Amed – july 15/11
Diving Bali day 1!!
6am and I was up and getting ready for my first day of diving in Amed. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be sure if I was actually on time since I couldn’t figure out what time it was in the first place. My dive computer said one time, the clock on the wall in the restaurant said another, my cell phone said another and the guy at the next table told me a different time. Put them all together and there was a good hours different from time telling device A and time telling device D. So I took the Olympic Figure Skating marking approach. Threw out the high and the low score then divided the remaining. Seemed to work well and I managed to finish my breakfast and get to the dive shop on time…Bali time that is. I quickly found out that this didn’t really matter since Tommy Wilcox the Kiwi who was supposed to be diving with me showed up an entire hour late, then spent 20mins faffing about so our 8am dive didn’t actually get out of the dive shop until past 9am.
Our first dive was at Bunutan which is a 15 minute boat ride from Jemeluk where I am staying. Now I am using the term “boat” liberally here since we were actually diving out of a traditional Amed fishing boat called a Jukung which is about the width is wide enough to only fit your feet so you have to sit on the edge of the boat with your butt hanging precariously off the edge while it sputters and spats along the coastline. Because the boat is so small you have to kit up in the water which is also a bit of an ordeal if you’ve never done it before. Luckily for me I had a short one day crash course last year and looked the real expert next to “tardy Tommy”. After a few hiccups were in in the water and cruising along the black volcanic sands. I remember leaving Amed last year thinking that it was some of the best diving I had ever done and I wasn’t disappointed today. I have to say that if you are diver, Amed is a must. Hands down still #1. Beats the Similans, beats the Gilis and understandably, beats Koh Tao…(but I still love you K.Tao!). Dive #1 was full of firsts: My first encounter with ribbon eels, massive fields of meter long garden eels, honeycomb morays big enough to fill a bathtub, giant swirling “balls” of giant trevallies, and finally, FINALLY I actually managed to see a pigmy seahorse. On too many occasions in the past I have had a dive guide point them out and in order to not look like a total gomer I have cooed into my regulator and given the always cool “gnarly find” hand signal to indicate that I saw them….but in actuality I’ve always been too blind to see even when the guide practically has his finger right on it. Now in my defense if you don’t know what a pigmy seahorse looks like…it looks like a regular seahorse but it’s less than a centimeter long and looks EXACTLY like the fan coral it Has attached itself to. Not a terribly thrilling creature (as seahorses tend to be a bit boring) but I did get a splash of glee from finally being able to see one.
After successfully surfacing, de-kiting in the water and mounting into the boat like a beached whale attempting to look graceful, we returned to the dive center for a surface interval and a good bake/nap in the scorching sun. Dive #2 was a shore dive at a small shipwreck about a 15min drive away called “the Japanese Shipwreck” - very original indeed. When asked what the story behind the wreck was, the guide looked quizzical for a moment as he clearly attempted to make up a plausible story but coming up with nothing, shrugged his shoulders and said “no idea, let’s go diving”. The wreck was unremarkable but the corals and fish surrounding it were lovely. The gomer of the day award went to some idiot who was diving solo at 20 meters picking up feather sea stars and playing with them. What an idiot…I wish dive shops had international blacklists for people who pick shit up and generally just act like knobs underwater. And what the hell are you doing diving solo? When we surfaced a lady in full kit was just sitting on the shore waiting for him. KNOB! – Day 1 of diving- success!
The rest of my day consisted of a walk, a 4km run (which was MUCH harder than last year when I was here) 2 hours of work (only Professor Inaka brings work with her on holidays), a lovely dinner of satayed fish and salad and now a little blogging action. Of course these Amed entries aren’t actually being posted in real time since I’m living in the land of no internet but at least I’m getting something down.
Finally, this being Amed, a night cannot go by without an advance from one of the local cassanovas. Tonight’s specimen I’ve decided to name “Frenchy” for the sake of bloggy anonymity. Needless to say, I remember him well from last year. Why might you ask? Because I remember finding him the creepiest of them all and telling “Wheels” so. He came right up to my table and said “you have been here before” to which I replied, “Ya I know who you are – “Frenchy” I left out the “creepiest McCreeperson, Bali Cowboy wannabe, makes the hair on my arms stand up, yuckerton” bit but I said it in my mind. He obviously didn’t pick up on my revulsion and took it as a compliment and a clear indication that I must have remembered him because I was secretly lusting for him one year on and jumped in with both feet. He invited me to see him play guitar at a bar down the street (how original – yawn) then said that he would come pick me up and drive me there and bring me home “in a car” – very hi-so for these parts. He then added in that he was going to take a shower…I wonder if he felt that it would up his chances if I knew that he had good personal hygiene. Anyway, he wrote his number down on a napkin and asked me to call him if I wanted the pick up (probably both meanings of the word). Sadly for me…the waiter picked up the napkin when he was taking my plate away and so “Frenchy” has ended up in the trash…coincidence? I think not ;)
And so ends another day in paradise
Cheers from the Cowboy Corral
J
Diving Bali day 1!!
6am and I was up and getting ready for my first day of diving in Amed. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be sure if I was actually on time since I couldn’t figure out what time it was in the first place. My dive computer said one time, the clock on the wall in the restaurant said another, my cell phone said another and the guy at the next table told me a different time. Put them all together and there was a good hours different from time telling device A and time telling device D. So I took the Olympic Figure Skating marking approach. Threw out the high and the low score then divided the remaining. Seemed to work well and I managed to finish my breakfast and get to the dive shop on time…Bali time that is. I quickly found out that this didn’t really matter since Tommy Wilcox the Kiwi who was supposed to be diving with me showed up an entire hour late, then spent 20mins faffing about so our 8am dive didn’t actually get out of the dive shop until past 9am.
Our first dive was at Bunutan which is a 15 minute boat ride from Jemeluk where I am staying. Now I am using the term “boat” liberally here since we were actually diving out of a traditional Amed fishing boat called a Jukung which is about the width is wide enough to only fit your feet so you have to sit on the edge of the boat with your butt hanging precariously off the edge while it sputters and spats along the coastline. Because the boat is so small you have to kit up in the water which is also a bit of an ordeal if you’ve never done it before. Luckily for me I had a short one day crash course last year and looked the real expert next to “tardy Tommy”. After a few hiccups were in in the water and cruising along the black volcanic sands. I remember leaving Amed last year thinking that it was some of the best diving I had ever done and I wasn’t disappointed today. I have to say that if you are diver, Amed is a must. Hands down still #1. Beats the Similans, beats the Gilis and understandably, beats Koh Tao…(but I still love you K.Tao!). Dive #1 was full of firsts: My first encounter with ribbon eels, massive fields of meter long garden eels, honeycomb morays big enough to fill a bathtub, giant swirling “balls” of giant trevallies, and finally, FINALLY I actually managed to see a pigmy seahorse. On too many occasions in the past I have had a dive guide point them out and in order to not look like a total gomer I have cooed into my regulator and given the always cool “gnarly find” hand signal to indicate that I saw them….but in actuality I’ve always been too blind to see even when the guide practically has his finger right on it. Now in my defense if you don’t know what a pigmy seahorse looks like…it looks like a regular seahorse but it’s less than a centimeter long and looks EXACTLY like the fan coral it Has attached itself to. Not a terribly thrilling creature (as seahorses tend to be a bit boring) but I did get a splash of glee from finally being able to see one.
After successfully surfacing, de-kiting in the water and mounting into the boat like a beached whale attempting to look graceful, we returned to the dive center for a surface interval and a good bake/nap in the scorching sun. Dive #2 was a shore dive at a small shipwreck about a 15min drive away called “the Japanese Shipwreck” - very original indeed. When asked what the story behind the wreck was, the guide looked quizzical for a moment as he clearly attempted to make up a plausible story but coming up with nothing, shrugged his shoulders and said “no idea, let’s go diving”. The wreck was unremarkable but the corals and fish surrounding it were lovely. The gomer of the day award went to some idiot who was diving solo at 20 meters picking up feather sea stars and playing with them. What an idiot…I wish dive shops had international blacklists for people who pick shit up and generally just act like knobs underwater. And what the hell are you doing diving solo? When we surfaced a lady in full kit was just sitting on the shore waiting for him. KNOB! – Day 1 of diving- success!
The rest of my day consisted of a walk, a 4km run (which was MUCH harder than last year when I was here) 2 hours of work (only Professor Inaka brings work with her on holidays), a lovely dinner of satayed fish and salad and now a little blogging action. Of course these Amed entries aren’t actually being posted in real time since I’m living in the land of no internet but at least I’m getting something down.
Finally, this being Amed, a night cannot go by without an advance from one of the local cassanovas. Tonight’s specimen I’ve decided to name “Frenchy” for the sake of bloggy anonymity. Needless to say, I remember him well from last year. Why might you ask? Because I remember finding him the creepiest of them all and telling “Wheels” so. He came right up to my table and said “you have been here before” to which I replied, “Ya I know who you are – “Frenchy” I left out the “creepiest McCreeperson, Bali Cowboy wannabe, makes the hair on my arms stand up, yuckerton” bit but I said it in my mind. He obviously didn’t pick up on my revulsion and took it as a compliment and a clear indication that I must have remembered him because I was secretly lusting for him one year on and jumped in with both feet. He invited me to see him play guitar at a bar down the street (how original – yawn) then said that he would come pick me up and drive me there and bring me home “in a car” – very hi-so for these parts. He then added in that he was going to take a shower…I wonder if he felt that it would up his chances if I knew that he had good personal hygiene. Anyway, he wrote his number down on a napkin and asked me to call him if I wanted the pick up (probably both meanings of the word). Sadly for me…the waiter picked up the napkin when he was taking my plate away and so “Frenchy” has ended up in the trash…coincidence? I think not ;)
And so ends another day in paradise
Cheers from the Cowboy Corral
J
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