Following will be of much underwater pix, most of which will be nudibranches:
For 2 of the dives, I didn’t bring my camera down. So the following will only be from 4 out of the 6 dives I had.
Ghost pipefish
Another ghostpipe
Different angle
…continued from here.
The resort was fully booked, and there was a slight misunderstanding about the room allocation, which wasn’t a big problem actually. But the irritating thing about this resort is that they switch off the water pump at some certain timing during the day and nite, and it was a bit inconvenient to want to shower at times and also to guess whether it is right to start soaping or not.
Most of the time we had to tell them to turn on the water pump.
Diving is fairly easy, except that it’s a shore dive, which meant that we needed to move out from the beach. The beach is filled with pebbles and rocks, and a bit difficult to balance on with the heavy air tank and equipment.
The people there were amazing. We leave our equipment at shore, and they balance 2 sets of equipment on their head! It’s like 20 over kilos ok?
And our daily favourite activity after diving:
Dip into the swimming pool enjoying the sun…
Sipping cold drinks and having snacks while partially submerged in the chlorinated water.
And another almost daily activity we do.
Massage. 1 hour, 2 hours massage (shiokadoodoo). Every hour, only Rp70,000, which is about S$10, or lesser. And the days pass by so fast.
Frankly speaking, as compared to the food found in Padang Bai, Tulamben loses hands up. Their food is just cooked in a different way.
For example, if you ask for chicken/pork cordon bleu, they top up the meat with a sauce of onions and other vegetables. Or Greek salad with some creamy thousand-island-like-texture dressing. And mostly are either too salty or not too nice.
But some are foolproof:
Banana juice / milkshake which comes out tasting almost the same at all eating places,
Nasi Goreng Ayam – local foods.
Juices are with default, with sugar syrup unless you request kosong.
Dogs are plentiful there.
There was one black dog which was at the resort, with one of its legs crippled. According to the resort people, he was run down by a car and from then crippled for life.
True enough, despite the roads being one-lane (each direction one lane), the vehicles go along quite fast, whether they are just cars or vans or even lorries. Not to forget to mention that the roads are also quite dimly lit.
We usually retire to our rooms after dinner, or just sit around chatting in one of the rooms, or watch movies. Only the staff has got cable in their ‘houses’.
They have a nice garden full of lush greenery though.
…to be continued~
Just found out something which I make me wanna laugh…
Anyway…
It was basically a waiting game on the first day in Denpasar. Initially thought that the waiting time will be just about 5 hours which ended up to be about 8 hours. The others whom had gone for their trip on 20th to Komodo were ’stranded’ because the flight was delayed again and again.
Had brekkie at Black Canyon Coffee but becoz I didn’t really have much appetite, I just had an iced lemon tea and Caesars salad.
It was decided later that we go for a massage after the flight from Komodo to Denpasar was arriving at an unknown time.
I had a full body massage, one which doesn’t involve stripping or body oil on the body. Just fully clothed and with towel and baby lotion.
It wasn’t too bad. At least we can while our time away, little known that the flight from Komodo to Denpasar was delayed and delayed. We had nowhere else to go, and lugging our luggage to go Kuta wasn’t that great an idea (security) and so we stayed at the massage place. They were kind enough to let us be there, since there were not much customers.
Our luggages in the corner, while the employees were having a meeting with their boss.
They finally finally arrived at 4.45pm. A grand total of nearly 8 hours at Denpasar airport. Amazing.
We proceeded to have a meal (t’was their lunch, our snack since we had lunch) before getting to the Mataharin Tulamben Resort. It was 9pm+ already.
…to be continued~
(continued from here)
The yum yum (and not so yum yum) part.
I didn’t lose weight this round. We ate and ate and ate. Because we got one all-time-hungry sharx among us.
Our trip wasn’t full board (only breakfast included), so we had the option of looking around the different restaurants for lunch and dinner. The breakfast wasn’t that impressive. My first meal was pancakes++, but that laid me off from it for the rest of the days. Continental breakfast was for the next few days, except the last where I decided to try nasi goreng.
Will segregate those food I ate which are good from those bad.
(continued from here…)
Water freezing, gets colder after each dive. All for the purpose to see the Mola. I’ve learnt that TIMING is very important. We were so close, yet so far…
For some of us, it was the first time to see the molas and mantas. I’ve seen Mantas in Maldives before, but not Molas. So it was a trip of anticipation.
We tried (but failed) to see the mola each time. Divers around Padang Bai saw them, but we were either at the wrong place or wrong timing. In desperation, some of us actually considered extending the trip (were supposed to leave Thursday) if we end up NOT seeing it.
We had lot of fun though. Went to Nusa Penida, Crystal Bay and Manta Point.
On Sep 30, we went to Manta Point to see the mantas. I managed to get some nice shots of the mantas, but got one really unusual manta with black belly.
My first time to Bali, first time doing underwater photography, first time using my G9 and Ikelite underwater, first time seeing mola mola, first time diving in 21 deg C water, first time diving with my secondary school friend.
Whenever I am on half day’s leave, I find myself rushing to finish things. Weird. Like everything just had to come last minute.
I rushed home, bathed Caramel who was having a chalet stay again at my place, and rushed off to G’s place since my stuff were there. Jialat! I realised that I forgot to bring my dive comp and trying to see if I could get my dad to collect it and pass to YX who was also going. No hope. He was in town.
So I took G’s car as a last resort. He’s never let me drive his car alone but I zai zai pom pi pi. Only thing is I was so concentrating on not to mount kerb (his car much bigger than mine) that I went the wrong way (not wrong per se, but longer way). But shiok to drive his ultimate driving machine. I went 120kmh and it feels like 80kmh so I had to slow down.
Though the peak traffic was building up, I managed to get back on time.
This is the last section of the South Lombok, Belongas Bay trip. It was a nice getaway, albeit the shredded hand. It was not difficult to have your healthy portions of veggies/fruits per day, meals are always yummy (and not because we are hungry) and it was one of the trips that made me exercise more than usual.
The last day of diving was also trekking day for us, because…we had nothing else to do? Or just needed to while the time away?
Nay…to get reception for the phone. It was quite unexpected that there won’t be reception for the phone, coz no one said anything. Plus I kept having bad dreams during the nites, so I thought better call home to check that everything is ok.
And so, got to the top of the hill…no reception for my BB! Useless shit.
So I had to borrow the phone from G who’s got almost perfect reception. I’m always thankful that I usually do not need to use the phonebook to get numbers. Department colleagues numbers, everyone in the family hp numbers…all in my mind.
Mission accomplished, we started our journey back to the resort, also to be in time before darkness falls. And dinner. I was starved.
But not without taking some momento images.
Went to Earth Cafe with the pooch and the Paradizer last Saturday, but experience was so-so. Supposed to go to Pawtobello, but to my surprise, it had ceased operations on 21st July. Sad.
Day 2 at Belongas Bay. We were to go for our check out dive supposedly to be a well…easy dive.
Relatively, it’s a more challenging one than most of the check out dives I’ve done. It’s full of currents, nothing too much to see for some sites actually. The sea might look calm from the resort but as you go out to the open seas, that’s where you see the action.
We did see a big group of 30-over eagle rays and white tips, cute and small sea cucumbers in yellow which looked like nudibranches.
Went to dive at Gila Sarang and The (super challenging) Magnet, and I skipped the dive at the Cathedral which they said was worse than The Magnet (current-wise), coz of my hand. We went to the Magnet twice, once I had trouble descending and by then I did it was total blue all around and can’t see anything. So ascended. The next trip to the Magnet we went down by the anchor so that it was easier to get to the reef. At both corners the washing-machine currents were so strong that it was difficult to pass. That’s when I let go of the corals at the 2nd corner and decided to ascend because I think I was also low on air.
And I saw my hand bleeding like no one’s business. It’s a wonder that the hammerheads didn’t come by with all the blood that was coming out from my palm.
At the nudibranch site (actually they were all juvenile sea cucumbers), I saw SF and the DM ‘dancing’ underwater. Coz the currents at the dive sites were all swaying left and right, like waves coming up to the shore and back, other the washing machine type. So it was quite coordinated like they were dancing as they move left and right. Most of the time, we decided not to fight the current coz as you fight against it, the next 10 secs or so you would be swimming with the current.
We even went to the kelong out (with permission of coz) there coz it was said to have a large garoupa under the stilts. It was totally green under there, and nothing to see. We looked like a comic lor, finning around.
Thank goodness I’ve not bought the housing for my camera. I think I look super unsteady in the water there.
All right, pictures!
The flight was delayed known about a week before, and we departed after 4pm. HL was supposed to come with us but because his passport was less than 6 months, he couldn’t check in at all. A call to Lombok didn’t help too as they were too very strict.
So the group lessened to just 7 pax.
To anyone who’s ever thought of trying to smoke your way thru with less than 6 months validity, DON’T TRY. IT DOESN’T WORK.
We hopped on the plane, looking forward to the destination.
Going away later for a few days till Monday. No updates coz I dun intend to bring the laptop.
Got a few pix to update from Sunday’s dog romping session. Am bringing my G9 but no underwater pix coz I’ve not bought the housing yet. But will try to take several pictures around on land.
Hope it’ll be a good trip. Till then!
(Warning: Lots of words, no pix of my own)
I had asked to leave early last Friday from my boss (who was actually on leave too..hehe) coz initially I thought I was to catch the 7pm ferry. Though the sms came that we were to leave on a later boat, I still left office around 3.45pm.
It was a toture to need to carry our weights to the dive site, coz I needed like…5 weights. Which was equivalent to 5 kgs (like carrying a sack of rice). This is in addition to my diving gear, and you can try to imagine i’m carrying (not pulling like a hand trolley ok?) like around 18kg (I think).
Thanks to C*****, she was pulling a trolley, so we deposited the weights in her bag to check in.
It’s been eons since I’ve taken a ferry to Batam. Can I say…more than 10 years? I couldn’t remember what Batam looks like now. There were plenty of people who went to Batam at the same time, and to and fro, the ferry was packed full.
the usual routine of the day was to wake up at around 5 plus – 6 in the morning, and have breakfast at the dining table. much earlier than i used to wake up everyday during the weekdays! though so, it was ok coz i wake up to something unanticipated and new everyday.
breakfasts were buffet-styled, and i must say that food is still acceptably good. then we will proceed to the dive centre to gather to get onto the boat, while we set off to the diving area of the day, for the whole day, only getting back in the evening after all the 3 dives were finished.
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