Tuesday, October 19

DIVING WAS AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWEEEEE-SOME!

Oh my goodness...all of you have to go some day! Will put up some pictures soon. Didn't bring my digital though! Cos Dad left it in his office. So I used good ol' film.

We dived off Pulau Aur, abt a 65km North East of Mersing (a small town on the east coast of Johor). It's a 4 hour ferry ride there, or 2 hours by speedboat (which makes you seasick a lot faster), keep in mind that this comes after a 3 hour bus ride from Singapore, taking into the account delays at customs, pit stops, etc.

Anyway we stayed at "Atlantis Bay" (woo! ahh!) which was basically a few wooden houses built on stilts and on the beach. Food was surprisingly good! It really was like a scene taken out of "The Beach" ! So here we were on an island so ulu that there was no network coverage, and out of no where we got wooden huts sprouting on the beaches... well ok there was satellite tv, so i guess it's not THAT ulu.

We had a total of 6 dives, the most eventful happening on Saturday afternoon/evening. We went down 14m for about 45 mins. When we surfaced at 7 pm, it was pitch black...AND THE DAMN BOAT WAS GONE! Haha... like that movie "Open Water". Good thing we were in a big group, abt 14 pple, so we were just bobbing up and down in the ocean, which was getting very choppy by then. The boat came to pick us up within the next 30 mins. But man, if I was alone in that situation, I would have just died.

Besides the diving, the real highlight of the trip for me was meeting all sorts of different pple... There was Jackie, the Ex Commando; Rama, who works arnd South East Asia working on oil rigs; Doug and Karen, a loving couple in their 50s from South Africa, though Doug was originally Scotish; Cheryl, NUS grad now financial planner; and Mimin, from the Philippines working in Deutche Bank Singapore as a IT Consultant. Just a few pple i met during the trip.

It was just nice that everyone was just so friendly and open to each other...not cliquish at all. And in my conversations with them, I really get to know a lot more about their expereinces staying in different countries, their cultures, etc. Doug was telling me about this ultra-marathon in South Africa- The Comrades' Marathon. 90km of madness. The guy completed it in 4 hours! WHAT THE!

Typing this post from office can you believe. It's back to work immediately for me...gotta be MC for Commander's Parade again later. Ah well. The weekend was really a good break for me...so i guess i can't complain!

posted by gabriel @ 1:32:00 AM