lag".. hur hur..
anyway i shall try to recollect all the significant events that happened during the trip, limited to my short term memory with apologies, wont be getting the pictures anytime soon
day 1: Friday, 20th April
-took leave
-went shopping wif may and lionel
-went to church and had a great time jamming, switching among the different instruments
-totally forgot about dinner, rushed down to raffles city when joses called and packed burger king
-rushed down to SRC after tt, and to our surprise, everyone else was late
-the van came at 830pm, instead of 7pm. we were way behind schedule
-bus journey abt 3 hrs, reached a town called Mersing at approx 12MN
-took a 3 1/2 hr boat ride to Pulau Dayang
-didnt manage to catch any sleep
-just gazing at God's creation up above, I could see a gazillion stars out at sea, it was just too amazing le..
-when we reached Pulau Dayang, i was STUNNED.
-the water there was so uber clear, it was clearer than some swimming pools here in Singapore..
-saw so many colourful fishes from the boat already, and I knew something great was in store for us pretty soon
Day 2: Saturday,21st April
-We checked in at 430am, caught some sleep, woke up at 830am for breakfast.
-There were like at least 50 divers waiting for their 1st dive..
-Saw 2 cute NTU girls.. hehe
-Anyway proceeded to our first dive site
-Was really disappointed coz the dive site we went to had not so gd visibility due to the dead corals there.. we only got down to 7m and did basic skills..didnt see much
-went back to shore for lunch, then it was back to the boat for the 2nd dive
-supposed to dive at this other island, Pulau Lang, but when we got there, the boat suddenly veered out into the open sea.. everyone was wondering what happened, why aren't we stopping to jump off for the dive.. we travelled out into the open sea for like another 15 mins.. when we saw this Orange sausage balloon sticking out of the sea. Apparently the captain of the boat spotted the orange balloon and went to check it out.. there were 4 divers floating there, waiting to be rescued.. haha.. scary man.. the current pulled them out into sea like a few kilometres away..thank God they were spotted!
-then we went back to do our 2nd dive, this time we got down to 18m.. saw so many funny looking fishes, too many to describe.. we played wif a sea cucumber as well haha.. didnt noe sea cucumbers could move on their own until that day.. they have this spout at the back to blow air out to move.. came face to face wif sea urchins too.. scary. they were huge spike balls haha..
-after the 2nd dive, we headed back to wait for dinner, there were ppl playing volleyball at the beach, 5 of us decided to challenge them haha.. many girls watching, so we played as if we were pros hahaha.. but it was really fun :)
-then we played beach soccer wif the locals! super fun la, the sand at the beach was so soft, it was quite hard to run on it haha.. some guys said that they would rather play soccer than dive.. hur hur..
-i think the highlight of Day 2 was dinner
-As I joined this dive through Singapore Recreation Club, we had special treatment ahhaa.. the club provided extra stuff for dinner.. like this HUGE FISH that tasted like chicken.. and... *drumroll*.. a few hundred HUGE PRAWNS that tasted like heaven... and there were approx 20 of us? each of us ate like.. 10 or more huge prawns.. and we couldnt finish them..
-imagine.. we ended up playing the zhong ji mi ma game to clear the prawns, the person who guessed the number had to eat it.. hahaa.. then we went on to grosser stuff like parts of the fish.. i got the worst deal.. i had to eat this huge fish eye which tasted like liver+brain+intestines.. but really had a great time bonding wif the other divers..
Day 3: Sunday, 22nd April
-woke up at 630am for the 3rd dive
-we did navigation skills, used a compass to find our way around underwater..
-we saw this really HUGE FISH! it's called the parrot fish.. it had this huge hump on it's forehead.. and it's beak is like that of a parrot... super funny slow moving fish..
parrot fish looks like tt above, but it's the size of a fridge
-on the 4th dive we had our leisure dive ... checked out the whole Dayang Bay underwater for an hour! saw sea turtles! many schools of fish! exotic man! so tempted to ride on one of the turtles hehe..
-set off for Singapore after lunch.. so sad.
-oh the 2 NTU girls were wearing a Brazil and Argentina singlet..
-then the guys were like saying "eh u support Brazil or Argentina?" hahaha..
anyway. thank God for the safety of all the divers! many scary things happened during the dive, like.. on the 2nd dive, when i jumped in from the boat, my oxygen tank came out.. hur hur.. my friend's weight belt fell into the bottom of the sea after he jumped off too.. drank a lot of sea water too..underwater.. which wasnt pleasant..
pulled this picture of Pulau Dayang from the net
