Back to work after a superb dive trip.

 

 So it’s back to work after the dive trip. The clinic manageress in the Taman Melawati clinic called to say one of the aquariums there had emptied itself onto the Persian Carpet over the weekend. Yikes! Fortunately the fish still had enough water to survive so are now temporarily housed in the other aquarium whilst we wait for our Fish Specialist to come back from her holiday in Thailand. The persian carpet was an effective, albiet expensive sponge for the spillage!

The KL clinic was packed and I had to skip the lunch break. It’s amazing how many people get into trouble with their teeth during long holidays.

Anyway ….. the Lembeh Straits was just awesome! My friends and I took plenty of photos both above water and below. We managed to squeeze in 12 dives in all, and they all were more than an hour long too! In fact amazingly, one dive was a record length for me … 88 minutes! With no decompression time too, as I kept a close eye on my depth and the dive computer. There’s no wonder though, that I now have blocked sinuses due to being immersed for such lengths of time … I usually came up shivering with crinkly finger tips! But it was well worth it …

The photos we got were awesome. Imagine trying to keep as steady as possible, when every time you breathe in you start to rise, and at the same time focusing on the tiny fish who try their best to camouflage themselves from predators. I got so frustrated at first, as I stupidly left my camera flash diffuser at home, so had to make a makeshift one out of part of a plastic bag which I taped onto the housing (many thanks to Sam for the brilliant idea!).

We couldn’t  dive 24 hours before our flight back to avoid getting decompression sickness, so whilst a group of us went to the National Park, some friends and I opted to walk around Bitung and look for the real Nasi Padang experience. That’s when we found an Ahli Bikin Gigi (which translates to ‘Maker of Teeth’ for those who don’t get it! )

The amazing finds in Lembeh included a juvenile scorpion fish, a leafy sea dragon, the pygmy sea horse … as I was busy taking a photo of a particularly active (and sassy) black and white spotted sweetlips, a morray eel attacked me! It wasn’t very big so I wasn’t too worried, though having it trying to take nips at my camera and my fingers was kind of irritating. I guess it was just trying to protect its turf.

 We had so much fun but there were many dive sites we hadn’t time to go to, so we’re thinking of going back in July and this time dive Bunaken as well. 

 Photo credits are to Din, Sam and yours truly!