We met Amber from New Zealand at the office to go and catch the boat in the morning. She was travelling alone so with Camilla we formed a 3. We'd arrived nice and early to catch the 9.30 boat, and didn't end up leaving til 11. It was scorching hot and the boat was not particularly covered, but luckily it was a speed boat, not a slow one like we'd intended - apparently they stopped running those years ago, but the Lonely Planet aka Lonely Liar had not caught onto this yet. We arrived at the jetty of Pulau Perhentian Kecil - the "small" island of the pair to find beautifully crystal clear, warm water. We had not booked accommodation, but it was a busy weekend on the islands so we were looking for anything we could get. It makes it harder that none of the hostels would take bookings and wouldn't evict people, so generally you had to wait until people left to get a room, which often results in people spending their first night on the beach! Finally Amber found a room that would take all three of us for basically peanuts, but it was the other end of Long beach - and carrying our bags all the way down there was a very unattractive option. Unfortunately the water taxis decided this was too good a scam to miss so tried to charge us loads for a 1 min lift. We were stubborn so ended up trudging with our rucksacks what felt like miles - about 500m! - ending up climbing up some steep rocky steps to find our luxury hut. It was so luxury it had no windows and you could see through the floor, but it was a room, and it locked - sorted.

Amber and Camilla were both thinking of doing diving courses while we were here. I had never yet attempted my PADI as both of my prior scuba diving attempts had ended badly and I'd convinced myself I wasn't designed for it! I gave in to peer pressure though - and self imposed pressure - and went to talk to the guy at the dive shop. He was very encouraging and basically said I could try the first confined/open water dives as a discover scuba and if I managed those I could pay for the rest of the course. I started off by spending most of the afternoon watching the cheesy theory videos, which was probably for the best given the heat outside, so I went into my first dive already more clued up than I'd been the last time. What was even luckier was I ended up with Kevin as an instructor - who had been the one I'd had a long chat to, explaining my concerns - AND a trainee dive master but no other students. So I had 2 on one tuition, I'd buddy with Eric so he could practise teaching and Kevin would watch and join in where necessary. It was awesome, the water was 30 degrees and beautiful, and even in the "confined" water off the beach I could see amazing fish. The skills were not so much fun, removing mask/regulator, swimming to a certain point with no mask etc, but I got through them and my ears appeared to be working, as did my lungs.

On the first evening we managed to meet up with Matt who was on his last day there so went to the bar with him and some of the people he'd met - including a Swedish guy Camilla had previously met. Luckily, my first dive being in the morning, it put a stop to too much drinking and we had and fairly relaxed time. On the second night, having met up with the same group of people, I accidentally let Anders, the Swedish guy take a sip of my M&M milkshake - not realising he was allergic to peanuts. I immediately went into over-panicked pharmacist mode asking about epipens and antihistamines, but he refused to worry - apparently his throat will swell up, he'll struggle to breathe for a bit, he'll have a sore throat, then it'll go down. This still worried me, but in the end we had to leave so I assumed he'd be ok. The following day, bumping into one of the girls I'd asked if he'd been alright - apparently not, though luckily nothing to do with the peanuts - he'd got drunk at a party, chucked a coconut in anger after missing the coconut shy, it had half smashed the back of the restaurant sign, they'd demanded money, he'd refused, then they'd beaten him up. Not fun. I felt less bad about the peanut incident after hearing this...

I did two open water dives on the second day, and saw sooo many cool fish - blue spotted sting rays, puffer fish, anemone fish, loads of nemos, and aggressive trigger fish, a massive green turtle. At one point I was swimming through what felt like an aquarium with a massive school of barracuda on one side and snappers on the other. I did my theory exam in between the two dives, which I luckily passed - felt very odd studying again! - so by the time I did my last dive I was pretty much done. My final dive was the following morning and was to a site they don't normally take course divers - the Pinnacle, or Temple of the sea. It was amazing, I no longer had any doubts as to why people fall in love with diving! There was so much life, giant moray eels, Tripod, the three legged Hawksbill turtle (Kevin particularly happy to see him as had not for ages!), bamboo sharks, I also spotted my first box fish and a stingray - normally everything is pointed out to me! There were also all the usual suspects, angel fish, parrot fish, barracuda, bat fish and loads more I never found out the names of!

Amber was still diving in the afternoon doing her rescue diver course but Camilla had finished her advanced, so we went over to Coral bay to do some snorkeling. The walk over was only 10 minutes, but I'd dived early, drank very little water and only just taken my doxy, so felt very sick and light headed. We arrived at a cafe and ordered food and I lay on the sand between the tables with all the waiters accusing me of being hungover! so not fair! After my rescue food we headed off to Romantic beach to snorkel - pretty but nothing compared to the diving - before heading back to Turtle Bay Divers to meet Amber and for me to sign my paperwork with Kevin.

We spent the last evening at the monkey bar (where they have a tiny baby monkey on a lead - not nice) drinking "monkey juice" or orangutan - what everyone else had been drinking every night but us diligent divers had avoided! I managed to break my original camera for the 4th time - probably sand in it - which was annoying as it was so preventable. All our other friends had left and again, I had to get up early for a boat transfer, so we didn't even have a big celebratory finish-of-course night. Amber and Camilla were staying on another day, but I wanted to see the Cameron Highlands and had decided to go to Borneo and meet Camilla over there, so there was no time to relax!