Bali down below!

Hey all!

We've had quite the exciting few days underwater in Bali... I think I like underwater better than the land stuff!

After Ubud, we headed out to Nusa Lembongan, a small island off the coast of mainland Bali. We took a taxi and ferry out to the island. It's a little place, nice and quaint and very different from Ubud. It's still a tourist destination, but from what I saw, it's still in its tourism infancy. The island's draw is primarily it's marine life. The island has a regular population of manta rays and a seasonal population of mola mola or ocean sunfish. Google them. It's the weirdest fish you'll ever see, but for some reason they love Nusa Lembongan (unfortunately we didn't see any molas, but we saw EVERYTHING else).

It took us a couple days before we got in the water, but once we did, it was stunning. Indonesia is part of an area called the Coral Triangle, which is an area of the Pacific that includes places like Indo, the Phillippines, the Solomon Islands and more, but it has the most coral diversity and fish life of anywhere else on the planet. It does not disappoint!! Our first dive was in a place called Manta Bay. It it aptly named! Within two minutes of being in the water, we had our first manta drive-by. In total we saw at least three, if not more. They came and went, so it was hard to tell if it was the same one. Another great thing about diving on Lembongan was the current! There was lots of it! Koh Tao, as lovely as it is, has no current at all. This may sound like a good thing, but when used to your advantage, current is magic. The rest of our dives were awesome drift dives. You jump in at one place and let the current carry you along. Not much kicking involved, its great! These drifts had so much life, I didn't know where to look. So many fish everywhere! And there was all the crazy little things! Nudibranchs, garden eels, scorpion and lionfish... you name it! And we met Dory! After two years of diving with Nemo, we finally met his best buddy!!

The best came on our very last dive, however. We were diving on a site called Mangroves. It was one of the fastest drift dives I've done. Zooming along, trying to look at all the fish before they fly by you... The first 40 minute of the dive were awesome, but nothing particularly special. Until about the time my camera died... Drifting along we see a couple of sea turtles cruising along. I love turtles, and seeing them never gets old, so that pretty much made the dive for me. But a few minutes later I started hearing the squeaking and squealing that you so often associate with dolphins. Nah... can't be... but low and behold a few moments later, our dive guide starts bangning on her tank and pointing into the blue, and then we saw pod of about 15 dolphins, including a few babies!! They didn't stick around for long, but its always amazing seeing them underwater. You can really tell they're looking at you and checking you out. As if that wasn't enough, a few moments later our dive guide starts banging on her tank and pointing again... this time, it was a school of six eagle rays hanging out in the current. They weren't moving at all, even though we were swimming like hell against the current to stay with them. Needless to say, it was an incredibly memorable dive and a great way to end our awesome stay on Lembongan.

We left Lembongan to head to a new dive location. It was a bit of a hike... took us nearly all day in a ferry and then in a taxi. We did make a couple stops in the car on the way, though. We stopped at a place called the water palace. It used to be the king's bathhouse, full of fountains and beautiful sculptures, but its since been opened to the public. So we stopped there for lunch and had a bit of a wander around the gardens. I wish all taxis and transport would do that for you! Oh, long drive? Why don't we stop at this beautifully scenic lunch place for 30 or 40 minutes?

Anyway, we finally got to Tulamben, our next diving destination. Tulamben's main dive site is actually a wreck, rather than a reef. It's the site of the wreck of an American warship, called the Liberty. It was torpedoed by the Japanese in WWII, but it was dragged on shore before it could sink, so the cargo could be salvaged. The ship stayed on the beach in Tulamben until 1963, when the big, bad Bali volcano erupted. The lava flows pushed the wreck just offshore and tore it up a bit. Now, it lies just off the beach and starts in about 5m(15ft) of water, all the way down to 30m (100ft).

Initially when we got in last night, the waves on the beach were quite big, so we thought it might be a blowout... the dive shop next door said visibility was going to be iffy at best and conditions weren't so hot. But we got up early this morning to have a look and things were looking pretty damn good, so we said what the hell, let's go for it. The dive was awesome. Tons of fish life, and since the wreck has been underwater since the 60's, there's tons of coral growth as well. One of the dive guides described it as an iron cathedral, and it seems fitting. The wreck is a bit torn apart, so its hard to see which bit is what, but regardless, the towering beams and bits of decking make a stunning backdrop to an awesome dive.

We did a second beach dive in the afternoon, just down the shore from the wreck. The highlight of this dive may seem a little silly to most... but I convinced a cleaner shrimp to crawl inside my mouth and it was the happiest moment ever. It has been one of those weird bucket list things for as long as I can remember to get my mouth cleaned by a cleaner shrimp. They offer that service to fish, so why should I be any different?? And my mother worries about my dental hygiene... BAH! The fish will take care of it, right?

Anyway, we're off to the Gili Islands for more diving and island fun! We have a couple friends staying there as well, so it should be a good time! Hopefully we'll have more fishy fun and adventure over our last 7 days in Bali!

Love and fishes!!!

Bali: the adventure begins!

Hi friends!

So, a bit of updating is in order. The internet on Koh Tao crashed on us on our last few days! So I am currently updating you from our new hangout in.... Bali!!

We left Koh Tao four days ago, after a lovely going away celebration (aka drinking lots at our favorite bar with our favorite Koh Taoians) and headed over to Indonesia. It was two solid days of travel: one day from Tao to Bangkok and one day from Bangkok to Bali, but we made it!

We're spending just over two weeks in and around Bali, before we head to England and Florida to see Mikes and my family. We've started our journey in Ubud, made famous by the movie/book Eat, Pray, Love. It's a very cool town. Lots of interesting shops, lots of temples and its all surrounded by mountainy rice paddies on all sides.

Rice paddies near Ubud

Our first full day in Ubud started out meeting old friends! I worked with Dan and Emily back at Biscayne when I was still a marine biologist, before all this traveling started. They moved out to New Zealand while I was living in Australia, and I had every intention of going out there to visit, but somehow to trip to kiwi-land never quite happened. Dan and Em happened to be in Indonesia about the same time as Mike and I! We met up for lunch and caught up on our respective lives in the Pacific. Pretty cool! It's certainly a small world. They had to jet off just as we were getting to Bali, so we had to split ways after lunch. Mike and I spent the rest of the day exploring on foot. There are so many temples and beautiful spots around Ubud. There's the Ubud Palace right in the center of town and a beautiful temple surrounded by ponds of lotus flowers.

Ubud Palace

One of the deity statues at the Ubud Palace

Lotus temple

There's also a scary, scary part of Ubud.... the monkey forest... It's actually not that scary, but after my monkey adventures in Phi Phi and Koh Tao, I'm generally a little wary of primates. There's a big forest just outside of town with a large population of long-tailed macaques. It's been a tourist stop for many years, so the monkeys are very comfortable around humans. Even going so far as to jump on unsuspecting tourists carrying something of interest: sunglasses, water bottles, even saw one monkey going after the keychain on a woman's backpack. There are also some beautiful temples and grounds within the forest, so there's and added draw it as well. Despite a general wariness of monkeys, the calmness and apparent tameness of the monkeys there eased my suspicions. One even jumped on my lap when we were sat down taking in the scenery. And then his buddy ran across my lap as well! 

One very curious macaque...

Komodo dragon statue selfie!

Day two in Bali we decided to expand our adventure to the outskirts of Ubud. We rented a motorbike and decided to get lost and see what we could find. Luckily, there is one road out of town with all the good spots along it! We started off at a beautiful terraced rice paddy alongside a mountainside. Had a brief snack (a banana split and spring rolls, obviously) and enjoyed the scenery. We were headed in the general direction of one of the dormant volcanoes in the center of the island, and along the way had a few adventures as well.

Suddenly, as we were driving along, a local guy pulled along side our bike and started chatting to us about all the things to see in the area: coffee farms, temples, and the volcano. He kept on talking up all these places, so we finally stopped into one of the coffee plantation "agro-tourism" centers. We saw the different types of coffee that are grown on the island and learned a bit about "luwak coffee". Basically these little cat/mongoose/fox creatures called luwaks (or civets in English) eat the best coffee berries whole. They can't digest the bean inside the berries, so it comes out the other end. The luwaks poo is then collected and cleaned to get the bean out. The beans get cleaned like six times, then roasted, then cleaned again and then ground into possibly the most expensive coffee on the planet. It goes for about $60 USD for a small bag of beans. Anyone for some cat poop coffee?

When we left the coffee plantation (no cat poo coffee for us, thanks), we headed toward the volcano. On the way, Mike had his very first run in with traffic cops! Lucky for us, they were pretty cool about him not having a license for motorbikes and let him off with a ticket. Poor thing, it was his first traffic ticket since he's never had a driving license ever!! He manged to convince the scary Bali police he had left his license in our hotel room. Even still, he was all mopey about it, but I promised him if we converted his fine into USD, it would be nowhere near what I've paid for some speeding fines ;)

Traffic ticket in hand, we finally made it to the volcano lookout. Definitely worth the fines. We stopped at a stunning viewpoint and could see the volcanic mountain and the lovely lake beside it. We took in the sights, had a drink and started our motorbike journey back into Ubud.

Tonight is our last night here, we're heading to an island just off the coast of Bali called Nusa Lembogan. It's supposed to be awesome for beaches, surfing and most importantly diving, so obviously we have to go. If the wifi is good, expect more updates soon!

Love and fishes!

Alright FINE, I guess I owe everyone an update.

In my defense, Koh Tao is a little like Groundhog Day. Wake up, teach diving, have a beer, eat dinner, watch some tv, go to bed. Not much new to report on that front. The "busy season" has been slower than everyone expected. Maybe from the government nonsense, maybe from the economy, maybe from the fact that its been raining a lot? No idea, but its certainly not overwhelming.

But that's alright, because we're gonna be changing things up a lot and moving around a bit! There's a lot of weird things going on with immigration... they're trying to crack down on people working illegally (cough cough who would do THAT?). Our visas run out at the end of August and since its just gotten too complicated, we're going to run away! We've already made plans to go home. We're flying out of Bangkok September 12th and going to England for ten days! Mike hasn't been home in a long time and I haven't ever been to England so BOOM. Party time. Then we're wandering back over to Florida!!! Thennnnnn we don't know whats happening. Haha... life is confusing and hard sometimes. I'm really excited to go home... it's been way too long and I've been getting homesick, I need some Florida time. We're not sure how long we'll be home for, that's open ended for the time being. At least a couple of weeks, hopefully!!

But the problem we're encountering is what to do between end of visa time and London... we've got about two weeks between point A and point B. Since the visa people are cracking down, we kinda need to leave the country or else we'll get slammed with overstay fees.

Sooooo the burning question is.... Bali or the Philippines?????? It's a very tough call to make, and its going to come down to which one is cheaper. Bali has manta rays and maybe mola mola (ocean sunfish) and beautiful reefs. The Philippines have thresher sharks and maybe manta rays and beautiful reefs. HOW CAN I BE FORCED TO MAKE THESE DECISIONS? Any ideas?

Thats all for now! Hopefully this blog will be getting a lot more exciting!

Love and fishes!

Working and playing!

Happy May!

Well, still here! Hanging on Koh Tao! It's funny how my "short" travels seem to end up being a lot longer than originally intended!

At this point though, Tao has me trapped! While the cost of living on the island is rather cheap (think dinner for as little as $1.20 US), I'm getting paid a living wage here, sooooo not exactly racking up the American dollars. Making enough money have a grand ol time in Thailand, but when I do the conversions of my paycheck, its a little sad. But that should hopefully be turning around in the near future! Everyone says that June - September is crazy hectic. We're talking no days off for weeks on end, unless you need a visa run!

Speaking of visa runs, Mike and I ran off to Koh Samui last week to visit the immigration office and have our visas extended. Most people would go to Samui for the beaches, the fancy resorts, the waterfalls, the elephants... We went for the movie theater, the mall and McDonalds. Koh Tao is great, but as far as entertainment goes, there's not much around here except for drinking and diving. That's normally not a problem, but after four months it was really nice to have a bit of a change. We wandered around a fancy shopping mall, ate soft pretzels and window shopped. We caught a movie at the cinema... it didn't even matter what movie we saw! I was just thrilled to sit in an air conditioned room for two hours and eat popcorn. The movies here are even different from back home. After the previews, but before the movie, an anthem plays and you have to stand to honor the king. He is incredibly loved here, so there is no question about whether to stand or not to stand.

It's quite funny how much you miss things like movie theaters, malls and "normal" western things like that. Mostly, I also miss food. We have a good variety of food here, but its things like macaroni and cheese, Mexican food, mashed potatoes, Reese's cups, cookie dough ice cream... those things are a bit hard to find. But a Spanish restaurant just opened up that makes the most excellent paella, so now we've got that!

Nothing much on the horizon at the moment. We need to do a big visa run to Malaysia at the end of the month,  but that won't be exciting, mostly just time consuming. But hopefully once busy season kicks in, we can save enough money for a week in Bali! It's just around the corner, it'd be a shame to miss out! That's all for now!

Love and fishes!

Songkran!

So, as promised, April has been quite wild so far! We had the celebration of Thailand's New Year, also called Songkran. It's a water-based festival where throwing fresh water on people symbolizes a new beginning and washing away sins and fresh starts. What it really becomes is a free for all water battle where everyone shoots water guns and throws buckets of water at unsuspecting passerbys. There are no rules... doesn't matter if you've got luggage, if you're riding a scooter, if you're dry...

Hopefully this video will explain a little bit:

 

Here's the link if the video doesnt work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u6nYgc1Lmc

We started drinking and celebrating around noon and the party lasted all day. One bar had a water slide hooked up that led from the bar into the ocean, which was pretty awesome although slightly dangerous with a bunch of drunk people. There were massive pool parties, lots of water guns and lots and lots of beer! No one was dry all day, if you weren't wet on land, you were in the ocean. It was such a fun day and I really enjoyed this New Years celebration. I think I like it better than American New Years celebrations! Maybe I'll try to get this one going next December 31st.... hahaha. 

In other April news, a few days before Songkran, I saw my first Koh Tao whaleshark!!!! I was fun diving with a friend from Australia who's been working in Phi Phi for the last few months. Dylan came out for a few days on his way back home and I took him fun diving... he must have had good luck because on his first dive on Koh Tao, he spotted a 4m whaleshark cruising by! I almost missed it, but luckily I turned around at the right minute! Hopefully this is the start of the season for them, so I might be seeing them more often! Fingers crossed! 

That's all for now! 

Love and fishes! 

Yikes, one blog post a month? I'm not doing so hot with the updates, am I? In my defense, there hasn't been a ton of new things going on... I'm still a dive instructor, I still live in Ko Tao, I still live in the same shabby guesthouse, but its all good! It's a fun place to hang out, that's for sure!

Lots of fun people keep turning up to visit, so that's fun! When I was living in Cairns, I met a lot of non-Aussie divers also on a working holiday visa. Slowly but surely, lots of them are winding up in Thailand now! It's great to see friends again. There's five of us now that used to hang out at the diver's bar in Cairns that are now hanging out at diver's bars in Koh Tao! It's awesome and I love having so many international friends!

March has been a pretty uneventful month so far. It's been rather quiet on the island, but still getting work! Teaching everyone to dive! April should be a bit more eventful... we've got Buddhist new year coming up next month which involves a giant water fight throughout all of Thailand! From what I hear, all of Ko Tao shuts down (except the bars, thank goodness!) and every holes up and shoots water guns, throws water balloons and dumps buckets of water on each other. Driving a scooter requires a dive mask and apparently the best part of the day is soaking all the unsuspecting tourists. So looking forward to that!

Other than that to look forward to, its been about the same around here! It's getting alllllll kinds of hot though! Miss everyone back home lots! Sending lots of love!


Love and fishes!

Apolgies from a Dive Instructor

The life of a dive instructor certainly seems glamorous, and in many ways it can be. The opportunity to travel the world, meet a million new people and see amazing things underwater, yes, it's incredible. Changing lives by introducing the weightless, alien underwater world is incredibly rewarding. However... there are some things that get slightly neglected, so in this blog post I would like to shout out some apologies.

Firstly to the friends and family who think I've fallen off the side of the earth/gotten eaten by a giant squid. I'm sorry I don't call/text/write/send smoke signals or carrier pigeons. My head gets too full of water and I fear using a phone will cause sparks and possibly a hair fire. No but really, I do wish I could chat with family/friends more often. I miss you all a lot and being on the other side of the world is hard. I wish I could teleport all of you out here because I love you all and miss you dearly.


I'm sorry I have a better idea of what two dive sites looks like (ahem... Twins and White Rock, I'm looking at you) than I do of what this island looks like.

I'm sorry to my poor hair, that gets caught in a mask or a tank valve and ripped out so often I'm going to start going bald soon. I'm also sorry that it turns slightly greenish from time to time due to the over-chlorination of the pool...

I deeply apologize to my body for feeding it on a diet of peanuts, Coke and cookies when I don't have time for lunch. But even when I do have time for lunch, I'm sorry I only feed you fried rice. But its so good and cheap!!

I also apologize for feeding it more beer than water. Especially since its Thai beer. There's nothing more painful than a Chang hangover. A Changover, if you will.

I'm sorry I seem to forgotten what "healthy eating and lifestyle" is. Are there other ways to exercise besides doing 10 minutes of treading water with your students once every three or four days?  I walk to work... doesn't that count? Move some tanks around on the boat? The fact that I can't touch my toes anymore because I'm so inflexible? Ehhh... we'll just ignore that little tidbit.

I'm sorry to all the other clothes I own that aren't bikinis, board shorts and my work shirts because they no longer exist on a day to day basis. I walked into work the other day after having an afternoon off (yes, just an afternoon... whole days off are too hard to come by at the moment) and I had showered and put on real clothes and my coworkers nearly didn't recognize me. Apparently I look weird when I'm not in my black work shirt. I can wear other colors I swear!

I'm sorry to that college educated me that used to live around here. The one who could do math without a calculator and read books for fun and knew how to write papers... ain't got no time for that now! I have to remember how to properly teach an emergency swimming ascent or neutral buoyancy and generally teach people to dive without killing me or them. And identify all the fish. At least that knowledge hasn't gone anywhere :) I'll show you alllllll the fish.

I'm sorry I've taken more certification photos of my students than I have of anything else on Koh Tao... and I'm also sorry to my computer desktop which is now covered in student pictures, temp certification cards, teaching guides, instructor manuals and dive videos.

 But really, all kidding aside, things are great out here. I'm working my ass off, yes. I've had four days off in the last month and one of them was a border run, so does that even count? Haha... I'm teaching so much I dream about briefing my students about the skills they're doing that day... like every single night. But I get to spend my time diving and teaching others to dive. Sometimes it's incredibly frustrating and challenging, but it can also be so rewarding. I've had a couple really great groups of students in the last couple weeks and that makes all the frustrating dives worth it. Especially when one of my Open Water students came in two days after the course finished and signed up for his Advanced course. I start teaching that one tomorrow :) I'm really happy with where I'm working and the people I'm working with. I'm not making millions, not by a long shot, but enough to survive and buy beers, so I certainly can't complain! :)


All the love and fishes!