My first diving experience in Tioman Island

After much considering, I decided to try diving after hearing so many fun things about it from my friends. I don’t want my first diving experience to be in a dirty sea so Pangkor Island is definitely out, so I went to Tioman Island since I have never been to there before.

The Tioman Sign at the back of a shoplot

Located 32km off the Peninsula Malaysia, the journey to Tioman Island wasn’t a good experience. First of all, I had to drive all the way to Mersing, the ferry port for almost all Tioman travelers, and took a ferry to Tioman.

Sounds simple, but I had a three and a half hour ferry ride in choppy seawater, plus one very very very tiny seat, lousy air-cond system, and a lot of noisy ah-bengs­ who were trying to make all Malaysians in shame in front of a lot of foreigners. Imagine that and you can feel how sien I was in the ferry.

When I reached Tioman it was already 3pm, so without wasting more time, I faster checked into my booked hotel. The name of the hotel is Barbura Seaview Resort, not exactly five star ratings because I wanted to save money for my first diving experience.

My hotel room, got air-cond one ar, don't play play

The diving centre is just beside my hotel, run by a Japanese who prefer working at the beach than in air-conditioned office cubicle.

The beach behind my hotel

The diving centre

I forgot how much I paid, but my diving trip included watching a DVD as a lesson in the diving centre and an experienced guide who will guide me during the dive.

The DVD lesson which nearly made me fall asleep, but quite informative

After the lesson, the guide went through what I had learnt from the DVD and let me try on all the gears and familiarize with it before going in. The guide also taught me some important hand signals to be used such as showing middle finger if other people accidentally pull of your goggles in the water.

After everything was done, we swam from the beach to the middle of the sea, and dived in.

As a first timer, I was a bit kelam-kabut in the water, I couldn’t control my floating and was either went too low or too high in the water. I think the guide was also a bit kelam-kabut when he couldn’t find me.

Too bad I don’t have a waterproof camera, if I got one then I can show you how funny I was in the water.

The place where I dived doesn’t have much corals or pretty fishes because it’s just a training ground for first time divers. If you want to see more pretty corals and fishes, you have to take more lessons and of course, pay more so that the diving centre can ferry you to other places.

I don’t have the money so I just resort to the lousy underwater view.

After nearly one and a half hour of diving, I had to head back to the beach because I was left with not much oxygen in my oxygen tank.

It was already 7p.m. when I reached the beach.

It was quite an experience for me as I never done this before. If I got the money, I will definitely take the entire diving course and get myself a diving license.