Leeway Sub-Aquatic Paradise

I recently took a NAUI scuba diver course at Leeway, which my brother gamely signed us up for as a way to bond over his summer vacation. The course consists of an evening theory session and equipment fitting, 1 – 2 days of training in a swimming pool at the top of the building where Leeway is located and then two days of scuba and skin diving at your location of choice. We picked Pulau Hantu so that we could see what Singapore’s underwater life is like.
The Leeway team was flexible in accommodating our questions and schedules and most importantly, the instructors were thorough in teaching us the fundamentals of diving. We were mostly taught by Kendra, who took us through our safety and diving drills from the pool to the open water. She communicated her instructions clearly and we were able to follow along underwater and I felt well prepared to hit the open seas.
On our 2 days at Pulau Hantu, the crew ensured that the weather was clear before we set off and there were up to 2 instructors (Kendra and Kevin) following our group of 3 students, while another instructor took a couple. That was really reassuring for a noob like me as I had an instructor with me when I had trouble equalizing as we descended and made a boo boo in one drill (took off my weight belt while removing and replacing my BCD). Once I got used to being underwater, diving was incredibly fun. People often diss Pulau Hantu for having relatively poor visibility compared to places in the region but I would argue that the visibility wasn’t too bad. We had 3−5m of visibility on the seabed (it is relatively poor because the sea bed is made of silt) and even more visibility near the reefs. The best thing was discovering that Singapore does have some gorgeous reefs and marine life!
The entire course cost about $ 420 and I thought it was well worth it. Here’s to more underwater adventures whoop whoop!