AQUATASTIC: December 2007

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Christmas Fun Time!

A diver dressed as Santa Claus joins a whale shark for an event promoting Christmas celebrations at an aquarium in Osaka, Japan. news.bbc.co.uk

Hello people! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Its been a while and yeah I have been busy conducting dive courses so sorry for not updating my blog for quite some time now but hey, lets rejoice for this one! :P

Christmas was awesome much like always, the festive mood always leads to a good mood for diving. It rained heavily almost everyday a few days ago but fortunately it was sunny during the Christmas period and we had enjoyable time at Sipadan Water Village Resort.

Awesome dives at Mabul Island with cute little fishes. Giant school of Barracudas, Jacks, Fusiliers, Bumphead parrotfish with large green turtles and friendly white-tip sharks all in one dive at Barracuda Point, Sipadan Island is magnificent. Visibility was good, we had around 15 meters at Mabul and at least 25 meters at Sipadan and I really did enjoyed that.

We did our first day dives at Mabul Island, visiting Paradise I to see the Ornate ghostpipefish, Juvenile angelfish, Fingered dragonet on our first dive. Second dive was a fun drift dive at Eel Garden, the current was even stronger at Lobster Wall. Our third dive was at Paradise II to visit the Clown frogfish and Mandarin fish and they are so adorable. Ian had a fantastic shot of the Clown frogfish yawning! I was too lazy to wait so I took more shots on the Mandarin fish instead.

Second day (Christmas Eve) was fantastic, woke up at 4.45am and took the ride to Sipadan at 5.15am for the dawn dive with the gang at Drop-off. Everyone was still half asleep when we got there but once we entered the water everyone was fully awake by the cool refreshing water and the awesome fishes we saw. Bumphead parrotfish with us the whole dive with the same school Jacks doing the tornado with the giant ones. Grey reef sharks and White-tip sharks are more active early in the morning too! On our second dive we did one at Barracuda Point and after a few minutes passed we were joined by a huge school of large Barracudas! Some of us were in the middle of the tornado and it was really cool! We came back to the resort for breakfast and lunch and did our third dive at Seaventures at Mabul to see the famous three orange and two pink Pygmy seahorses. We got back to the resort after the dive, planned to do the forth dive but well, I guess we can't resist the call for Happy Hour! Tiger Beer for the win!

After a really good dinner we went to see the performances prepared by the resort and enjoyed ourselves watching the dances and just having fun messing around with the party toys and with each other (Ken had the most fun from what I heard lol). The dive crew sang Christmas songs in a caroling fashion and both the ex-staff, namely me and Nina joined them on stage. It was fun and no doubt our performance was excellent. *Ahem* The celebration ended pretty early around 10.30pm and while many of us went to bed early the others were invited to party at Uncle Chang's Lodge. Nina, Aaron, Ken and me walked over there with the staff Desmond, Kiet and Richard joining us to party with the free-flow of boozes (we had rum, whiskey, wine and beer) and a great live band. After the countdown and a few more drinks we staggered and wobbled all the way back to the resort and enjoyed a good night sleep. Epic no?

We didn't wanna dive on Christmas Day, preferring to get a good long sleep and to spend time basking in the sun, walking in the beach and shopping on the island. Aaron, Eric, Chris and Kok Ming completed their EFR Course in the afternoon so congrats!!!

Here are some pictures to share with everyone:

From left: Ian, Ben, Kok Ming, Eric, Me, Ken, Aaron, Danny and Nina. Chris missed it...