Baby Girl Castello turned 10 in April 2010 which meant she was officially old enough to get her dive certification. I decided to bite the bullet and join her so we went through the certification process together. I made a few calls to different dive companies in Singapore and picked the one that seemed to have the most experience with junior divers. Diving is safe but when it comes to the only daughter I'm ever going to have I want the person in charge of her survival to have a lot of experience with children and their limited attention spans.
BGC and I passed the written test and the pool work so the only thing left was the check out dive. Our dives were going to take place in Tioman, Malaysia over the course of a weekend. We left Singapore for Mersing, Malaysia late on a Friday night and woke up early Saturday morning to board a speedboat to Tioman. I'm convinced the speedboat ride was the most dangerous part of the whole weekend. Our boat bounced off the waves and spent as much time in the air as on the water. I was assured that it was impossible to sink the boat but that's what they said about the Titanic and we all know how that turned out.
Dive camp in Tioman.
I have an unfortunate history of getting sea sick on boats so I thought it would be a good idea to take some medicine beforehand. I picked up the Asian equivalent of Dramamine at my local pharmacy and took two on the morning we were supposed to take the boat to Tioman. Because, you know, if one pill is good then two pills are better, right? Two pills turned out to be one too many and I couldn't hold my head up all morning. My vision was blurry and it seemed like everyone was speaking in cartoon voices. The only thing that kept me from laying down in the dirt and going to sleep was the fact that this trip meant the world to my girl. She had traded a 10th birthday party for the opportunity to get her certification and I wasn't about to let her down.
Tioman, Malaysia
There wasn't any time to sleep once we reached Tioman. We threw our bags in our room and it was time to dive. Thankfully, most of the drowsiness had worn off and I stopped seeing double of everything. The first day was in more shallow water and was all about getting the course requirements out of the way. On our second day we saw sea turtles, stingrays, a banded sea snake, and a mixed bag of other tropical fish. BGC and I both passed and had a little time to just relax and enjoy our new underwater freedom before it was time to head back to Singapore.
Baby Girl Castello is about to fall over.
BGC was the only child getting certified but she did really well. Everyone in our group went out of their way to help and encourage her. By the end of the second day she was exhausted but delighted to be the youngest diver in our family. Since Tioman, BGC has gotten to dive the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, a WWII shipwreck in Bali, and a marine sanctuary in the Philippines. In 2012 she'll be old enough to get her advanced certification so we'll do that together as well. Four years after that, it will be Miniman's turn.
I hope that diving is something we will always enjoy as a family and gives us a way to stay connected to our kids as they get older and realize that we are the least cool people on the face of the earth.
Sweet dreams, Baby Girl.
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