Weekend Dive in Perhentian

note: this post I will show you how I maintain my skin during my dive trips.


It's not always easy to maintain a long distance relationship with your friends, especially your best friends. ;)

Many people have their own ways to "catch up" and keep the flame going between friends. While some people let it die with time and distance.

At this age, heart-to-heart friends are hard to come by. And thus I have always made sure that every year, my best friends and I will catch up at least once, if not more, and we will go on a dive trip together.




We dived last year. And two years before.

This year, we planned for an island trip in Western Malaysia - Perhentian.




So last week, both my friends flew down to KL and stayed for a few days before we were to depart to our island.

On the day of departure, I dropped by Body Shop to check up on their body shampoo, the ones back home have only less than a quarter left and I don’t think that’s enough for a dive trip up to Perhentian.




One has to shower very frequently when one goes on a diving trip, which reminded me, I should bring more hair shampoo too, and perhaps some hair mask. PS, the honey hair conditioner from Body Shop is a dream to use!


TCM - Tropicana City Mall



walk in casually


It was cool until I spotted a range of products my friend suggested to me a while back. The Moisture White Shiso skin care series.




I’ve always loved Body Shop and I probably have 1928 of Body Shop things back home, but that never stop me from buying more products, kekeke

And….. I am going to the beach where some whitening would help,

AND the description on the product did say that it would help me with dark spots and freckles…

Then I did the craziest thing on the spot.




No la, I didn’t buy all of them la. Siao meh…

But someone gave them to me. Hehe...


xoXoxO


Keke…

For people who likes discount, you can print this voucher out (as many times as you want) to get RM10 off the product range. ;)


I got it off http://www.facebook.com/thebodyshopmalaysia, yes I’m a fan ^^


Now I was ready to pack!

In the evening, we took an overnight bus to Kuala Besut jetty, reaching at about 5am in the morning.


playing on my iphone for 3 hours.


Our boat ride to Perhentian Pulau Besar (big island) wasn't arriving until 8:30am so we waited at the jetty after our not-so-soft-boiled soft boil eggs breakfast




It was the weekend so all the buses were fully booked and local students, working adults, Chinese, Malay, Indians and traveling Caucasian was swamping into the island like bees.


note to self: never travel on weekends.



cam-whoring while waiting


By the time the boat arrived and sent us off on a 40 min bumpy ride on the sea to our lodge, we were completely exhausted.




We arrived with dread appeared like it has wind surfed across our faces. It was an exhausting trip.
note to self: take plane next time

Our lodge:




Our beach:




Our room:


3 beds


The cobble road we walked on every day:




Our dive boats:




And our dive sites:




I wanted to wash up, staying up all night on the bus makes me felt like I haven’t shower for DAYS but we have to get off to diving immediately. So I unpack and decided to just wash my face.




I took out my newly bought cleanser to wash my face.




Now I have used several types of cleanser before, but this is my first time using a cleansing powder, which literally comes in a form of.. well.. powder.

What I found this product really GOOD was that it’s extremely easy to travel with. You have no idea how many times I have traveled and when I reached my hotel, just to find that, upon unpacking, my cleanser has leaked at least more than half the bottle away in my suitcase.

Which can be the most annoying thing in the world, because then not only I have wasted a good half of my expensive bottle of cleanser, I would need to wash all my clothes and hang them dry in the toilet due to the leak.

Not with the powder!




Wet the powder and you’ll have your very own instant home-made liquid cleanser! HAH!




Finally I slapped on a thick layer of 130 SPF sunblock (I hate being dark if you’ve noticed) and headed out for my first dive!
(Will do the complete regime at night)




This trip, Miss..er...Splat (she was Miss Chocolate two years ago, then she-who-must-not-be-named a year ago, so now she's Miss Splat) and I decided to get ourselves each a rash guard.


rash guard on sale!


She got a black one while I went for a white one.




Apparently Gerald also ordered his rash guard online weeks ago so now we're all protected against corals.





wear your wetsuit over your rash guard


Upper body at least.




I scratched myself on my legs multiple times that trip T_T

Anyone know where I can find nice trendy lower body rash guard?


As usual, I didn't bring my pink bandanna (always forgetful) so Gerald lent me his red one.


I opted for a pink mask.


Which I later found out was a horrible mask to use.




It couldn't stop fogging up no matter how many times I spitted on it.

So I changed to an uglier mask on our next trip out.




We had two dive masters on this trip, Swedish Karl brought us down on our first 4 dives. While the remaining two dives was led by a very funky lady named Mel.

Our typical dive would begin with briefing.


Karl


The DM would tell me about the dive sites we're going, how we're going to go about the reef, current, where he's going to lead us and stuff. I don't think I ever listen to these except when it comes to a complicated dive site, or a dive site I'm really interested in.

Like the wreck dive we were going to do! :D


Briefing on the boat.


I've done wreck dive before, which I am going to blog about next. But this wreck was 100m long (bigger than my first one), and with lady luck NOT on our side, Gerald's camera housing leaked so we were without camera underneath. T_T

And we saw SO MANY amazing marine lives down there that took our breath away and we didn't have photos to prove it. FML.

We saw the largest group of giant puffer fish, each more than half the size of me,


giant pufferfish we saw on another dive


among the group there was a pregnant giant mother pufferfish down there, she was HUGEEEE. The wreck was huge. Even the small school of Barracuda was HUGEEE...


photo taken from Sipadan post (highlight note: not in this Perhentian dive trip!)


I mean, I saw a large school Barracudas before in Sipadan, but each individual fish was nothing compared to the ones I saw in Perhentian, these were at least 1.2m each, and 6 inches wide!


again taken from Sipadan post for illustration here.


But we did see, on the other dives, stingrays.




Stalked one.


(me on the left)


Couple of Murray Eels out in the open.




Lots of sea urchins that's threatening to sting Gerald. ;p




A wheel barrow.




Played with a sea snail.




Took plenty shots of Nemo.







and nemo family.










And his cousin.




Then we saw abundance of fish! Lots and lots of baby fish swimming in large schools.





miss splat on the left, nicolekiss on the right






chasing after a group of fish





And of course, very beautiful reef sites.


dive site name: Temple of the Sea





Oh, we also saw a super snorkeler who could held his breath for at least 5 mins! He dived down to our level (around 5-6m that time) and was swimming next to us?!


WTF??!!!


He's crazy man.


On the first night, being gung-ho (act cool), we went for a dive night together despite being incredibly tired already.




It was Miss Splat's first night dive since achieving her diving license last year, actually it was her first night dive, ever.




So with a torch each in our hands, and a camera, we boat dived in the night!




Not so bad considering we managed to capture ONE nice shot of a baby leopard shark.




There were plenty of baby leopard and nurse sharks that night. It was a fruitful dive. There were also lots of luminous worms, like crazy amount of it.

You know on land, at night, especially after rain, you will see lots of flying bugs gathering at those lights on ceiling, flying against the lights.

Well, these luminous worms are like those lights, they swim like they're flying under water, then they circle around our torch lights (whenever the lights were stationary), and they multiply in amounts every passing seconds. It's actually quite creepy, interesting, but grossed.

That night, stars were soooo beautiful when we emerged from our dive that I couldn't help but to just float on the sea with my BCD and tank on, and just stare.




It wasn't so romantic on the boat on the way back. It was SOOOO bloody cold!!

note to self: bring a towel to night dive


We were all famished by the time we got back, but we would still need to do one thing I hate most about diving.

Washing up.

Not just ourselves, the gears too.


Gerald dipping his feet in the water meant for washing gears because he got stung by red ants. *point and laugh*


Every night, we would serenade the night with grape juice and mango lassi over a nice BBQ dinner.


They served the BEST GRILLED PRAWNS!!




no photo here as were too tired to take photo already.


After dinner.

I returned to the room to perform my usual ritual.

Ok guys, it’s called a daily beauty regime.

Now I want to teach all the guys out there that procedures like these are very important. We’re not just simply applying 1001 chemicals on our face!

Let me teach what they do! I’ve been trying to teach my baby this for AGES but sometimes I feel like he hears me, but not sure if all those info really go into his head.

I still want to talk about it anyway.

FIRST there’s the cleanser, which I used earlier in the day, to wash off the dirt off your face.

Secondly, apply toner; or in this case, Moisture White Shiso Moisturising Essence I (which is for oily and combination skin). This is to hydrate your skin and tightens the pores that has been “opened” by the washing process.

Now for the whitening action with Moisture White Shiso Whitening Serum, my new best friend under the sun. :D it also helps hydrates up to 12 hours.


(I know I’m being long-winded by this hydration is VERY VERY important when you’re travelling. Because of various reasons, your skin tend to dry up really fast which can cause serious damage to your pretty skin.)


Finally the moisturizer, since I’m sleeping after this so I’d be applying the Whitening Night Treatment (else you can use the Whitening Moisture Milk). It’s like food to your skin – Vitamin C and all the healthy nutrients (e.g. shiso extract) that make your skin glow!


my friend found taking photos of me applying all these things on my face amusing *roll eyes*


PS// If you’re really hardworking, like I am,
Sometimes.
Rarely.

You can apply the Eye Serum (hydrating the eyes) and Concentrated Target Protector to help reduce pigmentations on your face.




I find these last two items really useful since I have started developing quite an amount of freckles on my cheeks and dark spots around my eyes at this age, something I’ve been dying to remove indefinitely. So let’s see how this will work over long time. ;)

Enough beauty talk for one post. It’s back to diving tomorrow. But at least now you know maintaining a face is easy as long as you keep to your commitment to your own skin. ;)

Okay. I needed to wake up at 8am next day. I was all ready for bed!


I call this photo: my diving silhouette


I might have dreamt of diving that night.