There’s no resort-style swimming pool, no infinity edge waters, no palm-shaded outdoor jacuzzi; no television in the room, or anywhere, no newspapers, no radio; no lounge, no business centre, no recreation room, no tennis courts, no spa, no gym. (There is a bar, though; must have beer.) There is air conditioning and hot water in the rooms, but no electricity between 10am and 7pm. There’s no satellite TV, no Internet or Wi-Fi, and for one weekend, your mobile smart device becomes a very expensive alarm clock. There’s very little to do at most dive resorts. And yet we have tons of stories to tell.
On Tuesday night, under a crescent moon, over nasi goreng and teh halia (Malay style ginger milk tea), K, Jun and I met for dinner and ended up having a long session comparing bug bites, recounting past dives and exchanging amazing tales like weathered old fishermen talking about the catch that was that big.
Jun had some bed bug bites (we think, or they could just be bugs from somewhere on this trip) on the back of her neck, and some on her back which she thinks she got from the boat — the owners of the boat probably don’t clean the mattresses very often, and we’ve seen wet divers and sweaty beachgoers just plop onto the mattress after a dive. And don’t even get me started on those orangey-black moldy life jackets… Ew.
K had a bite on her arm that was still oozing pus that we think is a sea bug bite; she was wearing shorties (wetsuit with short sleeves and legs). It happens. I remember when I did my Open Water, I had shorties too, and as I swam, I just kept feeling things which I could not see stinging my exposed skin. Sea bugs. Bleah.
I lucked out this trip. I might have a few tiny bites here and there, but other than the ant bite on my ear (I was napping on the wooden deck outside our room and sometime during the afternoon, a line of ants decided to cut across my towel, and I guess one inadvertently strayed) there was nothing major. I did get a few stings from a nudibranch, like a few pin pricks on my palm and finger (it was floating in the water and I was trying to return it to a rock, serves me right), but those went away after one day or so. There was one point, though, during one of the dives I suddenly felt a pain on my upper lip — my first thought was Oh #@%&! Not the face! (hey, I’m a girl, I’m vain like that) — but it came to nothing. Phew.
Most importantly, no one got sandfly bits. Those are the worst and the small beaches on islands like Aur and Sibu tend to have sandflies. The bites itch like something wicked and, even if you don’t scratch them, which takes the strength and willpower of a buddha, they leave a scar that lasts for two months. My reaction to sandfly bites is they swell to a blister the size of a ten cent coin.
And, no jellyfish encounters. I hate jellyfish. They freak me out. For me, jellyfish are to the sea what spiders are on land. Plus the fact that their stings are nasty. I once saw a colleague come back from a dive trip with jelly stings across his face. You could almost do a survey of the tentacle count of the jellyfish he encountered. (But he was a guy, they were like battle scars; they’ll heal but in the meantime, it was a good story to tell the chicks.) Jun has a horror story from a friend who on a night dive, where you can’t see anything in the black water, did the giant step right into a school of jellyfish. Ouch.
Then we got to the best part: the dive tales. The monster moray form Perhentian. The descend into deep blue nothing and suddenly see a pair of lionfishes waiting for us at the bottom. Seeing sharks on my first ever dive. Being surrounded by six sharks at Tulamben. Jun’s mola mola and whale shark adventures. The huge green turtle resting on the table coral. The triggerfish that cracked the camera casing. The case of the curious cuttlefish during the mask clearing exercise. The night dive with the puffed up puffer (so cute, but I felt so bad for them; puffers shouldn’t puff up too many times in their life, it’s bad for them). Seeking shelter from strong currents at the USS Liberty Wreck… So many stories.
From there, we eventually got to lamenting that fact that the dive shop people we were with over the weekend would have left for Bali that day (August is a good time to go manta ray and mola mola hunting; to see, not shoot). This weekend is a national holiday, after all, so dive shops around the country would be leaving for big dive trips.
K’s a convert now. So that’s another diving kaki for future trips. (Eam wants to take his Advanced Water soon. Dave’s also thinking of learning…)
But till then, we paid up, grabbed our shoulder-aching computer bags, and headed home. All of us brought work home to do, but none of us were in the mood to do them. Thanks to the water as well as the boat rides, I was still enjoying the last remnant of the dive trip, the swaying. My head’s still in a slight haze, spells of rolling like the waves every now and then, but it’s a happy buzz. I’ll miss it as it fades as the week goes on.
Note: Except for first row, photos are from Wikipedia.
