My 1st Diving Trip: Pulau Perhentian

I am now a certified PADI Open Water Diver! YAY! It's probably not a big deal to most of you people but it is to me because I'm one step closer to achieving my dream hehe.

My botak instructor & I! 

Anyway, I've been really excited about sharing my experience with you guys because my dive trip was super fun! I really hope through my experience people of all ages will take up diving and be able to experience the underwater world too and also protect it!

Pulau Perhentian Besar!

I honestly don't know where to begin and how to describe my experience underwater. If I could put it in one word I would say that it felt magical. You would probably think that I'm exaggerating but that was just how I felt when I was diving. You'll feel like you're floating and when you see the reefs and the weird creatures and plants underwater, it just feels so surreal. If you don't dive, you'll never be able to see the cool things down there for yourself. I remember when I went snorkelling in Tioman, it was really amazing but going diving, the "amazingness" is x39847204704009490. Seriously.

I stayed at Bubbles Dive Resort and I loved it there. Simple, clean, eco-friendly and damn good food! Their service was great, people were friendly, my guides were really nice and they had open air bathrooms! I just have a thing for open air bathrooms, I love the sunlight shining in and at night, you watch the stars while you shower hehe! Anyway that resort was great, you can even just go there for snorkelling trips or maybe just a weekend getaway! It's cheap :D

The beach front of the resort:) Pretty eh?

(Credits to the owner of this photo)

Sleeping quarters

The open air bathroom with the sunlight shining in :3

The beautiful view you see when you lie down on the hammocks at the beach front of the resort:)

Altogether, I did 5 dives during my trip. The first dive was at the Bubbles House Reef so we just had to swim and descend to the reef. We saw two big groupers, spade fishes, a giant clam, fusiliers wrasse fish but it wasn't much compared to the next few dives but then again, it was my very first dive so it was for me to get comfortable underwater and practice some skills.  Honestly, I don't think I've ever been so comfortable underwater. I just felt so at home (I'm destined to be a mermaid, HAHAHA). It was a great start :) After an hour, we were out of the water, get back to changing tanks,  short break and boom, time for the second dive.

A giant sea cucumber on my 1st dive!

(taken by my instructor)

I cannot express enough my anger towards the fucking boat driver that took us to our second dive spot. Our 1st & 2nd dives were delayed because we arrived late and that wasn't our fault. The boat driver was angry at us that he had to work later or something like that. So you know what he did? The waves were very strong and that would result a very bumpy boat ride. If that's the case, the boat driver should drive slowly and slow down whenever there's a big wave (that's what they're paid to do because if anyone gets hurt because of the boat ride, the boat drivers will get their asses handed to them) but no, he went as fast as he could trying to make everyone on the boat suffer. We kept flying off our seats and it was so effing painful every time our asses hit the seats. My dive guide was too nice to tell him off if not he would have kena nicely. If my instructor didn't tell him to turn back to dive in a nearer dive spot, someone could have gotten hurt and the boat would have probably cracked. It was a really bad and painful ride. I know it's mean of me to say this but I hope they fire his ass by now because it was freaking obvious that it was on purpose, everyone on the boat knew. You should have seen his face, I really wanted to slap him. But I didn't want that son of a gun to ruin my dive trip.

Feather duster worm! If you sweep your hand over it, it'll like just shut tight!

(taken by my instructor)

Every trip has its up and down anyway, so that was my only down for the trip. Thank God. The others in my group had a night dive one the first day but Mark & I couldn't go because we didn't have the certification yet :( And they saw a turtle which made me really jealous because I didn't see any turtles during any of my dives:/

OH! My third dive was super cool! It was called the "sugar wreck". The ship was used to transport sugar hence the name but according to my instructor, the ship was suppose to arrive somewhere to get it fixed but I think there was something about not wanting to pay for the fixing or something like that so the people on the boat purposely sunk the ship but everyone else on board was safe. The ship was 600m long and 6m high (i think?) As I was descending, all I saw was a giant, blurry shadow. The 3rd dive was deeper than my earlier dives so I was kinda scared and all the while, I was looking down trying to calm myself.  Right when I looked up, I saw this giant, rusty ship lying on its side and in my head I said, "Holy crap.... This is so freaking cool." The wreck was damn cool though, come on, if you saw a ship wreck in front of you, don't you think you'll be in awe?!?! I really don't know how to explain how taken aback I was... It was really just an unbelievable sight. You'll have to see a wreck for yourself to know how I felt at that moment. We went around the wreck and I saw a "map giant puffer fish" and also two black & white lion fish that were hiding. They were a shit loads of sea urchins on the sea bed though and my instructor was bouncing one up and down on his hand. Don't ask me how he did it because I had no idea. There was no way in hell I wanted to dive so close to the sea bed. Mark was low on air and he was my buddy so we had to ascend earlier. On our way up I saw two box fish (so freaking cute) on the other side of the boat which turned into a reef. It was covered with beautiful corals and school of fishes!

Equalising the pressure so our ears won't hurt! See the wreck behind us? :)

Not sure whether you can see it but this is a small part of the wreck! Had to screenshot this from a video my instructor took.

This is a box fish! Can you see that its like really square? Cute eh:b 

(Got this off google though)

This looks exactly like the lion fish I saw! The pointy parts are all poisonous and it's usually to ward off predators. 

(Google!)

When we got back to the dive centre, same procedure. Change tanks, had yummy lunch, chill and off again to our 4th dive!

We dived at Batu Layar for our 4th dive although there were no Batu's at all lol but instead it is a giant, submerged, circular reef. It was so breathtaking! The reef was seriously beautiful, there was so much life and colour!!! I saw a lot of things this time around: a net giant pufferfish which was pregnant i think, another cute box fish, trigger fish, butterfly fish (the fish that supposedly has a black dot at its tail to fool his predator that it's going the other way), damsel fish (Deb/Flo, the fish that thinks her reflection is her twin sister in Nemo), cleaner wrasse (the tiny fish that eats parasites), a pillow starfish, file fish (pretty cool, front of the fish had a distinct black and the back half was distinct white) and a snapper!! My instructor stayed very still and the cleaner wrasse came to pick on his skin and he opened his mouth to let the wrasse clean it but it didn't :b I have to say the 4th dive was my favourite, there were so many things to see until you don't know where to look. The dive was great but I had to do mask removing and then recovering it at the 5m safety stop to pass my test. I struggled really badly because I can't stand it if I had to stay underwater without being able to see. I'll feel so vulnerable and paranoid. I took a long while to calm down but thankfully my instructor was really patient with me. Once my mask was off, I could feel my chest tighten and my breaths were quick and short so I inhaled from my regulator as though like I was running out of air but in reality, I had about a 100 bar left lol. Finally I did it and yay, at the surface my instructor congratulated us for being an official Open Water Diver! Of course there were a lot more skills la than just removing mask, hahaha but just mentioning the one that I took ages to do -.-

This is a butterfly fish! :)

(google)

Pregnant Net Pufferfish I saw

(taken by my instructor)

Another pufferfish! 

I wanted to take a picture with the beautiful reef but, China go pro, what do you expect right:b

(taken by Mark)

Again, back to dive centre, change tanks had some watermelons and kickass cekodok pisang (deep fried banana balls), ugh, mouthgasm man (that came out not how I thought it would. HAHA). At this point I had almost zero energy left. You're probably thinking, "diving only what, you're just gliding through the water" which was what I thought as well but nope. You'll be surprised how tiring back to back diving can be. Other than using the energy to carry our tanks and other diving equipment back and forth, I had no clue what else could be draining so much energy. Maybe it's like getting tired after a long car ride, you don't do much but you're still dead tired. Get me?

Alas! My final dive for the trip! :( The spot was called Tiger Rock but this time there were huge boulders but why tiger? I have no clue either :b This dive was the deepest by far, 22m ish? It was considered deep diving. This time around my instructor decided to bring an egg underwater, yes, raw egg and he cracked it underwater!!! Aren't you curious what would happen to an egg when you crack it underwater? I didn't bother thinking about the possibilities but man I didn't know cracking an egg underwater could be so cool! We were playing with the raw egg HAHA. When my instructor cracked the egg with a knife, I could hear the cracking so loudly in my ear *cringes* and bloop! The raw egg floated out and you could see the membrane and all so clearly! When you do this spinning gesture with your finger near the egg, the egg follows you which was quite cute :b We kept playing with it and eventually, the yolk and the white separated. We all kept poking the yolk because it was so squishy but then Mr Smart Mark thought that it wasn't fragile at all and decided to play badminton with it. Yep, that was the end of the egg yolk and it slowly went up the surface.

Since we were swimming around giant rocks, we had to be extra cautious because there were really sharp barnacles all around. OH! We swam in between the boulders, that was cool. It felt like you were on a little adventure especially when you were a little kid and you would crawl through those cylinder things at the playground, ya that kinda feeling :3 This dive was a bit scary because we swam through tight places and when you look down, it's pitch black... It is exactly like how you see in those movies. My instructor managed to spot a white and rare nudi branch, it was really pretty! There were huge table corals and also a hermit crab floating around :b There were tons and tons of fishes but it's so hard to identify them and remember them after the dive :( But yes, colourful fishes everywhere!

On my second night, I attended the turtle talk Bubbles held almost every night. Did you know that Leatherback turtles are extinct in Malaysia :( Apparently, they have this special way of ingesting their food. They have these spikes at their "neck" and they "inhale" the jellyfish in and since they only feed on jellyfish, they mistaken plastic bags for them. So when the leatherback turtles inhale the plastic bag in, they choke and die :/ It's really sad la :( Anyway yes, if you want to watch turtles lay eggs which they do almost every night at Bubbles' beach front, you'll have to attend the short talk but it was really interesting! DID YOU KNOW that green turtles are actually red on the outside but their fat is actually green, cool eh :b I was really lucky on that night because they released turtle hatchlings and I was really excited! They were so adorable!!! Another thing checked off my bucket list! Unfortunately though, I couldn't wake up when they knocked on our door to watch the mother turtle lay eggs. I was super tired from the 3 dives but hell, I really regretted not waking up. It was a once in a life time opportunity and I missed it. If you have a chance like that don't waste it :( You get to see wild animals going about in their own daily lives and there's definitely nowhere else in the city where you can witness things like that. Maybe that's why I love diving so much, it's so different from going to the zoo or aquariums. You get to see unique and different creatures in their natural habitats which makes it even more special. They're not tamed or fed by humans, you see them glide through the water, watch them hunt for their own food, you appreciate the beauty of it even more that way:)

I've managed to see the nemo fish in their anemone in all 5 dives. I went really close and they're actually pretty ugly HAHAHA, not like cute little nemo. They look pretty angry most of the time :b

Every dive was really different and unique. You can never have this experience anywhere else, seriously. I tried my hardest to give you guys a visual on how my diving experience went but I really don't think words will ever be enough to express it. You've just got to see it for yourself and when you do, you'll know why it's so important to protect it and appreciate it even more. I think this diving trip really added more fuel to the burning passion I have towards the ocean. I want to discover more and learn even more about the underwater world. When my instructor told me about his past diving experiences, man, I was so envious :( His encounters with really giant fishes that came super close to him and was super curious about him, he has seen hammerhead sharks, barracudas, those really giant school of fish (like the one in nemo where they gave directions), whale sharks and so much more! UGH! I really want to go diving again, haha!

New friends I met during the dive trip :) 

And look at the clear water behind us!!

A new adventure for the two of us:)

I know its quite a pricey hobby to take up but I'm not lying when I say that it's worth the experience. I don't know, maybe it's just me. Some people can't appreciate things like that but if you do like to discover, go dive! You won't regret it :)

I guess I should stop talking now, it's such a long post! If you read the whole way, thank you so much for doing so :) I just really like to share my special experiences with people in hopes that they would wanna experience it for themselves. Sorry if I had any typos that I missed, please correct me if you see any grammatical error or typos! Thank you so much again for reading until here, it means a lot to me :D Have a great July!

Love Rachel*