dangdut diving in mabul with Billabong Scuba (25-30 March 2010)

it's time for our second annual trip to Mabul... and this time we brought our sugar daddy and toy boys along. haha.. kidding. we missed a few from last trip because 1) comot was pregnant with her first baby, 2) eadie is currently posted overseas. but we had newcomers which made our second trip more or less a horny one. lenn came this year with a mission.. to get her OWD license..finally. haha.. before i start writing about our fabulous trip and the men we "rembes'ed" with, let's start with an introduction of the trippers :)



this trip was actually organized by tony the triggerfish. i helped looking for people, he dealt with faizal from billabong scuba.. biasa lah have to send bapak ayam to deal la kan? then we send mak mak ayam to finish the job. the results we got to see a whole bunch of frogfish :P

day 1: Putrajaya-LCCT-Tawau-Semporna-Mabul

we arrived at Tawau Airport on board the Air Asia free tickets we bought the year before. something funny happened at the LCCT, my name, and also nana's, jon's and lan's were called to board the plane. hehehe.. when i first heard i was like, hey jon, nama orang kena panggil tu sama la dengan nama kau. huahuahua.. i guess it's still too early for me lah. hohoho.. anyway, despite the hiccups at the airport, we managed to arrive safely. since it's the first time, tony dive with the rest of us, he was worried that we would be very difficult. kekeke... dun worry daddy, our group not difficult except when meeting deadlines je. hahaha..

faizal of billabong scuba greeted us at the airport, and we went to semporna on a chartered van. funnily enough, we got the same abang bajau that drove us the year before. abg abdul. haha... we arrived at billabong scuba's office in semporna and immediately we were taken to mabul using their boat. tony reminded me like a gazillion times that we're not gonna be fed until we reached mabul so we'd better not complain. and that the food is not good la.. when we arrived, everyone ate happily. what tony didn't know is, our group is not picky about food but when we get good food, we celebrate hahaha...

our package entitled us for 14 dives. 3 in sipadan, 2 in siammil and the rest in mabul/kapalai. our check out dive was in mabul. i didn't go for i had a headache. i think mostly due to lack of sleep. so i decided to sleep it off.. and of course with the help of panadol actifast :p nana and lan made themselves at home. and of course took photos! suddenly i saw a familiar face.. johnny! haha it's been a while since i last dived with the guy.. he's still all jovial and cheerful as ever. we said hi and he told me to dive. and not sleep. so i went for the second dive.. at ray point. we're supposed to see eagle rays. tyler and jon led the dive. i had to follow tyler. and boy i was not satisfied. i had like 80 bars left and he told me to go up with gary. mangkuk hayun. i didn't even get to see the eagle rays.. and on our way back, i was swearing and cursing (in malay of course) at tyler the badak.

that nite i told johnny, if i have to dive with tyler again ever.. i'd ask for my money back and leave for big john's. after that i only dive with johnny, lando and otto. and yvette (she's lenn's instructor) from UK. otto has the hots for ryn, and lando is a hunky boatman.. now he's a DM at billabong scuba. good for you lando.

that nite also, lenn and bad gave the bad news. lenn forgot to pack her pump. ermm.. so we had to call billabong's office and ask the clerk to buy one from guardian nearby and have it sent to mabul first thing in the morning. otherwise lenn would have fallen ill.


day 2: SIPADAN!

you know it's gonna be good if you see the barracuda vortex as soon as you jumped into the water. hehe kan? yup.. that's what we saw.. yee haw.. because Billabong Scuba only has 6 permits for Sipadan a day, our group had to be divided into multiple groups. jon, nana, lan and me got the permits on day 2. tony, wong (MacApple), ryn and mahzan a.k.a puteh on day 3, while lenn and bad got to go to sipadan on day 5. bad had to wait for lenn to complete her owd training..

mahzan got the name puteh from tony actually. it's a funny story. the day we arrived, Billabong was fully booked. so only 3 rooms were available. we booked 5 rooms altogether. at first, the deal was to have me and jon, and tony and wong to stay at arung hayat on the first night. tony changed his minds because he thought i should stay and guard his bags.. kekekkee .. hampeh. jadi locker bag sudah nya aku ni. that night, everyone was quite excited despite the tiring day. it's our traveling day, we took all different kinds of transportation just to get to mabul, and except for me everyone had 2 dives up their sleeves. so at around 10 pm, when puteh said that he's going to bed, tony all of a sudden (and we were laughing at something) jumped up and said ok let's go to arung hayat. they were going to leave their bags in billabong scuba, so mahzan went to bad's room to get some essentials before going to arung hayat. while mahzan was away, tony said to the rest of us, "i'm scared to let him go to arung hayat all alone here.. scared that he'll be kidnapped by the mabul people. he's sooo puteh!" and we cracked in laughter. that's how mahzan ended up as puteh. i think tony meant jambu.. but puteh sounds good. kekekkeke..

anyways, lan turned out to be a snorkeling newbie. he's scared of the water in sipadan. nana had seasickness while waiting for us on the boat so the boatman left them on the island. good tho.. coz then i wouldn't have photos of sipadan island itself.. ;)

after that it didn't really matter what i saw.. johnny was fun to dive with. and he's quite a good spotter. not as persistent as big john. but his eyes are sharp!

we did 3 dives in sipadan. it took jon a while to go descend when in sipadan. i think it's the wet suit la.. dah dive sekali setahun.. memang la macam pakai new suit nokks.. ahaha.. johnny nagged me for not helping jon out when descending. hohoho.. sorry buddy.. :(

day 3: mabul/kapalai

as promised, johnny didn't give tyler to our group. he instead assigned lando and otto.. susan led the dives though. but we had lando and otto to be our guides :D saw a whole bunch of frogfish.. different sizes... different colors.. and most of them at the mabul water bungalow house reef. lando even showed us his "pet" the clown frogfish! excellent.



lando is hot. hehe.. enuff said. he has a body that could make anyone drool. hahaha.. opss.. i think jon can confirm that ;) he has this tall lean body with 6 packs and all.. ahhh... he can hold me anytime beb. hahaha.. :P anyways at kapalai he led us through swimthroughs and at one point i ran out of air because he was holding me quite tightly. hahahaha.. jon was shocked. i guess it's been that long hahahahaha bodo :P



that night, wong successfully persuaded me to go for the night dive. i agreed provided that he would wash my equipment hahaha.. i was too lazy to change the batteries on JD's camera. after one shot it died :P tyler and jon led the dive. tyler led the photographers, while jon led the non-photographers. heck i spotted more stuff than he did. he wanted to end the dive after we saw the mandarin fish. and that was after 10 minutes. dang..! (fyi he doesn't work with billabong scuba anymore.. ) when he told us to ascend, wong pretended that he didn't understand him, haha that was funny. so we managed to squeeze a good 1/2 hr for the night dive. now that's worth 80 bucks :p we saw a huge huge turtle. i think he must be 150 years old hehe.. he really was that huge. and a huge plurae branch. i think that's my first. excellent. unfortunately no photos .. that sucks

I did four dives.. and they were not a disappointment. thanks to lando and otto :D


day 4: Siammil

puteh was sick after his sipadan rendezvous with tony and the gang. he slept through the night. he decided to skip siammil. but since he's paid for the whole package it wasn't right to leave him alone at the dive center. so we insisted he came with us. he decided to sunbathe and snorkel with nana and lan.

the view was fantastic. and the crabs that we bought after diving were fat and fleshy .. hehe.. siammil is an island about 45mins to 1hr boat ride from mabul. there's noone on the island except an army base. thankfully we had 3 orang PTD - puteh, lan and bad.. they told us that the communication tower on siammil is taller than that of sipadan. which means the security is more critical in siammil than sipadan. i guess it's true. although we didn't have to pay for permits, we still have to submit our full names to the base camp. there's an island next to siammil, denawan. there's a fishing village there. which is the best place to get ketam and udang and sotong and ikan. they also sell filipino rum called tandoay and other liquor.. that's why johnny wanted to go pun.. sabor je :p

it's the first time for everyone except me. i've been there in 2008 with big john. dived with johnny also. he was borrowed from billabong kekeke.. that's how i knew johnny. spotted a great deal there .. including huge nudis that i've never seen before. best gilakk! and they were mating! double seronok! woo hoo..

unfortunately there's fish bombing right before we came..saw a lot of dead fish underwater. johnny collected them and sent them to our boat. buat bbq katanyer.. tak nampak ponn.. ceh!

that night nana and jon cooked... gila babeng best... thanks ladies.. muahsss.. they made butter (more like planta kot) crab, chilli crab, and sotong. we were all well fed that nite.. johnny and wong didn't feel too good after the dive. i think because of the air mix. but they managed to eat crab with us that nite. hehee ... yvette joined us too. terus tukar meja kauuu... huahuahua



day 5: mabul/kapalai revisited..

i think this is the trip where i repeat all the dive sites in mabul/kapalai 3 times. :p sabar je.. i think it's because in some dives we didn't dive together.. and so we missed a lot of things.. so to make sure everyone saw everything, we went to the same dive sites.. entah la. i don't know who decided where to go. and i didn't really care cause i was busy checking out lando's butts... boo yah!

i managed to spot some creatures i missed after running out of air so fast on day 2.. this time i managed to control my self.. hehehe.. i told puteh to follow me and jon.. he's missed too many things underwater i felt bad. but he followed me oh too closely. i was afraid i might hit his face with my fins so i told him to follow the DM or jon instead. the first 2 dives were cool.. but our finale was at paradise 2 and it was fabulous. we had otto, lando, johnny and yvette guide us during our last dive. and we saw so many mandarin fish i went up with only 20 bar of air left. they searched high and low for micros.. gosh.. i was a happy camper!!

that night, jon and nana acted as chef again. they cooked the sotong that we bought from semporna.. it's actually paid by bad and ryn. muahahahaha.. as penalty for late payment. macam bank je.. kan? tahun ni siapa nak belanja pulak ni? ngehehehe

we also bought jon her birthday cake. it tasted a bit masin. i think it's the sea water... but the cake was good... wong also belanja everyone air kelapa... and that night i slept in early. sakit belakang.. ahem .... *wink*

day 6: home sweet home? sob sob

i think we left a bit too late. we waited for lando. he didn't even say goodbye.. after all the adegan raba2.. peluk2.. tak nak babai orang pun.. uhuk uhuk.. johnny had to go lead the dives in sipadan. so since i slept really early, i got a goodbye hug.. it's sad to leave when we're having too much fun. and to make it worse... the boat couldn't leave.. low tide. so the men had to push the boat. hahahahahaa... the funny part was the men are actually smaller than us ladies. wakakkakaa... sabar je kan? we arrived at billabong scuba slightly before noon, and paid for the cake, and the sotong.. faizal said the sotong was on the house for being such good guests.. see.. we behaved ;) then he brought us to sabindo at tawau for an early lunch. we stopped by the wet market to get some ikan masin and everything dried before our lunch.

when we arrived at sabindo, 1Malaysia restaurant, we were shocked. the restaurant was opened just for us. it's typically closed during lunch time.... i guess sending mak hayam after bapak hayam trick works eh? hahaha.. we had a delicious lunch - fish head curry, isi ikan soup, and a lot other seafood. best of all we had the time to sit together and remember the things we did in mabul...

so i guess it doesn't really matter where you stay or how badly the toilet is, or how loud your roommate snores, or how crappy the DMs are, or how short or long the dives are.. what truly matters is the company you're with, the friends you make and of course the memories that you bring home after a trip.

to the bapak ayam, mak hayams, anak2 ikan in mabul, i thank you from the bottom of my heart, for making this trip a lively one.. :) may our trip in march 2011 brings even more joy into my mundane life

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