Bali

Since I'm seriously back blogged, and I have ten minutes, I'm going for the Bali part.

I went to Bali with two friends this weekend - Julie and Julia. They sometimes introduce themselves as Melissa and Susan. That's only when they don't really want to be meeting people.

Essentially we left Friday night, dove all day Saturday at Tulamben, hung out Saturday night, relaxed Sunday morning, went to Ubud, relaxed, went to Legian to the beach on Sunday afternoon, and relaxed. Then we came back to Singapore. Basically, we relaxed, and we had a really great time.

A couple of highlights...
On our third dive at Tulamben, we swam with bumphead parrotfish. They're my favorite. I will post a picture or two of them, but it was amazing. They're huge. They're the Dr. Seuss ones that I have mentioned in the past.

We walked to our dives along a stony "beach." I thought it was hard to get to the place where we get in the water. Well...the locals put our BCDs and tanks on their heads (two at a time!), and carried them for us. They get less than $1 per tank per carry.

I had a defining moment on Sunday. We tried to work out transportation on Sunday to get from Sanur to Ubud, then get to Legian, then get to the airport. The airport is right by Legian, but our stuff was in Sanur. After exploring options (having a driver for the day, taking a bus to Ubud, hiring taxis, hiring private cars, etc.), we decided we would figure out a way through taxi or private car to get to Ubud, find a way to get to Legian, and then the guys from our hotel were going to meet us, with our bags, in Legian to take us to the airport. I am NOT a trusting person. In fact, sometimes I think the world is out to get me. Well...I relaxed, and I did it. I left all of our stuff with some random guys and hoped that they met up with us to take us to the airport (with all of my scuba equipment!). I explored their incentives for each choice, and it seemed okay, but I did get nervous throughout the day. It worked! The guy was there, and all was well. I am slowly getting back hope for humanity.

One weird thing was the beach at Legian (and Kuta and Seminyak). When I went there in August, it was the most beautiful beach I had ever been to. Perfect clean sand, going on forever, super fun waves, and facing a wonderful sunset. There must have been a shift in the tides or something. There was trash ALL over the beach. It was filled with plastic bags - even some trees had washed up on shore. It was totally disgusting. When I went into the water, I had to get out, because there were plastic bags swimming around my ankles, and it made me gag. Yuck.

We met an unsuccessful suicidal gekko at Cafe Wayan in Ubud. He was hanging by his hands, upside down from a beam on the ceiling, and we were watching him. All was fine and good until we heard a smack. He jumped off the beam and then walked away. Poor guy. Must have hurt.

One last note on Bali - it was fun to travel with girls. I love going places with Matt, but I had a whole new perspective with these girls, and it was kind of fun to be checked out! (I don't get that when I walk around with Matt). Even if they guys were looking at Julie and Julia...it was still nice.

Pictures include Tulamben diving area, Julie and Julia underwater, a bumphead. Videos are the bumphead, a Julie Fish, a Julia Fish, a Ranta Fish, and a Melanie Fish at the end. The second one is oriental sweetlips. Click here to see more photos from our trip.