Learning to dive in Tioman

The following weekend my husband was in the UK and I went to Tioman, Malaysia to complete my Padi open water scuba diving course. We met at the dive shop after work on Friday. Before getting
onto the coach we had to check all of our dive equipment to make
sure it was the right size. We left the dive shop at around 7pm and made our way towards the border. It took a long time to cross the
border as we had to take everything off the bus and go through 2
checkpoints - Singapore and Malaysia. Once over the border we made our way by coach to Mersing port on the East coast of Malaysia. We
arrived Mersing port at around 11:30pm and jumped onto a ferry. The ferry was freezing and we arrived at Tioman island at around 3am in
the morning. We were staying at the Island Reef lodge just up the hill
from the jetty. The lodge was basic and we were all staying in separate
lodges with four beds. We managed to get some sleep before being
woken up at 8am the next morning. We struggled out of bed and down to the main dining room for breakfast. After breakfast we
grabbed our stuff and made our way back down to the jetty to get on
the dive boat. I had a cold and my ear was blocked. I was worried that
I wasn't going to be able to complete the dives. We got into our groups of 8 and our instructor told us to check our dive gear and turn on the air. We did our buddy checks and then entered the water. The
first dive as only 5 meters deep and we spent the whole hour doing
skills - taking off our mask, taking out our regulator, running out of
air. We then went back to the lodge to get have some lunch. We were
surprisingly hungry even through we hadn't done much. After lunch

we went back out on the boat and did 2 more dives. The 2nd dive was
again practicing skills - CESA and buoyancy - but the 3rd dive we got
to swim around we saw a turtle. The weather was fantastic and we sunbathed on the roof top as we cruised back to the port. In the evening a few of us when down to the beach and had a beer.
The next morning we were woken up at 6am! It was dark and difficult to get out of bed but we made it down for breakfast. We got back onto the boat and set off for our morning dives. On our 1st dive of the day
we got to swim around a shipwreck which was awesome. The ship
was only small as it was only 16 meters deep but it looked really cool
as the coral had grown all around it. The last dive of the trip was the
best. There was a small island with coral reef all around. We dived around the island and saw 3 black tip reef sharks, turtles, clown fish
(A.K.A Nemo) a trumpet fish and cuttle fish. It was a truly amazing
experience. We went back to the lodge to have lunch and pack our
bags and start the long journey back to Singapore.