Day 1 at diving

We left our hotel early for breakfast and found only the slowest restaurant known to man. Many boys ordered pancakes which one would think would be quick but somehow managed to take close to an hour. As it's a public holiday in Malaysia, we were unable to go to the doctors to have medical checks done before our dive. We continued to the island on a speed boat which took around 30 min. After unloading our luggage on our tropical island, we sat down to lunch which was unfortunately only prepared for the meat eaters and the growing population of vegetarians (5 to date) needed to wait a little while longer. After setting up camp, we got the unfortunate news from the dive instructor that Nishil, Aaron and Will would either need to undergo a medical check before any dives or take part in alternative activities such as kayaking, snorkelling, stand up pedal boating and working on the turtle conservation project. They will still take part in the theory till the Medicals are done and finish the course slightly later if possible. Once the tents were up we headed to the theory room to start learning about diving. Our first test was a 200m swim with a 10 minute treading of water, all passed :)! We then watched a DVD that gave us the information for he first two sections of the PADI theory. We were quizzed after and all answered well. The evening was ours to do what we wanted, some of us attended a turtle conservation talk and put our names down to be woken if turtles started laying eggs in the middle of he night. During the talk the heavens opened and we experienced our first tropical storm of the holiday. Many boys have abandoned their water logged tents for the sheltered bag storage rooms. Some braved it in their tents. There was thunder and lightening all night long!