Tom had previously dived in Australia. I've never dived before and have always wanted to try it. The diving off the East coast of Borneo was supposed to be spectacular so thought that this would be a good opportunity to have a go!
 
Semporna itself is a pretty rubbish town and not really a place where you want to be after dark. It is however the gateway if you want to dive at any of the world renowned dive spots off the coast. So we arrived late at night (!) but luckily our hotel happened to be right next to the bus station where we got dropped off so we didn't have far to walk. We settled in and got some sleep.
 
Waking up the next day and I was preeeetty nervous. Like how you feel before an exam, eek! We had previously booked with a recommended company for me to dive that day and Tom planned to snorkel. I was going to be doing a “Discovery Day” where you don't have to have any qualifications or to have dived before. We didn't know until we got to the dive centre where abouts we would be diving that day. The whole area off the coast here is made up of lots of islands which are incredible for snorkelling and diving. The area is a protected marine park with huge amounts of marine life. 
 
We found out we would be diving and snorkelling off a tiny tear drop of an island called Sibuan. We got all our kit sorted and then we were off on an hours boat ride to get there. What an amazing sight when we arrived. The island was just beautiful. The sand was perfect white and the shallow water was crystal clear turquoise green. I said to Tom “Wow so these places you see in magazines actually do exist then!”. We later saw a full page photo of specifically this island in ONE of those magazines you get on planes!! Ha!
 
I was the only one on the boat having some lessons. There were three people who were experienced divers, two girls who had only just qualified but were going to dive with a guide, Tom and two other guys snorkelling and me and my instructor. 
 
Everyone else went off to do their own thing and it was just me and my instructor standing in the shallows. We put all our gear on whilst in the water and ran through all the safety bits. Then I needed to be able to do a few things like taking my breathing apparatus out of my mouth under water, put it back in again and clear it of water. Test using my BCD which is a jacket you have to wear with a control which you use to adjust how much air it contains. Basically a buoyancy control. That was fine. Then the one thing I couldn't do! I had to be able to fill my face mask with water under water, tilt my head back and blow through my nose to clear my mask. This is in case your mask gets knocked off for any reason under water etc. It took me ages to do it! It's because when you fill it, there is water sitting up your nose straight away which just feels wrong and no matter how hard I kept thinking “blow out, blow out, blow out!!” even just breathing in a tiny bit and it went straight up my nose and I was coughing and spluttering everywhere. My instructor found it funny anyway! I got there eventually and this meant we could swim out and try and go down a few metres. 
 
My next problem was that I couldn't get one of my ears to equalise. For every metre you go down you have to keep pinching your nose and gently blowing to allow the pressure in your ears to be released, like when your ears pop on a plane. If you don't do this it's for one very painful the deeper you go and you will end up doing serious damage to your ears. I couldn't get my left ear to equalise, grrrr! It was really sore and I was blowing and rubbing my ear like mad and it just wouldn't release. We were only down a few metres and so I had to come up for a while. Eventually I thought we're going to be here all day so just dived again and hoped that it would eventually sort itself. It did do luckily and we were sat on the bottom 12 metres down, whoop!
 
After all the faffing I was finally able to relax and follow my instructor around. When we had first got on the boat and I saw my instructor for the first time he looked a tad grumpy. I knew that this was because he was stuck with a newbie (me!) for the day. Not helped by my being rubbish with my mask and my ear. He had said initially that on our first dive he would hold on to me the whole time. As it was he didn't at all as I took to it straight away and just slowly glided around after him.
 
There were some pretty huge fish the size of dinner plates that were floating around. They would all of a sudden just glide past in front of your face and make you jump which was pretty cool. My instructor pointed out a frog fish too camouflaged in some coral which was awesome. We saw lots of sea cucumbers and lots of smaller fish I can't remember the names of! He tested me on my communication under water asking for me to check my air and signal how much I had left and things like that. My first dive was around 45 minutes and we came back up to the boat. The mood of my instructor had changed considerably and he was very pleased with me. He said I was a natural and we were just fun diving today meaning he didn't really have to look after me and we could just focus on checking out all the awesome marine life. Whoop!
 
I climbed back into the boat and MY GOD was all my gear heavy! I hadn't noticed this before because I’d put it all on in the water. I could barely climb up the steps and barely even stand! So so heavy! We jumped back off the boat and went for a quick walk around the island as our next two dives were going to be away from the shore off the boat. We only walked for about ten minutes as the island was just so small with a group of palm trees at one end and a lovely curve of white sand to the other. Back on the boat we heard news from one of the other boats that they had seen a whale shark in the area. Aaaaaah a whale shark!! I kept everything crossed we would see one too!
 
So my next new thing, rolling off backwards in all my gear into the water. That was fun :). It was so warm outside of the water, especially with a wet suit, it was refreshing to throw yourself in! The second dive was awesome as we dropped to the bottom and then followed just a wall of coral where it dropped off from the shallows. So everywhere you looked from the sea bed up to the shallows there were just so many fish, super amazing! 
 
Our third dive was equally awesome. Just so much life everywhere. We saw green turtles, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, sting rays, a ribbon eel, pipefish, cube box fish, parrot fish and probably lots more that I can't remember! I was constantly looking around into the deep blue water for a whale shark but sadly we didn't see one. At the end of the third dive we sat on the sand at the bottom and my instructor started making bubble rings with his hands. So you swish the air bubbles coming out of your breathing apparatus so that you have a wall of bubbles in front of you. You then pull your hands apart in the bubbles and you can make cool bubble rings kind of like smoke rings. He signalled for me to copy him and so I did. Perfect bubble ring first time, hehe! He didn't hide his surprise and made a gesture that suggested “Right that's it, up to the surface NOW!” Hehe! Once at the top he said “FIRST TIME!!! Unbelievable! It took me months of practice to do that!!” :) 
 
All in all a fantastic day! My instructor said I was considerably better than some of his divers doing their Open Water qualification at the moment and that I should do mine as I’d breeze through. I was pleased with that! Tom really enjoyed his snorkelling too and said it was the best snorkelling he'd done. He saw a stonefish too. I hadn't banked on being so cold during the dives though. On my last dive I was physically shivering I was so cold. As you have weights to hold you down and you use your breathing to control how you rise and fall in the water you don't do much else so it's difficult to keep warm even with a wetsuit. Unlike snorkelling when you're expending energy swimming about! I also ended up with fantastic wet suits marks where somehow I’d caught the sun being 12 metres under on a cloudy day! You forget how the light is just magnified in the water.
 
So so glad I chose to have my first dive experience here and having one to one with an instructor. A very memorable day!!