More Diving

But first, a little update…

Sorry our last post was so short, we were getting eaten by some nasty little mosquitos in the lobby of our hotel in Lovina, so I will give some more details in this one.

Our stay in Candidasa was excellent… 3 days of just relaxing by the pool and reading. It was just what we needed, and we headed to Amed ready to get back into the water and do some diving. We had three full days of diving planned, and decided that this would be a great chance for Cat to get her Advanced Diving Certificate, so we found a great dive shop to take care of this for us. The diving around Amed is great, excellent corals, lots of fish and two big shipwrecks to explore. Cat had no problem completing the course and I had a great time tagging along taking pictures of everything. Here’s some…

The place we stayed in Amed was again, very nice, ocean view from the front door of our villa, excellent food, a great pool and of course, silly looking ducks…

We said goodbye to the ducks and Amed and headed to Lovina, which was to be our base for exploring the inland a little and see the volcanos. We decided to stay just two nights in Lovina, giving us an extra day of diving at our next stop, Pemuteran. Our trip up the mountains and inland was a nice little break from the temperatures of the beaches, only 25 degrees instead of 35. Near the top of Danan Brahma, there is a botanical gardens and we spent most of the morning there looking at various types of orchids, cacti and various other plants in a huge park overlooking a volcanic lake. We also stopped by an old Hindi temple that was built on this lake centuries ago, and some of the temple now sits well into the lake… it was very beautiful.

We headed back to our hotel for a late afternoon poolside beverage and started getting ready for some more diving. A bit about our hotel here in Lovina… as some of you may know, it is low season for tourism right now. I don’t know why, maybe its because May is when students are writing exams, or summer vacation is just around the corner, or maybe because it’s the hockey playoffs (go Canucks), but anyways, most of the places we have stayed in are generally kind of quiet, which has been nice. This place in Lovina though is, well, eerie… it is an older, established resort, a bit rustic but well kept up, and almost completely empty. If you can remember the winter resort from the movie The Shining with Jack Nicholson where he goes crazy, this place feels like a summer version of that resort. Don’t worry, I didn’t chase after Catherine with an axe, but we both got the same feel from the place and looked forward to moving on.

Anyways, move on we did and we are now in the small seaside town of Pemuteran. This place is all about the diving and snorkeling. People at the other dive shops had been speaking highly of it and we couldn’t wait to get into the water… but we had to because for the first time on this trip, I ended up with a little tummy trouble, and had a miserable night our first night here, so we had to skip our first day of diving. I got some medicine in me and am now 100% better, so this morning we headed out diving and WOW, this place has some fantastic coral life here. Here are some highlights… Well only one actually posted :(

We are headed out again the next two days and will try to post more pics if we can. We have a good Wi-Fi connection here and for those of you who we have been trying to Skype with, I dont think this island can handle video Skype, so we may have to do just audio... it seems to work just fine! Well gotta rest up for tomorrow!

Chat soon,

Tim and Cat

Lovin Lovina

Hey all,

Just a short update today. We finished our diving in Amed, and Catherine completed her Advanced Open Water Diving certification! Yay! We had some truly amazing dives while she did the course, and saw the most amazing corals I have ever seen. There were lots and lots of fish as well, but to see big healthy coral reefs was fantastic. I have been to a few sites around the world and had assumed that the health of the reefs was rapidly deteriorating, but it was great to see that the conservation efforts here seem to be working.

We headed out of Amed this morning and drove about 2 hours to Lovina and found yet another paradise. They dont have Wireless internet, but they have a couple of decent computers in the lobby, so we will try to post some pics on this blog tomorrow. We have just finished dinner for tonight and are planning to retire to the room and get ready for tomorrow... we will either be hiking to a big waterfall or going on a boat ride to try to hang out with some dolphins... decisions decisions :)

Chat soon,

Tim and Cat

Wet in Amed

Well we managed to pull ourselves away from the wonderful pool in Candidasa and head north to Amed on the North Eastern shore of Bali. Our nice little green car got us here quickly and cooly (good AC) and we managed to find and check into our Amed accomodations. They also have a great pool, as well as a whole menagerie of resident animals, including two rather animated ducks. After much discussion it has been decided that I am not allowed to feed them from the table in the restaurant, but Tim figures it is ok for me to take food out onto the lawn for them and feed them there. They still follow me back into the restaurant though, and hover around expectantly. We have spent the last two days doing some incredible diving. The coral here is like nothing either of us have ever seen before, the fish are prolific and amazing, and there are two shipwrecks in the area that we have gotten to explore. All in all a really incredible place. The only thing we are missing is a good internet connection, hence the lack of posts and new pictures. We are pretty sure our next location - Lovina, we go there tomorrow - will be better equipped. So until then hope everyone is well and we will talk to you soon . . .

Driving in Bali

Well we got our car yesterday and I think it is safe to say that the vehicle delivered to us in no way resembled the picture of what we thought we were getting. We asked for a Dihatsu Feroza, thinking that we would get a newer model, but we were delivered a model from the early '90s, which was a little rough. Now, I am not usually one to complain, so I had a quick look, hopped in, and started it up, and it actually seemed ok... it had AC and seemed to run pretty smooth, and it had the feel of a bigger jeep type vehicle, which would likely serve us well when we got to the mountains, so we decided that we would take what we were given and head to Candidasa.





For most of the drive, things went pretty smooth... well, the steering was pretty loose and the brake pedal would go to the floor without actually providing any stopping power to the vehicle, but it seemed to fit in pretty well with the other vehicles
on the road. We managed to get to the Watergarden resort in Candidasa within about one hour, and checked in. Again, this is an amazing place... we have our own villa with a little deck that overlooks a beautiful pond filled with many fish, there is a great pool, and the Wi-Fi connection is pretty good (knock on wood). Catherine's research pays off again!!





Now we could have just hung around and relaxed, but we decided that we would drive up into the mountains to see the crater of one of the 3 large volcanoes on the island. We also decided to take the less travelled route rather than the paved highway, thus getting a better feel for the culture of the area. The travel book we have states that all roads in Bali are paved... I think that the writers may not have travelled every road on the island, because the road we ended up on turned into an 8 foot wide path with bits of ashphalt scattered about, with incredibly steep climbs and drop-offs, and surprisingly, alot of traffic (mostly bikes, pedestrians and lots of chickens).





Many people might have turned back at this point, opting for the safety and reliability of the highway, but not this fearless couple... we decided to forge ahead. about 15 minutes later, our quest for adventure ended up smacking right in the nose. I was pretty sure I heard the tire explode, but I decided to will the tire to reinflate and pushed on until I was at least on a flat stretch of road (by stretch I mean about 25 feet long and about 10 feet wide). As it turns out, I do not have the ability to reinflate tires with will alone. I do, however, possess the ability to change a tire, so I got ready to do just that.





When you guys rent a vehicle, how often do you check for a jack and tire iron? Same here. Well my search for tire changing equipment left me with the following tools...





A small flathead screwdriver


A 6 inch long aluminum tube with one end shaped to fit over the lug nuts


Another 6 inch long aluminum tube that looked like it had been driven over once to often





Yeah that was it... the piece of aluminum that fit over the tires lug nuts was not the same size as the one to remove the spare from the back of the vehicle, and even if I somehow managed to get both the spare and the flat tire loose, I had no jack to raise the vehicle. As the motorbike and scooters squeezed by us, we began to wonder if we were "in a pickle" or "up the creek". We decided that we were still in "pickle" mode so we pulled out our Indonesian language book and flagged down a passing scooter and tried to inform him of our situation. After some strange looks we guided him to the side of the vehicle and showed him the tire, at which point he began to nod knowingly, chuckled to himself, and pulled out his cell phone, I presume to make a call to the local AMA.





(This type of thing has come up before in our travels... not the flat tire thing but the cell phone thing. Why is it that people can get crystal clear phone coverage in some third world country, on the side of a volcano nowhere near any civilization, yet we cant get a signal from our back yard?? It boggles the mind... anyways, back to the adventure)





Within about 10 minutes we had 5 fellas on scooters and one guy claiming he was a mechanic at our side to aid in our rescue... the mechanic had brought a tire iron (wrong size for the lug nuts on the flat, but the right size to get the spare off), a crescent wrench, and the handle off an old socket set (no sockets though). Numerous efforts to combine this equipment in one fashion or another did not get us any further in loosening the lug nuts off the flat... and the mechanic kept looking at me with this incredulous look every time I asked him if he had access to a jack (the look conveyed the message "what the hell are you two doing up here without a jack?). It was a little humbling. After all of us tried a combination of the tools at hand to loosen the lug nuts, we did the one thing common to all men when faced with a situation of this nature... sit back, scratch your head and look around at the other guys scratching their heads. I had turned to Catherine and we were getting plans ready to abandon ship and catch a ride back to Candidasa when it appeared to me that one of the fellas got an idea, grabbed the aluminum tube and the ratchet handle and scooted away. The other fellas seemed contented by this display and we only waited about 10 minutes before he returned, with a confident look about him. He had taken the aluminum tube with the socket end and had drilled a hole through the other end of the tube which allowed the ratchet handle to slide through, allowing us to get a good grip on the lug nuts, and we began cranking. The aluminum to me looked like it would not withstand the force required to turn the nuts, but amazingly, it managed to get all 5 nuts off before it was completely mangled where the hole was drilled. The guy also managed to find the smallest hydraulic jack ever made, so we were able to get the Feroza off the ground just enough to get the spare on. Success!! At this point, much of the nearby village had heard of our plight and had come to lend some support, so there was much cheering, and many outstretched hands when I began to compensate the fellas who helped the most with this rescue... ahh well I am sure they all had a good laugh and a cold beer at the expense of the silly, unprepared tourists, but we managed to make it back down the volcano without any more incidents.





We decided to take it easy today and relax, get a massage and wait for our new vehicle to be delivered. I gotta say that even though we were given a piece of crap, the guys who runs the rental company has been excellent and he just dropped off a new (well looks like about a 2005) Toyota small van type thing, so we are ready for our next adventure... well after a day of massages and beers by the pool that is :)





We are off to Amed tomorrow and will be doing a couple of days of diving there as there is supposed to be a great wreck just offshore... chat with y'all then.





T n C

Monkeys and more

First, let chat a little about monkeys...

For those of you who know Catherine, you may have heard her refer to monkeys as "those little bastards". This comes from her past experiences with monkeys, however, my limited experiences have been very positive, and I generally refer to them as "cute". So we saddled up and headed towards one of Ubuds most popular attractions, the monkey forest, where the monkeys roam free as nature intended around beautiful temples and statues. You could buybananas for these furry little angels at the entrance, and with some hesitation, Catherine decided to buy 6 to hand out according to which monkeys were behaving the best. We put these bananas into our backpack and headed into the forest, where the little beasts were politely minding thier own business and appeared generally bored by our presence. We got a number of great photos, and after about 30 minutes, we decided that the monkeys had behaved well enough and did indeed deserve a treat of bananas.

Now heres where things got a little... well, lets say the general demeanor of the monkeys, or one in particular, changed somewhat. With the backpack on my back, Catherine unzipped the pouch containing the bananas, and as she pulled out the plastic bag they were in, a large grouchy male decided that ALL the bananas were his... he jumped on my back and grabbed the plastic bag of bananas from Catherines hand as she squealed and uttered something that sounded like "Buckin Trunk Keys!!" or something similar. The big male had taken the whole plastic bag full of bananas and was pretty intent on keeping it. Being a bigger male than him, I decided that I should valiantly protect my bride and retrieve said bananas... this was the monkeys response...

So we left the monkey reserve with dignities damaged and previous assumptions about monkeys restored. They are still a little bit cute though :)

Anyways, tonight will be our last night in Ubud. Beautiful city and I can easily see why people who visit this place often end up staying here. But we must move on... we have rented a vehicle and will be trying our hand at driving tomorrow to Candidasa, where we will spend a few days adventuring around the east side of Bali and maybe head up to one of the volcanoes.

Chat soon,

Tim and Cat

Hello Bali!

Hello again,

Well we had a great time on the Gili Islands! The weather was awesome, sunshine and mid 30's everyday, we did 10 dives between us both and met a great couple from Sydney to share after-dive Bintangs with :) It is kind of a shame leaving this little paradise but the journey must move on, so we booked ourselves a "fast boat" and said "Cya" to Gili T.

Now, we did actually make it to Bali, but it wasn't without a little adventure. Our boat that we had booked to take us to the harbour in Bali arrived an hour late, and when we finally did climb on board, there was a mechanical problem with the engines, so we sat on a hot boat in the noon sun for another hour before getting underway. But we did finally get things moving and got to the harbor in Bali around 1500hrs, where our A/C'd van was waiting. The 45 minute drive to our hotel allowed us to get a glimpse of the southern part of Bali, which seemed to be primarily small manufacturing shops, and was amazingly clean for a port town.

We arrived at our home for the next 4 days around 1600hrs, and once again, Catherine did a great job of finding the perfect place. Right now I am sitting on the deck of our villa overlooking a vast expanse of palm trees while 3 huge volcanos provide the backdrop. This pic really doesn't do it justice but...

We just returned from a little shopping excursion and are now both lounging about until its time for dinner. We plan to do the same thing tomorrow, maybe visit a monkey sanctuary too... rough :)

By the way, we have been keeping a close eye on things in Bangkok, and even though we were really safe when we were there, we have altered our travel plans a little to avoid going into the city again. This will likely blow over soon enough, but better safe than sorry, so don't get too worried about the news stories coming out of Bangkok, we wont be headed back there.

Chat soon,

Tim

Underwater paradise. Land isn't too bad either . . .

We are well into our third day of diving here on Gili Trawangan. We started this morning with a sunrise dive at 6am out to Shark Point - infortunately no sharks, but lots of early rising fish zipping about having breakfast, alothough we learned that the appx 3 foot trigger fish are not morning fish and were quite grumpy that they had people around so early. Yesterday was a spectacular diving day with a 2 meter manta ray, many sea turtles, and beautiful coral. Monday was the refresh day with Tim doing two dives and me refreshing skills in the pool before heading out in the afternoon to dive with turtles and even a baby black tipped reef shark. The island is gorgeous, the food amazing, and everyone is super friendly. We have been diving with a great couple from Australia that have been sharing in the underwater photo adventures - and the post dive Bintangs as well.

Tomorrow we head off to Bali and to the cultural centre of Ubud for some mountain time following our stay on this beautiful little white sand rimmed island. Now we're off to pick up our laundry and then back on the boat for our final dive out on the east side of Gili Air.

Ok Tim here... just think I should explain what looks like a shark attack at the end of that video of the manta. I have been sucking through my oxygen on these dives much faster than Catherine, so we were doing our safety stop when we saw the manta, and I had only 10 Bar of oxygen left. When our divemaster, Rusty, saw the ray, it was the first one he had seen in months, so he was really excited and wanted us to share air while we swam after the ray, but that didnt work out the way he planned, and I had to head to the surface. Still, it was awesome to just be in the water with this amazingly graceful critter... We'll post more from Ubud.

Off to the Gili Islands

Well today we are leaving our little villa by the sea and heading across the straight to the island of Gili Trawangan where we will spend our days diving. Our time on Lombok has been great so far, we made it out golfing on Friday at the Kosaido Golf Course about 1/2 an hour away from the hotel. While neither of our scores were particularly amazing it was pretty wonderful to be able to say "my golf ball landed just below that palm tree," and "the pin is up there about 30 feet this side of the ocean." The Indonesian golf tradition is that they send a caddy out with every golfer so as we left the club house two Indonesian men hopped on the back of our cart and proceeded to hand us clubs, give us tips on the greens, and find our golf balls when we shot them into the bush. On the first hole Tim promptly sliced his ball - and there was a chorus of "too bads" and "nice tries" from the gaggle of local children surrounding the cart. I made one of 3 good shots all day off my tee shot on the first hole and got a bunch of suprised "nice shot!" and "ooohhhh-ing" from the peanut gallery followed by polite clapping. We realized fairly quickly the role of the small children was not to provide the cheering crowd noises, but was to retreive lost balls that our caddies were unable to locate, and show up at the next tee box and sell them back to us for 2000 IDR or about 20 cents. Sure enough a water hazard or two later and there were shiny white, barely used, Maxflis waiting for us at the next hole. Relalizing that 20 cents was actually a pretty good deal, we rewarded the hard work and bought a few of the balls. Our caddies quickly realized that we were not undercover PGA and LPGA players and took far to much pleasure in telling us our scores at the end of each hole. I didn't know that you could actually get a 10 on a par 4, but apparently you can. By 11 am we were thankfully finishing up and the heat of the day was upon us. It is not easy to golf in 35 degree heat, so future tee times will continue to be as early as possible.

We aren't sure what we will have for internet connection while we are on Gili Trawangan, so we may or may not be posting over the next few days - if we aren't able to our next update will be on Thursday from Bali. Talk to you soon!

And just so you know, we have been trying to upload pictures and haven't been able to. We will try again at the next internet site - hopefully with more luck!

On an island in the sun...

We are now on Lombok, a little island just to the east of Bali. We had to get up at 3:45 AM to catch the flight which had a 2 hour layover in Sudihaya, which gave us the chance to grab a bite, then off to Lombok... well not quite. Once all of the passengers boarded the plane and we got onto the runway, we noticed that there was no A/C working on the plane, so it was back the the terminal so the mechanics could work their magic. Now, if you had 80 people jammed tight in an aluminum tube sitting on a black ashphalt tarmac in + 34 degrees heat with no AC on the plane, would you deplane them or let them raost a little longer?? We ended up roasting a little longer, but as it turned out, they had it working in about 50 minutes and we were really on our way.

Our driver met us at the airport and drove us the 30 minutes to the resort, and what a place! This is the most extravagant hotel we will be staying in for the entire trip, and likely the nicest accomodations I will ever stay in. When you walk into our little piece of heaven, you find yourself in a covered open air kitchen and living room, overlooking our own little "plunge pool", and past the pool is our enclosed air conditioned bedroom. The room (it should really be called a small compound) is very private, or at least it is meant to be... there are 10 foot walls all around with a number of trees and other plants to provide us with even more privacy... but there is a two story guest house being built just to the side of us and the workers were putting the finishing touches on the roof. I think that once one of the young lads saw Cat prancing about, the rest of the work crew decided that the roof would be a great place to take a coffee break and have a gander. While this did provide me with a bit of entertainment, Catherine reminded me that they might not all be looking at her, so we spoke with the manager, who had made arrangements that no work was to be done on the second floor, and she got us our privacy back in our little slice of heaven.

We spent the rest of the day doing a bit of a hike into town, then back to the resort for a beautiful sunset, a delicious meal and of course, a bintang or two. We tried our best to stay up past 8:30, but the travelling and the heat had beaten us into submission. Slept like a log.

Today we told ourselves we were gonna do nothing but relax, suntan (burn), dip into the ocean, send a few emails and make a few skype calls. For those that have never tried this, and that included me until a week ago, this is a free internet video messaging system. Basically, you get a web camera, plug it into your computer, download the skype program, and start looking up your friends who have it and start chatting. David and Elaine mentioned that this is how they contact their families when they are on vacation, so we thought we would give it a try. We sent out a few emails and set it up so others would be online for 10:00 AM our time here. There were a few glitches as the internet signal here fluxuates depending on where you stand, but we were able to talk with Cat's mom, Ken and Noreen, and we could see David and Elaine, but they couldnt hear us... we will be trying again soon to get it working proper. All in all, it is pretty amazing that I can sit here by the pool on the other side of the planet and have a face to face conversation with someone back home.

Anyways, after the skype calls, we accomplished what we set out to do ... nothing. We snorkeled, ate, had a beer, made a tee time (golfing tomorrow), felt sad about the Oilers, and got a sunburn. Pretty full day really :)

Well time to go have some dinner... chat soon!

Tim

Borobudur Photos

Thought you might enjoy some photos from our day's adventurings . . . Catherine

Made it to Indonesia!

Hey all, well after having a great start to things in Bangkok, we left the beautiful Pullman hotel behind us and headed to the airport to fly to Yogyajakarta, on the island of Java in Indonesia. We arrived at the airport and quickly realized that we were overweight... well our luggage was overweight, not us. So we had to donate a little more money to the airline, but even though we packed lightly, the stuff we did bring with us we really do need, so we bit the bullet, paid the nice people and hopped on their plane.



We flew into Kuala Lampur airport and stayed there for about 1.5 hours, then carried on to Yogyajakarta and arrived at 1700 hours on the 5th. the temp was about 30 degrees and it had to be 100% humidity... awesome! We grabbed a cab and went to the hotel, which is the "sister" hotel to the one where we got engaged at in Havana. This hotel is every bit as beautiful as the one in Havana, and if you have about 3 minutes to kill, I decided to shoot a little walkthrough of the place...

Ok heres the deal with the walkthrough video... it is a little bigger than the kickboxing one and the connection we have here in our hotel is a littel slow, so as of right now, I havent been able to upload it to share it with you all... but take my word for it, it is beautiful, and we will have either pics or videos up shortly :)

Well, yesterday, we headed out into the throng of activity on the main market streets, and found a great little place for lunch... rice for me and noodles for Catherine, and a couple of beers for each of us for about 6 bucks... yummy! After lunch, we booked ourselves a tour of the nearby temples for tomorrow, and then headed to our hotel to cool off in the pool. It was another 30+ degrees and 80+% humidity and the pool felt great!

Well now it is a new day, and I started this post yesterday, but because of the slow download issue, I will tell you of our tour of the Barabradur temple today. I have seen a few temples in my life (Tikal in Guatemala and Copan in Honduras, as well as some great temples in Japan) but I have to say that this one takes the cake. Barabradur is a Bhuddist temple built in 750AD and after it was built, the area became largely Muslim, so the temple was not put to much use. Aside from alot of Bhuddas missing their heads (likely at the hands of the local Muslim faithful) this temple was in spectacular shape. It is a worldwide heratige site so it is constantly being upkept, and the grounds around it are spectacular as well. Here is a quick link if you wanna see a little more... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur

We arrived just after dawn and started the 5 km trek to the summit, 5 km if you do a clockwise ring around each level, which we did. If you walk up the temple in this fashion, you will be able to view every one of the hundreds of hand carved wall pieces, each depicting a piece of the story of how the Bhudda reached enlightenment. While we kinda lost the plot of the story, we did see some awesome stone work, cool skinks and geckos, and lots of neat bugs. Our timing couldn't have been better, because as we reached the top, we were greeted by many school kids out on a "greet the english speaking person" tour. They were all very polite and giggled at our repsonses to their questions. We made the climb down and took in a early lunch at the bottom in the market... have you ever had pinapple pancakes?? Yummy!!

Right now we are back in our room, having another Bintang and working on getting some pictures up on this blog so you can get a sense of how things are going for us here. Till we get that figured out, I am gonna put this post up so you all know we are doing great and having a great time.

Lastly, just a note on the beer situation here... the people on Java can not only make fantastic coffee (ever wonder why we call coffee Java?) but they brew a pretty fine Pilsener call Bintang. This beer far exceeds any of the yuck in Bangkok (like Singha which we did sample often) and I would say its on par with most of the good Canadian brands like Kokanee. No, really, its good!

Ok time to wake Catherine from her afternoon siesta and head out for supper.

Chat soon, Tim

Well it has been a couple of fun nights here in Bangkok. We went to the Muay Thai kickboxing matches last night and watched some tiny little tough guys kick the crap outta each other.

To finish off the night we went down to Phat Pong road and had a few beers. This is a pretty popular place for tourists, lots of fake name brand merchandise and lots of "bars" with every kind of entertainment you could think of. We played it pretty safe and went to watch a Thai cover band.

We got up early today and went to the weekend market. It was amazing how much stuff was for sale in a one block area, and how many people come to buy there. We stayed till about 1400hrs, then back to the hotel. We planned to go out again tonight but our late afternoon nap kinda drifted into the evening, so we are gonna just start packing up and get ready for our flight to Yogjakarta tomorrow.

Pullman Bangkok King Power Hotel

Well we have settled in and are working on acclimating to both the time change and the temperature change. Its 3pm here right now, which means it is 2am at home, and its 36 degrees outside right now. There had been a little bit of rain, but it doesn't really cool things off, more like standing in a warm shower. Our hotel is wonderful, definately a change from the thin-walled guest house we stayed in last time Tim and I were in Bangkok in that it actually has air conditioning and walls, rather than screens, separating our room from the others. We are planning to spend the rest of the afternoon at the pool bar before heading off to Lumphini Stadium to watch the Muay Thai kickboxing matches Then its off to the infamous Patpong night market for some shopping and free entertainment.

We made it

30 hours from the time we left the house to getting into the room in Bangkok, but here we are. Its 2 am, and we're tired, but very happy to be here.