Tubbataha reef- a disappointment

Well, someone forgot to tell all the large pelagic that we are going there.

We arrived at Tubbataha on the morning of 9th May after 12 hours overnight on the Apo Explorer. There were 16 of us, 10 from Malaysia and the other 6 from Singapore. We had very high hopes that this is the area to dive esp after a 45 minutes check out dive at Malayan wreck, my best check out dive todate.

Malayan wreck sits atop the reef at only 5 meters and the same wreck is a home to about 100 bumpheads which were just leaving home when we dived in at 8am. The visibility was around 35 meters with no current. We then swam towards the wall which drops to about 70 meters. Swimming at depths of 36 meters on our first dive was amazing. It is exactly like the Barracuda point at Sipadan minus the school of barracudas. There were sharks all over and it soon became clear to us that the reef is a nursery and kindergarden to reef sharks. Looking out into the blue, we saw only one thing...blue water. No large pelagic was swimming past us. Something amiss, I thought.

The following dives were all mostly similar, wall dives and beautiful reef that were mainly covered with hard corals or sandy bottom. There were few soft corals and hence, not many anemones and macro like nudibranches. We were really disappointed.

As we were using Nitrox most of the time, we were diving very close to our MOD ( maximum operating depth before oxygen turned toxic ) becos of the great visibility ( maybe that is why there is no pelagic...they are camera shy ). I did most of my first day dives with air as i wanted to explore the deep end and went down to 56 meters to see some juvenile barracudas.

Our dive on 9th May was on Full Moon and despite this, there were no current, the sea as calm as a dead woman, and no large pelagic. No Mantas, no rays, no whale sharks, hammerheads, etc etc. The conditions were perfect but no big stuff.

In most of our dives, we could hear dynamite exploding some 50 miles away. It was common to hear 2 to 3 explosions on each dive. Maybe these scare away the big fishes. Unless the filipino government takes some drastic actions, no fishes will dare come into filipino waters.

Tubbataha reef is beautiful and it definitely beats places like the Great Barrier Reef in terms of marine life and there are corals ( many barrel corals ) of enormous sizes. It is definitely a breeding ground for turtles, sharks, Napoleon wrasses, octopus and reef fishes. Maybe it was parent days off when we were there.

The renown washing dive site was also a disappointment. Someone switched off the power and no noticeable current were felt. Imagine..we had brought reef hooks, gloves, mini anchors etc etc.
Some brought down some dirty linen.

We visited the Ranger's station that houses around 10 Rangers that patrol the area to keep out fisherman and pirates . It also double up as a T-shirt sales center.

Our group of 10 Malaysian makes use of the nights drinking away the beer that cost USD1 per can and the two bottles of liquor that we brought. The other 6 Singapore divers kept to themselves mostly except on the last night when they decide to have fun with us.

The manager of the boat, Colin who is a Canadian is great and very attentive to our needs. The crew on board the Apo Explorer who we were told only earns less than RM150 a month, are friendly and good at their work. The Malaysian gang were so taken by the services and each of us gave USD40 to the crew as tips. Sad to say, the Singaporean group only gave a fraction of this.

Tubbataha "the Africa of diving"

Tubbataha. Never heard of it ? Well, it is described in one dive magazine as" The Africa of Diving"- Wild and Unexplored. And I will be going there this Friday, 8th may 2009.

Where is this place ?? Tubbataha reef is an atoll coral reef located in the Sulu sea of the Philippines. It is a marine sanctuary protected as a National park and is nominated as the New 7 Wonders of Natural World.

The reef is made up of two atolls which are 5 miles apart and in between is a channel that provides passage to all large pelagic and fishes. Wall dives, reef dives, drift dives and "washing machine' dives are all available here. The marine life here is so vivid and diverse that this sanctuary rivals the Great Barrier reef.

Declared a Unesco world heritage site in 1993, Tubbataha can only be visited by Liveaboards that weather only permits entry in March to June each year.

The Magnificent 10 of us will be going and hopefully all 10 returns will fish tales......more soon.

Thin line between Love and Hate 2

An unpleasant incident compelled me to write on this subject again. After a few drinks last night with PJ's group at Armada, I came home to once again find my neighbour ( 2 doors away ) 's car parked in front of my house ( at the other half, not blocking my gate ). This fellow has 4 cars ( wife and 2 kids ) and they parked their car all outside neighbours house and not inside his own house. He has been doing it for a year now since he moved in. As we all leaved in terraced houses, it can be annoying as I will then have to park my car inside the house's compound which is very troublesome for my wife to move in and out with her car. So I got mad and paste a notice "not to park outside my house ' with my phone no and name. Guess what. He called me up at 7am this morning on his way to work and said I should have gone to his house and settle the matter. Firstly, would he had welcomed me middle of the night or I must wait until he gets back at night. We do not know each other and being hot headed, situation may get out of hand. Over the phone, he says he has the right to park anywhere as the land does not belong to me and he is someone that I should be afraid of. After some shouting on the phone, I cut him off and tried to go back to sleep thinking anticipating a problematic day ahead.

However, I thought i better settle this as my wife was really sore with me and had left home for office early. I sms Zainuddin, the neighbour, and said that he caught me in a bad mood this morning from my hangover and that I want to meet him for breakfast as there should not be bad blood between neighbours. To cut a long story short, he promised not to park in front of my house and I told him that I will park on my side of the house and his small car can still park on the other half. Comprehend?? At the end of all this, we agree that society has made us all cold to each other and we now hardly know our neighbours.

Anyway, if i had not made the attempt to defuse the situation, who knows even a bloodbath may ensure. It is indeed a thin line between love and hate. My wife probably hated me like mad for arguing with the neighbour although she often complains that the neighbour parks their car outside our house. There was one time that he left one of his car there for one complete month without moving it.

The incident above is some which we faced in everyday life. Don't you at times wish you drove a 16 wheel truck and ramp thru all those who drives at snail pace on the fast lane and will not barged despite your continuously flashing of the headlights and then honking.

I told my wife we should have a gathering and invite the neighbours to get to know them. I fully blamed UMNO for making us hostile and cold to each other. In fact, I even blame UMNO when my goldfish dies....

Blogs clean up

My great lawyer fren, Sam tells me that I went beyong sanity and wrote some nasty stuff about politicians in my blog and I'd better clean it up before Najib's gang learn to read. So I took his advice and removed all my political blogs from labelling MCA as running dogs to our new PM...son of Razak. Anyway, I wanted frens to comment on my blogs but I guess they are scared shit in case they are called up to whereever it is now that they make u sit on ice until your balls get frozen then they easily smashed it up.

So I will write nice blogs on subjects that I have passion for like scuba diving, make love to the Ocean...I mean love the Ocean, beautiful ladyboys , my new GOD travel websites and educate someof you on lovely animals of the sea. I will also do some cartoons as I know that some of you are poor readers.

GOD is here

Recently the word 'GOD' crops up many times in my mind and will now play a more significant role in my life. Have I gone more religious??? Maybe about time. Maybe my time to meet the Maker is round the corner.

Anyway, let me first speak about the first GOD. GOD is the acronym for Great Ocean Divers and that is our new website, www.greatoceandivers.com . My good frens, Hadi, Yaohan, Mark and I are setting the website to go into the dive travel business, training and later offering land and sky adventures. We will offer many great benefits for those who want to be GOD's members like discount rates for diving, lessons, points for future free trips etc. We should be launching our website in middle April.

The second GOD is our maker and also known by so many names that I have lost count. No one knows how many GOD is there. Why only one and not two, three or four ? I often believe that the most important rule to follow is the rule to do good for others....do what you want others to do upon you.

One of my young frens, Hazel suggested I come to church with my family who are honestly neither here nor there with regards to religion. I am to be fully blamed for that. As I was not ready to accept GOD and to follow its rules diligently, I shun from meeting GOD. Religion is a very personal thing. Some become religious because of parents, friends whilst some have religion shafted into their throats. In Malaysia, the later is true. Why must all Malays be Muslims? Sensitive topic that can get one in hot soup. Or a cell in Kamunting with cold soup.

I drop the hint to my wife about the activities in the church for the kids this weekend and she says that similar activities are also carried out in temples. Mmmmm. Dilemma.

FireflyXXXXX

I must be mad to fly on Fireflyz again. Last year, I faced the screw up on their changes in the flight schedules and this year it is happening again. Firefirez announched that they are changing the schedules of some of their flights and cancelling some. These people do not care on the welfare of their passengers and are protected by some fuking clauses giving them the right to cancel, change , reschedule flights at their whimps and fancies. Can we as paying passengers do the same ?? If we cannot make it for the flight, we are penalised but the airlines can get away with murder. What a one loped sided world that we lived in.

The problem with flyfirez is that they are run by people of the moronic kind who are not answerable to anyone. They fail and losses money....no problem, government will help. That is their attitute. We dare to fail so we will fail.

Flyfirez is a new airline and the only reason people uses them is the convenience of flying from subang airport as oppose to going miles away to KLIA or LCT. BUT they will soon lose all creditabilty as a reliable airline by constantly changing their flight schedules.

Fly the fly no more.

Ladyboys of Phuket Part II-in words

Now for Part II.

I decided to get to know more about these people who have been unkindly created into this world..not knowing at a young age whether to be a boy or a girl. After puberty, most of them decides to be a girl. If they have beautiful features like those in the photographs, they will likely earn enough money to go for an operation to remove the unwanted penis. The rest like breast enlargement and some masculine features can be taken care by hormone tablets.

A breast enlargement will cost about 1K USD which the removal of the penis will be 2-3 times more expensive. Some of my female friends are thinking of breast enlargement after seeing these ladyboys. Mmmm....big breast, small breast....no difference to me actually as long as it doesn't drag on the floor after old age.

From the pictures, I sat and took pictures with about 4-5 ladyboys over the course of 3 nights and I am sure you know who is my favourite. Actually the one that I considered the most beautiful and feminine was not around at that time as she has gone down to Singapore. They can earn as much as Sing2K in one night if they are lucky.

I went out with both Yuna ( Ms Tiffany) and Bow ( Leon's favourite ) to a nearby disco and a bar for some drinks. The 'girls' took me to a Man's bar and it was full of not so desired ladyboys and gays. It was really weird and fightening. There was a show where some ladyboys or rather ladyman performed. It was at a bar near the Royal Paradise hotel in case any of you want to go there to look for ugly ladyman.

The night ended with the two 'girls' wanting to go to my room. I somehow allowed them to and the hotel receptionist gave me the " Dirty old man" look . In the room, the girls were very well behaved and just wanted to use my computers to check on their websites and emails. I must be the most boring person on earth. Anyway, you think I dare tell you what really happen?? Hahaha. Not for the printed media.