Layang Layang & MOM update

I've finally moved over to MOM. Life there so far is still ok, just been reading stuff and trying to understand my portfolio better. People seem like a very fun bunch as well, but haven't integrated myself with them as yet. Been eating out quite a bit, met Lindi for lunch today at Mouth Restaurant with Kirk, Wenshan and Siyong. Then on Tuesday had lunch with her, Val and Qihui at Copthorne Kings Penang buffet. Heard a juicy story about her and Val's colleague then as well. :) On Monday had lunch at Central with the PSD senior management, not the most comfortable of lunches, but I was obligated to go.

Anyway, the gist of my post is about my Layang Layang trip. Was in Layang Layang for a 1 week dive holiday from 14 to 20 May. 14 May also happened to be my last day in PSD and it was a hectic morning as I got everything ready to out-process. Left PSD for the last time during lunch when most people weren't around. I think some people were suprised that I left so fast, received 1 sms and 1 facebook msg from colleagues who were suprised I had already left PSD.

In any case, flew to KK on 14 May and stayed in a 'pseudo' Shangri-La hotel. Was quite nice but definately not a 5-star hotel. After one night in KK, took a short flight to the island proper. It was certainly an interesting flight. Small plane and we could see every action taken by the pilots.

When we got to the island, the weather was quite bad and I think we were experiencing the edges of a storm that was approaching the phillipines. That very afternoon we had a dive in the lagoon which was ultra boring. All we saw was sand and more sand. But it was due to the weather that we couldn't go dive in the deep blue. Supposed to do a second dive that day but we all aborted it to sleep more and we guessed that it would be held in the lagoon again.

The next day had slightly better weather and we went out to dive, hoping to see hammerhead sharks. Didn't have much luck, but the corals were quite nice. Tried out my new camera setup with the wide angle lens and my new strobe and the photo on the left is the result. Had 3 dives on our 2nd day of diving. One of the divers in our group suggested heading out early the next day to try our luck and we did exactly that.

The next day we were the 2nd boat out at about 7:30am and we went to the Wrasse Strip dive site which was known as a possible place to view hammerheads. After diving for a while, we finally got our wish.

There were a total of 43 hammerheads in this school (one of the other divers actually counted the hammerheads) and we were the only group lucky enough to see it. There was another group of divers at the same site but they missed the school. This dive was the highlight of the entire trip and the reason for visiting Layang Layang. After this dive, we went to the Mid Reef dive site and there we saw Mantas and Mobula Rays. That concluded day 3 of diving.

Day 4 started with another visit to Wrasse Strip but it was quite a sucky dive as all the other groups heard about our hammerhead sighting and the site was full of divers, at least we had one huge manta joining us for the last part of the dive. We then spent the next 2 dives at Shark Cave 1 and Shark Cave 2. Those were nice wall dives as well and we saw two huge frogfishes. There was also a shallow cave and I took a picture of all the other divers from within the cave.

I had 1 last dive on day 5 and it was quite a boring dive, took some interesting photos though. Missed out on a hammerhead in this dive as well, one lone hammerhead came out of the blue but I was too far away to see it. Ah well, at least I have memories of the whole school of hammerheads.

After my last dive, took some time out to relax and packed my gear. After all my diving, I had a no-fly time of about 22 hours. The next day, we all flew to KK for some shopping before flying back to Singapore at night.

And now I can't wait for my next trip, which should happen in just 3 weeks. :)