To dive or not to dive...
Door: Yaisa
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Yaisa
03 Juni 2010 | Indonesië, Batavia
Off we went, after our long and hard season of working in the Maldives... To Bali!
But not before we made a pitt stop in Singapore, an all time favourite destination for the both of us. In four days, we ticked most of our “Must Eat” dishes off the list: turtle soup, pork rib & prawn noodles soup, durian, mangosteen, black pepper crab, pork intestine soup, frog legs... And in the meantime, I got started on wrapping up for good the remains of my corporate life. The first day, I went to the storage facility where I stored all my belongings when I left for Egypt, exactly two years ago. My intention was to start splitting my stuff into four categories: 1. keep & send to Holland, 2. keep & send to Egypt, 3. throw away, 4. sell. But as I opened the door of the storage and saw the 10 cubic metres of boxes, I sank down on the ground and started crying, realising it was going to be much more difficult to say good bye to some of my possessions than I thought. I have learned however, that asking for help is not a weakness but a strength, so I closed the door of the storage box again, locked it and went back to town. The next day, after a delicious roti prata breakfast in Little India, I returned to the storage facility armed with a stack of garbage bags, a roll of tape and Stefano; that was all the help I needed. Together, in two mornings, we sorted everything out. Ruthlessly, I moved 99% of my clothes to the “garage sale” stack. A size 34 diving instructor does not need size 40 corporate outfits, high heels or prom dresses. Away with the skis, the motor helmet and the dragon boat paddle. In some instances, Stefano took pity on me and allowed me to put something on the “send to Egypt” stack. At the end of the whole exercise, I felt relieved and cleansed. Next on the list was to find an affordable shipping company to move my furniture back to The Netherlands and find a place to hold a garage sale in Singapore. For that, Timmo came to the rescue and proposed I use Villa Marina, where he still lives, to sell my stuff. And so Part One of the chapter called “Corporate Life, it’s a wrap” was over.
A quick jump to Bali before embarking on Part Two (the actual shipping and garage sale).
And here we are, a company of six: a lean mean Texan machine, a 6 foot tall Singaporean, a skiing instructor slash paraglider slash diving instructor from Australia, a professional underwater photographer from Guernsey and us two. What do we have in common? Well, the five guys all worked for the same dive centre in Thailand at some point in time and I’m the tag along girlfriend (of just one of them, let there be no misunderstandings). And we all came here to stick our nose in the mud and in the corals. In other words, to go muck diving and take macro pictures. At the risk of sounding blase, we did not want to drag our dive gear around to see mantas or (whale) sharks. We have a whole next season to look forward to that (yes, we have decided to go back to the Maldives in September!). No, we are in Bali to make pictures of critters that you need to enlarge 400 x to see on your laptop. So that’s what we’ve been doing since we got here (aside from eating lots of Babi Guling, Soto Ayam and Gado Gado). All our dives have been at an average depth of 9 meters and no shorter than 90 minutes. So far, the score is not bad: a couple of sea horses, mimic octopus, wasp fish, double ended pipefish, frog fish, microscopic shrimps, nudibranchs, sea hares... At the USAT Liberty, a wreck at Tulamben, I swam in a school of thousands of big eye trevallies and saw my first humphead parrot fish. I’ve seen a baby lobster being eaten by a sand perch, Stefano showed me the smallest scorpion fish I’ve ever seen in my life (Ambon scorpion fish, no more than 2 cm long) and I’m waiting for the pygmy seahorse and hoping to find many more rare nudibranchs, ghost pipefish and shrimps, but it’s heaven already.
We are staying in lovely bungalows for less than EUR 15 per night, drive around in rented cars for EUR 6 a day per person and some dinners don’t cost more than EUR 2 for a big portion of delicious Indonesian food. I could last here a long time... The company and conversations are great, the landscape is beautifully green and tropical, trees filled with frangipani (my favourite flower, see right foot for proof), massages left, right and centre and lots of time to relax between dives and meals.
And the best thing of all is that I haven’t had to organise anything. About one week before the season ended in the Maldives, Stefano suggested we go to Bali. I had been breaking his balls for weeks about where we were going on holidays and as you may have read before, I like to at least pretend I’m super-organised whilst long term planning is definitely not his forte. He is, however, well connected in the diving world, so all he needed to do was to place one phone call to Gerald. Gerald happened to be planning a trip to Bali for some muck diving and good food, all we needed to do was to book a ticket and pack our bags. So indeed two days before departure from Male we bought our flight tickets to Singapore and Bali and that was that. For the rest, we didn’t have to do anything. Gerald has been our tour guide, since he’s a regular Bali-goer and we’ve just followed him around, to the best dive sites and the best restaurants. And yes! After five months of working, finally we have been diving for fun, without guests or students tailing us. Finally the opportunity to spend 30 minutes the same coral patch, looking for the tiniest colourful creatures and practice some underwater photography and not worry about anything except for your own air consumption (although a 12 liter tank at 9 meters depth lasts me for about 3 hours, so no worries there either).
7 days later....
The last part of the holiday was spent lazing around in Ubud, yoga & massage centre of Bali. In the past four days, I went to five yoga sessions and my body feels stretched, revived, detoxified and I every single muscle in my body hurts... I feel great and have confirmed that I found a new passion. After five months of yoga abstention in the Maldives (except for when Darja was visiting), the drive has been rekindled and I have decided to integrate yoga more into my life. And I’m not talking about just self-managed yoga sessions. I’m talking more serious yoga. A few weeks of yoga teacher training in India perhaps? Don’t fret guys, I’m not turning into a vegan, macro-biotic, chakra, ayurvedic, head-in-the-clouds chick. May I point out to you that in between the yoga sessions, we had ogreish meals, devouring smoked duck, crispy pork, dog satay (yes, DOG satay) and all sorts of other Indonesian delicacies. Consider the yoga thing just a very practical way of balancing out the bad shit I put my body through... ;-)
And now? Now we are about to leave Bali to return to Singapore for Part Two of the chapter “Corporate Life, it’s a wrap”.
And then? Then it’s back to Egypt, back home, for some sand, sun and... diving perhaps???
Wishing you a wonderful start of the summer!
-
03 Juni 2010 - 10:13
Mama:
super super superissimo!
Ik voel je gelukzalige gevoel en de opluchting na het 'loslaten 'van je vorige leven.
Wens je alle goeds en tot gauw in het haagje. -
03 Juni 2010 - 11:05
Luan:
Love your blogs!
Geweldige avonturen Yais, nog steeds!
Blijf genieten en reizen en lekker eten en schrijven. Je kan testen hoe veel vlaggetjes Waarbenjij.nu toestaat in je profiel, het worden er al aardig wat!
Liefs uit la Suisse,
XX Lu -
03 Juni 2010 - 13:06
Yaisa:
well done on the throwing the stuff away ... must have been hard women. Glad that you are enjoying sun & the deep sea... all that food and no talk of cocktails ... ;)
Regards
SKO -
04 Juni 2010 - 04:25
Mir:
Wow Yais... goed te horen dat jullie het samen nog altijd super hebben! XM -
04 Juni 2010 - 09:52
Anjo:
Succes met opruimen; bedenk maar dat je geen roeipeddel nodig hebt, als je onder water op je best bent!
Reageer op dit reisverslag
Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley