Getting ready
Breakfast at the Impian Inn started at 0730 which was perfect for my dive meet-up at 0830. I turned up at Tioman Dive Buddy a little earlier to do the paperwork and pay. But the divemasters didn’t know about me but the managed to fit me in for the 0900 dive which had two other divers. The first was doing his advanced certification and the other an experienced Singaporean diver.
When Kimi the boss turned up, he was very relaxed and didn’t even bother collecting the payment. I just presumed I could pay afterwards.
The reason I went with him rather than the other dive centre wasn’t the price difference of MYR10 less per price, but the fact that Kimi was quite nice.
My dive centre, Tioman Dive Buddy.
First dive at KM
We had plenty of space on the small boat as we headed out to our first dive site called KM, a little south of Tekek, off Berjaya Resort.
The water was gorgeous aqua, clean and calm. But as soon as we backrolled in and followed the buoy rope down, it quickly turned murky.
We descended to 30m and we had a blurry view of a wreck. After a while, we ascended partially to have a clear view of a wreck. I couldn’t work out what was happening. When I asked after the dive, it was explained that we had visited two (out of three wrecks).
There were some fish at the first but with poor visibility, it was hard to appreciate them. At the second wreck, there was a large school of yellowback fusiliers.
It felt like a very short dive and it sure was at 22 min, due to the deep dive and no decompression limit.
We took our surface interval at a coffee shop by the water and the main street of Tekek, within view of the airport control tower.
Second dive at Renggis
We backrolled in parked up off a small island to dive Renggis. It would be a shallow dive at around 12m but it felt like a deep descent because I had some mild equalisation issues in my right ear. I equalise automatically without any active effort and this was possibly the first time I can relate to the difficulties many other people feel.
[Edit: I later found that I had an ear infection and a perforated eardrum in my right ear, plus lightinflammation in the left with apparent scarring in the eardrum. ]
Through the dive, there were plenty of small and large tropical reef fish, some nice coral but plenty of dead coral too. The highlight was a turtle hanging out with a couple of bat fish and a couple of large yellow black-and-yellow fish.
Near the end, there was an area to create artificial reef in the form of structures that resembled scaffolding plus a treadmill. The treadmill looked about 50% than expected and I nearly didn’t recognise it. It was a great reminder that things look larger underwater.
It was a good long dive at 42 mins. We returned to the dive centre and I settled my bill with Kimi. By 1145, I was back in my room freshening up for the rest of my day.
General comments
The divemaster could have been more detailed with his briefing, eg. the fact that there were three wrecks at the bottom. He also lacked general knowledge of the area. I asked why that spot was so jinxed that there were three wrecks but he didn’t know. And why some patches of coral are so nice but there were large patches of dead coral.