2012
Sunday, January 01, 2012 - 7:12 PM
so it's 2012 already huh...
the year i turn 22! i know i'd just turned 21 but still...22 sounds old to me.
this may sound pathetic to you, but i've been counting the years since 2009. like when it was 2010, i was like "it's been 1 year since 2009" and when it was 2011, "it's been 2 years since 2009." this year, it'll be 3 years since the best year of my life (so far). why? because i did a lot of new things. the first time i went on a flight, and visited the beautiful island of bali (speaking of which, i have something to say about bali, but i'll explain later), picked up this wonderful thing called scubadiving, started university, went on adults-free trip to kl...the list goes on.
i hope this year would trump 2009. i plan to take up advanced open water certification, then maybe go on a trip to sipadan. hopefully. 2012 would be the year i enter my final year of university too. that was fast. seriously. my four years in secondary school crawled by agonizingly in comparison to this. university was so full of ups and downs, and of course the 3 month vacations made the semesters short too. and honestly, although i was sad to say goodbye to 2011 because it meant saying goodbye to being forever 21, 2011 was pretty uneventful for me. unlike some of my friends who had a blast going on exchange, seeing the world, all i got was a short trip to kl. but i'm thankful for 2011 because it was the best academic year for me (so far). no complaining about that.
so...about bali...
i was waiting for my mum to pick me up from the toa payoh hdb hub when i heard this minahrep talking to her friends...
"anywhere...phuket la, ko phi phi la, krabi la..anywhere but bali! i don't get why people like that place so much."
i have so much to say about this. yeah, you have to admit, the places that most tourists go, like kuta beach are really crowded and have 'tourist trap' written all over. and compared to phuket, the water at kuta beach (the only water that most tourists see) is nowehere near as spectacular and blue and clear as phuket, phi phi etc. but as someone who dives, i know that bali is an amazing place for diving. but the sites are nowhere near the tourist centre which is in southern bali. to get to the sites, you have to set aside a day just to get there. so, non-divers, don't usually see these amazing places.
just google 'tulamben', 'nusa penida', and 'menjangan' to see what bali's about. kuta beach has rough waves and is more suitable for surfing. so people who come to bali thinking it's a snorkeler's paradise get really disappointed when they snorkel at the horrible nusa dua (in the south). that place is chaotic, more suitable for sea sports like jetskiing, parasailing etc. for snorkelling/diving? NO. the coral's dead, the visibility is poor.
but the divemasters are cute. so yes, i'm definitely visiting bali again, but i'm not gonna spend much time in kuta. god willing, i'll visit tulamben!
yeah i might have sounded macam paham there...but that's just my two cents.
