28 May 2007

Nyonya Kueh in the middle of South China Sea

Day: Friday, 25 May 2007 - Day Dive
Crew: Myself, Caroline, Tuon, Caryn, Eric, Tat, Boon Hui, Linda, Sebastian, Simon, Joseph, Philip, Diana, Uwais, Cik Azli (Instructor) and Hj Kula (Captain)
Dive Site: CL (Cik Li) Wreck @ UBD Wreck, CL Reef
Viz: Very Poor ~2m to Good ~8m
Max Depth: 15m & 18m
Dive Time: 50m & 60m

.Scuba babes :P.

My morning started at 6am. On the way to Muara Port, Caryn, BH, Linda, Sebastian and I detoured to a house for yummy kolomee, lou-she-fan (fat noodles that look like rat's tail hence the name rat noodles), milo-ping kao kao kosong!! Bless Brunei's home-operated restaurants.

Viz towards the bottom of CL Wreck was kinda crap. I cant see beyond 3 feet of me, and a few times i swam straight towards my buddy's fin and WHACK! 15 divers finning away, it was raining silt and planktons, how refreshing is that.


.
Hermit crab with claws that can punch your lights out.

There were a couple of 1st for me during this dive. Caryn pointed out a big painted frogfish that's black in colour. Didnt manage to get a good shot with all the silt around. Next up is a stonefish! I've read so much about it but never got to see one until today. It's one mean-ass looking fish, and it's just as venomous as it looks. Infact, it's the most venomous fish in the underwater world. It has spines in its dorsal fins that injects a highly toxic venom causing intense pain and sometimes death. They're much harder to spot than the common scorpionfish because they're almost always perfectly camouflaged as an encrusted rock or a lump of coral. That's exactly why we have to watch where we put our hands and feet. One way to differentiate between the scorpionfish and the stonefish is the position of their mouth. The scorpionfish has a U-shaped mouth whereas the stonefish's mouth is an inverted U.


.
McNasty.


.
Wire coral shrimp, can you spot it?.

The highlight of this dive trip has absolutely zilch to do with what i saw but what i ATE! I was appalled at the amount and variety of food we each brought. Philip brought lou-she-fan, kolomee, ham chim peng (fried dough) and muah chee (stuffed rice dough) all the way from Seria! Tuon brought a whole box of fried noodle, i bought nasi lemak from Kg.Mata-mata, Diana brought orange-flavoured cake and Caroline, oh caroline made chicken sandwich and the best nyonya kueh in town! from Terrace Hotel, ofcourse :P mMMm..We had a feast!


.Must have special ingredient - chili sauce.

None of us has been to the site for our 2nd dive so it was kinda exciting. We were given two options; swim west towards the reef for corals, nudibranchs and other macros or swim east to the sandy patch for gobies and rays. We descended to a sandy patch, positioned our compass and swam westwards. In less than 2 minutes, we saw scattered corals showing signs of a reef ahead. The formation of a reef slowly comes into view, sloping upwards.. vastly populated with corals glowingly vibrantly under the warm rays of the sun. The corals were healthy and stunning.

.CL Reef.


.Bubble coral shrimp. These bubble corals seriously look like grapes.


.Hup hup hup, hinge-beak shrimps.


.A pregnant shrimp!!.


.Nudis.

We finally got back to land close to 5pm, it has been a long and tiring day. Most importantly, we had so much fun. *Burpppp*



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