Beach Party

Last week, I posted about an upcoming Bookworm seminar on a scuba diving team that went to Mongolia last year and explored ship wrecks, surveyed fish, and came upon a really weird creature (I also griped about the media’s priorities when it comes to stories like this, but what can you do).

If you have any images that capture the feeling that scuba diving offers, please add them to our Flickr group so we can share them with the world.

I have never been to Isle Royale, have wanted to… even for diving - there are some nice shipwrecks up there - crystal clear water - and it would be great to spend a little time observing wolves and a few moose. I have so much admiration for the people who dedicate a majority of their lives in the study of wildlife and promoting education about them.

Notorious is Singapore muky waters, as bad as milo-ice-dinosaur, so as joked by the instructors & lecturers. The instructors strongly recommend the Malaysia Pulau Aur Dive Trip scheduled this weekend for an additional $160. Which covers a return trip to the protected dive resort with 2 days, 2 nights stay with food (all 3 meals) & accomodation provided. Come to think about it, its actually quite a good deal you ask me, personally I had seen the waters around Singapore (esp around labrador park area where the Singapore dive site would be launched from) & yes, you can’t see your hands in front of your when underwater, its that bad. Pulau Aur waters claims to have a visiblity of an astonishing 10m with a large array of marine life, the perfect Scuba diving experience they claim.

Wikiscuba is a project to create a free, complete and up to date Scuba Diving Reference Guide. It is a fully collaborative project between wikidivers from around the world.

I put on a slalom ski and my first go was face plant city. I gave the thumbs up to go again and got up this go round. It was great; I had a long run, jumped the wake three times and couldn’t believe I could still do this – awesome! Marlo was jazzed that her Mom can water-ski and Paul was hooting with enthusiasm. I stayed in the water with Marlo for her next series of tries and then Larry Tepper got in for the assist after I got to cold. Marlo still did not have it, but she got really close. I feel certain that tomorrow will be her day; she’ll get the muscle memory and stand for a nice run. She’s so determined there’s no way she’s not going to make it! Boy is she going to sleep well tonight. Once we came in, Paul left with Justin Smit to do some scuba diving – he loved it!

This journey will consist of the four things he loves most; spending time with his family, scuba diving, quad biking and to be in nature. On top of this he wishes to break the record in the first cancer victim to circumnavigate Africa’s coastline on a quad bike.

So alittle more abou my diving. so I finally got on with my diving course. there’s not relly much more to tell about the first two days, we just had classroom instruction, and pool time, and I did burn my sholders alittle, as I couldn’t get sunscreen on it very often. so that was over, and now it was time for the boat. so we get on the first boat, this is the one that will take us out to the boat will will be living on. and about mid morning, we stop and go for a snorkle, before lunch. this snorkle was our first time on the barrier reef, and it was soo cool.

The scuba diving sessions in Koh Tao were, for Jakey at least, very terse. In fact, he took the primary training session which partook in a standard swimming pool with such courageous perserverance, that he capitulated after fifteen minutes. Nevertheless, Pepe continued and completed the course before we both left for Koh Samui.

A funny French man (with 4 kids – two of his own by two different women) was our driver down to the south (near plakias) to go scuba diving (snorkeling first, under the supervision of Eric who was mark’s one on one scuba partner). (Mine was a novice who hit me into the rocks, hehe, but was nice anyhow and great otherwise). We were with a bunch of brits who I hung out with later that night (Laura, Disa and Alex – alex was turning 27). Scuba was INCREDIBLE, it’s another world down there… I definitely want to get my scuba certification… and somewhere exotic. Hmmm. We came back, bought our tickets to santorini and ate at another place at the venetian harbor… gotta go to dinner, will continue later, the kids are restless). I went out with the “british blokes” as Angelique called them, got a little hmm, tipsy, came home, slept until had to leave in the morning.

Just as I am planning onto becoming a problogger, Darren wrote an interesting article on his blog about the principles of choosing a blog topic, which is the ultimate trick for success in problogging. Basically, its what you choose to blog about that matters. Its important that what you are writing is profitable and has little competition. For example, the topic of “scuba diving” earns more than “aquatic sports” because “scuba diving” is narrower and exact. Do a lot of research on your choice of topic and be sure to note the demand for your topic to ensure ongoing readership. But don’t choose a topic that is too common either, you don’t want you readers to rather read elsewhere.

I left Siem Reap and took a bus through Phenom Phen to Sihanoukville for the final outward stop on my journey. Time to splash out a bit, so I’m spending a whole $11 a night ($1 discount for being only me!) on a beachfront bungalow with balcony… Going to spend tomorrow touring the islands by boat, then will try to get some scuba diving done before getting a plane from Phenom Phen (still can’t spell it), I think they have a Chinese embassy there so I might be able to skip Hong Kong (dammit, needed that stamp) and fly straight to Shanghai to make meeting Judy easier… We’ll see! Feeling very nostalgic, almost home!!!

I shot this image last December while flying from Caracas to an archipelago of small islands called Los Roques (I have already posted several photos of the place on this blog). It is a one hour flight, with small planes that fly at the clouds level, not too high on the sea surface. You want to take one of the earliest flight in the morning, to be at Los Roques as early as possible and spend your time at the beach, or Scuba diving in its coral reef. The downside is that it is very difficult for me to wake up early in the morning (physical suffering describes accurately what happen to me in such cases), but one is usually rewarded by vistas like this one, in which the golden light of the young sun is filtered by the water above and reflected by the water below, enshrouding your little plane and yourself in a warm glow that heals your spirit and dissipates the longing for the missed sleep hours. You just want to dissolve in this light and become a molecule of water, drifting in the wind between the sea and the sky.

So a big congrats to Team Headhunter for your magnifcent catch. I’ve never met you guys but boy would I have loved to be on that boat when you guys hauled in that fish. You guys did amazing! Bravo. Almost makes me want to pick up scuba diving and spearfishing — but of course, I would have to learn how to swim first.

I wonder exactly how to manage time so that I can also make time for the endless things I want to enjoy, achieve and learn in life. Go scuba diving, pick up sitar again, travel more, write more, enjoy a proper beach holiday, doodle more, study more.. ah, the list is endless!

Today we went and visited Phi-Phi Ley, which is where “The Beach” was filmed. We had to swim out the specific beach from the movie, Maya Bay, so I couldn’t bring my camera. So sorry, no photos of me doing my Leonardo DiCaprio impression. The beach did not disappoint, the sand was white and fine, the water a beautiful pale blue and we were encircled by impressive limestone cliffs. We also got the chance to go snorkelling where I saw even more fish than scuba diving on Koh Tao. All in all it was a fantastic day.

Another day another set of pics. Two weeks ago we managed to escape the city of Brisbane with our host Michael to the little city of Byron Bay. Byron Bay is located on the farthest East point of Australia. Its a small town where everyone I think surfs and if you don't your kinda like an outcast of somesort. I tried surfing thinking it was going to be like skiing but its nothing like it, I sucked at it but enjoyed floating on the board. We stayed in a Hostel while we were down here which was a lot of fun. The three of just just read, relaxed on the beach, and swam in the ocean the whole time, which is funny cause down here its winter right now so all the locals think the water is freezing but really its like a luke warm bath. I went swimming one morning around 6:30 because I could. Oh yeah...how could I forget...me and Jen also went scuba diving twice while were down here. This being our first dives without the presence of an instructor made us a little nervous at first but after being in the water where its freaking freezing and you can see more then 2 feet we had tons of fun. On one dive we were able to lay on the ocean floor within 2 meters of a shark just hovering on the bottom. Some of the sharks we saw were up to 6-7 feet in length! It was a good trip, and they had this sweet bakery called "Brumby's" which makes an amazing blue berry muffin. Lots of rambling...enjoy!

A 22-year-old student was swallowed nearly whole on Saturday while scuba diving with a friend. The attacker? An estimated 20-foot-long shark.

Scuba divers do more than check out the fish. Depending on your interests, you can specialize in a skill for your own pleasure or make diving a career option. Scuba diving can be broken down into four groups: recreational, commercial, scientific, and military.

I'm feeling very unsure and insecure about this whole story. It's back to that old debate again that discourages me so much, that you can only write what you know. I don't think it's true -- or maybe I'm just desperate to believe it's not true because it would be so limiting, so limiting. Now I'm getting into the part where people are actually scuba diving and I don't even know what I don't know. This is so difficult. I cut all of the bits about people with accents because two people commented on it and I felt weird about it myself. Now it's...

From Saigon, I headed north to Nha Trang, a resort town famous for its beached and world class scuba diving. The diving was good, but too cold for me to go out for more than the one day. I did see more moray eels and lionfish in one day than I had seen in all the diving I’d done up until that point. I’m looking forward to getting back to the warm waters of Koh Tao. After a few days on the beach, I moved north again to Hoi An, home to over 200 taylors and famous for its custom made clothing that costs a fraction of what you would pay at home. Of course, I took advantage and has a few suits, jackets, skirts…a little of everything made. You walk into a store, look through their catalogs, pick out something you like, choose any material from the shelves, any color, and then a small group of vietnamese girls converge on you to take any and every measurement possible to make the fit perfect - it’s fun.

Finally got the most successful pictures from our diving trip up on Flickr. There are some other great scuba diving pictures, but these are the ones that we took, and we’re proud of them.

The diving has begun! Today I joined the Kwajalein SCUBA club and had my orientation dives. I tagged along with an instructor and her student. First we went to a sunken Japanese ship in the lagoon. It was a pretty nice wreck. It was about 400 feet long. Supposedly there is a car inside one of the cargo bays of the ship but we didn’t find it this time. Visibility was pretty good…about 100 feet or so. There were tropical fish everywhere and it felt like I was swimming through one of those tank in the pet shop. That dive went to 118 feet. The low point being when we swam through a big cargo door and right back out a huge hole on the ship. For the second dive we went to the Troy coral head. The lagoon is pretty much 150 ft deep throughout. In several locations large coral heads build up from the bottom to about 30 ft of depth. you can anchor the boat to the head and dive down along the coral head. This one is famous for..SHARKS!

We had breakfast with Mickey and the kids loved it and were able to get their picture taken with all of the characters. After breakfast we zoomed over to Magic Kingdom and hit the rides non-stop all day including Peter Pan, Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain, and Haunted Mansion. That afternoon we headed back to the room and found that we indeed had a new room, closer to the pool and non-smoking so we made the switch and got ready for dinner. We then caught a bus to Epcot where we dined at the Coral Reef Restaurant. While there Mickey Mouse decided to go scuba diving. According to our waiter, this was very special because very rarely does that ever happen. After dinner we caught the IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth - a fantastic fireworks show on the water. After that we raced back to the room were we crashed for the night.

A popular beach and scuba diving center, Belize has been thrown into turmoil over the last week by riots, strikes at the main telephone company and opposition calls for Prime Minister Said Musa to step down due to unpopular tax increases and corruption scandals.

Our more action packed days included scuba diving and Nate got his PADI certification (so Garth - this means you are coming to meet us in Vietnam, you realize. We will do some scuba, OKAY?) Other highlights included the Full Moon party which was a sort of wannabe Burning Man, but with more cops and Europeans. And some Thais. We actually found some good drum n bass and some bad hip hop - but it was more than welcome. The setting was beautiful, on the beach nestled between two outcroppings of rock and a big moon overhead.

- Once applied, lipstick will never rub off. Even while scuba diving.

That night we discovered what Utila was all about as we talked with several people who were scuba diving instructors or who took frequent vacations to the island. The majority of the people who live there have a passion for diving and for drinking. This is an everyday occurrence. As I talked with one of the guys I asked him if he could choose to do anything in the world, what would he do. He told me that he loved how he was living his life on the island, and would choose to do the same for a long time....

After several days in Hua Hin, I went further south to Chumpon, where I took a boat to the tiny island of Koh Tao, in the Gulf of Thailand. I had visited this place two years ago, but lots had changed. It was much busier now, many new buildings and additions to hotels, and a new moron element: lots of young, male tourists, speeding on their rental motorbikes or trikes or even motorised skateboards on the narrow path in front of the beach. Or perhaps it’s just that I’m getting older. The beach was still wonderful, and the scuba diving...