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Published: November 30th 2015
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I left Ubud and headed down to Sanur for a few days. Mom and Dad were on a cruise for 12 days and their first stop was in Bali! We had arranged to meet up and spend a day together. So I coordinated a private car for the day and picked them up at the cruise ship terminal.
We drove to see Uluwatu which is a big temple on some high cliffs overlooking the Indian ocean. It was an incredible view and we took some beautiful pictures. Next we stopped in at Jimbaran beach where we relaxed on some nice beach chairs with a few beers for the afternoon - and tested the waves! The water was a great temperature but the waves were pretty strong. Still a nice time, and I managed to fill my bathing suit with sand - took me a few days to work it all out of the fabric!
Then we had the driver take us to Kuta Beach for sunset. We strolled on the beach, had a quick bite at a small local warung where I got mom and dad to sample some Indonesian food (a very successful endeavoring I may say so),
then we watched the sunset. We were approached by some English students from java - not the same ones I met in java luckily - and we had some English practice on the beach! It had been a pretty hot and tiring day so the driver dropped us all off around 8. I went for a late dinner and beer with an Australian girl from my hostel before crashing for the night.
The next day I took a ferry to Nusa Lembongan which is a small island off the east coast of Sanur beach. It was a quick ride to the island which is pretty small and almost only has motorbikes on it (with a few cars). Once I dropped my stuff off at the guesthouse I went to the dive shop and got all organized to do my advanced open water dive certification over the next two days. I was given a coursework to read through and some homework to do for the next morning.
I did 5 dives over two days and completed my certification! I did a drift dive, deep dive (down to 30m), photography dive, navigation dive and a specialty dive that focuses on
improving performance buoyancy which helps extend dive times and oxygen use. The buoyancy dive was the first one we did and it definitely helped when I did the other dives after.
The dive sites were so amazing and I was lucky to take lots of photos (all on a memory card so inaccessible right now) but we swam with several mantra rays which in my opinion was the highlight. We also saw an eagle ray, a sea turtle, a sea snake, lots of nudibranchs, and a bazillion types of fish. The water had great visibility and I was thrilled with all the dive locations, the instructor and everything. I pretty much had one instructor to myself for the two days and she was great, she gave me lots of good feedback and things to work on for future dives.
All in, the experience on Nusa Lembongan was great, except that I had rented a scooter for an afternoon after diving one day and blitzed all over the island (super awesome time!) but lost my phone at some point and when I went back to the area I knew I had lost it - it was gone. An iPhone
is a pretty hot commodity here, even an old one apparently so I'm sure someone grabbed it. Luckily all my pictures were backed up for the most part (just lost my pictures from the last few days since Ubud) so it could have been much worse!
This morning I took a ferry back from the island to stay in Kuta Beach for two days of relaxing, having lots of beer, buying a new phone (lol) and getting laundry done before I say goodbye to Bali and hello to the Philippines on Wednesday!
Edit: apologies for the poor photos, some were screen captures from my Instagram photos that I've since lost!
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Deb
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Scuba-baby
Atta go girl! Great to see you in the water... you're such a fish! Nice to get your advanced scuba taken care of while there. Too bad on the iPhone but I imagine they are cheaper there? Maybe... maybe not!?! Also awesome to see the parental units hook up with you. I was thinking how cool it would have been for you to grab a hug from them. Still missing you but enjoying living vicariously through your adventures. Stay safe. Love and hugs. Xoox