Snorkeling at Kuraman!

Damn it! This was scheduled for yesterday and blogger didn't post it up for me again! Does this scheduled posting actually work because my plan for my writing blog was to write a bunch of chapters in huge batches and schedule them for every 3 or 4 days. I have the prologues for End's Worth, A Class of Disorder and Interweb Intel ready and am now working on the first chapters. I'll post those up as soon as I get at least 8 chapters in total. Also I'm not sure if I've mentioned this but I recently realized that my jumping skills are pretty much ninja-like now since I jumped my chin high concrete fence without needing a running start.

On last Sunday, the 28th of June, I went snorkeling at Kumaran island off the coast of Labuan with my cousins, my aunt and some of her friends. I was there pretty much the whole day. We left for the island at about 9 even though we were told to be there by 8 and we came back around half past 6. We were told to bring passports but we didn't end up needing them. We were also told by my uncle not buy any souvenirs since they could be stuffed with drugs. Luckily we did not find any drugs in the fish we got there.

Me and my cousins at empire

Overexposure due to high ISO setting. Very beautiful though

Beautiful day

Look carefully. You can see the silhouettes.

Before we left I joked to my cousins that since we could easily get shipwrecked in a storm that they'll make us sign waivers to say that our deaths our own faults. Cue the Irony effect of my life when said event actually happened. Signing the waivers I mean, not the shipwreck. The paper ACTUALLY stated that they weren't responsible for any loss of lie. I also joked that we were in the perfect setting for a murder mystery scenario since I was told the island would be uninhabited. Nothing remotely close to Umineko no Naku Ni happened though since the island wasn't devoid of people after all. I was even looking forward to exploring the island but no chance for that.

Shallow spot

After we left on the boat from the empire hotel's beach area, we set out on a 45 minute ride to the island. I was amazed by how beautiful Brunei looked from the sea, I was even more amazed that I could actually see the silhouettes of several mountains in the distance behind the coast. These mountain silhouettes were HUGE by the way. They made the DST building look like a shoe at the bottom of a shoerack. I also spotted some shallow sea spots like in the poke'mon games. They look shallow but they're close to 2 meters in terms of water level so you won't even be able to keep your head out of the water if you try to stand.

Island where the snorkeling took place

Island opposite the diving spot's island

The two islands

Just as we're about to reach Kumaran island, we managed to see some dead coral and also some turtles laying their eggs. The guide said that it was the first time they've encountered turtles on these trips. Unfortunately the waves made it impossible to get a good picture of the turtles.

Turtle!

Lots of banana trees on Kuraman


The two islands

I thought the guy was a statue when I took this picture

Once we got there, we dropped off our stuff at the nearby hut, had a bite to eat from the food we brought and fed some chicken bones to rather friendly dog there. The bones actually went crunch when it ate them. While we were eating we actually saw a fire take place on the other end of the island from our place. The fire was put soon though. After the food, I went to swim in the sea for the next 3 hours or so.

The dog

Island opposite the two islands from Kuraman

Digital zoom at said island

Kuraman Island

Yeah, they have an actual well

The fire

Fallen tree

Me in the shadows

My aunt

My cousin, he's very photogenic

My brother, ninja shot from above

For some reason I remind myself of Godzilla going home in this pic

Doing this probably contributed to my sunburns

I had a great time that day but I also came back home with really bad sunburns on my upper back and neck since I swam in the sea for 3 hours shirtless. I decided not to swim anymore after that since I was satisfied with all the snorkeling done by the beach. The pain didn't bother me when they started hurting but it did bug me whenever I tried to take a shower or sleep. It felt like my skin was on fire for the next 3 days whenever hot water touched the sunburns and whenever I lied down, it felt like I was bleeding from the shoulders. Also, my sunburns actually hurt when they were exposed to light so I'm pretty sure these were pretty bad ones. They're fine now though, no more pain but the skin's gotten hard where I got burnt.

Island near snorkeling spot

Not edited in anyway whatsoever

Some guy drinking water in the sea

Two guys eating sandwiches in the sea, they actually fought over the last one later

That's what happens when you wear pocketed pants in the sea

An actual padian

We got all his catches for a total of 45 bucks I think

My cousin kissing a fish

Finally here's a picture of a flower that I took on the island. It's not quite the perfect shot I wanted but it's pretty close. Hopefully I'll have my new Konata figma to review for next time.