Day 88 – Day 97, 16-25/5/2012
If I really liked diving after the experience in Thailand and Cambodia, then I fell in love with it in Perhentians! Over the course of 9 days I spent in Perhnetians, I finished the Advanced Open Water course (5 dives) and did 7 fun dives, so now I have 20 dives under my belt. “OK, let’s go diving!” is my favourite phrase of this week.
I had a Spanish clown, I mean, diving instructor, and there were 2 other people in my course – a funny bloke from London and a girl from Malaysia. I was diving with Turtle Bay Divers (yes, I chose them because they had a turtle in their name), and that was a 5-star service there! The instructor even corrected some of the things we had learnt wrongly (or just forgotten about) in Thailand. Everytime when one of us was saying “But in Thailand, they told us…”, he would respond with “then go back to Thailand and dive wrongly there!”. A clown, I’m telling you.
The PADI Advanced Open Water course consists of 5 dives. The first dive we did was a buoyancy workshop only for me and the English guy – he became my diving buddy in the rest of the dives, too. My buoyancy was bad before this, and it usually went especially bad at the 5 metre safety stop when the tank is rather empty. Thanks to the workshop I became better at controlling my buoyancy, even at the 5 metres. We were practicing hovering and swimming through a hula-hoop, we practiced backflips and frontflips (I had no idea you could do these in the water!), then failed at backflipping through the hulahoop (but nevertheless, it was fun trying!), we even had an underwater race (running without fins on the bottom – quite difficult) and kung-fu fighting there as well. That was too entertaining, and our instructor made it almost impossible to stay serious and not laugh (but as you start laughing, you start getting water in your mask – not my favourite thing!).
The equipment was good and new, but the boats.. They were fine for everyone, of course, it’s just me who had problems with them – first, I had gotten used to the big dive boats in Thailand, where you enter in the water with a giant stride (and perform buddy check on the boat), but from the small ones they use in Perhentians you have to do a backroll entry and the buddy check is done in the water, too. Once I got over the fright of rolling backwards in the water (and it happened as soon as I tried it) it proved to be a rather fun entry. But getting back in the boat – damn. No ladder (they could get those, it’s not that difficult!), so I was crawling back in the boat as a beached whale. By the end of my stay I had learnt how to get in the boat more or less gracefully, but the beginning was too funny and frustrating.
The second dive of my course was a navigation dive, which was fine – well, I didn’t get lost when I had to orientate myself using natural references, and I knew how to use a compass. While we were waiting for the others to complete the tasks, my buddy and I were doing backflips – it was just so fun! And then we were wondering where did our air go so quickly. :)
One of the main reasons for getting the Advanced Open Water certification is that it allows you to dive to 30 metres instead of 18m. While other adventure dives you can choose according to your interests, a navigation dive and a deep dive are compulsory. On our 3rd dive – the deep dive – we dived to 25m, and our instructor demonstrated some effects of the high pressure under the water – he smashed an egg, and the yolk stayed in a ball which we could pass on to each other. Then a plastic bottle got pretty squeezed from the pressure, but after there was some air added in it and we surfaced, the bottle had become rock hard and once opened, it popped like champagne from the pressure (that’s what could happen to your lungs if surfacing incorrectly).
In the evening we were having a night dive – a dive you do in the dark, using a flashlight. This would let you see some things you cannot see in daytime, as the nocturnal fishes come out to hunt. I didn’t see any big fish eating small fish, but we had a squid that left a cloud of ink behind it, and some more eels. The best part about this dive was the bioluminescence – the algae in the water were shining as we switched off our flashlights and were moving our arms around (thanks to the new moon for not spoiling this pleasure!). Awesome! It is quite common that people get claustrophobic or disoriented during the night dive, as it’s all dark around you, but I liked the darkness even more because then you could really focus on what’s in the spotlight of the flashlight.
Our last dive to get our certification was a fish ID/photography dive. With my buddy we decided to rent a camera and split the cost between the 2 of us and switch with the camera use in the middle of the dive. We met a turtle (right then when I had a camera!), and we saw a small school of fishes that I nicknamed “mini whales”, because to me they looked like mini sperm whales. They were so cute, if a bit odd! Turned out they are called humphead parrotfish and they are about 1 metre long. Impressive and beautiful! They come in top 5 of my favourite fish now (along with boxfish, lionfish, angelfish and bluespotted stingrays)! T-3, the divesite, has quite distinct thermoclines – layers of water with different temperatures. Once you are used to diving in water with temperature 31’C, getting in the cold thermocline gets you covered with goosebumps and makes you convinced that the temperature must be below 20. But no, computers don’t lie when they say it is only 28’C. This is what getting spoilt in +31’C means.
From now on I could enjoy fundiving without the limit of 18 metres, so my first dive was with an Australian divemaster and we went down to 29m. We saw everything on this dive! My miniwhale bumbhead parrotfishes, a shark and a turtle! I was trying to learn the breathing technique from the divemaster as his air-consumption was ridiculously low, but there did not seem to be any bubbles coming out of him. So for me, partly because we went very deep in the beginning, partly as I was overexcited because of the parrotfishes and turtle, and partly thanks to trying to follow his breathing, I had 30 bar of air when we surfaced – but we had spent an hour underwater!
On the next dive we headed for a wreck dive with a German divemaster. There’s a wreck of a ship that was transporting sugar – that’s why it is called the Sugar Wreck, and it’s been under there for about 10 years – I had no idea that marine life can transform a ship so much in such a short time! I was very impressed with the wreck (and with the galore of the poisonous lionfishes and scorpionfishes), and I even managed to get disoriented at one point – as we were exiting the wreck (it was darker inside, but not as dark as to need a flashlight), I was stunned by how light it was in the open water, and then I looked down and all I could see were schools of fish that never ended, it seemed there was no bottom. I thought we must be at the very surface, but no – we were at 13 metres, so it was only 5 metres from the bottom, but it seemed there is no bottom! My confusion lasted a few seconds, but I got what I missed out on the night dive :)
On another day I had a private dive with my German divemaster – I was the only one diving in that spot :) The divespot had a pretty strong current, which I was fighting with throughout the dive, but everytime when the divemaster was asking is the current ok, I was answering that it was fine – I figured, if I want to learn how to dive in stronger currents, I might as well start learning now. At one point we had a shark, a cute baby bluespotted stingray, a huge great barracuda and a huge pufferfish, all at the same time, each in a different direction from me. I heard the divemaster screaming and pointing at the shark behind me, so I looked at the shark, thought “meh”, and continued admiring the baby stingray that was slowly swimming away. Later, as we surfaced, she told me: “So I guess you are not into sharks, are you? I’m shouting there at the shark and you are not even looking at it!”. Well, what can I say… Other fish seem to be more interesting. (I wouldn’t say this if I saw a whale shark or if I’d be in a cage diving among the great whites, of course).
As the amount of dive sites in not infinite here, I started going back to places where I had been. So we returned to T-3, where we had done the fish ID dive. This time our divemaster took us through all the swimthroughs – during the training dive our instructor was not allowed to take us there. Well, I think I hit all of the swimthroughs with my tank, because I had left my buoyancy on the shore. My hair kept getting stuck with the tank, water kept coming into my mask and suddenly one of the fins gave me a blister, so all these tiny things made the dive quite uncomfortable – surprise, I consumed my air as quickly as my buddy (and I usually had 20-30 bar more left at the end of the dive than my buddy)! The small things really matter. But I saw a baby yellow boxfish, and that’s one of the prettiest fishes I’ve seen here! It indeed looks like a little yellow box with black dots.
I went back to Sugar Wreck on another private dive with the Australian divemaster because in the first dive we were not taken in the air pocket. This time the current was stronger and the viz not so good, but I saw a coral catshark (the only place you see them here), and plenty of scorpionfishes and lionfishes. As I later put it, the dive atmosphere was like a badly made horror movie – with the bottom covered in sea urchins, poisonous fish and sharks around you, fighting a current and diving in a rusted wreck, and then you surface in the airpocket. The airpocket was a bit of a disappointment – I had expected it to be bigger, but in the end the only thing I could think of was how not to crash into something. But I enjoyed it very much anyway.
I went back for a second dive to the Temple of the Sea as well with another Australian divemaster. The Temple is full of fish, but I only wanted to see the baby yellow boxfish and this is a good place for them – usually you can find one or two, and my divemaster promised he would find me a boxfish. We found sharks (a whole family living under rocks), and a seasnake (I only found out afterwards that that snake is the most poisonous creature they have in the seas here) and my divemaster was looking for my boxfish. He was looking and looking, and looking, and I was trying to figure out an underwater signal for “forget it!”, but he wouldn’t give up. And he found me not one, but two of the cute yellow boxes (why I wanted the baby boxfish? Because the juveniles are yellow, but when they grow up, they are still cute, but in a brown colour)!
I didn’t even notice how my stay on the islands had come to an end, so for my last dive I wanted only to see a turtle. I went for the last dive in the D’Lagoon – in general, it’s a rather boring divesite, but good for beginners and refreshers. However, it’s the only place where you can see panda clownfish, so I opted for it, plus I was begging for that one last turtle to finish on a high note. The panda clownfish were amazing (it’s similar to Nemo, but in a different colour)! There’s this field of sand without anything interesting, and in the middle of it stands a lone anemone with a family of panda clownfish living in it. A papa panda clownfish, a mama clownfish and 3 baby clownfish. While I was hovering over them and admiring their expressions, the papa clownfish decided he doesn’t enjoy the intrusion into his home, so he swam up and crashed right into my mask. Yes, I was attacked in my face by a panda clownfish. An 8 cm long clownfish. :) We did see another turtle at the end, so brining my total amount of turtles up to 7. See – the Turtle Bay Divers give what you ask for: you ask for a turtle, they find it; you ask for a baby boxfish, they get it!
Overall, I saw a lot underwater. Of course, during the dive when we had a camera, we didn’t see all this, plus most of the photos were bad enough as it was our first time with the camera underwater (yes yes, bubbles and buoyancy play their role here). But what I saw during the dives were (courtesy of my fancy diving logbook): hawksbill sea turtles, blacktip reefsharks, bamboo sharks, coral catshark, banded sea krait (snake), white and neon damselfish, brown pipefish, clownfish (panda and nemo), black, clark’s and pink anemonefish, jawmullet, yellowback, gold-banded and lunar fusiliers, silver and tall-fin batfish, bluespotted stingray, bluespotted fantail ray, Jenkins stingray, titan and yellow-margin triggerfish, bartail goatfish, cleaner and moon wrasse, scorpionfish, lionfish, rainbow, greenthroat and humphead parrotfish, squirrelfish, one-spot, two-spot and blue-stripped snappers, blue-ringed and six-banded angelfish, gold-spotted trevally, black-spotted porcupinefish, black-blotched porcupinefish, map and starry pufferfish, yellow and shortnose boxfish, white-eyed moray eel, Indian ocean walkman, red bass, bluelined grouper, moorish idol, longfin bannerfish, butterflyfish, brown-marbled and brown-spotted grouper, scribbled filefish, orange-spined unicornfish, gold-saddled and coral rabbitfish, yellowtail, bigeye, pickhandle and great barracudas, spanish mackerels, sergeant majors, crocodile longtom, orange-banded coralfish, eye-line surgeonfish, shrimp goby, raccoon butterflyfish, squid, sea urchins, reef crab, durban dancing shrimp, coral banded shrimp, banded boxer shrimp, anemone shrimp, cleaner shrimps, cowries, featherstars, bioluminescent plankton, starfish, nudibranches, seaslugs, and plenty of different corals.
The Perhentians were the best diving experience I’ve had, comparing to Koh Tao and Koh Phangan in Thailand and Koh Rong in Cambodia. I want to go back already!
Chapatis, curries, rooftops and holy cows 