Diving at Tioman

The day has finally arrived for my long awaited scuba diving trip. Woke up real early to meet up with my friends and instructor and thus began the long, long ride to Malaysia and then to some jetty. Sat in the car till my butt muscles ache. Anyway, the trip to the jetty was almost the width of Singapore, but more undulating. At the jetty, we hurried aboard the "speed' boat. It was another hour ride before we got to Tioman. By the time we reached Tioman, Paya Beach Resort, it was already lunch time. We ate a quick lunch and proceed to our first dive. The first dive site was quite near and we dived off from a boat. Once underwater, it was like into another world. Corals and fishes were plenty. We did a couple of skills at our first dive. Had a little problem with my buoyancy though. One thing to note, sea urchins were damn scary, with all their needles and their numbers, it would be disastrous to land onto them. On the first day, we did a total of three dives. The best would be the second one where we saw a sea turtle and my friends even saw the outline of a black-tip shark. The worst would be coming back from shore at low tide. All the corals and tide seem to be against us. It was a painful experience. Although we did only three dives, we were quite tired and hungry. We slept a little early as we need to do a dawn dive the next day. Day two, we did a total of five dives. Again, the underwater scenery simply amazed me, it was that beautiful. We brought along our rented underwater camera and tried to take photos. It wasn't easy to remain bouyant and take good photos. On one of the dives, I almost got lost while doing navigation and almost got stung by jellyfish. It was such a scary experience. Still, I enjoyed the experience. Saw sea fans, many more colourful fishes. It was very exciting. On the last day and the last dive, we dived to a wreck. It wasn't that amazing, just simply a wreck. However, as we ascend to shallower depth, we were greeted by the myriad of fishes. We dived until almost out of air. In all, the whole dive trip was wonderful, no doubt a little tight on our pockets. Maybe next year, after the monsoon period, we will go again.
If anyone want to see the photos we took, it's on my facebook.