Taking It Easy and Challenging Myself All In One

First of all, let me say I certainly wasted almost 2 weeks in Bali when I could have been here.  Once you get here, and speak to other people here you find everyone feels pretty much the same way.  You also often hear the story that "I was just going to come for 3 days and now here I am 3 weeks (2 months, a year and a half) later.  The dive schools suck people in because it is so much fun, and if you are able to put yourself through all the levels, which would take about 4 months total, you can then stay and be employed and then you NEVER have to leave. 

On the "Fast Boat" from Padangbai, Bali, to Gili Trawangan

Still on Gili Trawangan enjoying my first day free from diving.  I arrived Tuesday Jan 25 around noon to this apparent time warp.  The speed boat option from Bali pulls right up on shore after 2.5 hours crossing the Lombok Strait.  We hop down into the water and walk up to the beach where we were greeted by locals promoting various accommodation locations.

Just arrived in Gili, watch your step.

I ended up finding a small place just off the main "road" which charged me 100,000 Rupiah per night (about $10).  I paid for 2 nights and I am still there 5 nights later and no one has asked me for more money yet.  I spoke with a guy today, and told him I plan to stay one more week from today, and he told me I could pay 80,000 per night for the rest of the time.  I got a small clean room with a fan and a cold water shower that seems to be half fresh and half salt water.

There is no fresh water source on this island.  All the water is brought in daily on boats from Lombok.  Lombok is the larger island that is like the mainland to the Gili Islands. There are no police on the island but some island security, and apparently if there is even so much as a bar fight, the perpetrators are detained for the evening and sent away by boat the next morning.  Also, available and advertised all over the island are "Magic Mushroom Milkshakes".  Although the penalty for illegal drugs in Indonesia is severe (including marijuana), magic mushrooms do NOT fall in the category of illegal drugs.

After dropping off my bags I went choose a dive school to spend my time at.  There are 13 dive schools on this island, which you can walk the circumference of in < 2 hours.  I settled on Manta Dive, simply because I liked the atmosphere best of the 4 or 5 schools I looked at.  I spoke with one of the instructors, filled out some paper work and was to report back first thing the next morning.

Take It Easy

Today I did the circumference walk with a fellow dive student, Ollie from England.  There is no paved road, and there are no cars.  There are small horses that pull… well they are more like wagons than carriages.  The road in the developed part of the island is partially dirt, partially cobblestone and as you exit the, umm, downtown area it becomes hard dirt road and sometimes just a sandy path.  The sand is white, and the water close to shore is the beautiful turquoise you imagine it would be until underwater maybe 15 meters out is a sudden and steep ridge which makes the water change drastically to a deep ocean blue.  This is the same the whole way around the island, except for one stretch where the turquoise extends more like 50+ meters.

Island Goat

Lunch Time

Apparently, although just one side of the island is built up to support tourism now, every piece of land has been spoken for and with the international airport coming to Lombok soon, you can bet things are going to change around here pretty quick.  Most businesses owned by Westerners who come to check up every so often.  Some local food joints are family run, and the smaller cheaper homestays as well.  Otherwise if it looks touristy, you can almost be sure it is not Indonesian owned.

Goats Take Naps In Palm Tree Shade Too

Practice Pool

Right now I am lounging at the dive school, which sometimes reminds me quite a bit of surfcamp.  I completed my open water diving course yesterday!  2 days of pool skill practice and theory followed by 2 days of diving practice (2 dives per day) and a multiple choice exam and I did it.  For the past 4 days I have spent the day here starting at 8:30 and ending around 5 with an hour and a half break in between.  My instructor, Aan, is from Lombok.  She is great.  4 dives didn't seem like enough so I decided to continue on to the advanced course which gets me 5 more dives in the next 3 days.  I took today off, and start advanced tomorrow which is all diving and no classroom.  I get a new instructor for advanced, Eddie, Aan's husband.  He is from England.  Many transplants here, who came to stay for a week, 5 years ago.

Boatmen

The Indonesian boatmen/dive assistants are fun to watch.  Fit young men, mostly from Lombok who either commute here daily or live somewhere on the island now (I believe this is the story for almost all the employees on the island).  They hang around the dive shop, loading the equipment, assisting divers in and out of the water.  One drives the boat, which is wooden and battered with a long narrow hull and a couple of motors attached to the back that seem out of place, a couple sit on the bow and watch and sing ("Don't telllll me, it's not worth dying foooor..." "Bryan Adams, you know? you like?") as we sail to the dive sites, smoking their cigarettes, quiet and seemingly pensive.  They go for dives every so often as well.  For some reason they just have this way about them, they seem to glide along a little too cool for school.

Gearing Up, Heading Out

I can't even tell you how cool it is.  Not just being underwater, but learning the skills,  the underwater sign language, feeling confident, practicing calm breathing, knowing that you can be almost 100ft underwater and not freak out and die (I've only made it to about 50ft so far, but 30 meters is part of the advanced course).  Done properly an accident underwater is very unlikely.  There are hardly any animals down there that want to hurt us unprovoked and I'm pretty sure I will see sharks at some point in the advanced dive course as almost everyone else I've spoken to has.  You have to go a little deeper to see sharks than I have gone so far.  There is a lot to remember, and the scariest part is not the marine wildlife.

Dive School Kitty, Used to Bait the Sharks

The scariest part is lung expansion (which can only happen if you are holding your breath in ascent, which would be silly) and decompression sickness, which also happens in ascent but this happens when you ascend too quickly and do not give your body enough time to dissipate the nitrogen levels present from being under pressure.  I don't fully understand why this happens, but I do know how to prevent it and really don't want to get it.  If you do get decompression sickness, you will be put on the first boat to Lombok to get you into a recompression chamber as fast as possible. 

This Guy Will Teach You How To Stay Safe 30 Meters Underwater

Those are the scariest parts about the diving I am doing, which is also very unlikely to happen.  Those things would just about only happen in a no oxygen freak out emergency ascent.  Funny, the common danger in SCUBA diving is getting OUT of the water.  For more advanced diving I'm sure you can find yourself all kinds of other fun dangers.  Channels of current that must be followed exactly, because swimming outside the lines would put you in a down current so strong it would suck you beyond 100 meters depth in a matter of seconds, ending your story right then and there.  Oh the thrill of not dying.

We saw about 6 sea turtles yesterday,  a lion fish (danger, poison), a sea snake, parrot fish, lots of snapper, several scorpion fish (danger, poison), many clown fish living in sea anemones (exactly as is illustrated in Finding Nemo), trumpet fish, several kinds of butterfly fish (lots of these guys), some things ugly and brownish grey, blending in with the sea floor, some things the bright tropical colors you would expect to find.  So many tiny little fish, big fish, different kinds of marine life, busy all the time just below the ocean surface. 

Post-Dive Nap

I have developed some kind of lock jaw symptom from trying to hold the regulator (air mouthpiece) in my mouth.  It happens after every dive and even happened after the pool exercises.  So for the past 4 days, my jaw refuses to perform in accordance with its full potential, and I have had to force feed myself dinner through about a one inch slot between my teeth.  By the morning it remedies itself just to lock up again after the first dive of the day at 8:30.  I'm working on relaxing my jaw but still have not figured out how to completely prevent this.

The problem with pictures and words is they don't make you here, so really, you'll never know.