My trip to Malaysia and Philippines 25.6.-20.7. 2007

It had been a busy spring in at The Voice Tv Finland when me and my
colleague finally had the chance to get out of the country and do some
serious diving!

We decided to start our trip in Malaysia, where we arrived on June 26th. Kuala
Lumpur being a bit too busy a city for us we decided to try and get out of
there as soon as possible. Since we were traveling without any plans or
reservations we were able to get the first plane that took us to the island
of Sabah. After a couple of hour driving we ended up in a town called
Semporna which really wasn't that special a place considering where we we're
about to go the next morning.

As the sun rose up next morning in the south-east of Malaysia, we hopped on
a boat that would take us to the island of Mabul. The few first days we
spent on Mabul were absolutely great! Even though the dives around Mabul
were pretty shallow and not so rich in coral, I saw a variety of underwater
life, I've never seen before: a couple of Clown fish, Frog-fish, Crocodile
fish and a Leopard shark, just to mention a few.

The dives in Mabul were also ideal to test a new wireless transmitter with
my Suunto D9 diving computer. The wireless transmitter connected to my regulator's
first stage kept me constantly aware of how much time would i have left
underwater with my current breathing rates. Seeing that the transmitter and
my Suunto D9 worked perfectly, I was ready for the deeper dives in Sipadan!
After diving in Mabul we finally got to our main destination, Sipadan
National Park. Since one is not allowed to stay at Sipadan Island, we had to
do day trips there. It took a little over an hour to get to Sipadan by a
boat but it was well worth it! On the very first dive there I saw a massive
school of at least one thousand Barracudas circling around me. I was so excited that I tossed
my underwater camera to my friend Sami in order to get a picture of me
swimming with the barracudas.

After chasing the school of Barracudas, the next dives at Sipadan proved to
be as miraculous as the first one. With massive turtles swimming around in
the midst of reef sharks, I couldn't help but take pictures all the time!
After the trip I realized I had taken somewhere around 1500 pictures
underwater. Luckily a few of them turned out to be pretty nice as well.

After diving a week on Mabul and Sipadan, we decided to follow a new friend
of ours , American girl Holly to Philippines, where her friend had a diving
school on island of Malapascua.

After spending an evening in Kota Kinapalu (which I never want to do again,
thanks to all of the Karaoke bars there), we got a plane to Cebu,
Philippines from where we would continue our trip by multi-cab to a boat
that would take us to Malapascua.

The originally planned few days there turned out to be a little over a week,
since the island was beautiful and serene, with a lots of great sites to
dive. Since there was a chance to catch a glimpse of Thresher sharks, we
woke up around 5.30 to do the morning dives. I really couldn't imagine
anything else I would wake up for 5.30 in the morning! Sadly none of our
early wake-ups brought the desired result and we totally missed the
Threshers. Naturally the very morning we decided to continue our naps, a
group of divers saw a few of these elusive sharks on their morning dive!
Fortunately the shallow dives near the island proved to be very successful
as we saw a whole bunch of different Nudibranch, Squid, Stingrays and even
a mimic Octopus! But as much as I enjoyed the variety of small stuff that we
saw on the muck dives, it was the big stuff that really got me ecstatic!
On a couple of afternoon manta dives we got really close to gigantic
Manta Rays that just out of curiosity came hovering above us and then as
silently as they had arrived glided back to the deep blue. The profiles of
the manta dives were actually quite boring with everybody just waiting in
the bottom of a "cleaning station" in 25 meters on their knees for the
mantas to arrive. But seeing a creature like that really makes your day!
I've always loved diving but it's definitely the moments like these that
really make you humble. The four-five meter wingspan of a Manta is just
something you can't get your eyes off.

After a great week and a half we still had a bit of time to spend in the
Philippines before we would have to make our way back to Kuala Lumpur and
home. So after all this serious diving we headed to island of Bohol to relax
and do a few fun dives.

After a few days it was time to start heading back home. As we made our way
back to Cebu and from there to Manila, I realized that once back home, we
had taken 13 different flights all together to get to the sites we wanted.
And while not spending time in airplanes or waiting for our Nitrogen levels
to lower, we pretty much spent the whole trip underwater. -I really can't
think of a better way to spend a holiday!

Gorgonia Garden

The last day of the trip, everybody was excited to get in on the morning dive. The site of the day was the beautiful Gorgonia Garden with lost of small things to see. A bunch of Sea Snails of some kind seemed to attract more attention from the guides than a lonely Moray Eel sitting in its hiding den.
I didn't have my camera on this time so I settled for a relaxing effortless dive without actually seeing anything of interest. Due to the worsening problems with my ears I decided to make this dive the last one on this trip.

As the others jumped to the waters of El Maosur, I concentrated more on sunbathing and jumping off the deck of Nectarious! After a few backflips and
filling my logbook, I fell a sleep on the deck of the boat, just to wake up in the roaring of the Nectarious' motors that would soon take us back to Hurghada.

After getting to shore it was time to say goodbye to the crew, a bunch of amazing guys that made our trip possible with a constant smile on their faces. Such a great trip wouldn't have been possible without an equally amazing group of different people from different parts of Finland. I don't think I've ever had as peaceful and and relaxing trip before! Especially when having to wake up every morning at 6 o'clock!!!

Camel South Point Drift, Aquarium and Aquarium East

The very first dive of the morning was no doubt one of the best dives on the trip. Although it took quite a lot of energy to swim against the current in order to get to the site, the amazing corals, the Barracuda and Napoleon fish were well worth the effort.

We started the dive in about 30 meters, me watching closely on my Suunto D9 dive computer. While using enriched air (Nitrox 32%) I didn't want to go too deep. The slowly flowing current gave us the sightseeing tour we wanted without having to move a fin! A 45 minute dive was a great experience although not as long as everybody would have wanted... we all just ran out of air 'cause of the heavy swimming in the beginning of the dive.

The next two dives were a mix of business and pleasure while I had to help a few AOWD students in their navigational exercises. Luckily everybody got the hang of using the compass underwater quite quickly and we were able to have a look around both the west and east side of the Aquarium site. Nobody even got lost!

A wreck day - Salem Express and El Kahfen

Salem Express was a cruise ship making it's way in a storm from Mecca, Saudi Arabia to Safaga in -91. The captain of the ship, Moro, decided that the ship would take an alternate rout to it's destination. The faster route turned out to be too difficult for the captain to handle and the ship hit the reef with devastating effect: The passenger ship sank taking at least 500 passengers with it including Captain Moro, the person to blame for the accident. Because of the storm it was virtually impossible to get any help to the accident scene. Only 180 people survived the accident.

The Wreck of Salem Express was an impressive sight with a grim silence surrounding the resting place of hundreds of lost lives. The sea floor around the wreck was still filled with old luggage: Tape recorders, shoes and suit cases. Obviously no one was allowed to go inside the wreck but the surroundings of the massive ship were a sight impressive enough. Big schools of small fish had made it a new home and with all the new life surrounding the ship, it seemed as though the ship had a new purpose now.

The Salem Express dive lasted about 50 min. The maximum depth was 25m.

Abu Kafan - 3 dives, Shaap Sheer - nightdive

Friday started out great! The visibility in Abu Kafan was great, at least 20-25m. The morning sun deflecting from the surface of the crystal clear water was well worth waking up early again. The morning for me would only consist diving with the more experienced divers. We did two deep dives to about 30 meters and saw schools of Barracudas and a Napoleon fish that really didn't seem to be too interested about a bunch of over excited divers chasing him... Too bad we didn't have our cameras with us...

After doing the third dive with the AOWD students it was time to do yet another night dive, this time with the experienced group. The night was clear and calm and we descended slowly to approximately 15 meters. We started gliding forwards slow and steady and took our time exploring the surroundings with our flashlights in almost a perfect full moon. This was the kind of dive that made me fall in love with the night dives in the first place! A definite highlight of the dive was the largest Moray Eel I've ever seen in my life! The beast was about 3 meters long getting everybody's attention while gliding in the midst of the chorals.

A perfect day!

Panorama - 2 dives, Tobia Arba - 2 dives, Shaap Sheer - 1 dive

On Thursday we got up around 6 o'clock. The early wake up didn't seem to bother anyone since everybody had been dead tired from wednesday's diving and had gone to sleep around ten. Thursday was about to be a serious diving day for me, since besides my fun dives I was doing my divemaster course that includes helping the PADI Instructors teach new divers for their Open Water and Advanced Open Water Diver courses. So basically when I wasn't enjoying the reefs by myself, I was keeping an eye on a few newcomers underwater.

Unfortunately the night dive on Thursday wasn't quite as good as I hoped it to be. My flashlight didn't work properly and keeping the AOWD students in my sight would've been difficult even without any technical problems. But I guess you need the bad dives in order to appreciate the good ones. Based on this, I was sure I Would LOVE my next dives...

Eldesha - 3 dives

Sometime around midday we geared up eagerly even though the first dive would only be a check dive to see if everybody had the correct amount of weights. The salty water of Egypt surprised quite a few when descending with the regular amount of additional weights (4-6kg) was virtually impossible!
After a few tryouts I found myself carrying 12-14 kilos depending on whether I used my extra hooded 5mm short on top of my long 7mm suit. Even though we were in Egypt, the water really wasn't that warm!

After the check dive and a brief exploration of the surroundings we headed back to the boat for dinner and right after that we made our first genuine fun dive on a site called Eldesha. It was a 13-meter dive on a shallow reef full of small life. The weather conditions were great, even though the spawning jellyfish took care of the poor visibility. Some of the divers freaked out about the jellyfish at first, but these ones, even though big and beautiful, weren't harmful. After the sunset we did the third and the last of the day's dives: a night dive. Unfortunately everybody was excited to jump in for the night and at worst the night dive felt more like a traffic jam compared to a slow paced relaxing gliding in the dark ocean. The depht of the dive was approximately 15 metres. And despite of the hassle it was still great to see a Lionfish eat up a poor small fish trapped in our flashlight beams...