My Little Life Adventures: Diving again (and making an attempt of bringing the blog back to life)

OK, this blog has been dead for way too long. I have made around 257 promises to revive it and bring it back to life – and failed every time.

The unfortunate change in The Bum’s life is that she now has a Real Job. The bank account says thank you and the credit card company is happier that my bills are paid in a more timely manner – but the Real Job gets in the way of doing some other things in life – finding the time to blog.

In any case, occasionally The Bum finds some time for Fun – such as the most recent dive trip to Tioman on board MV Dive Race.

I was travelling with Miss Last Minute Queen, who almost got left behind at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal – though she did actually eventually make it not-a-minute-too-early for our 6.30pm meeting time.

Messages from Miss Last Minut Queen.

We were told we can dive as our own group, being experienced divers. Obviously this was the plan – we did not even make the dive team board!

"Ummm... Why is my name not on this board?"

The unfortunate consequences of having been all-work-and-no play and not having really dived were rather obvious. My regulators were in dire need of servicing, my backplate webbing was somewhat in need of a change (well it still held together for this weekend) – and my dive computer battery kept beeping a low battery warning throughout the weekend. Oh crap! I clearly need to be more of a bum and less of a professional – this dive gear was expensiiiive!!!

I deserve a FAIL on dive gear maintenance.

Well, what I lost in gear maintenance I won in choice of manicure. In a Girl Diver’s life, what could possibly be better than having a perfect manicure still after a weekend with 6 dives? I vote for hard gel :)

Perfect Manicure - after 6 dives!

So, how was the diving then? Although July falls right in the middle of the high season on the Eastern Coast of Malaysia, in July-August when the currents are again turning the visibility tends to be somewhat poor. As it was this time, too. We had a visibility of around 7-10m. No photos this time – due to having again flooded my camera. My carelessness being the reason this time, duh…

The dive sites were still as beautiful as ever. Me and my buddy were slightly bored at Marine Park. It has some interesting small wrecks but the visibility is on of the worst of all sites on Tioman, only around 5m Stay close to your buddy!

Second dive was at Malang Rocks – a site where turtle sightings are rather guaranteed. We started off on the shallow side of the site (did not find the balcktip reef sharks L ), found one big turtle and continued towards the swim throughs – until I realised my buddy who had just a few seconds ago been with me was missing. With the bad visibility it took me a little while to locate her – and I found her swimming AWAY from me. Apparently she had spotted another turtle and I had not heard her banging on her tank to catch my attention. Well, at least she was trying to be good a buddy and call for attention despite of abandoning me…

Malang is actually my favourite site – it always has something to offer to cheer you up – turtle, swim throughs, big schools of yellow snappers, beautiful seafans, interesting rock formations – and occasionally a devil scorpion fish, a shark or something else bigger. Nice diving. J

Third dive was at Seafan Canyon, which used to have some beautiful, big, orange colour seafans. However, one of the storms seems to have taken most of them out – but it still makes for a nice dive. We didn’t see much – but it still made a good story for the logbook:

"Umpf... I spotted.. an SMB??? At 9m below the surface."

It so happens that my buddy was trying to practice her skills in shooting a surface marker. She seemed to have some trouble inflating the marker – and as we ascended to 9 meters, I found to my great astonishment her reeling in her entire surface marker back down to 9 meters. Obviously not enough air in that marker. Tapped her on the shoulder and she did Take 2 of Surface Marker Deployment.

Fourth dive of the day was at Labas – an always pleasing site to dive. Labas is also another mere pile of rocks covered in seagull poop on the surface, but underneath the surface the rocks offer lots of swim throughs, canyons, beautiful corals growing on them – and often earlier in the season a few angry titan trigger fish defending their nests. Luckily we did not see triggers this time (although one tried to harass my buddy at Malang). Dive buddy’s mask kept flooding so we cut this dive a little short.

This girl sucks at taking panoramas - I gave up after my horizon still after attempt number 4 looked wavier than the surface of the sea. Dive buddy did a better job but I haven't stolen her photos yet.

The night dive at Labas offered lots of crabs and shrimps in all different sizes, shapes, forms and colours, a very pretty nudibranch (most likely a flabellina extopata or f. rubrolineata), a teeny-tiny squat lobster and a lonely, little squid floating around for a good while (the highlight of my dive)

This is not my photo, it’s from Wikipedia – but it shows what the cute flabellina looks like:

Cutiepie, yes you are!

After a beautiful sunrise on Sunday morning we headed off towards Bahara Rock for our last dive of the trip. Bahara is probably the most beautiful of all the sites that we did this weekend – unfortunately the site tends to suffer of rather poor visibility. The sloping reef, steep rock formations and plentiful of crevices and holes to explore amongst the corals makes it an interesting site. We found a small free swimming moray eel, some big batfish, a map puffer at a cleaning station, a giant moray hiding under a coral rock, an anemone with its resident anemonefish and commensal shrimp.

Sunrise on Tioman behind the dive deck.

This is again another “borrowed” photo (from someone called Massimo Boyer who takes way better photos than what I do) to show how cute some of the tiny, almost transparent commensal shrimps are:

Last dive logged, logbook stamped - yep, time to go home.

That brought the diving part of the trip to an end and started a loooong journey back home to Singapore. Heading out is so much more comfortable – we eat, drink and sleep on the journey out. The way back home felt a little tedious – but what would you not suffer for the love of diving? At the end of the day, the food on the boat, the company and the masseuse on board make sure that there you are well looked after on the way back.