Fully qualified PADI diver at your surface (sorry)!

I was planning on posting my previous post last night but the internet was down so I've just put it on here. No major news except I passed my PADI exam (90%) and I'm now a fully qualified PADI Open Water Diver!! Will update in a couple of days.

Getting into the routine

Over the last couple of days I’ve been busy with the PADI course, which is coming along nicely. Day 3 (Sunday) brought two more scuba lectures and two more dives. Nearly everything we learn is a solution for a problem, usually occurring underwater. Problems such as air running out, masks filling with water, buddy’s air supply running out, needing to perform an emergency ascent, towing an unconscious diver etc are all simulated and the solutions checked by our instructor Imin and our dive master Stephanie.

The days here are long and extremely tiring. The usual routine is wake up (by cockerel method) at 6.30, breakfast at 7, lecture 1 at 8 followed by questioning and a quiz, down to the dive area to prep and kit up at 10, dive 1 at 11-12.45, lunch at 1, down to the dive area to prep and kit up at 2, dive at 3-4.45, free time until dinner at 7, lecture 2 at 8 followed by questioning and a quiz, bed around 10 by which time we’re shattered. Still not fully acclimatised yet so all of this is done in high temperatures and humidity. We stayed up last night to watch the England-Germany match which finished at midnight so have been feeling very tired today, but our first open water dives were sufficient to wake me up!

We had our first one at 11am this morning (day 4) where we practiced remaining neutrally buoyant before swimming off for 30 minutes on a tour of the reef. Visibility wasn’t amazing but the biodiversity certainly was. I lost count of how many different species there were down there. I saw huge sea cucumbers, lion fish (v poisonous), alligator fish, puffer fish, needle fish, parrot fish eating huge chunks of coral, huge vibrant blue starfish, quite a few crab species and innumerable species of less distinguishable reef fish. The second dive yielded much of the same, only with many more lion fish. After coming back from the dive I took some photos and videos of our hut and nearly collided with a giant fruit bat that fell out of a tree opposite us and flew directly towards me. Part of the wonder of this place is the fact that I’m coming face to face with hundreds of animals that I’ve usually only seen in David Attenborough productions. Just yesterday morning there was a 2m long monitor lizard (looks similar to the Komodo dragons but not as large) blocking the path to breakfast. Thankfully they seem more frightened of us than we are of them and it scuttled off as soon as I came round the corner. At the moment I’m sitting on our balcony listening to the chirping of the cicadas, the wind through the trees, the breaking waves, and the odd squawk of something that unfortunately falls prey to something else. Dinner is in 20 minutes so I’m going to head up to the lodge and attempt to post this online with some photos and maybe a video/sound clip of a bird that lives in our roof. I have my PADI written exam tomorrow morning so wish me luck - this time tomorrow I may be a PADI Open Water certified diver!

Mandi’s, monsoons,and more....

Haven’t updated in a few days and a lot has happened so this one will be quite long.

Had an early breakfast in Jakarta, which was very tasty but interesting to say the least. The main constituent was nasi goreng (a type of egg fried rice), which is usually only eaten for breakfast at uni if there are no other options. Battered spiced fish complimented the nasi goreng along with chocolate fruit fondue and other similarly strange foodstuffs to find yourself eating at 6am. After a short bus ride to Jakarta airport we caught the internal flight to Kendari with Batavia airlines. This was one of the airlines that until recently had been banned from operating by the Indonesian government due to heavy internal corruption and the forcing of pilots to fly un air-worthy planes (wing tips falling off/plane cabins disintegrating mid-air, you know). I noted that Batavia’s slogan was ‘Trust Us To Fly....’ which didn’t ease my fears either. Apart from some heavy turbulence and a slightly wobbly landing we touched down safe and sound in Kendari around 2pm and got a 40 minute taxi ride to the hotel, just when the monsoon season decided to begin. Usually I hate rain in England because it encompasses wind and coldness but in Kendari it was totally the opposite - we still managed to sweat a during a torrential downpour! During a walk to an ATM we were relentlessly mobbed by the Kendari locals. Everyone we encountered was amazingly friendly, breaking into a big smile, waving, and shouting ‘selamat sorè’ which means good afternoon. Most younger people were taking pictures of us on their camera-phones and nearly everyone wanted to be in a picture with us. We were later told this is because of the unusualness of white people in eastern parts of Indonesia (especially white people over 5 feet tall!). I got up early the next day to have breakfast with Rosie, Louise, Jess and Lottie and to see them off to the forest site, then later on at 1pm caught the speed-ferry from Kendari to Bau Bau which took about 6/7 (choppy) hours.

Arriving in Bau Bau in the evening, we dropped our bags off on the pier with the local harbour porters and then went for a meal at a restaurant 5 minutes walk away. I played safe and had nasi goreng with battered chicken with chilli noodle soup as I didn’t want to risk food poisoning before even getting to Hoga. During dinner I experienced my first proper Indonesian toilet, consisting of a hole in the ground, a small bucket of dirty water to flush your business down said hole, and a big tub of freshwater to rinse your left hand in after you’ve finished wiping....

After dinner we caught the 9pm overnight ‘slave boat’, so called because of the 2 vertical layers of mattresses on wooden platforms present on each floor of the boat. Despite diesel fumes, a group of locals who came along to marvel at the white people, free-to-roam chickens, free-to-roam rats, and a bloody awful and bloody loud Jean Claude Van-Damme film, it was actually very peaceful, with the sea breeze and gentle rocking sending me to sleep fairly quickly. At 5am I woke to watch the sun rise as we were approaching Wanci, where once arriving at 8am we seemed to exchange our old local stowaways for some new local stowaways, and then departed on our final leg of the journey to Hoga!

At 11am upon sight of Hoga, we moored about 500m off shore and jumped across a big hole in the boat to some smaller boats that ferried us across to the most pristine, whitest beach I have ever seen. Up until this point I had been feeling a bit down as I was missing parents and Div and was anticipating the 6 weeks to go slowly. However as soon as my feet hit the cool clear water of Hoga’s beach, I’m glad to say my worries were immediately swept away. We were given a glass of iced orange juice, a lecture on medical facilities and dangerous animals to avoid, and were then taken on a tour of the island, followed by the assignment of our accommodation. The wooden huts consist of one room (which may or may not have electricity), a balcony, and an outdoors toilet/shower called a ‘mandi’. A mandi is a shower that comprises 2-3 small scoops of cold water. It takes some getting used to but now I can mandi with less than 2 and a half scoops. To get fresh water to the island, locals have to transport it over in huge plastic vats, so the less we can use the better. I’m sharing with an Irish guy called Jim who seems nice. Dinner was very good, and has been very good every day since arrival. It largely consists of rice and tuna, but they give us vegetables and various other side-dishes which are all very tasty. After dinner on my first day we had a PADI diving lecture and then it was straight to a very welcoming bed.

Waking up on day 2 we had a shallow dive at 7am, where we got used to the SCUBA equipment, then had a couple more PADI lectures. Week 1 for me is PADI week where I’m attempting to get my Open Water qualification. After lunch I had another, deeper dive and then went back to the hut to discover we had electricity!

Right now it’s 6.40pm (and dark) and I’m sitting upstairs in the main Hoga base station with the Week 1 coral reef ecology students studying for their after dinner exam. Dinner is in 20 minutes so I’m going to sign off. Tomorrow I have my first open water dive and more diving lectures so fingers crossed I don’t drown.

Stir-fried morning glory.

At the moment I’m sitting on my hotel bed in Jakarta, typing up my ‘memoirs’ and checking my emails whilst feeling very content after an amazing meal in the hotel restaurant and a post-meal swim/sauna/steam-room session. The flight from Gatwick to Dubai resulted in a giddily exuberant Southampton University foursome on account of the in flight entertainment system (films/music/games/front and ground facing cameras etc etc), and the discovery of being permitted as much on-board alcohol as we desired. However, due to flying with Emirates and not wanting to offend any of the Arabian flight crew or passengers we limited consumption to a (hopefully) modest two cans of beer, small bottle of wine and a vodka-coke over the 7 hour flight. The in-flight food was quite good, for in-flight food. As usual it was far too salty and made you thirsty as hell but it certainly beat easyjet and ryanair’s offerings.

After arriving in Dubai, we had the problem of obtaining Indonesian Rupiah (12,000 rupiah’s to £1) which we need to pay for various things on site. This is where I discovered how enormous Dubai airport is. To find a bureau de change that exchanged in rupiah’s required a 15 minute walk from terminal 2 to the nearest edge of terminal 1, which itself takes a further 15/20 minutes to walk through. There appeared to be 3 terminals in all, of which terminal 3 was recently purpose built for Emirates flights only. Cue a short wait in the departure lounge and the world’s most expensive frappuccino (£5 for a small!!), and we were on our way to Jakarta by 4am GMT!

If I thought I would get some half-decent sleep on the Dubai - Jakarta leg of the journey I was severely mistaken. Screaming children, loud air conditioning fans and a family of unabashed Americans guffawing loudly at Chris Tucker's racial abuse of Jackie Chan in Rush Hour 3 meant my time in the land of nod was not to be. After an extremely smooth landing in Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta airport (34°C and cloudy!!) we got through Indonesian customs without a hitch, met our guide Acho from Losari Tours and made our way to the ‘Resort Hotel’, arriving by 5.30pm GMT+7, having been awake for over 24 hours. A quick dip in the hotel pool was followed by a fantastic dinner with Rosie, Louise, Jess, and Lottie where we decided to get an assortment of local dishes to share. The stand out dishes were ‘Ayam Panggang Ala Thai’ which was BBQ chicken with Thai sour & spicy sauce, ‘Nasi Lemak’ which was Malaysian style coconut rice served with cucumber, chicken curry, sambal bilis and peanut (very good) and finally ‘Cah Kangkung Seafood’ which was unnervingly translated as ‘stir-fried morning glory with prawns’.

Another paddle in the pool followed along with stretches in the steam room, sauna, ice bath and jacuzzi, which seemed to cause an acute bout of dizziness, presumably from dehydration.

However, I am now fully rehydrated and have been up for a little over 32 hours, so it’s time for bed. Next stop is an 8am flight to Kendari tomorrow morning. Will update when I next get the opportunity, which will presumably be tomorrow night in Kendari or at the weekend once I’m on Hoga.

The website for the hotel I'm staying in at the moment is www.fm7hotel.com.