Merry June

So what's up in June? Oh pwenty!

1. Lembeh Trip, Manado 2-7th June 07

This dive group is made up of 7 ppl: YS, Qun , YH , Michelle , TE and I. We took the the morning plane to Manado Airport, followed by an hours ride to the jetty and 20-min boat ride to the resort- Normad Adventure Divers.

View from our resort

NAD is situated in Lembeh Island which is off mainland. Electricity and water is scarce thus we have to use wisely. I bunked in with my newly-made friend, Michelle and off we went to gear up for our first check-out dive.

We actually made our first dive near the jetty and we were all relunctant to jump in. It was a fishing port and the water we saw was black. But after taking a closer look, it was the seabed that is black and the water was crystal clear.
When we first descended, we saw a dead eel and swamps of dead fish. They were probably dumped in by the locals as unsold fish. However, rubbish in Lembeh is thought to be a treasure. There are actually critters hidding among these trash. There's a reason for being known as Macro heaven.

My new toy for this trip was my underwater torch. Costs
me $50. In order to make good use of it, I finally did a night dive again. While 4 of us did a night dive, the other 3 did an evening dive in a quest of Mandarin fish. Sun sets an hour earlier in Lembeh, so we got in at 6pm. Hermits were everywhere. It wasn't easy when I had a pointer and a torch in 1 hand while the other was busy taking photos. I was trying to support myself while trying to take some crabs when I felt a burning sensation on my hand. The sand from the stinging corals got into my broken glove ( which I was unaware of ) . The pain was excruciating that I couldn't bear to stay in the water for another minute. But I still held on. Fortunately, the pain went off the next day but rashes appeared.

The " Cave"

On our 4th day, we went out to Bungka and we saw 3 dolphins along the way! It was the same place where I saw one on my previous trip there. We did some wall diving with 1 that has a "swim-thru" cave" The divemaster, Yopie, knew the place so well that he can remember each and every particular species of pygmy seahorse ( less than 1 cm ) located at it's respective depths.

We went back to the haunted jetty ( it's actually
the resort located at the jetty that was "dirty" , refer to left photo) , but this time, the weather was good . And we see more locals living on the island. It no longer looked eerie like my previous trip. However, I still refused to use the toilet located outside the resort. We stopped over for our lunch and surface interval, a few of us sleeping, some playing poker while I was busy taking pictures and savouring every moment of the peace I could devour.

I stayed in the water for the longest for the first time 1.5 hours. It was a shallow one but the visibility wasn't fanastic. But I saw something that I've never seen before... 2 frog fish leaping from the sea bed to the jetty stilts! Frogfish are usually stationary. They are so called because the would just stay immobile until its prey swims by and grab it with it's tongue in 1 split second. I found the same mantis shrimp again at the same place when I came 2 years back. By the time we proceed back to Lembeh, the day has gone dark.

On our last day, we got Yopie to bring us to Mainland for some fresh seafood. Sadly, the restaurant had closed so we just settle for some coffeshop that sells seafood as well.

I managed to cut down a bit of weight as I dun take much food in between dives. I did not managed to get enough beauty sleep in my warm room when the eletrical surges cut off the aircon in my every attempt to on it... TY's room was without water frequently so they had to use our bathrooms every now and then. To make matters worse, there was 1 night when they had to bunk in with us as there was no eletricity to run the air-con and no fan. At least we had a fan in our room to keep the air moving.

I would rate this trip as a very fruitful one because we got to see so many exotic creatures in 14 dives and I'm more than happy to come back to share these with you :