AYdate Ideas : Dive With The Sharks.

*WARNING* : Word & Photo Vomit Post 

If you guys have been checking out my social media posts on Instagram and on Twitter, you guys would have noticed where Yat & I went to last week to celebrate Yat's 24th Birthday.

If you guys do not know it yet, we actually went to experience "Dive with The Sharks" over at Underwater World, Sentosa.

I have been receiving quite a number of queries about this, so I thought I would do a separate post for this from Yat's 24th Birthday Celebration post that will be coming up on Thursday.

I actually first knew about this when I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a friend, Azie, posted a picture and video of her going for this. I did not even knew this existed in Singapore - hahaha actually there are a lot of things I did not know that existed in Singapore but I will probably list it down on my blog one day and go check it out with Yat soon. So when I saw that post on her Instagram, I thought it would make a perfect birthday gift for Yat. Yat is an adventurous guy and a thrill-seeker, so I knew this would turn out amazing.

So after exchanging a few questions with Azie about her experience and how scary it was, I decided to go for it.

Honestly, I am not a good swimmer. I knew if I have to, I can swim, but I can never float. I have a fear of deep water, which means that even if I do swim, I cannot swim in an environment that I could not touch the floor. I can swim laps in a pool of 1.5m deep, but ask me to even enter a 3m deep pool and I would freak out. So you can understand my hesitation when I was deciding whether to go with Yat for this experience, or to just book it for him while I watch him from the other side of the glass. But I thought, you know, why not right? What was the worse thing that could happen? If I have any problem, I could just go up to the surface and let Yat continue - but at least I would have tried. Hahaha. Besides, life is short. It really is and I would want to do a lot of thing before I couldn't.

So I booked it for two!

To do the booking, just head to this website : UNDERWATER WORLD

It is a really simple booking form that you have to fill up and you can pay using your debit/credit cards. Just click on the "MAKE A BOOKING" tab on the left and choose a date that you would like to go on and choose your session.

It cost $130 per person and there are only two time slots a day with a maximum of 4 people per slot. The time slots are at 1.30pm and the other one at 3.30pm. For each slot, if you would like to have 4 people per slot, they have to be all certified divers. If not, it is 2 non-certified divers per slot or 1 certified and 1 non-certified diver for safety reasons.

However, you can try making special arrangement with Underwater World by contacting them at least 2 weeks in advanced and maybe they will be able to accommodate your requests.

In any case that you have accompanying guests who would like to see you dive but not dive with you, they have 20% discount for their admission ticket to Underwater World and it cost $24(adult)/$16.50(child) [U.P $29.90(adult)/ $20.60(child)].

You will have to fill up the "Participants Details" form on the next page and the "Contact Person's Details" after that and you will be directed to the payment page. After which, you will just have to wait for the day of your booking and enjoy your dive! The whole booking process took about 5-7 minutes and it is really effecient!

Things to take note : Participants have to be 12 and above, in good general health and physical fitness to participate in this. Females should not be pregnant. The pre-requisites mentions that you have to be able to swim and be confident under water. I honestly do not think you need to know how to swim, you just have to be confident under water and not freak out because most of the time you will be walking on the bed and not actually swimming. Also, if you do not think you deal well with sudden change of air/water pressure, I would really suggest you to think this through.

I do not usually have problems taking an aeroplane, which means I do not usually have bad experience with sudden change in pressure during a flight. The one who usually have them was Yat. But during the dive, I actually had a hard time adjusting the sudden change of pressure and sort of hyperventilated when I first came down because I was having a sharp pain my ear and I have to tell myself to breathe through my mouth and it got pretty hectic dealing with all that at one go that I had to go up to the surface and calm myself down before I go down again and managed to slowly adjust to the pressure and the ringing in my ears somehow stopped and was gone after awhile.

It is perfectly normal to have that sharp pain in your ears, just try your best to go down slowly. I rushed myself going down at first hahaha and anyway, the instructor will tell you of a technique of how to actually get rid of that ringing before you go down underwater.

After booking, they will send you a confirmation email almost immediately. If you do not receive it within 24 hours, maybe you can give them a call and check with them regarding your booking.

My suggestion is to print this email confirmation out and show it to the admission ticket counter for your tickets.

Getting There

Underwater World is in Sentosa - that much I know. What I thought I knew was that it is somewhere near S.E.A Aquarium. I honestly thought that Underwater World was another name for S.E.A Aquarium, so guess who was the confident person who actually thought it was okay to walk from Vivocity. We walked and took the travelator into Sentosa and walked to S.E.A Aquarium only to find out from the admission ticket counter that Underwater World was at Fort Siloso - ALL THE WAY INTO BEACH STATION AND FURTHER INTO SHANG-RI LA HOTEL.

THAT WAS VERY FAR TO WALK.

And also, we were running late. The dive session was at 3.30pm, which means we need to report 30 minutes before the dive and it was already 3.05 when we reached S.E.A Aquarium. lol.

So we took a cab from the the basement and it cost us about $12 because of the $5.00 entry fee to Sentosa, $3.00 pick up fee from Resort World Sentosa. The base fee was only $4? Zzz.

So... if you guys are going, take the Sentosa Express Train from Vivocity, alight at Beach Station and take the Sentosa Bus 1 or the Sentosa Tram towards Siloso Beach and alight at Siloso Point. It is a cheaper alternative haha. The cheapest is to walk in from Vivo and take the Sentosa Express from inside Sentosa at the Waterfront Station.

Once you have reached Siloso Point, Underwater World is about 2 minutes walk away. Present your confirmation slip and they will issue you the tickets.

Upon entering, the staff asked us to wait for our diver and that we will be able to check out the exhibits until 3.25pm as our dive is at 3.30pm. (So technically, we were on time and not late and the 30 minutes was just a buffer time lol.)

Our designated diver was Abdul and he led us to the backroom where it looks like a small kelong. It is where the surface of the aquariums are located. I have never imagined what it looks like behind an aquarium, so now I knowwww. 

We were given a wetsuit according to our size. It is all provided by them so you just have to bring your bikini to wear inside, a small towel for you to shower after and your shower gel & shampoo.

After changing to our wet suits, our diver did a short briefing. He explained about the masks, the oxygen tank, the weights and how we should walk underwater, what we should do if water enters our mask, how to get rid of the ringing in our ears, the signs he will be using to us and so on. The oxygen tank is super heavy hahaha I really did not expect that at all.

After the briefing, we went into the water and he told us to try breathing underwater using our equipments and once we are ready, he led us into the aquarium.

We did not really get to take a picture with the fishes and all, because they were all swimming past by us and with the low light, the pictures all turned out pretty blur. But I am sure I can have something in one of our videos. The dive was only 30 minutes but I was pretty sure our diver gave us more than that even though it felt like the time passed by pretty fast when we are underwater.

The Underwater World team even got Yat a birthday card to take a picture with underwater - laminated and all. Kudos to such an amazing service from your team. And our diver was even offered to take a photo for us using our GoPro. They do not provide any photo services, so please bring your own underwater cameras! It will be such a waste if you do not get to keep a photo of this amazing experience.

Took a lot of pictures and videos for memory sake, and I will probably be done editing the video (along with all the highlights from Yat's 24th) by the end of this week, and will *most* probably be uploading them next week. So keep a look out for that video. :)

Yat was such a happy boy when we got out and I was such a happy girlfriend for seeing that grinning face of his. If you guys have no idea where to bring your adventurous and thrill-seeker partner for their birthday or anniversary, you can give this a try! 

Till my next post on Yat's 24th Birthday Celebration! :)