Romblon Adventure

Feb 2016

I got to know about Romblon from Man BD and Linn back in early 2015. They were the first Malays to have reached this place. Romblon is in the Philippines and it is one of the islands in the middle of the Philippines archipelago. Romblon is about 370 km from Manila and travelling to the place is rather challenging. Thus making this island unheard off to many and therefore preserved. The great thing about this place is that it offers rare macros that are unheard off before. To get there, I have to fly from KL to Manila and take a night ferry from Batangas to Romblon.

I planned to go to Romblon back in June 2015 after seeing all the beautiful photos on Man’s and

Linn’s Facebooks. I have seen a rare nudibranch called malibe colimani in Komodo before but I was told that they are plenty here. Also butterfly nudi and many more that I have not seen before…. That makes this trip more exciting. However, it is not easy to reach Romblon and it has to be a at least one-week trip…. This is going to be difficult for me since I cannot easily take long leave.

As promised, Man published the details for the trip. It was during the Chinese New Year of 2016. Considering long public holidays, I only have to take 2 days off if I flew back from Romblon instead of taking the night ferry back to Batangas and Manila.

I did not do a lot of preparation for this trip since I already have a complete equipment by now except that most of the gears are for beginners...I bought the equipment when I did my open water course. Anyway Linn told me that in Romblon has no strong current, water temperature between 28C to 30C and most dives are shallow dives… less than 10 meters. That is good for macro photographers since there will plenty of natural lights and the gas tank will definitely last longer…. may be up to 1.5 hours. I am really looking forward to get good shots of all the rare little creatures that made Romblon famous… at least for the divers…

The group going to Romblon this time is rather small…. There are only 5 of us. Man and Linn, Dr

Hairul and his wife, Anis and myself. I have never met Hairul and Anis before. Our trip was from 5 Feb to 10 Feb. However, Man and Linn will stay back since there is another group of 11 who will join after we left. Since there is no Muslim food, I bought packed Brahim’s food and Maggie instant noodle to last me for 5 days. I will make the best of the local food whenever I can.

Two weeks before we departed, Man told me there is a slight change of plan… the ferry that will take us to Romblon is now out of service for maintenance. We have to take another ferry to Tablas island and from there take another boat to Romblon.

The dive center and resort in Romblon island is called 3P which is operated by three brothers….  Peter, Patrick and Phillip…. and they are Germans. Man and Linn told me that they are good guides, helpful and friendly. I have met a few Germans and have been to Germany before …. most are very straight forward and very disciplined. I was a bit skeptical about these German guides…..

I met Hairul and Anis at KLIA2 on the departure date…. They seemed like a nice young couple… Hairul is a UK trained doctor teaching at USM Kubang Kerian in medicine. Even though there were many people at KLIA2 especially nearing the CNY holidays, but checking in was rather smooth. We departed on time and reached Manila on scheduled at around noon. After the usual immigration and custom clearance…. we met a van driver who was supposed to

take us from Manila to Batangas. Since the ferry was scheduled to depart at 9.00 pm, we went for a quick sight seeing around Manila. We went to the place called Tagaytay… nothing much there but just to see the old volcano craters… We left for Batangas after taking a few photos….

The traffic around Manila was terrible… even though there are tolled roads but the jam is like permanent… It is advisable for people going to Manila airport to allow additional 2-3 hours for the traffic jam… Anyway we arrived at Batangas around 6.00pm but since there was a bit of time before departure to Tablas, we went for a quick dinner at a nearby McDonalds… hehe...everyone ordered fillet-o-fish… After dinner we went to Batangas jetty where Phillip was also joining us back to Romblon… Actually he just arrived from Germany earlier in the day….

When the van stopped at the entrance of the Batangas jetty, a few men rushed to the van…. actually they were porters who were eager to carry our luggage.… more of pity rather than need to hire them… Man decided to get the porters to carry our luggage… only for a short distance… up to the waiting area which was less than 50m … only then we realized that they are not licensed porters… we paid them P50 per bag for the job and now have to get another licensed porter to carry our luggage through the security clearance and up to our cabin in the ferry…

The ferry taking us to Tablas is operated by 2Go… the ferry actually is a ship which can carry both passengers and vehicles… We were supposed to depart at 9.00 pm and arrived in Tablas at 5.00 am… but we were told that the ferry arrival is now delayed…. the new departure time is now at

10.00pm...another long wait…. I am fully prepared for the change in plan and timing… This sort of travelling, one cannot expect punctuality to the minute… One has to be prepared to change plan all the times… Finally, the ferry arrived at 10.30 pm… by then we knew that we are going to miss the connecting ferry from Tablas to Romblon which was scheduled to leave at 6.00 am… Phillip was a bit edgy since he was still having jet lagged and cannot think straight… but still managed to give a nice smile though….

There was a bit of chaos when we were informed to board the ferry… before we can board the ferry we were told to line up for another security clearance… this time the port police brought dogs to ensure no prohibited items are carried into the ferry… Once cleared then only we were allowed to board the ferry… The ferry is divided into 3 classes… open aircond cabin, open non-aircond cabin and 4 bedded cabin with private toilet. We booked into the 4 bedded cabin where Man, Linn, Phillip and myself were in one cabin while Hairul and wife were in the other cabin… Man paid the porter quite handsomely I supposed since he gave Man a nice big smile… the ferry finally departed at around 12.00 am… everyone was too tired after a long journey…. we all dozed off soon after that….

I woke up at around 5.00 am and by that time I can already see Tablas island …. But it was still quite far though… I took the opportunity to walk around the ferry for a while… we were only scheduled to berth at around 7.30 am and by then we would have missed the connecting ferry to Romblon anyway…. Phillip quickly made another arrangement to get another boat to take us to Romblon… He wouldn't want to wait for another scheduled ferry to Romblon leaving at 12.00pm. However, we have to take a van from the Odiongan jetty which is on the west side of Tablas to San Antonio jetty which is on the east side of the island. The journey along the coastal road took one hour...

When we arrived at San Antonio jetty we were told to wait in the van… the porters here are crazy… they rushed upon seeing our van … After a short discussion between Phillip and the porters…they carried all our luggage into the boat…no problem…. Soon after the boat sailed to Romblon which is not very far…about one-hour slow boat ride….

I was so happy to see Romblon… blue sky…sunny day and calm waters… In my mind… this will be an easy dive site with plenty of rare and beautiful creatures… most muck divers will want easy shallow dives… haha…we can spend 1.5 hours underwater… no problemo…

At the Romblon jetty things were different…. There was no haggling with the porters since Phillip knew them all… our luggage was loaded into the tut-tuts and we were at the 3P resort and dive center in 10 minutes after arriving in Romblon…

Romblon island reminds me of my kampong when I was small… back in the 70s… the houses were small and simple…lots of trees and very green… here many houses are built using bamboo… Shortly after arrival, I was given a cottage…  all by myself… apart from the 5 of us there was another diver, a girl by the name of Christina who is a Taiwanese American working in Singapore…. She arrived a day earlier than us…

As soon as I finished unpack and had a quick lunch… we were ready to go for our first dive…the guide was Patrick, the number 2 brother who Linn called Mr. No Problem…. His answer to every request is “no problem” … which is not the case most of the time…. Today we planned to do 2 dives…. As usual the first dive will be deeper than the second…

One thing that I found is that there many similarities between the islands of Romblon in Philippines and Lombok in Indonesia. The boats are very similar and if I am not mistaken, the materials used as the balancing poles are also the same…. The same about the bamboo houses and the way the petrol is sold in the bottles along the roadside…. Or may be just a coincidence…. Oh ...I don’t know…  

The clear blue sky that greeted us in the morning when we first stepped our foot on the island has suddenly disappeared. On the way walking to the boat, the clouds started to thicken…. No more sunshine…. The calm sea that we saw earlier has now turned choppy…. I now realized that all the promises Linn made earlier was now fast disappearing…. It was not going to be an easy dive anymore.…but dive we must…. The hunt must go on….

The moment the water touches my face ... I knew it is going to be a tough dive ... it was chilly… it was 26C… That is not warm for me…. I know the temperature can drop lower once we go deeper to 18 – 20 meters…. True enough the water was cold 25C at the sandy bottom around 20 meters… As usual my first dive after a long break always suck… I have to get back the buoyancy…. equalizing the ear…. understanding the current and most important of all to get to know how the other divers behave…. We don’t get much to see on the first dive and after around 60 minutes we surfaced and went to have a break at place called Marlin Bar…. I had a hot chocolate to warm up my cold body…

The second dive was much better… it was a shallow dive.… less than 10 meters deep…at this depth… my gas can last longer…easily 1.5 hours…. but the cold waters will be a problem… anyway as soon as reached the bottom…. Patrick showed us the nudibranch that everyone was looking for…. The malibe colemani…. The same one that I saw in Komodo except that they are plenty here… after that I saw many other small creatures that I have not seen before… wonderful… Thanks Allah for showing me all your beautiful creations… True enough… we spent 1.5 hours underwater… that is because the cold waters really got to me…. If not I would have stayed a bit longer down there….

I did 9 dives including one night dive where Kathy, Phillip’s girlfriend was the guide…. Kathy is a good guide…. She knows where to find the animals…. She knows the habitat of the animal at different depth… not only that, she can tell the scientific name of the animal… amazing knowledge!!!… She showed me many creatures… it was a very enjoyable night dive…. Before, I used to be very afraid of night dive but anymore…. In fact, I like night dive better now since there are more animals and creatures to see….

However, I was quite unfortunate…. I flooded my Canon G1X camera after the 5^th dive…. Must be that I didn’t close the housing properly after changing the battery… that usually happens to divers…. Peter the eldest brother asked me why it took so long for me to surface after knowing there was a leakage… only that I did not know the tell tale of a flooding housing… If I knew I would have surfaced earlier…. After so many years and dives…. The camera is now RIP….kaput….

I did’t feel like continuing diving after that…. Not much to do down there if I don’t have a camera with me…. At night during dinner I told Man and Linn that I did not feel like diving anymore… but Man was more positive than me… he suggested that I rent a camera from the dive centre….only to get the straight answer from Kathy…. No…they did not rent cameras…. How unfortunate… However, Man asked Phillip if he can lend the Olympus TG4 housing since Man can let me use his TG3 camera…. Wow!!!... I was happy again that I have a camera now… not only that, TG3 is really a simple camera… really just point and shoot…. I took quite some photos with the camera… of course I need more time with Olympus TG before I can master the camera but at least I can shoot my own photos now…

Throughout the 9 dives that we did, the sun never really shows its face… in fact we went diving in the rain…. The first in my diving life…. Never before I went out for a dive in the rain… The water was cold all the time…. Lowest was 24C… but much warmer compared to the dive trip in Bali back in August 15…. The water was only 19C… I did not write a single paragraph about the dive trip there since there was nothing exciting about the Bali dive trip….

After staying at 3P dive centre for 4 nights… it was time to go back home… Christina, Hairol Anis and me went back… Man and Linn have to stay back since there is another group of 11 who will arrive on Saturday… for Man and Linn, this was their longest dive trip… almost 12 days straight in total…The day before we left, all of us went to Romblon town in the afternoon for a quick sight seeing… again the sun never showed up… instead this time it was raining rather heavily…

Romblon island is not developed yet… in fact everything is basic… internet is poor, muslim food is  not available, public transport is only by tut-tut… not many cars on the road…. In fact, there is not many roads on the island. However, Romblon is famous for their marble industry……

Going back was shorter since I am flying out from Tablas to Manila…. However, I have to face the same challenge… the flight scheduled to leave at 12.50 pm from Tablas was delayed by 50 minutes… we were told that the approval to depart was not granted since Manila airport is congested…. I was worried that I could miss my connecting flight to KL… Again after arriving in Manila… my flight back to Kuala Lumpur was delayed by 1 hour since we did not get the clearance to take off…The aircraft was holding on the tarmac for almost 30 minutes waiting for others to land… However, by now I am used to this sort of thing… no point rushing if it is not safe…. I am sure everyone did their best….

I finally arrived at the KLIA2 at 9.30pm….what an experience!!!

Shahar

10 Feb 2016