Pre-talk

The stories was originally posted somewhere else right after we came back from Bali, but I didn’t share it with my own group, hayahh…shy.. phaiseh.. as I would talk about them and our journey.
I repost the original one, uncut, uncensored, (and let them know!)
I wanted to edit it at first, but it wouldn’t be the same, hopefully nothing is too gossipy about them :)

I parted the story into five parts, each part consists of story in different places, it happened between 11-20 November 2005.
The dives were superb, the accommodations were beautiful, the people were fun and friendly and the food was great. It’s a very wonderful and rewarding lifetime journey.

The Hidden Paradise (Safari Part One)

Is it the wind that whispering to my ear
Is it the huge silk blue clothe that waving to the shore
Is it the cottony sky that hovering above my head
Or is it the smile that I see on the faces around me
Makes me feel like home?


Bali Safari (11-20th November 2005)
WARNING: LONG AND WET

Just our luck that our long trip so far were all happened out of the best season. We went for the first one on March and the second one on November, while the best season runs from April to October. So during that, we were just looking up to the sky and wondering why.

But, who said we made the wrong decision?


11th November, Friday, First Day
The Departure


Whoever talked to me about work after was ignored on Thursday; all I cared about was Friday. After counting down since eight months ago, the last two months had been flying very fast, and well hell, let's skip the boring talk…

It was five of us, me, Hubby, Froggie, Leo and Cynthia. We’ve known Froggie since we started diving, knew Leo and Cynthia since the first trip. After that, we are all dive buddies.
Traveled by MRT with huge and heavy bags, we made it to the airport.

We had luxurious seats on the plane; half of the plane was filled with Russian. Found out that except Japanese and Australian, Russian was one of the most common tourists in Bali. They were more excited than us, although we made equal noises, those guys with thumbs bigger than my toes were so glad being in Bali, they were even clapping their hands when we touched down. I could imagine, they might have been flying thousands and thousands of miles.

Despite my worries, the immigration process was very smooth. ADA, the operator, was ready outside. We introduced ourselves with Prass, our Dive Master, Christian, and Aris, the driver.

After stopping by for snack, whoaaa, Indonesian product, Chitato, nyam nyam, and the numerous zeroes, we then traveled for three and a half hours through the rocky, dark, narrow and winding road, it was a rough journey.

01.30 am, we reached the hotel, Aneka Bagus Pemutaran. We were tired, but the hotel was niceeee. The surrounding was dark but beautiful, exotic, right in front of our room we could see a big mountain, we had three bedrooms.
Me and Hubby had two super single bed with mosquito net around the bed, high into the ceiling. It made me feel like princess, mhaha….



12th & 13th November, Saturday and Sunday, Second and Third Day
Destination : Menjangan and Secret Bay Gilimanuk

We had huge American breakfast at the hotel. The hotel is located right beside the sea, the swimming pool was right next to it. The garden was beautiful, the beauty of Bali, most of the hotels are low level, have generous landscape and outdoor spaces. I felt like escaping from the Lion city.


Menjangan Island, North of Bali

I could see sky and green everywhere. We took half an hour car ride and gathered at the sea side warung, I remember the name, Wild Wild West warung. Kekekekke...
I could feel Indonesian touch everywhere. Bamboo building, outdoor seating, roaming chicken, cats, and dogs, and the earth.

We had briefing, and off we went for twenty minutes boat ride to the island.
In the boat, here came my first challenge. I had to fit in my 3mm wetsuit. It was new and uhm, tight, and I hate tight and thick wetsuit. But because we heard Bali is cool, we were all dress up with the thickest wetsuit we had for the first day.
So, I spent almost ten minutes to put on the wetsuit and vest. It was quite torturing to wear in the land, but it looked better, mhehehhe...

Everything looked promising, the clear blue water, the calm sea, and the sunny weather.

So we jumped.

Menjangan used to be the best dive site in Bali, it is located far from the rest dive site of Bali. It offers warm water, wall and drift diving. This is one of my most favorite dive sites. I can remember the feeling of the colorful underwater life, giant gorgonian sea fans, numerous colorful fish, and the magic of the garden eels, the best point.

I remembered garden eels in Sipadan was not really clear because of rocks and corals. In Menjangan, imagine sea desert, huge area of clean sand and thousands, thousand of eels were peeping out from their home and made some dancing movement.
We were parked there, quiet and mesmerized, watching and almost held our breath trying to blend with the life. When we passed, hovering above them, they were hiding slowly and gradually like being swept by silent signal, disappearing into the holes, but the garden was so huge that we could stop above one point but still had surround-dancing friends around us.

Menjangan also has the perfect image most people have about diving. In the brochure, in the video, when they promote about this sport, we see colorful reef and fish, the rich diversity, the dancing fish and anemones.
This is not what we always have when we really go down there, there are a lot of variety, Menjangan is the closest so far that I’ve been to that image, the landscaping was almost perfect that I felt very sad to leave it at the end of every dive.

We visited one Wreck, they called it Anker Wooden Boat, because the anchor lies 6-8 metres from the surface, the wreck lies up to forty meters deep, it was used to transport the slaves in the past, nobody knows the real name.
When we descended, I followed Prass the DM as usual, I kept heading down until one point I remembered that we were going to the wreck, I kept looking to the front, searching for dark figure of ship but found nothing (I thought we were supposed to see the wreck immediately since the first point was about 6 meter depth)…, then I looked at my watch and oppps, I was already at 39 meters depth.

I looked back and then realized that the wreck was scattered around, most of them were covered by corals, anemone and gorgonian sea fans, the big metal boat was divided into smaller parts, I (being a very bad navigator) couldn’t put away the pieces together to form a boat in my wet brain hehehe…., we stayed for a few minutes and ascend to the shallower part.
Lucky I didn’t feel narcosis, the high feeling like we are on drugs if we stay too deep for too long.

In Menjangan, it was the first time we saw the infamous pigmy sea horse. The sea horse was disguise perfectly in the sea fans, the adult sea horse is about l cm or less (yesss it’s microscopic) and the body looked exactly like the sea fan. If you were an expert in Where’s Wally, that is nothing compared with the challenges of seeing this pigmy. Even when Prass had already pointed the location to us, I still had difficulties in figuring out where was the head, eyes and backside?…

I left the mystery in my head, about whether I looked at the correct thing or it was just the shape I made. On the second visit to that dive site, I finally could see perfectly the sea horses. One was fat and cute (I call it piggy sea horse), one was skinny and the other one was jumping here and there. I gave Leo the magnifying glass (he is long sighted and couldn’t see the pigmy at all on the first chance). He was so happy grabbing the magnifying glass from my hand, after a while, he signaled ok, he’s seen it and I could see him laughing. It was really a challenge mhehehe…. I spent about ten minutes then watching a bunch of pretty anemone shrimp (which was small also) waiting for others to take pictures of pigmy. I was the only one without camera.

On the second day at Garden Eel, last few minutes of the dive, the current was very strong. I stayed too far away for the seabed because the tank was almost empty, I had positive buoyancy. Quite suddenly, the current changed direction and we had to swim against it. Prass was in front; he finned followed by Leo and Hubby. It was too late for me to grab the bottom, so I was hovering about one and a half meter above sea bed, no matter how I finned, I couldn't reach them, it was like running on the treadmill, holly molly!! It would have been easier if I reached the bottom and crawled.
After awhile, cursing and swearing, I looked behind, from between legs :D and saw Cynthia, Froggie and Christian were still far behind, they were taking pictures, the current hadn't reached them. In front of me Hubby, Leo and Prass were clinging to a rock, flapping like flags. So, I gave up fighting and let the current carried me near Froggie. I was between suffering, angry and laughing while I fought the current, I finned endlessly but stayed in one point.
It must have looked ridiculous, lucky, I think, nobody was looking...

The island was called Menjangan, means Deer in English. On our Surface Interval, in between dive, we spent the time in the island, having tea break and chatted about dives, compared pictures, swam in the beach an did our nature calls.
I have to make something clear here. Sea is our, uhm, restroom. If we happened to land on an island, we would run to the water and did it. If we were on the boat, we would cling at the end of the boat or standing on the ladder.

There are only three types of divers in the world:
1. Those who pee in their wetsuit.
2. Those who lie about it
3. Those who haven’t dived long enough.

Menjangan really stands for its name. We found a huge deer sunbathing on the shore while the wave kept coming, hitting his backside. It enjoyed the sun so much that I envied the satisfied look on its face. At the other side of the island, we saw lots of huge deer, no wonder where the island got its name.

It was the first place we did shore dive. All along our dive experiences we always did boat dive, either jumped or back-rolled from the boat. Bali was the first time we did shore dive. It could be hard and easy, depending on the location and sea condition.
I did my first one quite tediously; I forgot where I put my hand and learned how to put BCD the dive jacket in the water. It was floating everywhere, refused to stick on your back, so I had to throw my back above it, or used my strength to pull it near to me. We could make it easier by standing in the shallower water, where the water level in the waist, but we did the first shore dive in between two boat, water level as high as our neck and we had to fish out our BCD thrown by the boat man. So, it was an experience.

We did five dives in Menjangan, three on Saturday, two on Sunday, we moved to Secret Bay for the third dive. I kept saying, this was only the first two day, I still have a lot of time, and BAM, I’m here, the holiday is ended… :"(


Secret Bay, Gilimanuk

We departed half an hour from Wild Wild West warung to Secret Bay. Secret Bay was nothing for the first glance.

It’s not deep; the deepest was only about eight meter. It didn’t have rich reef and colorful corals; it was a dark brown sea bed with lots of rubbish, yes rubbish.
We did one dive there and found lots of bottle, cans, snack like Taro, Yakult bottle and even, the most hilarious object, we found a bra. Wonder what happen to the lady until she dropped it. We suspected it was 34A, no wonder bra, mhehehehhehe….

But, actually, it was a rich and unique dive; we found lots of macro (small creatures or fish), things that we had never seen from other dives before. The sand was covered but green algae, below that, we found shrimp, crabs, miniature fish (the juveniles, when they became adult they would swim to the deeper sea), couldn't remember the species and latino names, have to do a lot of study in order to be able to identify them all.

We found a big tree bark and spent a lot of time there, we were busy, so many things to see. There was a school of big bat fish with their juvenile, a huge puffer fish inside the group (identity mistake hehehhe), three beautiful ghost pipe fish, file fish, huge cleaner shrimp, scorpion, lion, cat fish. Lots of thing, the visibility was not good about five metres and the water was quite cold.

We spent good one and a half hours below. Our longest and first muck-dive so far.

We were excited but cold, so we postponed the night dive to other day, we gathered for a hot tea break, we wore happy faces, every dive was a great one. After tea, we headed back to the hotel.
We had dinner at the hotel. Our hotel was out of nowhere, so these three days we couldn’t go anywhere. For three days, we haven’t even met Asian except the hotel staff and warung staff. Every corner of the hotel, every dive boat that passed by our way, we saw Caucasians, there were hellos everywhere. But, whatever the occasion, it turned out that we were always the loudest.

Five of us, we cracked jokes every time, and most of the jokes was not moderate funny, but extreme until our stomach cramped of laughing. Since we were already so convenient with each other, having known each other for almost and more than a year, we were able to tell ordinary, polite to dirty and extreme jokes. :)



P.S: We are all still in the process of holiday recovery. I have headache looking at the monitor. We slept for nine hours last night. We have three buckets of laundry to do. And there are Christmas songs playing everywhere.

Is That You Fishy Fishy Fishy (Safari Part Two)

I was quite hesitated to start this part two, because I realized that I have forgotten many details in Part One, like where and when, which and which. Some more, actually, I intended to put in some pictures, but gosh, Hubby and friends had taken at least one thousands pictures for me to choose! (Pictures finally uploaded!)

I promised myself to write journal along the trip, I imagined myself sitting on the boat, hotel balcony, beach etc during break to write in every thought and special occasions. The only thing I thought that I would need to fight was drowsiness caused by seasick pills, but I was wrong. I seldom took pills cause we had a lot of shore dives, but I also didn’t write my journal, I was even lazy to fill my logbook.
Because, every surface interval, every night, we chatted, ate, had fun and even went swimming, or just sat there looking at the sea or scenery. I did it quite often, as I wanted to enjoy every second of it, why would I bother my self to write? That’s why….
I realized that my first part might not be complete, I’ll try to make this and the next one as completed as possible, for my own record. If any of you who read this get bored, hey, get a life, who told you to…. Hehhehe…kidding..but, kalo bosen, problem loe….


The Fourteenth, Monday, Forth Day
Destination : Puri Jati (PJ)

We checked out early in the morning from Aneka Bagus hotel, so at 7.30 am we already hit the road. Good thing about diving, the activity schedules actually make us to have a good habit, wake up early and sleep early.

Destination Puri Jati, this dive site was found (I read it somewhere) in 2004. It is a heaven for macro and one of the favorite destinations for all diver photographer freaks or just a freak like me.
Since we heard the story about PJ from one of friend, we had been longing to dive in PJ. Yesterday at Secret Bay, we had a lot of surprise about the variety and richness of things we saw, and Prass told us that PJ is similar but better that Secret Bay.

The van was oglek-oglek along the paddy field. I think we traveled about one-two hour. This kind of timing details always make me bang my head. I thought, alaaaa, I would remember, didn’t realize that brain cells do die as you grow older. :)
We entered PJ though beautiful and green field. The scenery was so good, just like what we saw in calendars :), and pictures that we used to draw in Kindergarten. Mountain background, paddy field, and a sun peeping up between the mountains. Sometimes I added moon too, because I thought the corner space was too empty. But PJ scenery was realistic; I wouldn’t know that we were reaching. Hey, paddy field and mountain, where is the sea?
Then suddenly, the driver made one left turn and we were face down with the sea, face down because the place we were using as preparation area is about one meter higher than the sea. A lady villager and her daughters prepared the place by putting a plastic sheet on the ground and a big bucket of fresh water. There was one slopping waterfall, the water came directly from the mountain and went to the sea.

So, we unloaded and assembled our equipment to the tank. Prass gave us a short briefing and he took the first step to approach the sea. I thought we were ready to sink, then…he turned right and we had to walk one-two hundred meters with the tank on our back. I climbed mountain with, maybe lighter bag to carry, but at least mountain backpack was comfortable. This…, we were wearing wetsuit, the weather was hot, and the tank sat uncomfortably behind and we had to walk. It felt like forever, and as if, it was not torturing enough, suddenly Froggie ran-passed me with his own share of tank gluduk gluduk gluduk to take picture of all of us. Power Maaan..!

Finally, we went in the water, put the fin and ready to go.
Once we reached two there meter depth, the landscape was like ordinary land grass, after that, it slopped down to black sandy sand. Suddenly Prass was beng keleng keleng his tank and pointed something between the grasses. It was a bent stick pipefish (Trachyrhampus Bioarctatus ~ proud to know one latino name hehhehe), it looked exactly like a tree branch but if you observed carefully, it was one of the pipefish.

First, it was quite a challenge for us to spot things in PJ, even though the things were right before our nose and Prass had pointed them. The underwater life there, they were all masters of camouflage, you’d never realized that every corner, there were tiny eyes looking back, things that were easily mistaken as leave, dirt, rock, ruble were actually something in disguise.
Yesterday at Secret Bay, Cynthia was almost attacked by sea snakes as it buried itself in the sand. It was a venomous and big, one of the dangerous marine life.

Prass pointed us another dirty thing, at a second glance, it was cockatoo waspfish and then a pair of robust ghost pipefish. The amazing thing, some of these animals were actually confident nobody would recognize them that they stayed still and became good model for photography.

Once we got used to the game, it was very fun and busy dive. We found new things again and again, we were so busy following Prass’s signal and made our own discovery. PJ has black sandy bottom covered with small flowery shape beige rock. If we observed, the rock were actually living things, they moved from place to place. There were jellyfish, lots of them staying at the seabed, if we lifted it, it would fly back down. Then, there were holes everywhere, every hole had something watching, either it was goby, lobsters, shrimps or snake eels. We found snake eel first in Menjangan, it was peeping at us, so I saw something like dragon head with something protruding through its nose, same texture with the skin. I had hard time guessing what kind of animal it was, as it looked like dragon, or snake, or lobster or octopus. After that, we were able them identify it well.

Then everywhere, sometimes the sand moved, and something was flying through the bottom of it; It was Flounder. Flounder apparently is not a character in Little Mermaid, the yellow blue fish, but it is a flat fish, swimming on its side on the bottom of the sea. It disguises well with the sand and buried itself. I watched few of them closely as I was able to make as little movement as possible, or they happened to park near me, the flounder has two eyes on the top, but the mouth was facing front. Mhehehe…

Nudibraches, the beautiful invertebrate with two horns and a flower on its back, was everywhere. From tiny baby ones to the biggest that I have seen. So, common size for adult nudibranches is about 4-8 cm, this one, was maybe more than 15 cm. And we also found rare species, those with two pair of thorn, Prass called it Pikachu, it was cute….We also found few ugly ones, they looked like half a flower, huge and ugly.

We called PJ as nursery; there were many tiny fish kids hehhehe everywhere. They were super cute, sometimes they shaped differently with the adult, but many of them were just miniature of the adults. So, imagine if you see an elephant as big as a house cat, or a cat as big as stuart little. They were soooo cute….!

Frog fish, I love this ugly fish, it is kind of fish that stay at one place, and the dorsal fins adapt and become like legs. So, they would sit at one place and ignore everyone, some type, they caught their prey by fishing, so something would come out from their mouth to attract their prey and slurp, in millisecond, they could relax their jaw muscle until 20 times bigger and glup, had their meal.
Their common size for adult is about a man fist until a soccer ball, depends on the type. But the ones we saw in PJ, OMG, the babies were so tiny they could fit into a straw. We found one by accident, orange color, hiding in the sand, we were hunting for something else, then this frog fish was bouncing. The other one, white color, was found by Prass, Hubby tried to put it in his hand, it bounced and hid inside the edge of his compass. We were laughing and kelimpungan trying to corporate with this baby to pose for us.

We found a pair of Ambon scorpion, they looked so hairy that it was funny. And the highlight of PJ, there were many, many of octopus, and the infamous one, Mimic Octopus. This Mimic is known for their ability to mimic other species. They like to hide in the sand, in the hole, showing only their eyes and fore arms, pretended to be mantis shrimp or other species like flounder, scorpion fish etc. When we found a Mimic, we would stayed very calm, then Prass would approach them and made stepping sound on the sand with his pointer, he tried to make the octopus came out from the sand. Once we success, few times we had to catch up when the octopus shoot up and ran. It was quite funny though, that five of us, made two tier, the below one kneeled on the sand, the upper one held on the below’s tank, and Prass in front of us banging the sand while we watched soundlessly.

We had to watch our ‘step’ especially when we kneeled down, because there were quite a lot of sea urchin and jellyfish, sea snake or flounders. Once, I anchored my pointer and almost hit a juvenile stargazer. It was an ugly one, but smooth, unlike what we always seen, the adult who has rough and hard body. This one was pink and smooth, but it stayed calm and just moved a little bit to my left.

We also found Flying Gunard, the beautiful fish with colorful wing, it was one meters away from where we found four legs Mimic, so we were busy busy busy.
Sea horse, pipefish, puffer, porcupine, lionfish, all miniature size, even huge crab and shrimp who carrying a lot of eggs. There was one nervous lobster shrimp who was rolling up and down although we didn’t touch him, guess he was asking for attention.

So, PJ might look boring for the first glance, but actually there were many things and many corners to explore. We did three dives there and every dive we found different things. I heart people could spend one week in a row and still found new things from every dive. We spent one hour half for almost every dives, I must say the dives were GREAT! We had lots of fun.

The other thing about PJ, since we were heading straight from the shore, we needed to save energy and air in order to go back. So, whoever low on air, in a pair, would navigate themselves back to the shore. Of course, Hubby handled the navigation, I would have landed in Singapore had I done the navigation. And fining back, many times against the current, could be a bloody tiring thing to do. The best method was to crawl until we reached the grassy point; from there we would head to the shallower part, ascended and finned or walk to the shore.

The sun was burning high on our head and we had to drag the jacket and fins in the water, when we reached the shore, there were villager boys helping us to carry the fins and small things. They were busy and strong, they carried tank, helped us in assembling and dissembling the equipment, filled the bucket with fresh water for camera etc.

We had lunch in warung nearby, looking at the calendar scenery. There was one friendly dog that was hungry and finished all the leftover fried rice. We had free flow of soft drink and coke tasted so good. On this forth day, we started to realize that they provided teh botol… :)

After the third dive, the boys showed us the spring water in the middle of paddy field, behind a small pura. (A traditional Balinese temple/altar). It was like an earth big bath tub (around 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.2 meter) filled with fresh spring water for us to dip and clean ourselves. We took turn and had a great time, the boys helped us to hold our towel, of course we gave them fat tips. The spring water was refreshing and clean up the sticky feeling left by salt water. We needed it since we were going to travel for two and a half hour to our next destination, Tulamben.

Almost dark, we reached Tulamben area. It looked like they had more civilization than those places we had been. In front of our hotel, Paradise Hotel (Nooo, it was far from Paradise), stood the highest mountain in Bali, Mount Agung. It was glory and gave me nice feeling. Behind the hotel, was, of course, the sea.
Paradise Hotel was the most convenient place for diving; we could just gear up and jumped right from the hotel. The hotel itself was quite standard as it was meant for diver lodge. So, there were many water tubs for rinsing equipments, shower points, and drying decks. Therefore hotel was standard, ugly toilets, ugly beds, unlike our previous one.

So we took shower, and gathered for dinner at the dining area, which was again, next to the sea. We had great dinner; the dinner was better and cheaper than previous hotel. At first, we had quite a shock as our only choice for dinners was at hotels, as we always stayed far from civilization.
From dining lounge, we could see bright light coming from under the sea. Some divers were doing night dive. The moon was perfectly round and bright, ready for our tomorrow.

We were planning to have five dives tomorrow starting with dawn dive.

Are You Man Enough To Let A Woman Carry Your Tank (Safari Part Three)

15th November, Tuesday, Fifth Day
Destination : Tulamben and Seraya

It was quite a difficult night to fall asleep.
Woke up 5.20 a.m in the morning and prepared everything, I was waiting for Froggie’s morning call at 5.30, but realized that it might not happen when he hadn’t showed up five minutes from that. So, I went to the boy’s room.

Knock Knock Knock.

Silence.

Knock Knock KNOCK.

Ruffle sounds of bedsheet but silence.

BANG BANG BANG…!
“Morning Caaaalllll!”

I heard ‘Gedabruk’ ‘OUCH’ ‘Klontang-klontang’ , and then Leo’s face was peeping from the window, he gave ok sign. I asked him to wake Cynthia also as I didn’t know her room. He said ok and in a while he banged on the wall, apparently Cynthia’s room was behind theirs.
6.00 am, we gathered outside at Hotel’s lobby, we would take a short ride by car to reach Liberty.

Here’s the short history about the Liberty wreck, and so-called maybe the easiest wreck diving in the world.

The USAT Liberty Shipwreck.
Bali's most famous dive site. Built circa WWI this cargo ship was equipped with guns for WWII, torpedoed by the Japanese off Lombok; despite attempts to tow the ship to N Bali it was taking on too much water so was semi-beached at Tulamben. Over the years anything reusable was removed. In 1963, with the earth tremors from the last eruption of Mount Agung, the wreck slid further down the slope where it still lies (as close to the beach as it can be and still be underwater!).
The Liberty is 120m long, lies approximately 30m offshore almost parallel to the beach on the sand slope and is suitable for all levels of qualification and experience. The wreck lies in depths from 9-30m.

A very short trip, and we reached the rocky beach. I had a habit to collect sand from every beach I visited. In PJ I tried to collect underwater sand but it was tedious to put the sand into the slimy plastic bag and I don’t like the possibility of changing a little bit of the natural habitat, mhahahha…
So, back to the habit, Leo gave me Lays container (I thought he was joking) the huge plastic cylinder; he told me I would need it for Tulamben. In Tulamben, it is rocky beach that we met. I’d be doom if I wore full foot fins without booties, as it would be painful to walk on the rocks.

It was dawn dive; actually I imagined dawn dive to be dark and we would experience the sun coming and sweeping the darkness while we were down under. But, TEEET, I was wrong. It had been bright since five o’clock although we couldn’t see the sun. So, the point was, maybe, to wake up the fish, for underwater, it was still semi-dark.
We geared up, and walked to the shore, put the fins in, and jumped.
I thought about Liberty all the time. I thought I would see the ship from the bottom looking to the top and see the whole ship together. Again, I was wrong. It was damn long that I could only see part by part. I saw the guns, the head, the body when I levitated to get the whole picture in my mind.

We saw the tongos Napeleon Wrasse but we didn’t get excited, neahh, we saw a lot in Dayang, but then…we saw school of them. It was about maybe more than twenty, from grandpa to grandson, big and small, swimming calmly in front of us. Seeing school of huge fish was indeed a different experience. It happened at the end of the first dive, so we slowly followed them to the shallow. They weren’t distracted by us but kept their distance. Through the semi dark water, it was nice and glorious.

The beginning of the dive itself was satisfying, the wreck was totally covered by corals, anemones, gorgonian, but we could see the harden and tough shape standing right below, beside and above us. If the eyes were sharp enough, there were a lot of things to find among the shadow of every corner.
Prass showed me two big groupers who were hiding inside; Hubby also showed me one big almost white fish that we didn’t know the name. There was one magenta leaf fish who had been resident there for two years! Prass tried to find the yellow pigmy, but he couldn’t locate it. We saw a lot of fish; school of sweetlips, jacks, but most of all the highlight was the ship.
We penetrated the middle part of the ship, it was mysterious floating inside the ship, the sun shined through the openings and cracks and it felt like I was in the church, small church and showered by the light of hope. Mhehehhe…puah..puah, but it was a great experience. Before I even touched one, I always afraid of wreck. Thinking about the sad stories behind the sinking ship, or maybe scary stories made me shivered. Back then when I liked to swim at night, the dark floor pattern of the swimming pool already made me uncomfortable, let alone the wreck. What happened to the ship and the passenger, the guy with one eye or the guy with metal hook? Did somebody have been forced to walk through the plank? What was behind the disaster when it sunk? And bla..bla..
But, when I touched my first wreck in Dayang, it was fine. Completely fine. From what left behind, there were new life and new paradise. No uncomfortable feeling or scary thought had ever crossed my brain or was it had been soaked?
I read about wreck with skeleton, uhm… let’s talk about it later. Right now, I don’t want to see any of it except on my dinner plate.

After the wreck, we reached sandy area. We could find things between or below the sand. Blue spot stingrays, there are many of them. Crabs, shrimps, gobies, and usual landscape of colorful fish.
After sand was the rocky area again, the rocks were huge, it was getting shallower and shallower, it was fun to swim to the shore and suddenly felt the backside was already up on the air. So, turned around, took out fins and walk to the shore.

We were wet, the tank was very heavy that even took them off was a tedious task. But then, few lady villagers came, picked up our gears and put it on their head.
O-n t-h-e-i-r h-e-a-d!
Not one, but two sets of gear and they walked calmly to our hotel which was located uhm… (my sense of distance is almost always wrong) maybe almost 300 meters?
I read from the history of Tulamben and the sentence caught my eyes, I made it as the title. We were pretty impressed, especially when we walked back, only wcarried fins, it was already quite tiring to balance ourselves through the rocks.

We sat around in the dining area, had breakfast and hot lemon tea. Banana pancake with chocolate uhmm….salt water made everything tasted good. Leo had been hooked with the pineapple boat; he saved it for lunch.

There were two dogs patronizing the dining area.
The first one, we called it Scooby-Doo, he looked exactly like that and even had bent fore legs. He ignored us most of the time, but liked to visit Leo and Froggie’s room and sat there blocking their entrance. He didn’t move an inch so Frog and Leo had to leap through him. Frog liked to imitate Scooby-Doo laugh applied to that dog. Khikikikiki…



The second one was a female sad dog; it had such a face and look that put puppies in shame.


After breakfast, we sat, smoked for those who did and chatted. Around nine we already stood by at the same entry point, this time we walked there. We found a bonfire with delicious looking fish on the process of being barbequed, yummy.
Second dive, same point, Liberty. This time Prass was ready, he found the yellow pigmy right away. It was in twenty-three meter depth, so I gave it a glance and waited for those photographers in shallower area. The pigmy was skinny, so skinny it looked like lizard. It was a catwalk pigmy, slim and tall, and active. They had hard time trying to get good pictures, so I busied myself looking at a bunch of sea feather with shrimps in it. Leo took out the magnifying glass and signed to me happily that he could see the pigmy well.

We explored the ship once again, but I didn’t really remember that I went there, every entry was a different experience, although more or less I remembered part of the ship. It was nice to wait, made myself still, motionless and let the nature turned me up, down, left, right (with a little bit of manipulation of course) to enjoy the sight of the wreck. It seemed that I never got enough with Liberty.

When we reached the rocky area at the end of the dive, Prass found a boxer crab. It became my favorite since then. The crab was tiny; I could cover everything with my thumb easily. And the hilarious thing, boxer crab was always holding anemone in their hand for defense. It looked exactly like cheerleader’s crab; they sometimes identify it as pom-pom crab. Give me A, give me P, etc..etc…Can’t wait to show the picture..



To find it, Prass had to lift rocks; he then put it in his palm and put it down again in more sandy area, beside one or two rocks. It would stand near the rock, sometimes ran here and there circling the rock. One of the cutest things.
Leo and Hubby took pictures, Cynthia and Froggie were too far away and busy taking some other pictures. The pom-pom escaped when they finally reached us.

So, we came back, sat and chatted again, and got ready for the third dive. Leo aborted this one; he wanted to enjoy massage under the sun.
For the third dive, Seraya, was located about twenty minutes from hotel. We had to take traditional boat, called jukung. It was a narrow boat with four legs spread out on the sides. Another fun new thing in Bali.



I took the boat with Hubby and Prass, Froggie and Cynthia in other boat. It was a fun ride although the sun was burning above the head, the water sprayed from the sides and impolitely slapping my face until it wet :)

Two boats were racing, they were ahead, we went pass them, they went pass us, again and again, at the end, we won. Another experience, we had to jump with fins on to the side of the boat, held on to the leg while the boatman threw the gear to us. We wore the gear in the water and it was tedious had Prass didn’t give me a hand. After we ready, we swam away from the boat, waited for the rest and dip in.

Seraya was considered as muck diving. Unlike PJ, Seraya was rockier, and the dive was superb! We found so many things, from Gorilla hairy crab to many types of macro, frogfish, shrimps, many types of nudibranches, rare spiky shrimp and even underwater tarantula. It indeed looked very similar to tarantula, with the same size. Prass held it up, then it ran across his arm, then jumped and ran again through the corals.

Different types of lion fish, many of them. We saw a lot of eels; honeycomb, white-eye, yellow, brown, they were almost everywhere, hunting or hiding behind the rock. The honeycomb (polkadot) was the biggest I’ve ever seen. It was huge! With the mouth opened and closed. Moray eels were maybe the scariest thing I saw in the Aquarium way back. It was ugly, scary and looked threatening. Indeed, most of them are quite harmless unless disturbed. But, I didn’t dare to stay too close with the huge polkadot one, I think it could swallow me easily and spit out my tank and jacket, then used my pointer to floss its teeth, the burped my mask out.

The nudibranches we saw was not one, but four, five, six, seven, whole group of family gather along. They hated each other or some were curled up as one bunch. There were many types we couldn’t identify, which I made as homework to find out later. But, I can’t use much Internet at the office; at home I had many things to do…bla…

Again, it was a busy and very rewarding dive, and then, some misfortune happened.
Prass was trying to find boxer crab for Frog and Cynthia, who missed the first one. I showed one cute nudibrach to Frog, when he tried to take its pictures; a yellow moray eel came out from the rock and bit his camera’s strobe. Nothing happened to us, but when Prass, in process of finding boxer crab, shoved his finger to lift the rock, the hiding moray eels bit his index finger and shook it like a dog tearing a cloth. None of us saw this, he said the moray never let go until he shook it away and he saw blood kept coming out from his finger. He then finned to Hubby and Frog, and let them know he had trouble and he had to surface first, so he finned to the shore.

It was almost the end of our dive, I didn’t know he was aborting, so at first, I was following him, then I realized he left earlier and slowed down. I was alone for a while until Hubby submerged from the blue and we surfaced together. Few minutes later, Cynthia and Froggie joined us.
The wound was quite deep and wide. Hey, I though moray eels are harmless…they said this yellow was an aggressive type.

We rest for a while in the island and went back by boat. One sixth of the journey, Prass realized he left his computer on the beach, so we turned back. I was praying all the way that he would find it. Being bitten and lost his watch, we would feel very guiltyyyy…..Lucky the villagers were honest, they told him they saw it still on the beach. He found it.

Went back for lunch, it was the most productive day of all; we still had two dives to go. It was quite exhausting but I liked the short surface intervals. We had delicious lunch and had a longer break.
Then we found the third dog. This dog was handsome, cute, and guess what…he jumped down to the ocean, swam and swam through a snorkeler in the middle of the ocean. It was super cute, Cynthia took the video while we watched the handsome dog. He then took one turn and swam back to the shore. After a while, it jumped and swam again. It was quite a distance.

I enjoyed the sky and the sea. I saw big crab hanging on the rock. The hotel was high up from the sea, about three meter high. Every once in a while, a bunch of divers would appear from the blue. Cynthia took pictures of scenery and apparently, me :). I went down to collect Tulamben rock, found the smallest I could get.

Gosh…this is indeed a long story…

Forth dive, we jumped down right in front of hotel. We were carried by the current right away. It was quite strong, we drifted about few minutes and stopped near a big hard coral with army… probably hundred and hundred of shrimps on it. It was everywhere. So we clung there, took pictures and found more things behind the soft corals and rock around.
We saw four spot with one or two blue ribbon moray eels each in this dive alone.
The most memorial thing from this forth dive, Paradise Reef was the anemone garden. It was everywhere and maybe every type of anemone. Nemos, from clown to clark anemone, black and white color, porcelain crabs, anemone shrimp, there were everywhere. The garden was dancing with fish swayed in and out. We float there, finished our air until the end. It was paradise, sooooo beautiful. Too bad I couldn’t find pictures that live up to it.

We surfaced from the same point of entry, again, ginger tea, tempe goreng and waited for the dark. We were going for night dive at Liberty.

It was full moon and the sea was calm. We prepared our salem stick and attached it to the tank. I got green one.
Again, we walked and jumped down.
The wreck looked more glorious and enormous in the dark. My torch was excellent, I could see far. Frog almost hit a stonefish and since that, we were more careful and shined every part we landed.
Prass showed us flash fish. So we had to put the torch on the chest or turn it off, inside one part of the ship, we saw dancing blue and green light, flash fish, many of them. We clung on one part of the ship and watched soundlessly. It was quiet and striking wonderful. After few moments, I looked around; everyone’s eyes were still glued to the sight.

Night dive was indeed different. Things we couldn’t see on the day came out at night. Two different type of huge Spanish dancer not far from each other were found. Prass tried to make one dance, but it was so fat and lazy that it preferred to sink effortlessly.
We also found lots of shrimp at one go, on different spot, they were all bright red. We were excited and informed each other every time we found something, turned out a lot of thing to be found. Red tiny soft coral crab, various types of shrimps etc, every corner, every part, every corals. The wreck was busier at night.

At the end of the dive, Frog pulled my fins and pointed at them. I saw lots and lots of green lights dancing around. Whoaaa, underwater firefly..,green color? I noticed they flew around Hubby’s fins too. A while, apparently everyone was suspicious. How come there were soooo many flash fish around us, even when our torches were on? Then Frog and Cynthia found out that my salem stick was broken.
We enjoyed the moment. Although it was artificial, mhehhehe, it was great to swim among the numerous green fireflies. Beauuutifulll. Prass even tried to break his yellow one.

It was a great one.
We walked back, tired and happy to the hotel.

When we were in Aneka Bagus, we felt the pain every time we showered, especially if we had wounds or cuts. Frog said, half joking, that it might because we were washed by the current, the electricity grew in us. I didn’t believe that, but I was electrified when I touched the tap, I couldn’t think of other possibility. It was not an illusion as I tried and tried again, and the electric shock was not mild, but enough to make my hair stand. So, I was electric loaded? Mhehhe…

We gathered for dinner, pineapple boat for Leo. Every night, four of them would join together their pictures in Leo’s laptop. Then if we were not tired, we would look at the pictures. That night, bunch of Mat Soleh (the way Sgprean call bule) joined us and watched our pictures, although actually, most of us were almost fell asleep, finally, we finished, they were planning to go PJ early in the morning, and Prass gave them the information.

I love that day.
Still had difficulty to sleep.


16th November, Wednesday, The Sixth Day
Destination : Kubu, Tulamben and Seraya

Dawn dive. Same story. They overslept so I was the one who did the morning call again. Six o’clock we hit the road and went to Kubu. About ten minutes? We geared up and again, shore dive.

Kubu was nice, but after all the fantastic dive, it was quite standard. We saw a lot of things, although not many new things, there was school of don’t know what fish, they were funny and shaped themselves as something else.
In this trip, we saw titan and many type of triggerfish almost everywhere. Having been attacked by this aggressive ugly fish before, we were quite traumatic everytime we saw one, especially titan, we would fin away. Prass noticed that, and even he taught us how to identify whether a triggerfish going to attack or not, we still preferred to fin away when we met one. I remembered I was almost chocked when a very very huge one swam under me, closed distance in split second. Leo said he saw the titan had been hiding behind the rock. Whoaaaa, it had been ambushing me…just to frighten me, had it been attacked, I would bring back scars as souvernir.

There were many hydrolytes and sea feather in Kubu. If we felt the water pinched us like thousands of needle, it might be the hydrolytes. Sea feathers would attach to the wetsuit and it would be hard to take them away. Sometime they clang on the arms or leg and part of them were left behind on us.

Goshhhh…this may be my longest post so farrrrr………

We planned to have three dives before lunch. Second dive, we went back to Liberty, never get enough of it. Skip the rest of the talk, we had videos…

Then there was a very interesting and priceless story.

Prass found another boxer crab, and put it in more sandy area. Five of us, except Leo, who was wandering elsewhere, were circling the crab to take a good look or pictures.
There was a small parrotfish nearby, we ignored it. Cynthia had taken one two shoots but Frog was still adjusting his focus, then he pulled his camera for a while to let the parrotfish swam by and then… it swam fast and swallowed the boxer crab.
I was shouting, No no no NOOOOO and everyone was doing the same thing. The parrotfish spat out the boxer in the air and with the look of glory it swallowed it again.

I could see Frog was cursing and swearing; all the bubbles were busy, panicked looks were exchanged and become uncontrollable laughers. We were bunch of cruel divers who brought the fate to the crab, it was sad, frustrating, but sorry, the funniest thing I’ve met. Prass shook his shoulder, Cynthia looked at me, I saw her eyes became a flat lines and the regulator was almost fell from her mouth from laughing, Frog made struggle movement and looked angrily at the parrotfish who was still showed off. He was the only one without a single shoot of boxer crab.

We spent one hour surface interval laughing.

Poor crab and too many things happened for it. Prass got bitten, one deceased…

Third dive, we went back to Seraya instead of Drop off, as we liked the dive there so much. It paid, we found another boxer, safe and sound!
And the magnificent beautiful Harlequin Shrimp…There were lots of other thing, pink and yellow sea horse, school of puffer (this species hardly come in school, so it was cuteeee) and many other things I either forget (I wrote it in my logbook) or unidentified.

To cut a long story short. We washed up, had lunch and ready for next destination : Padang Bai.

Being Superman (Safari Part Four)

Continue from Part Three, on 16th November, Wednesday, we did three dives at Kubu, Tulamben and Seraya.
We washed up and had lunch.

There was one story I forgot that happened in Seraya. Hubby and me were following a hunting white-eyed moray eel. It swam from rock to rock trying to catch its prey. I thought moray eels only hunt at night (?), in Seraya, we saw many of them, hiding or hunting.
So, this white-eyed was apparently not a good hunter, after following it for a while, it still didn’t found its lunch.
At one time, it hid inside a rock, which was a home for a blue yellow small fish. This blue yellow fish was quite selon, it was small, petite, but had gut as big as its house. It was pissed off with the visitor, and used its backside to hit the moray eel on the face. Then it blocked the entrance (with moray hidden inside), and shook its body as if shaking its butt to make fun of the enemy. It was hilarious, but I was worried that the crazy fish would become a lunch menu.
Lucky, Mhahhahaha, seemed like the moray was chickened out after being slapped with backside again and again, so it left the rock.

After lunch, we checked out and had one hour plus journey (?) to Padang Bai. Everyone was asleep, I saw the paddy scenery again, this time we climbed the hill, it was hot in the car. Before we reached, I gave up and fell into rocky dream.

Padang Bai was the first place we saw with a little bit of civilization. Finally, we saw warung, coffee shop and restaurant, although it was only one road. Surround us was the sea and fountain. Medium ship, big ship, and bigger version of jukung was everywhere on the shore. Children were playing around and swimming freely in the sea, we saw lady villagers carried big bucket of fish on their head, they just came back from fishing.

We stopped at ADA branch, Absolute, it was the biggest dive shop I’ve seen, complete with kitchen and dining area. After filling up the form, we went out, sat at bale-bale in front of the sea, Hubby and Frog bought Ketoprak from gerobak. Hehehhe… We walked around, shopped for tidbits at warung, Cynthia was having fun taking pictures of children.



We heard the children cheering and asking for more. I found a cute and friendly dog that was standing in front of a gate to nowhere.

After chatting and walking, we decided to fresh up in the room. The rooms were beautiful, especially after we stayed at Tulamben. It was nicely designed and homy. Five of us acted like half crazy. When ADA girl showed us the room, we were so happy and norak, cheering and clapping. Frog and Leo had the biggest room, Leo had super single while Frog had double bed. The room was equipped with bathtub, hair drier (!), DVD player and collection, and balcony. We decided to bath and met up for dinner.
We had dinner in the second story open-air restaurant. The price was cheaper and the mango juice was yummy. There were mostly Mat Soleh everywhere, but we were still the loudest. After dinner, we gathered at Leo-Frog’s room, as usual, watched video from Tulamben.

From balcony, we saw the Fire Show from a pub near the beach, but we didn’t go there. We planned to watch DVD, but felt very sleepy and decided to go back to the room and slept.


17th November, Thursday, The Seventh Day
Destination : Padang Bai


Time flies.

We realized that the holiday was almost ended. Frog always whistled and sang ‘I’m leaving on the jet plane’, the soundtrack we brought back from Sipadan. Eight o’clock, we walked to the beach and took jukung, the bigger version that was spacious and could accommodate all of us with Martha.

From Menjangan to Puri Jati, Christian was helping Prass and was the sweeper for the group. Tulamben, Prass was on his own, and Martha was here to accompany us in Padang Bai. Martha is a male :), it’s a Balinese name.

First dive, Gili Biaha.

When I did my research before, I read about Toilet Flush current that would suck and pull divers in toilet flush motion. I was horrified thinking that we might experience that, but after few days, I forgot about it until that day.

I saw Prass holding a map, and around that there were point showing Toilet Flush current. He briefed us about the site. We would backroll from the boat at the same time to prevent any of us being carried away while waiting, and swim to the reef, but not too near, as the current could thrash us to the rock. Then, we would descent and enter a cave full of shark and lobster. The safety stop (for safety, we need to spend three to five minutes in the depth of 3-6m to discard the nitrogen in our body) would be done in the open sea, so we had to swim to the blue and hang out there. Prass reminded us to watch the dive computer, to avoid getting penalty and ended up stay longer in the blue or open sea, as it was not a safe area. When we entered the cave, it would be normal if we felt thumping in our heart as the pressure would be…bla..bla.. We had to avoid what and what direction as we wouldn’t want to hit the Toilet Flush.

Everyone, especially me, was quite worried to hear the serious briefing and condition, seemed like this dive was not for fun or fooling around. We had to carry torchlights as the cave was very dark. So, six of us, geared up and sat on the edge of the boat together. It was a first experience that we had to go down together, not one by one. On the count, we backrolled, swam together and descended.

And it was the first time we encountered such a cold water! We had been pampered by other warm dive sites and I had discarded my 3mm, so now, it was about Bali reputation: cold water diving. It was sooo cold that I started to shiver, lucky the hood I had been wearing since Tulamben made my head warm.
We went down and Prass led the way to the cave. It was my first encounter with serious cave, and I had a not so good feeling entering that. Although the cave was shallow, I had this deep-water feeling, like Prass said, thumping heart and I needed to equalize my ears continuously.

There were whitetip sharks everywhere in the cave, although they were quite small, I didn’t really like to interrupt them, especially that I might misplace my fin and disturbed them. From the edge, the corner and rock folding, actually everywhere, there were huge lobsters.
The water inside the cave was warm; I hung around the bottom with Martha and waited for others to take photographs. Leo knocked his head to the cave ceiling, so he went down to Martha and me. Hubby was also hanging low and took pictures around, while Cynthia, Froggie and Prass were cramped near the ceiling.
About ten minutes or more, we went out and greeted by the freezing water. A lion fish with the beautiful fins was floating calmly on the cave entrance, waiting for someone to bump into him and being stung. What a welcome.

We headed to the reef wall, and found a lot of nudibraches. When we float near to the wall, Hubby saw huge black tentacles crawling on his side and turned out to be a big octopus. It walked on the wall, when it reached my side; it hid inside the rock. We found many of that; I saw one peeping from the rock below me. They were huge and mysterious, brrr..

It was time to do safety stop, so we swam to and hung around in open sea. Leo and Martha had surfaced first, then Frog, Cynthia and Prass. When me and Hubby swam to the boat, there was a current that brought me down below six meter and my computer gave me penalty to spend another three minutes. So I just floated near the boat so the rest would know I was around, and saw one by one climbed up. It was quite lonely down there; lucky I didn’t experience any more current and other things.

On the boat, we had tea break and snack. Most of us were shivering and had blue lips. Me and Cynthia were the worst, we wore 0.5mm while the rest wore 3 and 5 mm. Second dive, we went to Shark Point.
The sea was choppy; the current brought the boat up and down, I felt a little bit sick although I had drank two pills. We stayed there for a while, observing the possibility to dive there. The sea was getting more choppy, and Prass decided to change to another dive site. It was the first time I felt lazy to dive, seeing the sea condition.

We moved to Tepekong, another dive site, and did the descending together again. It was colder than the first. For the first ten minutes, I though of aborting the dive as I was shivering. After a while, it was more bearable. We entered a narrow tunnel which cut through the whole reef one by one. It was nice and I felt better than being in the cave. We saw giant octopuses again, clown triggerfish, nudibranches and other reef fish.

Hubby surfaced with Martha earlier as he was low on air. So five of us went to another cave with a lot of whitetip sharks. I was having problem with my ears, it felt painful although I kept equalizing them. That was why I stayed shallower than the rest and watched the sharks from above. After that, we did the safety stop in the blue again and surfaced.

We went back to Absolute to have lunch. I took my 3mm suit and threw the 0.5mm in the room. Having been diving for quite long, Hubby’s and my ankles were full with cut caused by fining, so it was painful to fin and even to wear wetsuit and booties. Cynthia’s legs were full with blue-black mark caused by falling on Tulamben rock or bumping at the corals.
After lunch, we went for the third dive nearby at Blue Lagoon. It was a sandy bottom with few big corals. We found quite a lot of things there. Black Frogfish, White and Brown leaf fish. The curly pig tail soft coral with lots of pinky and beautiful shrimps. We hung out around the big rock for quite some time, then we moved to the sandy beach.

Without any warning, the current suddenly became quite strong. Because of sandy bottom, it was hard to find rocks to hold on. When I found one, usually it was not big enough to hold me. So, it was like a game. I finned to a rock, hang there for a while, person in front or behind was also holding on a rock. Then we switched, Hubby, who was in front of me, moved to another rock, I had to let go my current one, finned to grab the next. It was like underwater rock climbing. If I failed to reach the next, I might be carried away. It was bloody tiring, painful on fingertips and we wasted a lot of air from breathing heavily.

At one point, Frog, Cynthia and Martha were behind me. Prass and Leo were in front, then Hubby, then me. We had been holding for quite some time, the current was too strong to fight and we were tired. Frog said at that point he saw bubbles below him, which was puzzling as all of us were in front of him, and bubbles should be blown to the top. After a while, I saw Prass, Leo and Hubby let go of the rock and start fining to the same direction with the current. I let go mine, and for few seconds, I didn’t know what happen, a very strong blew was pushing me up. I saw everyone was up too, I held on someone nearby, apparently it was Froggy. As we already brought up to five meters, we started to do safety stop. Then Prass was banging his tank continuously, he gave us the signal, cross and safety stop. He tried to pull me up, then let go when I showed him that my computer said that I hit ceiling, I needed to stay on that depth.
So he pulled Hubby, maybe Frog and Cynthia up. Leo signaled me to buddy temporary with him, we did the safety stop. For a while, Leo was brought down again by the current to ten meters depth, I stayed with him longer and signaled him that I needed to go up too. He followed few minutes later with Martha.

We found out that we had been hit by down current. It was a dangerous situation, which the current might suck us down up to thirty-forty meter depth. So Prass was panicking and pulling us one by one, and asking to abandon the safety stop, which we didn’t really understand. Whew…. It was a crazy and exhausting dive. Lucky we were all right and didn’t really suck down as we surfaced on time.

We went back to the shop, cold and tired. The dives were good but challenging. We were supposed to have night dive in the same place, Blue Lagoon, but thinking about the water temperature, choppy sea and the down current, four of us except Cynthia aborted the dive. Chicken out…chicken..chicken… mhehehehhe.. Anyway, my ankles were getting more and more painful for the new cuts from crazy finning. Cynthia wanted to go back because she didn’t capture the Frogfish well.
So, we chatted for about half an hour, recalling our crazy experience, and then four of us resigned to the room while Cynthia and Prass were getting ready for the night dive. Prass borrowed my torch and Cynthia borrowed Frog’s. After shower, everyone was asleep except me. I watched DVD until eight o’clock and my stomach started to scream like crazy.

I found out Frog and Leo had waken up, and Cynthia just came back, she asked for ten minutes to shower before we gathered for lunch. We met downstair, she showed us her pictures. She had a great dive. Huge lobsters, snails, the same Frogfish, coral cat shark and many other things I don’t remember. We were quite envious but not enough to regret that we were sleeping in warm bed instead of dipping in cold water.
We went to the same restaurant, this time we treated Prass. He was already like old friend and he has the similar sense of humor, and he got used to us. So, we chatted, joked and laughed like mad until the restaurant closed. I think the amount of laugh when spending one week with this group defeated all the laughter I had in half a year without them. .


18th November, Friday, The Eighth Day
Destination: Nusa Penida


Huaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa….
Last diving day. Soooooo fast….
First dive, we went to Manta Point.
This time we chartered a bigger and faster boat. The boatmen wore kelasi uniform, Donald Duck style (with pants of course). It was cute, I asked them where could I buy the clothes, turned out they ordered it especially.. :”(
Manta Point was about forty five minutes ride. The sea was crazier, the boat bumped far up and down, it was as bad as taking a small speedboat, or worse. Anyway, it was end of year, entering rainy season. After being rocked up and down, we finally reached the dive site.

It was the first time I went down and waited. So we were just fooling around. The visibility was not so good. Ten minutes, suddenly I heard Frog sounded his horn; I looked back and saw Hubby was going up. Prass reached him, so I didn’t. He signaled us to wait while they came back to the boat. Frog told us that the O-ring on Hubby’s tank had burst, then it was leaking heavily.
We waited and waited, finally they came back again. They we slowly finned and we saw it. There was one, only one Manta submerged from the blue. It was quite far from us. It was my first encounter with manta ray. It was such a posh and glorious creature with the wide wingspan and beautiful shape. It swam for a while and disappeared to the blue.

I was slowly fining beside a huge rock and all of a sudden, a huge fierce looking yellow shark came from behind the rock and quickly swam toward me. It was quite surprising and made my adrenalin level jumped up, I kept calm and bang my tank to let everyone know so they could take picture. It looked too long for leopard and too fierce for nurse shark and a bit like cat shark. Confusing, but I couldn’t forget the look on its eyes. It was fierce, cold, white, almost yellow and it looked straight to ours. Eww..…
We met another group of divers and watched them, since there was no other manta around. A lady diver was sinking, struggling and banging herself to the rock although there was nothing on her way and no slight current. Later we went up, Prass told us the water was too warm for other manta to come.

We went to other dive spots for Sunfish, Mola-mola. We stopped above the dive spot (can’t remember) and had tea break. It started to rain. We took turn to feel the cold water by standing on the boat ladder (actually we were….).
The water was getting more and more choppy, then Prass decided to switch to another spot. The other spot was also very choppy, so we abandoned it and went to another point. We couldn’t visit mola-mola site as expected. Actually the last two day was like bonuses for us, as we were very satisfied with the trip and anything else we could see would be bonus.

So, in SD point (it was named after a primary school SD) on the small island nearby(), we geared up.

Prass said,” Finally, here, the current is easy and mild. The sea looks calm.”

Then he jumped down, we followed one by one. When it was my turned, I saw the guys were clinging on the rope and swept to the left and right like mad.

“Sorry guys…! I was wrong, the current is strooong!” Prass shouted, nyengir kuda.

I jumped down and held on to the rope, when Cynthia, the last, had jumped down, we descended.

IT WAS A MAD RIDE!

As soon as we went down, we were swept like crazy. It was unlike everything we had encountered before, this time we were really hopeless and carried away like superman. I was behind Leo, he was facing me, I saw him carried away to the big coral. I didn’t have a chance to warn him, but Frog, who was behind him, had. He pointed to Leo back, then Leo turned around and BANG.
At that point, I was carried through them already. Otherwise, it would be comical to see Leo banged face first to the coral. I think Frog did more damage than help. Mahahhahha…

But I didn’t have time to laugh, I made myself negative so I wouldn’t float up and carried away. On the other hand, I was a little bit too deep and had to touch rocks occasionally to bump myself up. So, it was like my jumping point while flying like superman. It was exhausting and crazy for the first few minutes as we hadn’t controlled ourselves well.
I was carried too fast once, one time Prass was waiting on my right, so I could bump to him and slowed down for a while. While I finally bumped, both of us turned to the right and saw Cynthia was flying through us, faster and deeper. After I told him I could manage, he left me and chased Cynthia.
Busy busy busy for him being a very responsible DM.

When we gained control, it was fun. Very very fun being Superman. We didn’t need to move and enjoyed the roller coaster ride. We were swept away about 800 meters or more away from the boat. When we reached calmer area, we still didn’t want to move a muscle, being pampered. There was a very nice soft coral garden. The soft corals were smooth, unlike the ones with nemos. These ones wouldn’t felt rough or stuck on the gloves. So, we played around with the beautiful landscape. Prass found a big sea snake inside corals. Oops..

It was a great and wild ride.
We couldn’t stop talking and laughing about it on the boat. We felt like we had encountered almost everything new in Bali, from great to crazy, usual and unusual.
We had lunch on the boat. The boatmen jumped to the sea and swam, topless.
We looked at them and brrrrr…they really could stand the cold maaaan…

Third dive, hiks….last dive.

For the closure, we went for another dive point, calm and good one. Soft coral garden, my favorite, for closure. We had improved, many of the dives, except these last two days, we managed to dive very long, although we went quite deep.
For Tulamben, every dive was at least seventy minutes. As usual, last dive of the trip; we would hang around until we really had to surface. We went back to Absolute, sadly looking at the sea and the gears.
Holiday was almost over…average; we did 23 out of 24 dives.

We took shower, said goodbye to friendly people in Absolute and took car ride again to ADA center in Sanur. We needed to pay them (We hadn’t pay a single cent) and spent the last two holidays in Kuta.


Civilization…!

The Closure (Safari Part Five)

We left Absolute Padang Bai on afternoon.
From the beginning there were two cars following us.
One car consists of tanks and instructor’s gears. Our van consists of Pras, our gears and us. The van was spacious and had wide leg room, and we could lower the back of the seats so it was comfortable to sleep, since safari in Bali involved a lot of traveling, dry or wet, hot or cold.
We entered Sanur area in less than an hour, we did last hour shopping, bought tidbits and drinks. In Sanur, we went to ADA Center and did the payment.

My thick travel pouch consists of rupiah became thin in few minutes. From feeling rich we suddenly worried about whether we had enough money for the last two days. We had quite a long chat with Butet, Pras, Christian who was there, Martha, Aris the driver and one person I couldn’t remember his name…
After the entire logbook chopping ‘Yay’ Aris drove us to Oasis Kuta Hotel, we had two hours to freshen up before dinner.

The Oasis was Leo’s choice, it’s located near Kuta beach, and surprisingly only few building away from Kuta Beach Club, the hotel me and Hubby stayed on our previous trip. So, we were busy washing gears, and found strategic place to dry them. The hotel main finish was made of stone. It was nicely arranged and spacious, we entered the room from small corridor, but we could slide the back door all the way and face the 50m swimming pool. We had two outdoor bale-bale to lie on but we used it to dry the wetsuit. We used the back door (which looked more like front) all the time. There was also a day bed and big empty area beside the cabinet for us to put our Bcd etc to dry up. It was a nice and beautiful hotel.

After washing gears and taking shower, at 7.30 pm, Aris came and we hit the road. We had this complimentary farewell dinner in Jimbaran. After one of the bombs in October hit this area, me and Hubby asked friends whether they were still keen to have dinner there, they didn’t mind at all.

We reached Jimbaran before Prass and Butet. It was a really nice place. The dining area was set out on the seashore, with open sky and sound of the ocean. I sat facing the sea, on my left all the way that I could see there were similar concept of restaurant, on my right was the same thing ended with Kuta airport, so once in a while we could see planes landed.

I was thinking about some people walked in heartlessly and blew up the happiness around, ******.

There were groups of singer; they went from table to table. Just like last time when I visited Yogyakarta, they had complete band with drum, bass, even saxophone, they sang good music and helped create the nice ambience. Soon the uneasiness I felt was lifted up.
Our food came first, just before Prass and Butet walked in. After their food was ready, we started to dig in. Our turn with the band, we requested for our soundtrack song.

Huaaaaaaa…

We chatted, laughed and laughed like crazy about our one-week diving experience. There were many many funny and embarrassing personal moments and experience which is not relevant to be told here.

Looked around and I saw happy and tan, dark brown faces including mine and how comfortable it was to sit between friends who went thick and thin together. This was the same group who shared the same fear and worries when we were stuck in the middle of nowhere on midnight with broken down car on our previous trip, who slept in the same bunk and cramp together on weekend trips or spent hours chatting until midnight in town, our house or their house. We got it all. Happy faces, golden tan and priceless pictures. Hmmmmmmmmmmm…. :)

As usual, we spent every minute until the restaurant was almost closed. We said goodbye to Pras and Butet, went back to hotel and passed out.



19th November, Saturday, The Ninth day
Kuta Bali


The habit of waking up early still intact, we gathered for breakfast at hotel lobby on eight. We started to feel Bali’s hot weather. After breakfast, we opened our room for gathering while waiting for Leo for business.

Then we went out around Kuta, we saw shops, malls, whoaaaa, civilization..! The weather was so hot that we bought ‘sate’ fan while Leo brought the nice classic purple flowery one, he ignored all the picking and laugh from us. We went in shop to shop for air con, stopped for Hagen Daaz, and ended up in McDonald. McDonald has rice and soup! We passed by the other bombing site and chatted with the Balinese there about that crazy day. Raja restaurant looked sad and abandoned, but the environments around were still happening.
Hopefully they will fully recover soon.

We needed to get ready because Aris would pick us up at one for shopping.
With Aris, we went to Sukawati, the traditional market, for clothing and souvenirs. We suggested the place when they said they wanted to shop, we took almost one hour ride. Me and Hubby rented a car three years back and we didn’t realize it took that long to go there.

It was thirty-seven Celsius degree!

We thought we would never survive the weather. It was either too hot or too cold in Bali for this trip. We bought steamed peanut, Hubby, Cynthia and Froggie loved it too. We spent some time shopping, the guys brought pants and shirt, while Cynthia and me brought nothing, we were too busy fanning.
We made a few stop to a few shopping centers along the way. Although mostly Balinese are Hindus, the Christmas ambient was everywhere to be felt, heard and seen. Niceeeeee…

Around five, Aris dropped us at the hotel. We went to restaurant next to it; we refreshed ourselves with drinks and cold towels, and for Leo, pineapple boat of course.
After that, we went for a shopping around again, bought drinks and snack for party tonight and few DVDs…, mhehhe..

When we reached hotel, left everything in the room and ran to the swimming pool. It was soooo nice to be in the pool after that hot crazy day. Leo went for massage while four of us were playing in the pool. I realized that I couldn’t even swim properly and couldn’t even finish one lap! I really need to learn..
We played water gun with hands, laughed like crazy. We were more childish than a bunch of children and a bunch of teenagers who were in the pool also. We chased, ran, sprayed, had water war and we were so noisy. Lucky nobody complained, maybe they would complain to ADA…kekekke…not our problem. Because we never brought goggles, we used mask by folding the nose part.
Leo came back and joined us; he didn’t swim, but chatted with us. When he came, our voice and jokes were getting louder and louder and became not suitable for children.
We went out for dinner in the same restaurant, it was visibly quieter in Kuta compared to our last visit.
After dinner, we then gathered at Cynthia’s room for party.

Last nighhhtttt…

Leo brought liquor from airport and did some mix as the bartender. We watched DVD from Cynthia’s laptop and enjoyed the snack.
Around midnight, all of us were so sleepy and went back to room.


20th November, Sunday, Last Day
Closure


We had looooooong breakfast, continued with packing. We gathered at Leo-Frog’s room and waited for Aris to come and send us to airport. Frog counted down ‘We have three hours left in Bali’ 'We have one our forty minutes left..’ etc etc.., then sang or laughed like Scooby-Doo.

I thought this trip was going to be quieter with only five of us, but I was completely wrong. Frog and Leo are two jokers and five of us make it even worse.
On midday, Aris and Pras sent us to airport. We had a long goodbye conversation until the porters disappeared with the bags. So we said the real goodbye in a rush while running after the porters. Had lunch and went for duty-free shopping, we were the last to enter the plane. It was raining hard, lucky we didn’t experience any rain at all except the last day dive and it was a mild one.
Now, because of heavy rain, we experienced a lot of turbulences in the air.
When we flew Sgp-Bali, the passengers were never sleep, including us. They were playing, chatting, laughing. The plane back consisted of people went back to work, so everyone was sleeping and very quiet.

So, it was over for now…. :)

I feel relieved that finally I finish writing this journey.., these two days I reserved myself to finish before I’m getting lazier.

Although there are many things I forget to write in, more or less, this is the story..