Alright, have taken your suggestion into serious consideration and proposed it to my friends so am now waiting for their replies. Hopefully, there’d still be flight and accomd availability.

Well, the thing is, I haven’t dived since I got my open water certification 2 years ago and am not sure if I’m up to taking the advance test. What do you suggest?

You feel comfy in the dark and being in unknown territory? Guess you probably fall into the weird category!

Draculass? Haha, I think Dracula will flip in his grave with this word pun! On a sidenote, have you read the book? It actually is kinda scary.

Sorry for the late reply. Almost missed this one!:s

Ok, honestly, I think you should take the extra leave to go for 2 more days:) I don’t want to be a spoilsport, but I can tell you, you’ll regret not extending:P Ok, but the level of regret will depends alot on how much you love diving:P

Why don’t you guys take you advance certification there? I’ve seen people doing that. It’s an awesome place for night dives. Plenty of critters to see. As for night diving, I think it varies among people. I feel really comfortable in the dark and I love the feeling of being in unknown territory. Like I said, different people feels differently, I may be the weird one:D But if you never try, you’ll never know if you are as weird as me:P

Haha! dracu-lass. I’m sure alot of willing men out there who’d want to die happy:P

Argh, shucks, I’m not certified for night dives and won’t be able to go for the mandarin fish dive! Such a pity, it sounds so interesting from your description! Have heard from friends it can be quite scary doing night dives though as you dunno what’s lurking in the waters. What do you think?

Aww, too bad, you missed out on all the fun! Why do you say that Halloween seems to be more fun these days? As compared to? Um, isn’t Zouk a NS boys hangout? Or am I mistaken? I was dressed in a long Dracula countess-ish dress which garnered comments of ‘nice!’ rather than ‘scary!’, go figure! :p

It’s called the mandarin fish dive. Basically, you’ll jump in to the area just before dusk (you’ll need to certified for night dive) and the DMs will tell you where your “seats” are. Just before the last light, the mandarin fishes (about 2-3inches) will sort come out of their hiding and mate. You can see them in this slideshow, it’s blue with orange stripes. Each session is probably 3-5 secs. If you are lucky, they’ll go afew rounds. Oh yah, you’ll see fish sperm floating all around.

I spent my halloween at home since I have a wedding the next morning. I guess I missed out quite a fair bit of fun out there. These days, halloween seems to be more fun. I think Zouk will be a nice place to be at:) What did you dress as?

Yeah, also heard that Jul/Aug period is the best, too bad I can’t switch the dates of my trip though. We’re going from 28-31 Jan, in case you’re interested and happen not to have projects lined up.

Mandarin fish dive? What’s that? And is that what the dive operators call it? How do you know their ‘show times’?

Hope you had a great Halloween! How did you celebrate? My epiphany is that the hardest part isn’t getting the costume (less of a headache than I expected) but getting from place to place decked out in it without folks staring, haha! :p

Not sure abt the seasons. I’ve only been there once. I did ask the guides, they told me it’s dive-able all year round, but july/august is the best. Although he also said that, different months, you see different things. Bunaken is an island and the dive sites are all around it. So I don’t think the seas will be rough throughout.

And wherever you are going, please try the mandarin fish dive. It’s amazing… I mean, watching the fishes mate. I heard the ones at Lembeh are nicer though.

Due to the nature of my work, it’s hard to commit too far in advance. I usually make very last minute trips. Well, keep me informed if you guys have firm plans, I’ll see if I can take time off:) Have fun!:D

It was good that you made the comment about Lembeh not being suited for novices. I checked and what you said was true. Bunaken is nice for beginners–if we go in Jun-Oct. The reason why it’s Lembeh and not Bunaken is because of the season. Seas will be rough during CNY and Lembeh is sheltered. So I guess we’d have to put up with the bad visibility and sediments! Hopefully, we’d get to meet all the creatures you mentioned! You just gave me an evil idea–make the person with the worst buoyancy control give us a treat, haha!

Any plans to go again?

i’d can pretty much assure u that those who are used to diving in west msia waters, manado will really be an eye opener:)

lembeh is not exactly for novices. it’s muck diving most of the places, which means there’s alot of sediment and vis is pretty erm… bad. but the nice thing abt lembeh is the creatures that resides there. amazing stuff. and they dun move about much. if the bouyancy control is not good, you might be kicking up a storm if u know wht i mean.

i did 3 days in bunaken and 3 days in lembeh. i wished i had done 2/4 instead. bunaken is nice for beginners… i suppose blue water, pretty corals appeal to them more than brown water and bottles, cans… etc:) But not all of Lembeh is like that tho, some sites still have pretty nice corals.

hope this helps:)

HEE

I think you’ve got to wait awhile before you start diving again. When everything’s more settled.

For now, just 望梅止渴:D

the bb is due anytime? the estimated due date is 12 july
let’s see how punctual this bb is
haha

no more crab after the one we did
and now i’m confined at home
not to trigger labor as my gynea wun b back in town till 11th!
hur hur hur

*i wan crab*

Thank you very much!:D

Wait till you settle down first. Then we go for some big trips ya!:D Btw, when is baby due? Still got time for crabs?:P Did you last weekend?