Day 96: Diving in Miri
Our original itinerary didn’t include any scuba diving in Malaysia, but we had so much fun at the Great Barrier Reef and in Komodo Island, we just couldn’t wait to go again. We decided to sacrifice a night in a national park in order to make a day-trip with Coco Dive in Miri, as this was the only location with decent sites for Open Water Certification (we are kicking ourselves now for not going for our Advanced Open Water back in Australia – we’re missing out on a lot of great sites simpy because we aren’t allowed to go deeper than 18m).
When our flight landed at the Miri Airport at 8:30AM, we grabbed a cab and headed straight to Coco Dive, where we would be joining another group of three tourists as well as two divers working on their instructor certification. We headed to the boat around 10AM in order to hit three dive sites: The Kenyalang Wreck (our first wreck!), Siwa Reef and “Nemo City”.
We had a pretty good group – very international: our guide Amia was originally from Spain, but had been living in China for the past 5 years working as an engineer, when she decided she had had enough and started travelling in Indonesian and Malaysia and became a diver instructor. The other tourists included a Thomas, a French guy who lived in KL with his Malaysian girlfriend Susan, plus his brother, Olivier who was visiting Malaysia. While Susan was in our group with Amia, the other guide, Liling, was in charge of the Frenchies – two Advanced divers who were quite a handful. You know that superiority complex that the French supposedly have? These guys had it in spades: “Zee French invented everything. We inventing scuba.” “Why can we not go back into zee water? In my day, we did not have decompression times – you just keep going until you get a headache, zen you stop.” “‘Zis visibility is shit. In France you can see 50 meters.”
Meeting up at Coco Dive in Miri
Boarding the boat and heading out to sea – past the giant seahorse that guards the marina
The Kenyalang Wreck – a former oil rig that is now teeming with fish! We just assumed “wrecks” were usually old ships, but this was even better than a reef – so much sea life concentrated in one spot was really cool!
Our guide, Amia, pointing out a giant clam on the rig
Igor and Lindsay glad to be back in the water, playing with our new GoPro!
Igor trying to “pet” a friendly batfish!
Lindsay exploring the Siwa Reef, our second dive site. Sadly not as exciting as the wreck or the reefs we saw in Indonesia
Our final dive site – Nemo City – which had TONS of clownfish
A great day for a scuba trip!
When we returned to Coco Dive, we had a small, late lunch at their sister hostel, then got driven to our hotel. Our reservation wasn’t supposed to start until the next day, but luckily they had vacancy in one of their suites, so they upgraded us – score!
Since it was the 4th of July, we wanted to do something American to celebrate! We tried to find a place that sold American beer – unfortunately Budweiser is not one of the many US brands that makes it to Malaysia. We tried to find an American chain – but for once even McDonalds was nowhere to be found! We finally grabbed some burgers at a Malaysian fast food joint – sadly that was as close as we were going to get to a Independence Day BBQ.
Enjoying sunset and fast Wifi from our hotel suite
Burgers and fries – a tiny taste of home on the 4th of July
Looks like you had a great diving experience in Nemo City and all those clown fishes. Happy 4th of July Malaysian style!!!!