PADI Open Water Course at Mabul Island

I’m at Mabul Island, West Malaysia now taking my PADI Open Water Dive Certification.

Arrived at 8am this morning to Uncle Chang’s “resort” and was shuffled off for check in and breakfast. The room assigned to us costed RM90 per person for a twin-sharing room and all meals included.

Today’s day one of my lifelong diving adventure. As I walked the little aisles of Uncle Chang’s lodge on Mabul Island, I saw a huge turtle swimming by in very shallow waters! Omg! Loved the sight. It looks so free. The waters are clear and full of various marine life like crabs, starfishes and some other fishes that I can’t identify.

The first dive was before lunch and we went out to a nearby shallow beach to learn our first dive lesson!

See the great thing about this is, there are no swimming pools (i.e.: no confined water dives!). You’re right out there on the first dive! Awesome.

So we learnt in 1.7m deep water for our first practical lesson. We learnt skills like how to set up own our diving equipment, and I had my very first experience breathing under water. So amazing.

The seabed’s full of these fancy star fishes! Was so worried I’ll step on them and hurt them!

It was challenging to breathe using only my mouth underwater. Thought it would be pretty easy but it seems even when I use my mouth to breathe out, some air escapes from my nose too.

After dive one, I was quite apprehensive as to whether I’ll really be mentally and physically ready for an 18M dive at SIPADAN Island in just 3 days!

Will I get used to breathing under water?

So then we had lunch and next up was the practical lesson number two!

This time around we dived in 3M deep waters and learnt more challenging skillsets like what to do if your regulator has no more air, how to do some hand signals, what to do if water gets into your mask, how to take off your entire mask under water, how to inflate yourself if your inflation mechanism in your buoyancy control device (BCD) jacket is not working…and so on. So cool.

I am also given this thick Open Water Diver Manual to study and get tested on by the next day. Back to school! :P

After lesson two, I felt wayyy more confident about diving and am starting to be relaxed.

Tomorrow 4 more dives. Tonight, will finish watching the rest of the 3 video clips before sleeping.

Who knows what day two of my diving adventure will bring. :)

[Blogged on 4th April 2011]