The H writes...
After my previous post, we received a formal complaint that there were too few photos, and too much whining about morons. We’ll take that on board, of course, so here is a post with nothing but photos of sharks!
A load of more photos from the honeymoon, especially the underwater portion, of course, can be found in the Small Steps flickr group. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »
The H writes...
Spending a week on a live-aboard at Sipadan turns out to be every bit as awesome as it sounds, but also an exercise in utter frustration, largely with our fellow divers.
That isn’t to say that we haven’t wildly enjoyed our 20-odd dives; Sipadan is most certainly deserving of its reputation as one of the 10 best dive destinations in the world. Before Sipadan, we hadn’t really seen sharks, and turtles, cuttlefish, and octopus were a rare treat indeed. Here, we must have seen a dozen sharks on every dive, and so many turtles that occasionally we were worried one would swim into us. And if the daytime submarine activity was magnificent, the night diving was downright magical, with oodles of species and experiences we’ve never had before. Truly fantastic. Read the rest of this entry »
The H writes...
So we’ve had a tumultous couple of days; When we feared we might get stuck in the Togean islands, we decided that perhaps it would be prudent to get the hell out of there while we could, so we made our way back to Manado. Which put us close to Lembeh – only about 90 minutes west of Manado, which is a world renown location for muck diving.
“What”, I hear you ponder, “the ever-flipping hell is ‘muck diving’?”.
Well. Imagine a very busy shipping port, where, at any given time, there are a dozen oil tankers, container ships, and other boats floating about. The shipping channel is completely devoid of coral, and the years and years of garbage from the busy shipping port (Bitung Harbour, in case you were wondering) and the surrounding villages were all dumped into the water. Read the rest of this entry »
The H writes...
After our time in Bunaken, we decided it was time to move on to the Togean islands. That, I will have to admit, is a hell of a lot easier said than done. On our way there, we flew from Manado to Gorontalo, before catching the twice-a-week, 12-hour ferry from Gorontalo to Wakai. From there, we had another 45 minute transfer to get to the Black Marlin dive resort.
We arrived on Wednesday (I think…), and were having a great time doing not much other than diving and reading; There was electricity from 6pm to 11pm, but no warm water, and running water only for 2 hours per day. And, needless to say, no internet to be had in many miles radius. A rather fabulous experience! Read the rest of this entry »
The H writes...
I know we’ve been updating this blog quite frequently over the past few weeks, but from today on, we’re heading to the Togean islands.
It’s an awesome, rather secluded part of Indonesia. So secluded, in fact, it’ll take us the best part of two days to get to.
Part of it being secluded, however, means that there is only power two hours per day… And it’s extremely unlikely that there’ll be any internet etc, so there’s going to be not-a-lot-of-updates from us for a while. We should re-surface at some point, but after the togeans, we’re heading straight to Borneo to hang out in a rain forest, and after that, it’s straight off to the northwestern part of Borneo to start our liveaboard.
All in all, we’re not sure how much time there’ll be for blogging and such… But don’t worry, it doesn’t mean we’ve been eaten by sharks! When we re-surface, no doubt we’ll have tons of stories, pictures, and other fun things to share.
See you soon,
~ Haje & Ziah
The H writes...
So, my dad asked a rather clever question, after I posted my recent post about my 100th dive, in which I included the stat that I had used on average 138 bar per dive. Of course, if you’re not a diver, that figure may not make a lot of sense, so I figured I’d post a quick blog post explaining what that means.
Can you do me a favour and translate the 138 bar in in something I can understand.
Why of course… Strap yourself in for a rather long, rambling, and slightly technical post that has nothing to do with travelling, so feel free to skip this post unless you want to know more about Scuba diving… Read the rest of this entry »
The H writes...
On a recent dive, I was amused to see that we saw a lot of absolutely ludicrous-looking fish. Some of them move odd. Some of them look weird. And some of them are both.
Since I was holding a camera, and I was thinking about ridiculousness in marine creatures, I decided to collect some of my favourites. To wit… Read the rest of this entry »
The H writes...
Our second dive today was my 100th dive! Hurrah!
Of course, I thought it was my 99th, because I failed to log one of yesterday’s dives, so I wasn’t able to do any shenanigans (Traditionally, the 100th dive is done in the nude, or, failing that, at least do something silly).
But, even though I didn’t do anything downright daft, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a memorable dive…
The H writes...
Okay, so I should probably start this blog post with a disclaimer to worried parents: Shark attacks on Scuba divers are extremely rare indeed; Sharks have better taste than that.
Anyway, this morning, we did our first two ‘proper’ dives here at Bunaken, at some rather fabulous dive sites… Read the rest of this entry »
The H writes...
We finally made it to Bunaken, where we were warmly welcomed by Mia at Living Colour. We were faced with a choice: As the rain was coming down, did we want to do our refresher course right away, or leave it until tomorrow?
One quirk in the plan was that the dive instructor who would have taken us out was slightly busy; one of the local staff at Living Colour had been half-way up a tree, clearing some branches, and then chopped himself in his wrist with a machete. Cutting his tendons for his thumb and several important blood vessels, meaning a swift round of first aid and a quick trip to the nearest hospital was (rightfully) a higher priority than getting a couple of divers back in the water. Read the rest of this entry »
The H writes...
The Z and I aren’t exactly unaccustomed with crazy flooding adventures in our travels. In our last big jaunt, for example, the Thai navy was evacuating the island we were staying on due to floods (read more in this post from April 2011)… But it seems as if we’re continuing to be haunted by flooding.
On Monday, for example, we’re hoping to continue our journey to Manado, on our way to Bunaken for our first diving destination of the journey at Living Colours dive resort.
One quirk? Our flight, using Lion Air, flies from Singapore to Manado… Via Jakarta. If you’ve been keeping an eye on the local Indonesia news Read the rest of this entry »
The H writes...
Today, we’re going to flounder around Singapore, picking up our last couple of dive gear things, and then off to do some touristy things, too!
Also, we’ve got a lot of other photos going up on Flickr over the next few weeks. Read the rest of this entry »
The H writes...
In only a few hours, we hop on a plane to Frankfurt, followed soon after by a flight to Singapore.
The plan is to loiter in Singapore for a little while first, specifically to get used to the time-zone – and to celebrate the start of our honeymoon in style, of course – at the Quincy hotel. Read the rest of this entry »
The H writes...
Ooh, pretty regulator!
Ziah and I have been doing some pretty serious shopping in the US; most of the shopping spree has been all sorts of exciting dive gear, which we of course can’t wait to try.
We decided to go with Hollis regulators (with DC2 first stages, 212 main second stage regulators, and a Hollis 321 octo. We decided that, since we’d mostly be travelling with our kit, we’d also get braided hoses to keep the weight down. Read the rest of this entry »
The H writes...
We used to use a service called Feed My Inbox to deal with our e-mail updates, but they sadly went under, which means that we had to find another way.
We did come up with a new solution, and you can now sign up to e-mail updates here, or in the sidebar →, although if you were already on the old mailing list, we’ve already moved you across, so you’ll continue receiving e-mails as usual.
Yay.
Haje has completed 102 dives and has spent a total of 78 h 5 min under water
Ziah has made 86 dives and has been under water a total of 58 h 23 min!
