First stop – Kuala Lumpur (KL)
We had a
first layover in KL, for a couple
of first days in Malaysia, taken up by our fellow friend Asia
(actually a daughter of our former boss at POSiR ;)) who blissfully
gave us a hand and a shelter in her apartment,
shared with her female co-workers. It was delightful to have some
free days from 'living on our backpacks' and being able to cook what
we actually really wanted to eat at that moment. Such a basic
thing, but so much underestimated by a lot of us! You start to
appreciate such details whilst being unable to cook for yourself due
to overall lack of kitchen facilities (not to mention the common
sense when the circumstances allow one to eat for pennies).
There was not much to see in
KL, so to speak, but we hanged out a bit
together, saw famous Patronas Towers (real skyscrapers indeed!) and
swam in the common pool in the apartment's complex. Even managed to
go to the fancy party were, to my full surprise, Tim Exile was going
to play. There was no line-up at all and
according to our presumptions that the biggest (to my
understanding) electronic-deck showman of the evening was going to
play much later than..8pm?, we showed up at about...7:50 so we
managed to see him for about... up to 10 last minutes of his
show, which was apparently of a very good quality (comparing it to my
previous experiences, in Berlin where he was brilliant, and London –
when he didn't actually smash the dance floor). Such a shame, but
hey, better 10 mins than nothing right? ;)
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| Twin Patronas towers |
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| one of the tower's reflection |
After bouncing about in the
capital we took a night bus to Mercing, where, thereafter, we hoped
to catch a ferry across open waters to the beautiful TIOMAN island.
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Welcome to Tioman Island! :)
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Tioman appeared
to us out of the blue (mainly because we were falling asleep sitting
upright, me at least) as an undulated landscape covered out-and-out
with a dense jungle, evergreen forest! We disembarked on the
ABC island where, almost instantly, found scuba centre we wanted to
dive in. After logging in in one of the gh's, the furthest one on the
beach un/fortunately, we signed up for our courses: advanced and open
water diving, J.and me accordingly. Both starting right the following
day, Jay in a group of 4 (him inclusive) and I got my own instructor
(cause at that moment there're no more beginners ;) For me it was my
1st experience with a scuba gear, in general, so started
my 4 days course with a bulk of theory, but as it was all very new
me, I pretty enjoyed learning new stuff. After some movies and quizzes I had to fill up, Marc (my British, post-banker :P, instructor) put
me in the swimming pool playing with the gear and familiarizing me
with everything I watched the introduction about. The second day –
theory again and the swimming pool, and surprisingly, the next jump
to the pool was replaced with..a walk to the ocean instead ;) So my
first offshore dive, very shallow one though, in the open water it
was! Jay's course was only 2 days, mainly diving (so much fun!), but
eventually the last day of mine, when I officially got certified he
went with us on a boat to dive out on the adjacent island. So we
dived together, saw amazing and huge bump head parrot fish (a whole
school of them!), a big sea-turtle, a ray lying on the bottom and
other stunning representatives of this
fascinating underwater world!
Waters of South China Sea,
around Tioman Island, were so transparent, turquoise and rich in
marine life that's actually pretty hard to depict the underwater
scenery genuinely and realistically.
Such a good shot for the first diving in one's life :) I kind of
overcame some of my fears and fight prejudices
and found out that, after all, I'm not that much scared of
fish... hehe.
Heading next: Malacca (Melaka)
on the south-western shore of peninsular
Malaysia.
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