Date: 16th July 2011

Place: Kota Kinabalu

Weather: sunny

I was so excited for today but also so nervous! It was my first day of diving!! I got up super early and walked to the office where I met the other two and also a group of other divers who were just doing fun dives. We tried on our wetsuits and then were squashed into the tiniest little van which turned out to be for the shortest ride ever that we could have easily walked!

When we got to the island I didn't realise how quickly we would be getting into the sea. We got there, put on our wetsuit and equipment and then had to do a backward drop into the sea. The first part was in shallow water though and we did all the basic skills like taking our regulators out and putting them back in, taking our mask on and off underwater, giving someone our second regulator if they had run out of air and practising buoyancy by doing a fin pivot.

The first time we went under the water I was really struggling to get the breathing right because for some reason I couldn't work out how to breathe out. When I eventually got it though it was fine, I think it was because I was so nervous at first that it didn't work. Once we had finished the skills in shallow water we swam under the water and down a slope away from the beach to a depth of around 12m.

We did all the skills again and then went for a little swim around where we saw loads of fish including Clown Fish, a Great Barracuda, puffer fish, blue spotted sting rays and grass eels. When we finished that we were taken to a little island where we had lunch and chilled in the sea for an hour or so. It was lovely getting into the water in just a bikini, I felt so light but I felt like I wanted to atleast go snorkelling!

After lunch we went back to the same shallow spot and did some more skills. When we jumped off the boat this time we did it without our diving kit on and had to put it on in the water. When we got to the shallow spot we did taking off our weight belt and putting it back on underwater, taking off our BC and putting it back on underwater, blowing up our BC manually, breathing out of the regulator if it starts to free flow.

Like before we did this all at 12m deep again. I really really struggled to equalise this time though as my ears just wouldn't have it whatever I tried. I thought that was the end of my diving days then and there. After a lot of persevering of going up again and trying to come back down and doing all the different techniques of wiggling my jaw, swallowing and blowing my nose my ears finally equalised and I went down. They weren't perfect and still heart a bit but I just constantly equalised whilst I was down there and it was OK.

On this dive Jason took us to a reef where there was loads of coral and lots more fish. We saw all the ones we had seen earlier plus trigger fish, Lion fish and a Turtle!!! I really really wanted to see a turtle and was sooo pleased when we did. It was awesome but did just swim off when we got close.

When I got back I spoke to Mandy and we decided to head down to the night market to get some food. I grabbed a shower whilst she went down to a café on the corner to get a coffee and I met her afterwards. I finally tried an Anzac biscuit here and they are good! We walked to the market and got a deep fried feast for RM1 so majorly cheap! We then found an absolutely incredible supermarket in SE Asia standards which had bottles of gin for about £3 that's how cheap it all was!