More water today than yesterday. Courtesy of my earplugs, my phone had been beeping for ten minutes before I happened to look at it and realised it was 07:10. Whoops. Well, nobody threw anything at me to wake me up.

I dressed quickly and walked to the Chinese place I’d had lunch the day before. Chicken and noodles for MR4.50 seemed a good enough breakfast and I ate them at Sipadan Scuba as everyone rushed around getting ready for their various dives. They also supply lunch for MR5, so I bought another polystyrene container full of rice and veg for later.

My instructor for the day was Ross, an Aussie from Perth and a really nice guy. Our boat was mainly people on their Open Water with one guy doing his Advanced who I shared some exercises with. He did his Navigation module in tandem with my exercises in expanding square and U-shaped search patterns. I also had to tow him back to the boat when he was “tired”. Grr. This rescuing people is hard work.

Today we were diving off a tiny island called Sibuan which must be about 150m long and a third of that at its widest point. The weather was superb, visibility top notch, variety of wildlife awe-inspiring, company good and learning curve just right. The highlight has to be the ease with which we found turtles – fair-sized ones at that. Truly amazing creatures and I’m looking forward to seeing hordes of them at Sipadan on Friday.

It was a long day, kicking off at 8am and returning after 5pm. One of the other instructors still had exams to give to the Open Water students so he was still in the office until gone 8pm. By then I’d had dinner. Erm. At KFC. Hey, don’t knock it. I had about the same amount of food as the previous night, and a drink, and paid less.

A beer at the Turtle Tomb got me online on their wireless until the connection went down just as I was about to post an update. Gah. It’s creeping up on 21:30 and there’s little else for me to do so it looks like an early night. Hey ho. I think I’ll need the rest for tomorrow anyway. It’s all “rescue scenarios” which I think translates into “towing and carrying people around”.

Joy.

(Really, I’m loving it!)