PADI Advance diving session @ TIOMAN

BEWARE! LONG POST AHEAD WITH LOTS OF PHOTOS.
DAY 1!

Ever since our basic diving session last year at TIOMAN with Simply Scuba going really awesome, we have been hoping to go diving again thereafter. But with Morris around, we felt that it is pretty hard for us to squeeze out days to head out for leisure dives. With ADEX 2016, we decided to head down to the exhibition and sign up advance session with Simply Scuba. We are very comfortable with the instruction and the facilities available by Simply and definitely another 2 days 2 nights without Morris is the best we can do for now.

Thanks GrandmaKwan for helping us to babysit during the past 2 days. We know it is very difficult to make Morris to sleep during the night as he waited for us. Sleeping at wee hours for you and grandpaKwan is painful as well because Morris aint asleep. Thank you for the chance for us to continue to experience life.

Back to the dive trip, we were really glad to see familiar faces such as the instructors and i bumped into Soon Poh who is my poly mate. Always good to have people you know around which makes the trip even more pleasant. We took the night bus over from Little India to Mersing and only arriving close to 1am. Thereafter took the ferry over and only managed to arrive TIOMAN at about 3am. That is still not so bad until we were being informed that we needs to meet at 730am the next morning. 

The shop own by Simply with the dive equipment.

Simple and clean bedroom to sleep for the 2 nights. There are quite a bit of insects though.

Breakfast!

We woke up with swollen faces due to lack of sleep but that is not going to kill our mood to head for our first dive of the trip. We were blessed with awesome weather at TIOMAN despite monsoon seasons arriving and past days were raining cats and dogs there.

​We headed to the canteen for breakfast and apparently the food here never change one. LOL! We had the same food one year back as we came over for our Basic dive. After breakfast, we headed back to the shop for some of the equipment fitting and fix our gears before we shift them to the boat for our dives.

There are total of 5 of who took Advance dive course and we were headed by Kevin. Kevin is definitely 1 awesome guy who we met a year back and we went diving on the same boat while he leads the leisure divers then.  And thanks for agreeing to come for our sessions. Always good to see you at diving spots. LOL. Boohoo Eric for flying us aeroplane for our dives.

We were being brief once more on the safety signs as well as fixing our gears and tanks. *THANK GOD* for these as i really forgotten despite viewing some YouTube videos beforehand. Even the dives at sea aquarium do not need us to fix up our gears and check the tanks. As we descends down, the world belongs to us only. 

Like i always share with my friends who are keen to head for diving. Pls always remember that diving is a alone sport. YOU need to be calm and alert when you head for dives as no one is able to hear you whenever you faced issue or danger.  YOU must be comfortable with water and not afraid of fishes. When you are diving, all you are able to hear is the bubbles you blown out in the water. That's about it!.  Sometimes we do hear bells where the instructor wishes to alert us on certain matters. 

When we head down for our first dives, we are required to complete certain set of skills such full mask removal (I hate this the most because i am wearing contact lens and i cannot open my eyes when i perform this skill!), retrieval of primary regulators and etc. Upon completion, we will then proceed for leisure dives.

The awesome team.

Sea Turtle!

We decided to pick the deck for our meeting area and gosh, we regretted doing so as we ended up with severe sun burnt after 2 days of tanning. It was windy but the sun is just a little too strong. Something good about sitting on deck is that the motion seems better or could it be the ventilation is better as papaTan felt less sea sick this time round.

​We headed back main land for break as well as lunch before we head out again for diving. The lunch was served hot and I guessed we were all way too hungry from diving as we focused on eating instead. LOL!

Lunch after the first 2 dives. Totally love the deep fried crab, yummy!

He is definitely better than me when it comes to balancing.

We tried to run on the track mill while in water.

papaTan looks really damn cool in this pose though.

Sunset.

One last photo as we relax on deck to head back to shore for dinner. Feeling fruitful yet  tired from the dives and the carrying of the extremely heavy TANK! lol

​For advance certificate, we had to fulfill to 1 night dive session where we will be having it near to pier in view of the adverse weather these days. We had to wait till Sun to go down and each to carry on one torch to go for this dive.

​Too bad we are unable to snap any photo as the gopro that we bring down cannot see a thing. The experience can be described as 伸手不见五指 type. Wasn't pitch dark as we have over 7 torches shining in the water so it is not that bad.

Only US.

The dinner is served in BBQ style while they grilled the fish, sotong, lamb and hotdog to be served with buffet as usual and we are always there drinking beer and chilling around during the last session. Beers were dirt cheap in TIOMAN!
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​Ended up we were all too tired from the lack of sleep from the day before. Took our dinner, stayed put till about 10pm before we decided to hit the bed instead. Way too tired from the numerous Dives.

DAY 2!

Rise and shine for DAY 2 dive! We seems more well prepared today!
Totally blessed with the good weather in the morning :)

Ready to go dive.

Old structure built up for diving sites.

Definitely not as sharp as how we thought sea urchin will be though.

海龟！

海龟 and ME!

Some of the random pose WE did while diving. LOL!

One of the crazy things we do while we decided to jump off from the highest point of the boat to the sea.

Diving is a kind of sports which is really very personal. We enjoys the quiet moment we hold on to during each and every diving session. Definitely will plan more dive trips in future while exploring out of TIOMAN. Now that we have the advance certificate, more places for diving will be open up for us. We are hoping to clock 1 leisure dive per year and we are looking forward to plan the one for 2017 soon! :)