Island to island, diving under the surface (“Saarelt saarel, ma sukellan pinnan alla...”)

We did our openwater course in 2006 in Perhentian island and our advanced open water course in 2009 in Tioman island (both in Malaysia). So it was time to go back to these islands to check out how good diving is nowadays and how it feels after 200 dives...

We took a bus from Singapore to Mersing, Malaysia and then ferry to Tioman. As always in Asia, It took a whole day to get there.

This time we stayed in Salang beach. It's a small, northern most beach in Tioman. We got a bungalow with fan & cold water for 60 MYR (15 eur) in the place called Puteri inn. It is a quiet place with nice garden view 2 min walk from jetty and beach. We dove with Azmi divers. We got 20% discount because we are divemasters so we paid only 17 eur / dive which is really cheap. Diving was really good. We went to the best places where you are not taken while doing diving course.  

Our bungalow in Tioman

View from our bungalow

The sink was outside

There are a lot of cats in Malaysian islands but no dogs at all. In fact the ferries banned dogs.

Some kind of macaque? A thief anyways. Stole someones bananas.

Olli managed to get a beer. Surprisingly hard to find in a muslim country... and expensive as well even though Tioman is supposed to be a tax free island like Langkawi.

Fruit salad

And we go again...

We went back to Mersing and tried to find a bus we could get straight to Perhentian island. There wasn't any so we took a bus to Kuala Lumpur. We spent three nights in KL and booked flights to Kota Bharu (easiest way to got to Perhentian). There was a Formula 1 race coming to KL after one week so there was all kind of program already in the streets and malls.

In counterbalance for living in the island we booked room from hotel Renaissance. This was our third time in that luxury hotel. There is a nice view to Petronas twin towers from the room and nice an olympic size swimming pool and well equipped gym.

Maija is checking out some race cars

Too lazy to go out... room service it is then!

Renaissance has a nice pool

They have all kind of rules in taxis...

We flew to Kota Bharu and then took taxi to Kuala Pesut and then fastboat to Perhentian island. There is a small (Kecil) and a big (Besar) islands in Perhentian. We stayed on the bigger one this time, in Mama's place. Also here we paid 60 MYR in bungalow with fan and cold water.
We dove with Turtle bay divers and we got the best price we have had during this trip, only 15 eur / tank. Diving was ok, visibility wasn't the best but good enough. We dove in best places they have and saw some cool stuff like huge napolen wrasses and bump head parrotfish. There was a lot of fish everywhere.

Does anyone know what monkey is this?

Our bungalow in Perhentian

View from our bungalow

Relaxing between dives

Olli is having barbeque.

Long beach (The big island where we stayed is behind Maija)

After Perhantian we flew back to KL and spent two nights in gorgeous Shangri La -hotel (Maija has always wanted to stay in Shangri La and Mandarin Oriental so let the dreams come true for once ;) Hopefully MO will also come during this trip...). Shangri-La is ranked number one hotel in KL in Tripadvisor and it was really nice hotel with excellent service. 

Shangri-La KL

Maija is checking what had happened in the world in one week. (No internet in Perhentian)

Now we are in Bangkok and at 30.3.13 we'll fly to Tokyo, Japan. We hope to still see some Cherry blossom.

-Maija & Olli

And once again back in Singapore

After three weeks in Philippines we flew back to Singapore for a weekend. We did nothing special, just normal city life: checked out some music festival in Marina bay, Olli went to see a movie (Oz), we ate good food and bought a new camera (Canon Powershot S110) because our 4 years old got broken.

This was our 5^th time in Singapore during this trip so it feels like some kind of home space. It's so familiar for us that we are little bit lazy to take pictures but thanks for a new camera, you 'll get some pics now ;) Btw. We didn't buy an underwater housing yet cause it is very expensive. Usually housings can cost more than camera itself. So no more underwater pictures...

Singapore, as we have mentioned probably before, is the food capital of the world. The food is simply so diverse and universally good there that you can't go wrong even if you eat at your hotel (hint: Go and try “The straits kitchen” in Grand Hyatt). We found a swedish restaurant in the Arab neighborhood while walking there. They had swedish meatballs on the menu so obviously we ate there. Ahh, so good! Mashed potatoes, meatballs with gravy and lingonberry jam for Olli and grilled salmon for Maija. The food made us think of home cooked food and Finland. Inspired by homely food we discussed the possibility of maybe ending the trip a bit earlier than July, but it depends on how Olli will get a job. Let's see how things end up, but it might be a good time for him to start polishing the CV and applying for jobs now! ;)

- Olli & Maija

Above average sushi in this place. We found it when reading a magazine provided by our new favorite Low-cost airline, Singapore based Trigerairways. They said it to be cheap. It wasn't.

Beef.

Salmon carpaccio... or something like that. Maijas favorite.

California roll.

Ollis favorite. Scallops wrapped in bacon.

Business center in Singapore

Marina Bay Sands. A high end casino hotel. Too expensive for us at the moment.

Coin-laundry. Just like in USA but detergent was dispensed automagically! And no coke vedning machines anywhere.

Swedish home cooked food in little Arab, Singapore. Weird, but good!

Suck on my chocolate salty balls

Akrabadabra!

Smoked duck and roasted pork... nice!

Fresh green apple juice, smoked duck with noodels or rice and bowl of chicken stock. That's our breakfast this time!

Excellent diving in Philippines

Many divers we have talked with have recommended Philippines as a great diving destination. So because we have very flexible plans we decided to go there. We took a Tiger airways (very good and cheap airline. Better than Air Asia) flight from Singapore to Cebu City. There are over 3000 islands in Philippines and Visaya islands are the best places for scuba diving. We dove in two destinations: in small Malapascua island and in South Leyte. We spent little bit over one week in each island and did over 20 dives. Immediately after first dive we were thinking why we have't been there before, diving was so much better than for example in Thailand, where it still is ok...

Philipinian panga. We went also to dive with this kind of boat.

We dove with Evolution in Malapascua island.

Our bungalow in Malapascua island.

Maija has a new puppy friend.

Olli has a new friend, Barbara.

The coral was in excellent condition and it was colorful, especially soft coral in Gato island (near Malapascua) and Napantao (in Leyte), which were the best places. Napantao divesite was also like a fish soup, huge schools of all kind of fish. We also saw a frogfish first time, in Leyte there was many of them during every dive.

Divers were more experienced in Philippines than other places we have been. That maybe one reason the coral is still in so good condition because usually experienced divers are better controlling their buoyancy and they don't kick coral. It was pleasure to dive with good divers, every dive we did was over 60 minutes and nobody was too close and kicking each others. Dive guides were locals with many thousands of dives in same sites so they found a lot of cool staff (like Pygmi seahorses etc.)

Macro life is very rich. We saw all kind of nudibranchs during every dive. Many we haven't seen before.

Sponge snail

Pygmi seahorse . Can you find it? (it is about 1cm long)

Robust Ghost Pipefish

Porkypinefish

In Malapascua island there is a dive site called Monad shoal where there is a cleaning station for Thresher sharks. Sharks are there early (6-7 am) in every morning. The dive is basically that you go to 24 meters and watch sharks swimming around. We saw 4-5 thresher sharks, they are very beautiful! We did a Nitrox course the previous day so we dove with Nitrox (32% oxygen instead of 21% in normal air) and we got longer bottom time (about 1 hour) than with normal air (with which you can stay only about 20 min in that depth).

Thresher shark

Tresher shark

From Leyte to Cebu city we took a big slow boat where was a bed for every customer.

Philippines is less touristic than Thailand for example but traveling around is still easy enough. Diving as told is absolutely brilliant, one of the best we have done all over the world. Food is terrible so if you are looking for culinaristic experiences Philippines is not the place to go ;) There is not same kind of traditional kitchen like in Thailand for example. The least bad food we had were pizza and pasta in an authentic italian restaurant in Malapascua island ;)

Philippines was first place we didn't have internet connection excluding our hotel in Cebu city. It can be good but in our case it was difficult because we had plan to make some hotel bookings etc... For example in Leyte they said that they have a connection but it was useless cause it was so slow you couldn't even check your emails.

In the future we'll rather spend (diving) holidays in Philippines than Thailand or Malaysia.

- Maija & Olli