after 2 hours listing down the pros and cons of both islands, i still couldn't choose one, so i seeked help from the Almighty. i asked jon to follow me too.. heheh.. and i also invited others to join. finally on thursday (5th June) i decided to go to Redang and asked MACHA to book the tickets. jon finally agreed to go on Friday afternoon.. pheww...
i went home, and packed my stuff.. wanted to catch some sleep before i drove out to jon's but i couldn't. probably the excitement has gotten into me.. so i went out early, about 9 pm to buy some food. as i and jon wanted to save cost.. hehe and also the fact that it's still school holidays plus i booked only 2 days before i came, we decided to sleep at the dive center. so snacks would be a necessity. (so if u want a room.. BOOK EARLY!)at 10 pm, i arrived at jon's place. stopped by Burger King for supper and bought some double swiss mushrooms for MACHA, Ayie, Kamal and Lan, and left KL at about 12 am. we took the Lebuhraya Pantai Timur (East Coast Highway) and the traffic was ok.. and since it's still early, and i was really tired, we stopped at Petronas near the Gambang R&R. it was closed, unfortunately, and i was extremely sleepy so we stopped anyway. i was awaken by a nightmare.. urghh
we finally arrived at KT at about 5:30 am. parked my car outside the jetty and took a short nap. at about 7 am, the caretaker of the jetty opened the door and i parked my car there. the parking was rather empty... probably because the oil price hike..? or perhaps the school holiday was ending that weekend.. and people would rather stay home... we bumped into Aba and izwas. turned out they were on the highway at about the same time we were and arrived at about the same time we did. alas, i didn't see their car ...
the jetty in the morning..
since our ferry to Redang is at 9 am, we figured we'd have a bit of time to have breakfast and buy nasi kerabu for the gypsies.. Aba and izwas already had their breakfast, so we left them to get the tickets, while we went to pasar payang for some nasi dagang.
after getting 8 packs of nasi kerabu, we rushed to the jetty as it's already 8:30 am. izwas told us that the ticket counters didn't have our list of names.. luckily the lady at the ticket counter remembered to call Mozana Resort and they sorted it out in minutes. we got our tickets and the marine park tickets (RM5.00), and at 9 am, off we went to Redang.
the journey took about 1 and a half hour. it wasn't a full house so jon and i secured 4 seats each and slept. at least she did. i couldn't sleep. again.. huhu... so what's a girl to do? take pictures of course
jon is asleep. shhhh...
the transit to Mozana from laguna took about 1/2 hour.
they should think of the best and fastest way for transit.. especially during school breaks.. the passengers had to abort the transit boat a couple of times because it was too heavy..
anyway, as soon as we reached mozana, MACHA happily took his double swiss mushroom. Alas Lan wasn't there.. he went back to his kampung.. and so one very lucky guest of MACHA's ate on Lan's behalf. S (not his real name) arrived a day earlier. Aba and izwas got themselves a room, and jon and i put our bags at MACHA's. we waited for them to finish their double swiss mushrooms and got ourselves ready for our first dive at Tumbu Kili.
there were 7 divers, and 1 DM (MACHA). S (not his real name) followed us on the boat to make sure MACHA is operating correctly (get the divers to sign the reliability forms BEFORE they dive, etc). Something like a QA inspector would do..
i was a bit dehydrated and kinda tired so i had to take my time to descend as equalization proves a problem when you are dehydrated and tired. the vis was ok.. i was hoping to see dolphins.. but i guess this was not a dolphin weekend .. saw the dolphins last weekend when diving with comot.. well ok, after a dive here with comot.
this dive site MACHA showed us the whip coral shrimp.. i didn't bring my camera down as i didn't wanna bother with cameras and stuff here. i also spotted a moral eel having its teeth cleaned by this tiny fish. hehe.. dunno what's the name of the fish laa..
Aba and izwas did take a lot of pictures here during the first dive, so maybe you guys can post a few photos here. 
in the middle of the dive i began to feel hungry so didn't really pay attention to the things around me..
we surfaced and went back to the DC. had our nasi kerabu and i set up my camera and got ready for our next dive
ok now we continue to our second dive larr..
our next dive was at one of my most favorite site ever, holy sand. 8 divers and 1 DM (Kamal) went down on our second dive. Macha had students so he didn't join us.
Holy Sand is located between pulau ekor tebu and pulau kerengga. it's a sand bed at about 20-22 meters depth. I've been here many times, and each time i dive at holy sand i'll find different kinds of nudis. Gypsy Divers and MUW has a joined effort in constructing an artificial reef to attract the seahorses to build their colonies there. i was told that the Marine Parks Dept of Malaysia and the Ministry of Natural Resources & Environment have recently granted their approval of such construction to both MUW and the Gypsy Divers. One structure is already up.. and already there's a seahorse making it its home. 10 more structures will be built over time. Kudos to both the Gypsy Divers and MUW for their effort
. anyway, i'll let macha to give the details later Anyway, this was the highlight of this trip.. saw lots of different creatures i've wanted to see.... i'll let the pictures do the talking lahh horr.. ? sorry pictures very bad la.. got very sexcited lah.. hehee
my first sighting of seahorse in redang.. hehe..
this blue-ringed octopus has already made this JD bottle its home la... hehehee..
frogfish.. some say u can see plenty of these here now..
after the second dive i was really beat.. and starved..
after taking our showers, at about 8 pm, we all walked to the food court at laguna. lss was in redang reef.. he smsed me earlier to hang out .. so at about 9 pm, as soon as we finished dinner he arrived. i told him to look for MUW t-shirt. i forgot that the MUW t-shirt doesn't have the MUW logo at the back.. haha.. sorry lss.. i guess he had a good conversation with MACHA and the rest. after dinner, we all moved to the kopitiam for some milo and kopi peng.. we were trying to make Syed sleep.. i guess the milo kaww doesn't work on him.. we went back to the DC and slept.. it was raining so jon and i had to sleep in the DC.. i slept i woke up at 5:30 am sunday morning.. it's a cold morning.. it's been raining aaaaaalllllllllllllll night long.
but it was still a beautiful morning at gypsy.
after having nestum 3-in-1 for breakfast, we geared up for our first dive that day. our destination is the anemone city. this dive site has so many schools of fish, and on a very good day (read: good vis) you can see nice formations of different schools of fish. however, the vis was quite bad that morning. and so i didn't take as many pictures as i hoped for. in fact two of the divers that went with us lost the group and were found only when we did our safety stop near the reef. there was a bit of current there especially during safety stop.
this is the only picture i have of this dive.. hahaha... we saw quite a number of different nudis here.
the next dive scheduled at about 11:30 am. i didn't go because i had a headache from the choppy waters earlier in the first dive and probably cause i didn't get enough sleep.. heheh
so they left me with Syed as he was taking a flight back that afternoon (no flight period)i think it's best if i leave this dive to jon, Aba and izwas to report as i didn't go myself. but i heard they managed to see a lot of different critters there.. i guess they were sooooo excited that someone even surfaced with 20 bars left in the tank
luckily for her, Kamal was there to share the air.. after lunch and a short nap, i had some energy to go for the last dive of the day. only 2 divers: izwas and i.. and Kamal led the dive. the dive site is also the holy sand. this time Kamal took us slightly further away from the structure they built and headed south.
here we saw quite a few nudis and sea hares. even saw a couple of sea hares doing "it" doggy style.. huhu
i felt like shooting a porn photo or something
found another seahorse here.. black in color.. on top of a fire urchin..
wahhh still at it ka??
never seen this before.. it's my first.. and it's the prettiest of all nudis i've ever seen in holy sand..
cowry right? dunno what it is.. but it looked interesting
at the end of the dive, when my no deco limit was showing 7 minutes, Kamal and clairvoyant found this on a "gamat"(?) dunno la what it's called.. but it looks like a huge worm
.. anyway, had to take quick shots of the thing..... i surfaced a happy diver
....anyway... before we went down to holy sand, stopar stopped by with lunch and coke. during lunch he invited me and jon to kampung redang.. he said he's picking us up at 5 pm. so as soon as we reached macha's dc, i took a quick shower and woke jon up and hopped on gypsy divers' smaller boat with ayie and kamal and headed to stopar's boat, Sembilu II....
i've always wanted to "drive" one of these babies.. but ayie and stopar wouldn't let me..
i wonder what my girlfriend's thinking about..
probably thinking what she's having for dinner yah?
kamal and duyong95, recreating a scene from a malay drama... hehehehe
we reached the jetty, and walked all the way to stopar's car..
kamal's our designated driver..
they left us here. ordered satay while waiting for them to rejoin us...
we're still waiting
went to berjaya redang.. beautiful place.. love the sand on its beach.. so soft la.. great landscape .. unfortunately my pictures came out blurred
we headed back to Macha's place at about 8:00pm on stopar's smaller boat
hopped on macha's small boat back to mozana.. it was low tide that nite.. so stopar's boat can only dock at laguna's jetty
jon termenung again.. still thinking about food ka dey?
anyway.. that nite i slept
it was another wet nite.. it's raining when i woke up. Aba and izwas decided to do one last dive that morning. and i decided to tag along. MACHA suggested that we do the reefs today.. so our last dive site would be the Mini Mount or Terumbu Che Isa.
again i didn't bring down my camera. i was lazy and the water was cold. i didn't pack my wetsuit along.. my bad
the water was sooooo very cold.. so i hovered mostly at 14 meters depth.. i wonder if i've lost some fat while diving there.. hmm... 
however the vis was good.. there was a big wall there.. and so we looked for macro stuff there.. found some nudis.. the chromodoris family, and another i think is from the flabellina family.. will check later. and we found this sort of a nest .. lots of nudis' eggs.. luckily i had my pointer with me.. almost got stung by a scorpion fish it was a good dive nevertheless.. a good ending to a great weekend we arrived at gypsy divers at approximately 11 am, and we were trying to get on the 1 pm ferry. by 12 pm, we were all set to go.. got Macha to stamp and sign our logbooks and left for the jetty at the kampung. if you're taking the 1pm ferry from redang to KT then u'll be boarding the ferry at the kampung jetty.. otherwise u'll be boarding it from laguna..
it was indeed a great weekend. i wanted to see the Blue ringed Octopus, and i get to see it in redang. even got it to pose with a JD bottle some more
i wanted to see the frogfish.. get to see one here. wanted to see the seahorse.. didn't have to go so far.. it's now safe to say that in redang.. macam-macam ada.. (anything got..)
-the end
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