Diving, Drinking, Fishing, Snorkelling

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Hi all, here is the second installment of our travel adventures.

So I think I mentioned in the last blog that we moved to a new Chalet called the Bintang View. It's set higher up away from the beach, so it's quieter and shadier, and it's lovely and clean. It's run by an Irishwoman and her husband, Finola and Joe. I think the second night we were there we just happened to be in the kitchen at dinnertime, so we ended up sharing our beers with Finola, and they shared their dinner with us. Joe is a great cook, and Finola used to be a chef in London, so what a great place for us to be! By the end of the night we had agreed that we would cook them a risotto before we left. It's become a bit of a regular thing, every second night Finola twists our arm for beers. It's the only thing on the island that really costs any money though.

We went for a dive I think around the second day we were here. It was my first dive in a year, and I was pretty hopeless. I wasn't weighted properly, so I couldn't descend properly, and once I had used my air I just popped up to the surface, and they were all below wondering where I had gone. Not cool. So I didnt dive for a couple of days after that. I did a snorkelling trip with the Joe, and some others from the chalet instead. They all thought I must have been allergic to the sun, because I kept getting back into the boat and the shade. Met some great people on the snorkelling trip, who were to become our buddies for the next few days. Patrick refused to go snorkelling because he's a 'diver'.

The chalet also runs fishing trips, and we missed the first one, but we happened to be in the kitchen again at dinnertime and share the spoils of the catch. Once again Joe cooked up a feast. There were about 10 of us for dinner, most of whom had been travelling for a while. When we asked what their highlights had been, they agreed that this island was pretty special. I think we were lucky, we found a great place to stay, with some lovely people.

The other couple we have spent alot of time with are Ivan and Stephen from Canada. We call Stephen the 'toilet monitor', as their chalet was just outside the toilets and he was always up at some ungodly hour, so used to see us all traipsing up each morning, half asleep to use the toilets. He was very worried one morning as he hadn't seen me, I had slept in and had to sun straight down to diving....We have their details and hope to go and visit them in Vancouver as part of aour trip.

Anyway, to bribe Patrick into letting me stay longer on the island, I agreed to do my Advanced Diving course. This has taken up the last 3 days for me, first dive at 8.30am, second at 1pm. The first day we did our Deep Dive and our Wreck Dive. the currents were both so strong on these dives, I was absolutely exhausted. The next day we did Peak Performance Buoyancy. I was doing my course with 2 other boys, and as part of the excercise you run a race under water. I was so determined not to let the boys beat me......I did win, the instructor was laughing so much at the expression on my face. I did Fish Identification and Navigation yesterday, so i'm now a fully qualified Advance Diver.

Patrick has now read 2 books and is onto this third. I only just finished 1 more, but I had my diving textbook to read. It was funny, each night we would be hanging for beers with the boys and Finola, and I would have to sneak off and study. Needless to say, late at night, after beers, my answers to the knowledge reviews were hardly legible.

We went fishing after one of my dives. The boys, Finola, Joe, Patrick and I and a Swedish couple. It was so much fun. There were competitions to see who could catch the biggest and who could catch the most. Joe of course caught the biggest, 2 massive fish, whilst ours were only tiny. We brought them all back to the beach and all had our photo taken holding up Joe's fish....like we caught them. The Joe barbequed them all up for us, and made a special Malaysian sauce to go with it.. Yum.

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