March 31st, 2005 Ok, so we got our camera back, and I've made the time to load the new pix from Pulau Tioman, Malaysia! First, we didn't have an underwater camera, but in the next blog post I will post some pix of fish that we did see underwater, that I found in a huge aquarium at one of the malls last week. At least you'll get an idea of how vibrant the colors were and the abundance of sea life!
As part of my course for getting certified for Open Water Scuba, I chose to be able to go to Pulau Tioman for my final open water certification dives. The options were to dive around Singapore, which would have been a little bit cheaper, but would not have more than an arms length of visibility, or make the trip to Pulau Tioman and get certified in beautiful clear waters and stay on a more rustic feeling island. I chose the latter, and Jeremy was able to come along on the trip for a small fee which included all of our meals, our accomodations and boat ferries and transfers to Tioman, and all gear needed, including tanks for the dives. We thought it a good deal, and signed up immediatly.
We left on a Friday night, loaded into the van with our dive buddies, and new friends and Raymond (our instructor) and set off for Malaysia. The drive up to Malaysia ended up being quite long, as Friday night traffic leaving the island was overwhelming and to leave the island, you must go thru customs. That meant for us, getting in and out of the van, carrying our bags and walking thru, meeting the van on the other side. So tricky! However, getting to customs took over 2 hrs. Mind you that Singapore is only 14 miles wide, North to South, and we were heading to the North. The Malaysians on motorcycles, leaving the island after being here all week working, just wove in and out of traffic, bumper to bumper, and 5 lanes accross. It looked to be very dangerous, but they didn't have to wait in the long lines like we did. There were thousands of motorcycles doing this, and if it weren't for the lack of lighting we would have taken some pix. I've never seen anything like it before. Those guys were insane!
We broke the trip into two parts. First arriving in Mersing, Malaysia (in the middle of the night) which is still on the mainland. We stayed in a budget hotel, and woke EARLY to catch our boat that would take us to the Ferry Terminal. Once others had boarded at the Ferry Terminal, we were on our way to Tioman!
Small village huts along the river early in the morning.
Fishing boats along the river.
A small abandoned boat along the riverside.
Villages along the river.
The trip by boat to Tioman took just over 2 hrs, as along the way, we had to drop folks off at their respective locations along the island.
We stayed at Salang Beach Resort.
Some of the views as we approached the island.
A fishing boat in the distance.
As you can see, we had calm seas for our journey to Tioman, and at one point I looked over at Raymond and we both commented at the same time, that the water looked like a sheet of glass! It was that calm! However, the week before another dive group (one that's just around the corner from Living Seas) took a group out to Pulau Aur (an island just South of Tioman) and they went when the conditions were a bit adverse and at 1am, needless to say, the boat sunk and while no one was injured, a lot of gear was lost, and they found later that for a boat that was supposed to hold 25, they had 39 folks squeezed on board. Believe me, I asked a lot of Questions before embarking on THIS trip! These were some of our first views of the island, Tioman, Malaysia.
Rocky outcrops on Tioman!
Those of you who know Jeremy well, know what he's thinking right now!
Ken, Kelly's dive buddy getting gear together.
Once we arrived at Tioman, we learned that they did not have all of our rooms ready, so we got some late morning breakfast, 'family style' and laid out our gear to get that yellow boat to take us to the bigger boat out in the distance so we could begin our dives. We all embarked together, but Jeremy and 2 others went to check out a fishing boat wreck while Ken, Kelly, Susanah and Sheng Cheong started the cert dives with Raymond.
from Left-Right: Ken (peace sign), Serko, ?, Sheng Cheong, Susanah, Kel, Jer...Raymond is missing!
Jer eating fried fish.
Kel and Ken setting up equipment.
Pre-dive pictures
Ken and Kel-dive buddies. Almost ready to dive.
We can't remember his name, but he had a kick butt underwater camera!
Kel situating the BCD.
Raymond, my instructor!
Those into diving know the different levels you can attain, and Raymond is attaining his Tech I Level right now back at Tioman!
Our new friend Serko
Serko came with us, as one of Raymond's friends and another fellow Tech I (he was using the time at Tioman to practice and was one of Jeremy's dive buddies until I was finished with my cert dives)
Susanah and Sheng Cheong, goofing around.
Kel and Jer after a good day of diving.
Jeremy being artistic.
We ended our first day of dives, doing 3 dives and getting to experience loads of exotic fish, and the warm blue/greeen waters. We also learned how the pressure on your body, when you dive deeper, makes you have to pee, A LOT. So, we got to try out warming up our wetsuits, (not that we NEEDED to be warm) and to christen the equipment. Special thanks goes to Living Seas for allowing me to borrow a wetsuit!:)
Tioman Reef at low tide.
Tioman Sunset
When we got back from our last dive, our room was finally ready, and we had about an hour to shower and change and meet back for another family style dinner. When we arrived at our bungalow, we found that we had a resident rooster hanging on our porch. We had a split bungalow half for Jeremy and I, and half for Susanah and Sheng Cheong. We thought it was nice that we'd have a wake up call in the morning, as we'd need to start early to get 2 dives in before needing to head back to Mersing and then back to Singapore. All of our affections for this rooster began to change as when we arrived back to our bungalows after a late night snack with the group and began to settle in with a book to read for a bit before catching our ZZZ's...this rooster crowed a boistrous crow at about 11pm. The crow of the rooster we thought was funny and we all laughed at his mistiming crows! Then we could hear next door, Sheng Cheong mimicking the rooster, thus providing for more laughs.
I hate this Rooster!
This rooster's timeclock was a bit off, MAJORLY OFF! I was abruptly awakened from an exhausted slumber at 3:30am by this stupid bird. He was sitting, right here outside our window when the commotion began. He didn't stop after one big crow, so I got up and shoo'd him away!
The peace resumed for another hour and half, and then this damn rooster began crowing again, at 5:30am! By this time, I was getting peeved! I was thinking of ways to eat him, Malay style cooking, Indian style Chicken Korma, maybe even just fried chicken legs! If I were to ever stay at this resort again I would make sure I was far away from THIS rooster! Then, he gave a faint crow at 7am, barely loud enough to let us know that we really did NEED to be up. Needless to say, his life was spared, but ONLY b/c we weren't staying there another night.
Let me add that this 'resort' we were staying in, was not like a resort that you all back home might recall being a resort. Now, resort in a third world country has a bit of a different meaning. The bathroom was set up the same as our bathroom at Mana-Mana, only this one was a but scuzzier and had a constant leak, probably from the toilet, so even after you squeegeed the floor after taking a shower, there was still a puddle in the middle of the floor right infront of the sink, thus making a middle of the night bathroom run quite wet! The toilet was quite a bit lower, although a toilet was provided, instead of a squat hole but the height difference was precarious if you weren't prepared for it. As well, we bought bottled water and didn't even use the water from the sink to brush our teeth. We were advised by Raymond to use our bottled water for drinking and hygiene. Our half of the bungalow did come with an Air Con, however, we couldn't figure out how to use it, until I got help from the front desk. Luckily we did have AC at night. And our little bungalow was carpeted...really, not necessary or practical for a beach 'resort'. Nuff said.
The next morning we all got an early start, met for family style breakfast (not your typical egg and toast I might add) but finger style foods, much of which I have no idea what they were. Some pasty like in nature, some fishcake like in nature, there were hard boiled eggs and fried noodles. They offered coffee and tea.
A little lesson in vocabulary now:
If you want coffee or tea there are several ways to ask for it, depending on your cream and sugar preferences. Don't take my spelling to be the way it should be spelled, but rather how it sounds when you ask for it. This is only necessary if you don't like the way it's typically served at the hawker stalls which is usally heavily creamed up and very sweet! On Tioman, they gave us the cream and sugar separate so we could do it to our personal tastes.
Tea or Coffee LARGE = GAJA
Coffee with Cream, no sugar (which is always a little around here) = KOPI-C MYTENG
Coffee with Cream & Sugar = KOPI (how you usually get it at hawker stalls)
Coffee Black, w/ Sugar = KOPI-O
Coffee Black = KOPI KOSONG
(and you can get any of the above iced)
Hot Tea with Ginger = Teh Halia
(you can only get this hot and only at Muslim or Malay eateries) but ohhh so good!
So, as the day before, we got our gear ready, and waded out to the yellow boat, and our boatman took us to his dive boat. He ferried us our dive spots and our lessons began. We only had one more lesson for certification, and then the next dive was for fun. We definatly felt the currents as our last cert dive which we swam into the current took only a few moments to get back with the current.
On our last dive, the one for fun, we saw a huge moray eel, it was so big I thought maybe it was 2 not just one, and again, loads of tropical fish. Think of Nemo and we saw tons of them, some bigger than we expected, clown fish, swimming among the aenonomies. We saw a school of baracuda, a big cuttlefish, mola mola, sunfish but no sea turtles or sharks (which was just fine by me).
Oh how attractive!
Getting the fins on!
Turning for entry.
I am just in awe of the color of the water! I have never seen water the color of torquoise before. The pix do it NO JUSTICE!
And Kel's in!
What form, what form! See how far away I am from everyone, this is b/c I was so enthralled with the color of the water, I just couldn't get in fast enough. And, there's a good current here.
Susanah and Sheng Cheong before entry.
Our Cameraman!
After we completed our 2 dives on Sunday, we broke for some lunch and got cleaned up and headed for the Ferry Terminal to catch our boat back to Mersing, Malaysia. We ferried from port to port picking up folks along the way.
Leaving Pulau Tioman
At one of the ferry stops, while we were waiting for folks to board, we looked over the edge and saw this school of fish just swimming around our boat. There is no shortage of fish around here, that's for sure!
School of fish
On our ferry ride back to Mersing, we ended up getting the boat stuck in the sand of a low tide and we were unable to efficiently make it to the channel that would take us to the ferry terminal. We watched the waters quickly receeding as our motor screamed behind us as the boatman tried to keep us moving churning up the sand. It was slow going and we thought we'd have to swim, but eventually, our skilled boatman gouged out a path in the sand for us to reach the channel. It's all pretty natural around this area, so we assumed they did not dredge the channel. We also thought, this probably wasn't the first time a boat got caught up here at low tide.
Once we reached Mersing, we loaded our gear into the van and Raymond treated us the 'best burgers' in Malaysia. They were intersting burgers, a thin patty of I guess it was beef? But that was also topped with one slice of cheese, and a fried egg. There was some lettuce and a sort of BBQ sauce all served on a bun that was more like bread. Not your typical backyard burger that's for sure.
We also made a bathroom stop and I saw this little cat just loving up the attention it could get. I had to pet it. All the cats here are so small. And all are feral as well. This one was near an outdoor eatery which is where you usually see them lurking about. If I wasn't the Doglady, I'd consider taking one in.
After a bathroom break and a burger break, we loaded in the van and started our 5 hr journey back to Singapore, filling out our Dive Logs and reminiscing about the weekend. It was a great weekend in Malaysia on Tioman and a fun group to learn to dive with. We are planning to stay in the loop for other dive trips going out and all hope to dive again together in the near future!
Now we are teaching Ken, my dive buddy, how to rock climb!
