Right, scuba diving! Having always wanted to do it, you could go as far as a life-long ambition, I positively jumped at my first proper opportunity to try it. And what a setting to to my first set of dives! I'd found out about this place called Semporna in the fair east of Borneo, that a reliable source (who shall remain anonymous after his last piece of skeptical travel advice) declared as one of the finest dive sites in the world. In the bay around Semporna are loads of little islands and reefs to go exploring whilst submersed. My island for the day was Sibuan.
The paradise island of Sibuan. Not habited by Malaysians, but sea-gypsies, don't you know.
The first part of the day was learning the basics, more complicated than you may think, but I picked it up nice and quickly (I am an educated fellow after all). Did three dives in total over the day and despite getting a nice wet-suit sun-tan, I can safely say that it was an absolute joy to do. Saw seamlessly unending corals, copious numbers of species of fish and more turtles than you could shake a stick at, although I was stickless. Thoroughly hooked, there will be more of this before I'm done, you can be sure of that.
Our vessel for the day. In between the dives you have to chill on the surface, allowing the build up of excess nitrogen out of your body. It was such a horrible place to hang about.
I didn't have an underwater camera, but still managed to spot the stars of a Pixar film... "Attack of the Killer Sea Enemies" coming summer 2008.
The definition of grace, the turtles just glided through the water.
No comments:
Post a Comment