"Mo Mo Pee Pil!"

The last time I was in Redang Malaysia, I came back with the song 浪花一朵朵 ringing in my head. This time, it was Lady Gaga's Bad Romance and the Hong Konger DJ's enthusiastic call for people to join the dance floor at Summer Mambo.

"Mo mo pee pil!' or if your Cantonese is not great, it is "more more people!". It did not take much persuasion to get us on the dance floor. Not when we had a professional dancer in our midst! I was getting a complimentary hip hop private class from Alvan to all my favouite sexy Lady Gaga hits.

It was not all drinks and dance. We had lots of wholesome fun (not that dancing is not, but you know what I mean) at the pool and watching the non-existent sunset. In my excitement, I convinced a pretty big group of us to walk to the end of the beach to catch the sunset, including our new friend, Chat, from London. I even got Bernice to risk her life to cross the rocks onto the edge of the cliff. Fortunately, the disappointment of realising we were facing East and twelve hours late - or too early - for the sun rise did not last long. We were rewarded with the amazing view of the islands scattered around Redang and the entire stretch of the beach.

The pool was a natural assembly point in between dives. I figured we might have bought all the ice-cream there was from the pool side convenience store. It was fun monopolising the pool, chit chatting on the side or taking silly photographs.

Oh, and if you were wondering, we were in Redang for diving. I realised I have been writing about everything else besides the dives, but I guess those are the things that make the trip. It is always the people you remember, and the fun times you have with them.

I had wanted to go as a leisure diver this time. My church friends were diving with Deep Blue for the first time and I thought it would be cool to simply relax, put my feet up and do nothing for four days with them. But YP was short on crew for that National Day weekend because everyone else was going to Bali! So, I had to suck it in and go as Dive Master. My anxieties were really unfounded because the divers were great, and so was Laurence, the instructor who went on the trip too. There are so many people to thank...

• Laurence: He is my 'Best Instructor' Pierre's instructor, so rightfully termed as 'Master Instructor. I was worried since it was just my fifth trip as Dive Master, but he was really patient. I really appreciated how he would teach me to do something, so I could try my hand at it instead of just observing him do it. So I learnt lots!
• Jenn, Ben, Justin, Sze Gay: They were doing so much of my job, like carrying the First Aid or the O2 kit, or squeezing the bags into the coach luggage compartment, or making sure everyone is accounted for.
  
• Bernice: She was the best roommie and I enjoyed the short chats we had just before I dozed off. And it was fun dancing crazy on the first night at Summer Mambo! We really need to go try Trance one of these days.
• New friends like David, Marcus and gang, Frankie and gang, Jill and gang, Alvan and JJ, Karan and gang: They are absolutely nuts some times (or rather most of the time). They looked pretty normal the first day I met them, then surely but slowly, as they let loose in the evenings and the rest of the weekend, I saw the other side of them and loved it! We should have taken a group photo!