Manado 7-13 Jun 08

We have came back from another diving trip. It was soooo nice, at Cocotinos Resort with Odyssea Divers, being pampered from the beginning till the end~~

*** I'm definitely still in holiday mood... :( I believe others also... This morning I had a vivid dream of going to airport for diving holiday! ***

But first of all, one lesson learnt this trip, ALWAYS, always buy travel insurance. What an experience, this trip, 4D also not so "zhun4". Our flight was supposed to be at 09:25 Saturday. It didn't fly. There was a volcano erupted near Manado airport. Other airlines were flying, but perhaps SIlkair wants to be on the safe side. WHich is fine. But the staff and even the supervisor or something, did not give us satisfactory explanation and didn't handle the situation well and frankly, was quite rude. They said there'll be an announcement at 1pm. It never came.

Sally went asked them around 1:30pm. Finally they told us it's not flying that day. The scheduled time would be at noon 12:00 the next day. But they didn't give proper explanation and everybody's temper started getting hot. The supervisor's attitude made things worse. Then he went missing. Left a female staff to handle a whole bunch of angry passengers. So poor thing.

At the end, SIA's manager came instead. He's very professional, very good attitude, gave proper explanation. So everybody is ok after that. It's not that we're being unreasonable, we just need an acceptable explanation why the scheduled flight is 12noon the next day and not anything earlier than that (since that other airlines were flying). So we went Changi Village HOtel for a free night stay. Free dinner. Free breakfast. The stupid hotel people tried to segregate us to different area with different food than other guests but we don't see why they had to treat us differently and we insisted on having the same food. We said we'll pay and claim with airline. But in the end, they didn't charge us.

Each of our room is entitled 5min of IDD call on Silkair's bill. Winnie made a 10cent local call and the staff asked her to pay for it.... ridiculous.

Anyway, in the end, we got to fly as scheduled. Those of us who have bought travel insurance, we can claim at least $400 for 24hrs of delay. At the end of our holiday, the flight delay about 3 hours again. We were all hoping it will delay for one whole day. hahahahaha..... but it nvr happened. But at least the airline had email our resort, and we got to spend a few more hours at the resort rather than the boring airport.

I never thought I'd use the claim for travel insurance. But this time really did. So, buy your travel insurance, my friend.

When we reached Manado, the sky was soooo clear. No sign of volcano ash. Perhaps only because the wind was in favour to us. But Martinos said the volcano (Soputan) is 3hours away from Manado... We checked the map, it is around 40km South West from Manado airport.

Ok, about diving. When we reached, we went to our rooms, there're baskets outside the room. We put our gears in our basket, which already has our name tag attached to it, and they carried to the dive shop. They put tags and stickers to all our gears, set everything. We just have to get our butts to the boat and get wet~

Our checkout dive became a night dive.. Saw many juvenile octopus. Martinos told us this is juvenile mimic octopus, I have thought it's coconut octopus. How to differentiate the two of them anyway...
Freddi's torch went "boop", gone, couldn't even find the "head" of the torch. And my Pelican small backup torch, I guess it got flooded during this dive, its maiden dive. I never even checked afterwards. Only saw it after a few days, since I put it in my pocket.

Vis wasn't very good, about the same as we had last year. What a disappointment. I haven't experienced 30m, 40m viz.....!!!!!

This is some soft coral crab, don't know the name. It's got eggs!

My photo of the trip~~ my first pygmy seahorse~ First time I saw pygmy seahorse. The others saw seahorse last year, I never see nuts of seahorse last year. hahahah.. This makes up for it.
I only took two shot as there are people queing to take photos. It was quite deep, can't stay too long, NDL was ticking... I was like, take one photo, check my dive comp, take one photo, check my dive comp.... My point and shoot Sony T100 finally rendered me good photos. happy~
Actually, before this dive the guides had shown the rest of the guys pygmy seahorse. I wasn't there and I thought that's it, this trip also no seahorse for me. But thank God pitied me and showed me this one and a few others in the following dives. In the first dive they saw pygmy, James was eager to bring us there, we were finning against current. I thought I still can take it and signalled OK to James and Gabriel. Until some time later I signalled to Gabriel I am breathing heavily, I hold on to Gab's hand and all of a sudden, panic attacked. I suddenly breathe both from my mouth and nose, causing the mask to flood. Somehow I cannot control myself to stop breathing from nose. Gab said because hyperventilated, CO2 built up in the body causing the body wants to breathe out more, something like that. I signalled frantically to Gab I want to ascend... We were at 20m.. Gab calmed me down and luckily I still have the sense to pinch my nose to stop breathing in and out from nose... then we ascended, rather faster than usual but it was still acceptable.

Came up to the boat I cried. hahahah.. It was really scary..... The scariest moment in my 6 years of diving. Winnie aborted that dive and was very uncomfortable herself but she comforted me as well. Gabriel who had heart surgery was stronger than me, haha. I'm glad he is very healthy and strong now. Afterwards James apologised to me and I too apologised to him because Martinos sort of scolded him for finning too fast in current. But I understand, he was just eager to show us pygmy seahorse (I had told him I want to see seahorse! I nvr see before..). He had checked on us to see if we're ok. I overestimated my ability and signalled to him ok several times. So he's not in fault.

Winnie on the other hand had ear infection. She was quite in pain. Glad to see she is better now.

In this pic, guess what I had my focus on? The rubbish in the center................... I had thought that was the shrimp until I checked my photos afterwards. Lookalike eh? hahahah...
Too bad we didn't take a photo of the dive boat. It's a very long boat. But it's a weird boat. The engine is at the rear end, so the "captain" couldn't really see where he's going. Some one has to sit at the bow and be his "viewer". When we returned from Bangka, it rained. It was soooo cold. But the staff, no matter what, had to sit at the bow, in the rain, as the "captain's " eyes.... So poor thing. I was really froze while inside the boat, under a towel....

Next, tiny cute frogfish. Felt like taking it home. Sweet baby~~
Check out this nudi's "antenna"~ like an antelope!

Our great guide, James. The divemasters are all very good. They would find the stuff, and try to show it all divers, not just those beside them. They will swim to you even though viz not so good, and bring you to what they found.
And the guides are very organised from the beginning when handling our gears. They gave very interesting and useful briefings and also very organised while underwater. But as James put it, good guide, if met with some messy divers, he will not be able to control either. If there are 4 divers, one is far in front, one far behind, one on the left, one on the right of him, he can't provide good guide either. If he follows one he will lose the other 3. So, I guess we are good divers. hehe..

Everybody was fighting current to take pics of squid and their eggs~ it was a mess... hahaha....

Check out the hole~ A worm's hole. It's rock solid! I used pointer to touch it, it's hard like our cement wall! cool huh?

Ever seen live scallops? I haven't. They move very funny.

"Dude, you're trespassing my territory!". The anemone kept zooming here and there in front of Gab's video. It was very funny in the video.

The elusive harlequin shrimp. Andy, Alex should have better photos. I couldn't really see what it was, it was so tiny. I just took 3 photos and decided to see what it is later on when I zoom in the photo. hahahah.. WHen our guide Jemmy discovered the harlequin shrimp which we had said we wanna see, James zoomed to Andy and took out his regulator and yelled underwater "Ha-le-quin-shrimp!!" I never saw that!!! What a pity!!! Tiff and ANdy told me about this, must be damn funny!!

The very beautiful resort. I forgot to take photos of its toilet~!!! the best we've seen so far. It was JUST.SO.NICE.

The food wasn't so good here.... maggie mee tastes better at times. hahaha. But our last day's dinner and "bak-kut-teh" was goooodd. Even though food was not so good, we don't really mind it. Cos the overall service was very good. After our last dive, they washed our gears, hang dry, the next day we just make sure all our gears are in our own basket, they carried the basket to our door step. We then packed our luggage and afterwards they carried our luggage to the car for us. Every step was well thought of. Oh oh oh, when we came back from day dives, they had ice cold face towel ready for us as we stepped up the jetty. When we came back from night dive, they had warm face towel ready for us. It was soooo pampering! What could be better than a warm warm face towel after a night dive?

Gabriel, climbing "high up" for Tiff-she's been craving for coconut drink. hehe.
Actually it's not high up lah. hehe.. Just camera trick. heheeheh...

This was the last night before departure. Tiff and me chilling.
Andy and Alex having their full body massage.

Check out the low and high clouds. Soooo beautiful.

Oh, UFO coming!

Sally chilling.

Beautiful sunset.

Manually patched sunset photo.

Winnie and Sally.

Gabriel. Look at the colours of the cloud. Sooo beautiful. We really enjoyed the last night's sunset. Previous nights, it was raining, couldn't sit under the stars and appreciate the beauty of the universe. But we're thankful, at least it's sunny during day time. The day we went Lembeh, a bit cloudy, but we still have sunny times now and then.

Tiffany enjoying the coconut Gabriel plucked for her. haha~~
We celebrated Freddie's birthday (one month ahead.. hahaha...Winnie said since Fred always fly and also difficult to get everybody together, so we just celebrate it one mth ahead) that night. Freddie was extremely sporting. They brought out the birthday cake, and our dive guide James said to him "It is the tradition at our resort here. Either you jump in the pool yourself and we throw you into the pool." I was like huh..... but Freddie, laughed and ran to the pool and a few seconds later he had jumped into the pool~! hahaha. And James was pushed into the pool immediately after Freddie jumped! hahahah.. unexpected. And he had no idea who pushed him. It wasn't recorded in the video, so we also didn't know. It was too fast!

My camera was not with me, so didn't take photos of the birthday celebration. But wait for our video which will come soon~~ (soon, maybe 3, 4 weeks. hehe)

The only negative thing we would say, is that this resort is next to a mosque. Which gives us morning call every morning around 4:15am... It's not just a 3min prayer... it was at least 10min. And it was super loud. On Friday, Gab and I thought we had got used to the prayer as we wasn't waken by it. But George said there was no prayer that morning around 4am. Then the prayer around 7am was much longer than other days. But it's ok still. If we can't go back to sleep after the prayer, we just wake up early to enjoy the nice scenery, since the day breaks very early at 5+am or so. And given that if we were going Lembeh or Bangka, we had to have breakfast at 6am. So we all thought it was ok.

The last day.
Flight delayed. So we might as well utilise the pool. When we go diving, Sally goes golfing and enjoying the spa. So, everybody is happy~

Winnie just had her massage, couldn't dip in the pool. While Alex and Andy were having their turn at the spa.


Here they come~ hahaha. with their "Astroboy" hairstyle~~ soooo cute....


Our group photo~ Backrow from left, Jemmy, Andrew, George, Tiffany, Sally, Freddie, Andy, Martinos, Alex, Winnie, Laura, 2 female staffs I don't know their names. Front row from left, one staff I don't know his name, Parman, James, Fendi, me (Michelle),Gabriel, and a staff I don't know his name. Another guide, Hanni wasn't in the pic.
If we're going Manado again, Cocotinos/Odyssea Divers is definitely the one to go!!

See all my photos here :
Michelle's photo
and
Gab's photo (Video camera's still shots)

Still waiting for Winnie, Andy, Alex and George's photo.