Thursday, August 19, 2004

SCUBA DIVING AT TIOMAN! (PART 3)

After we went back ashore and have a few hors of rest, we returned to the dive centre to get the rest of the paperworks done. All of us passed the course!!! We all now have a temporary open water diving lisence while we wait for our lisence to be processed! Yay! After, all of us together with the instructors and Julian's chinese wife Yeen chat around for more than an hour. We discussed on enviromental issues (espeacially on coral reefs), and hearing how Julian passionately recounting how tourism developement has destroyed some of the reefs seriously makes me feel sad. Also, I'm considering not to eat shark fin soup anymore in the future... That's the least I can do to protect from extinction! Later that night, we tried out the grilled fish at the cool Waikiki Bar, juz as we ate grilled sting ray there earlier. Man they're delicious!

Next morning, after we checked out and left our luggages at the dive centre, 6 of us (excluding Wei-Yen, he went for another 2 dives after paying an extra RM 75!) went for a jungle trekking to get to a waterfall... Little did we know, we actually need to cross the jungle hills to the other side of the island to reach there! After 2 hours of trekking upwards, we finally gave up (well, not really. We stop bcuz we're afraid if we got lost!), but I seriously enjoy the whole thing. Caught some pictures of the interesting flora and fauna there, including a HUGE aphid, the size of my thumb!!! Oh and also a rather weird looking spider that kinda resembles a ladybug! I also heard that there's 1 species of frog that can be found nowhere in the world except in Tioman, but unfortunately we didn't see any of them.

After lunch, we returned to the dive centre to do our last minute stuff b4 we leave the island. Finally, Julian drove our luggages to the jetty with his motorbike (his van broke down 1 day after we reached Tioman!), and after we say our final goodbyes, he left us there at the jetty waiting for the ferry. The ride back to Mersing was, unexpectedly, MUCH MUCH WORSE that the ride to Tioman. The waves were juz wild!!! Seawater kept seeping into the boat, and the whole ride was incredibly bumpy and uneven as the boat keep "flying" and "dropping" as it cut through all the waves. Most of the time, I can't even see what's out there through the window, for the waves kept splashing all over them!!! I seriously give thanks to God when we finally reached the shore in one piece! That was one crazy ride!!!

We reached Mersing at 6pm, but our bus won't be leaving till 10.30pm!!! And so we hang around a really cool cafe called The Port, and we sit, eat, and chat there for the next 3 hours!!! The food there are very expensive, but since all of us were so tired from the return trip already, none of us really care much about it! The food was delicious, and it will remained as one of the best meal I've ever eaten in my life! The atmosphere was quite cool to! If I'm ever to return to Tioman, I'll most definitely stop by that cafe again! At 10.30pm, we left Mersing and finally reached Puduraya Station around 3.30am in the morning of 6th August, Saturday. At first, I was supposed to take a taxi home, but in the end, almost my whole family (except my sis) came to pick me up! Also, Hadrianto came to my house to stay for the night, and we have bah kut teh for lunch the next day!

Alrite, b4 I end this entry, there's sumthing about Mr. Paul Jambunathan (1 of our behavioural sciences lecturer) that I wanna talk about. He came to Tioman 1 day after us, and his behaviour is totally different from how he behaves at IMU!!! He's a true prankster!!! Once, after we came back from the dive and eager to take off our heavy and bulky diving apparatus (the gas tank itself is 15kg!!! Some of the girls can't even carry it!!!), he stopped us and tell us to go back to the beach, as there's a change of plans. He said that Julian wanna teach us sumthing else 1st b4 we rest for the day. As I've already took off my gas tank and BCD, I busied myself trying to wear the thing all over again while the guys who haven't took off anything walked straight to the beach. I was really surprised when the rather sharp Julian actually help me out it putting them on instead of hurrying me like he always did! Then some of the instructors started laughing... And I realized it was all a stupid joke! I shouted to the guys at the beach to come back... And Julian was then teasing us, "U call urself medical students?! And u believe that crazy guy?!" Man, that was embarassing...

Well, now that I have got my lisence, I hope that I can dive more often in the future. But one thing's for sure: I'm definitely going to go back to Tioman to continue the advance course, which include wreck diving and night diving! Most probably I'll do it next year, if I pass my Sem 3!!!

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