A boring day spent catching up with my blog writing, suitcase packing and photo sorting. I wish I could make it more interesting for you (and me!!)!! I did a lot of reading about Thailand and have found a spa at Chiang Mai Women’s Prison, where you get treatments from inmates within 6 months of their release dates and a temple where you can go and talk to the monks to improve their English and learn about Buddism. Both sound great to me!! Lol!! It turns out I have a day spare in KL so I am hoping to get to [View Full Entry]

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A morning of shopping, and the final London Friends episodes, before heading off to get my flight back to Bali. I chose the sensible option in the end and booked a taxi (or taksi as they are called here) through the hotel. When I got to the airport and saw the enormous check in queue, I was glad that I had checked in online. What I hadn’t remembered was the 150K departure tax and I frowned as I realized I only had 77k! The emergency Malaysian Ringitts paid their dues once more and I was on my way! Once in Singapore, [View Full Entry]

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Last night, the guys at the dive school tried very hard to make me stay and do my Rescue Course at Blue Marlin. The course is definitely something I want to do, but I had made plans in Bali already and I have my filght back to Singapore booked too. I spent a mad morning running around taking photos as I had hardly taken any in my time here. My speedboat crossing to Bali was at 11.30 so after a string of goodbyes (and photos of the hunky instructors as promised! ;-) ) I left my faourite place so far with [View Full Entry]

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My glands are still up so no diving this morning. Grrrr. Alex is also suffering from an ear infection that will stop him diving for 2 weeks. He and Kasper have decided to leave tomorrow on the boat trip to Flores and Komodo to hunt dragons (by camera of course). The trip is 4 days there on a boat which does not sound ideal to me even if Flores and Komodo do sound amazing. Regardless, I am constricted by time and would not be able to go anyway. A day spend hanging around in the pool and on the beach again. [View Full Entry]

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Kate had a new group in today so we had to do our dive at 9am. Good job I didn't go to the party after all! We headed out to Shark Point to do the Underwater Naturalist course which is basically a treasure hunt of fish and coral. I had a slate with loads of fish and coral on and had to point out the things around us and identify them. The current was so strong down at 22m that at one point Kate and I had to hold on to the coral to stop ourselves being dragged away and over [View Full Entry]

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Up early to say goodbye to Kasper and get ready for my 3 dives. The first was my Deep Dive and we went down to 30m! The water was still 28 degrees, just like at the surface, and the light here travels that far so you can still see perfectly!! We saw turtles - they are everywhere and so many beautiful fish and corals. The deeper you go, the more at risk you are of Nitrogen Narcosis - you have too much nitrogen in your body - where start to feel like you are drunk and happy or get paranoid. People [View Full Entry]

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After all the excitement and running (diving) around over the last few days, I took a well deserved day off! I spent a lot of it in the pool and on the beach just chilling out and deciding whether or not to complete my Advanced course. The answer was always going to be yes!! The glands in my throat were really swollen on one side, which generally means don't dive. :-( I hoped they would be better tomorrow so I could start my course with Alex. Nina and Mathieu, and Ben and Aurelie both left today, but we have all exchanged [View Full Entry]

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Two dives today. Just as amazing and knackering as the last few days although now I am a certified Open Water Diver and can dive to 18m!!! Unreal! I wanted to do this course because I wanted to rid myself of my fear of the open water. I am now not at all scared underwater and in fact I LOVE it!! Unfortunately, I am not so good at the surface. I had a bit of a stress today. We had to do a compass navigation exercise at the surface but the water was really choppy and I kept losing sight of [View Full Entry]

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More pool skills in the morning and another open water dive in the afternoon. We had to do skills on the ocean floor for a while and then went off to explore. Today was even better (minus the shark!) as I wasn't desperately trying to remember everything all the time and could appreciate the fish. We saw a turtle quite happily swimming around, just like on Nemo!! It was fab!! We did our final tests and exam and I passed!!! Just the 2 dives tomorrow and I am certified!!! I still felt rough from the dives so stayed in with cheesy [View Full Entry]

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Back to the dive centre at 9 to start our formal training. Our instructor is a Londoner called Adam who is a great laugh and has told us where to go out on the island. ;-) We started in the classroom (a table on the beachfront!) and talked through some of the principles we had watched in the video and then it was wetsuits on and into the pool. This was a very bizarre experience and we learned how to do skills like setting up our equipment, take off our mask and replace it and get around underwater. the first tie [View Full Entry]

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