Tioman🏝🐠

Hello again!

Now I'm reporting from Tioman, where I finally arrived on Sunday evening after a rather unpleasant journey. For the first time on this vacation, I was really in a bad mood and annoyed by every living creature. This was partly due to the horde of Asians who traveled with me on the overloaded ferry. In addition, there was a (in my opinion) catastrophic organization at the port of Mersing, which resulted in me having to carry my backpack about 1km to the various stations: ticket, seat assignment, tax, and boarding pass🙄

But once I arrived, I was already rewarded with the great location of the accommodation, which is right by the sea and the "Marine Park".

Here I am spending 5 nights and getting my diving license. Besides me, there are a few Asians who are guests here, but they only want to snorkel, not dive. So I have a private diving course and I'm the only student of Kat, the diving instructor from England.

The first session starts tomorrow morning. I watch theory videos and answer questions in a book at the same time. After discussing the equipment in detail, we head to the sea. The water is crystal clear and after about 10m from the beach, I see the first fish🐠 The first breath underwater feels very strange and takes some getting used to. After a short gasp, I manage to breathe calmly and regularly. And with that, I already master the most important skill when diving: Stay calm and breathe in and out smoothly. We start with a few hand signs, exercises underwater and above water, and surprisingly, I'm doing better than expected as someone who is usually afraid of water😃 On the first day, we dive up to 12m, on the second day up to 18m, and the pressure equalization in my ears is not a problem as I feared before. We see a lot of colorful fish, living corals, and old shipwrecks that are inhabited by various sea creatures. It's like another world, totally mind-blowing, and it feels like flying over it.

I'm really enjoying the course and the first boat dive is coming up. We take a speedboat about 5 minutes out to sea and stop in front of the island Renggis.

Here, there are supposed to be sea turtles and even sharks😱 The coral reefs are much larger than in the Marine Park, my first diving spot, and they are super beautiful. Among other things, I see clownfish (Nemo) with their little babies, surgeonfish (Dory), two giant cuttlefish (about 80cm long), turtles, and two sharks 🦈 😍 They were baby reef sharks, so they weren't very big, no reason to worry😃

This image is from Google, but this is how the cuttlefish looked like😃

Tomorrow we will go out here once more and then the course will already be over. I passed the exam with some help from Kat and am now officially allowed to dive elsewhere 🎉

I spend my limited free time here boosting the accommodation's turnover with beer (tasty Tiger) and reading ("The Swarm", a suitable book about an environmental catastrophe in the ocean😄)...

I have another travel day ahead of me on Thursday, where I will take the ferry from Tioman back to Mersing and then the bus to Singapore, because my flight to Kota Kinabalu (Borneo) leaves from there. I haven't planned too much buffer time and hope to reach the airport on time😅

After that, I will go to the Mantanani Islands - there won't be much to do there except lazing on the beach. After so much action, I have to recover first..

Take care and have fun at home with 5 degrees Celsius😋

Yours, Mary