One more thresher shark please

Back to Asia! About time to board Lufthansa's A380 again and fly to Singapore. After “boarding completed” announcement the running competition began towards the back of the plane where a few empty rows were waiting for the fastest ones. I probably was a sprinter in the last life and secured a 3 seat row just for myself. What a luxury on a 12 hour flight! One movie with dinner, 8 hours lying down and pretending to sleep, one movie with breakfast and it was already time to land. Why can't it always be like this?

Lufthansa had also messed up my food pre-order and as there was no regular veggie option they brought me the food from first class. Not business class but FIRST CLASS. Wow. I would have gladly paid for that set of asparagus. I'm not vegetarian but meat doesn't fly well.

Rain = beer o'clock!

I had a 8 hour stop over in Singapore and met Tanja in chinatown. After some hawker center food action we headed back to Changi and took another night flight to Cebu, Philippines. Landed at 4 am and towards bus station -> 4,5 hours in a local bus to Maya. We had a ridiculous double seat designed for mini people, the one sitting on the aisle was dropping to the floor all the time. We tried our best but no sleeping in the bus :(

The plan was to draw out money in Maya and to go to Malapascua for some immediate hammock action. New plan was to jump back to a bus and to drive 1 hour to the nearest city with an ATM. Then back to Maya with a jeepney which took 2 hours. Blaah. And it's low season so we had to wait almost an hour for other people to satisfy the boat driver and to make him to move the pangka to Malapascua island. That was a long day!

We had pre-booked accommodation, a lovely bungalow by the beach. It has 2 floors, one for each, luxury! And an own bathroom! With tiles! Sometimes it does make sense to travel together with somebody, if I would have been here just by myself this place would have been out of my budget. But 9 e each it's more than ok! The place is called White Sand, highly recommended! It's also located out of the party zone in a peaceful corner next to the local village but still very near to the main (tourist) beach where the dive shops are.

After arrival it was time to go dive shop shopping: comparing prices and checking the vibes. The dive shop has to have a nice vibe. The shop with the best vibe didn't wanna take me to Monad Shoal (THE thresher shark spot) on my first dive so we chose Thresher Shark Divers instead. Okay, I do understand that they want to check how people dive before they take them to some really difficult&deep dives, but this spot is only slightly advanced. Some small current, otherwise a really easy & enjoyable spot.

The sightings of thresher sharks on Monad Shoal are more than common, they are seen on 95 % of all dives. We were 5 divers divided into 2 groups. The other group saw one shark, we maybe 10. Lucky!!! And wow, they are amazing! I've never seen smiling sharks before! I hope the sharks also saw my smile!

Taking photos was almost impossible, the visibility was quite good but not good enough for no flash underwater photography especially as the sharks weren't posing for me. And we were in 30 m so not much daylight there. Sometimes it makes sense to forget the camera and to enjoy the moment.

The better one of the 2 photos I took...

There's many other fantastic dive spots around the island, f.ex. a sea snake sanctuary. That's gonna be the place to test how it feels to panic while diving. And at Gato Island is a cave where white tip sharks sleep!!! Yayyy! So that's the plan for the next days. Tanja is doing a refresher dive today so I hope she'll join me for the snake & shark action. She might have to hold my hand and put the regulator back to my mouth if I react the same way when I see a snake in the forest: scream & run.

Angry lion fish & some nudibranch.