Monday 11 July
Up at 4am, and taxi to Kuching airport for 6:15am flight to Kuala Lumpar. KL at 8am, sat around, checked in, free wi-fi. 12:15pm flight to Banda Aceh, Sumatra in Indonesia. (As we flew out you could see acres and acres of Palm oil plantations below).
Indonesia is 1 hour behind Malaysia and so we arrived at 12:45pm. I met a Swiss girl and a Croatian girl who were coming to the same dive center so after rushing to the ATM we jumped in a taxi to the jetty at Uleh-leh hoping to catch the slow car/passenger ferry just before it left, which we did. It was just blowing its horn, and the gate for vehicles was already closed so we ran along in the rain and grabbed a ticket, with the locals hurrying us along in a friendly way. Phew.
Well, the slow ferry was slow so we went up to the first deck and stood with our bags and chatted. Some of the locals stared at us a bit, but they seem pretty friendly and smiley. The sea looks pretty rough but it took less than two hours to arrive at Sabang port on Pulau Weh. A taxi driver found us as we got off the ferry, but he quoted the normal fare so we jumped in with him. It was still very rainy, dark skies and windy. The new road has forests and small wooden houses on both sides, this seems like a remote place which is good.
We arrived at Lumba Lumba dive centre at Gapang. I chatted to the owner about doing a couple of boat dives and explained that although I did my PADI years ago, I am basically a beginner again, so he quite rightly said I shouild do a refresher dive first and asked me to pop back in tomorrow afternoon to organise it. Fair enough.
It's too expensive to stay there so the Dutch owner let us leave our big bags while we found somewhere cheaper along the beach. Croatian Tamara and I found some nice cheap rooms at Ramadillas up the hill among the rocks at the end of the beach. It was an adventure carrying our big bags up the rocks in the dark and the rain. The rooms are basic but comfortable with outside squat toilets and just a bucket shower, for $5. We saw some crabs and frogs along the way. I am sharing my room with a cockroach, a furry spider and a smallish rat.
We met up with Swiss Esther and dinner at Barracudas, a small family restaurant (their home) facing the ocean. The veg curry and banana and chocolate pancakes were great and the family really nice.
Tuesday 12 July
Lazy lie-in. It was stormy most of the morning, strong wind and rain. Apparently it hadn't rained for a month until I got here! Of course the rain is good for the locals, but not so good for tourists. Read my book at the restaurant, and had a lovely cat nap this afternoon! I arranged my diving refresher course for tomorrow morning. Anyway, the forecast is for better weather in the next few days, and it was already better this afternoon and evening.
Wednesday 13 July
Met my dive instructor, Dutch girl Iris, and after a briefing where she explained which underwater skills I would have to perform, she put her dive equipment together while I watched and then copied with mine. I put on a wetsuit and the equipment and we walked down the beach and into the ocean just as it started to rain. But the rain doesn't matter once you are underwater.
Iris would demonstrated each safety skill and then I copied to show that I could do it. It went well, including when I had to indicate to my buddy (Iris) that I was out of air and take my regulator out of my mouth and take her spare regulator to breathe with. We had a swim around, just down to 7m and saw Trumpetfish, razorfish, nemos, an small octopus and a bandit boxer shrimp. When we got back Iris said I did well and was good to go on a proper dive.
So in the afternoon I joined 4 other divers and 2 local dive guides and we headed out into the choppy ocean. For, I think, the first time, we went backwards off the side of the boat; I am sure I have only ever stepped off a boat before. Anyway, the guide wasn't very clear with any advice about entering the water but the German guide showed me what to do.
Because the sea was quite rough, we agreed to head straight down but we went too fast for me; partly because I didn't have enough weights and so everyone else was below me, and anyway I couldn't equalise very well and my ears hurt a bit. All I really needed was time to get used to it, but the guide wasn't too helpful, although he did then come up and add weight to my belt to pull me down and my ears didn't get any worse. But having not dived for 6 years, going straight down to 20m was not good!
We swam around and saw ribbon eels, nudie branch, lionfish, butterfly fish and porcupine fish. As instructed I let the guide know when I was down to half a tank, 100bar, and we carried on for a bit, but the others had more air left so the guide took me part of the way back up for 3 minute? safety stop and then I carried onto the surface while he stayed with the others, which is fine.
At the surface, as expected, it was quite rough and waves were coming up behind me and crashing into the rocks 50 metres away. But I had plenty of bouyancy from my BCD and just swam backwards against the waves until the dive boat came and picked me up. The others emerged about 10 minutes later. Everybody breathes at different rates so my tank emptying sooner is no big deal, but possibly I had breathed a bit more heavily as I was a bit stressed at the start. But I wasn't scared and I didn't panic, we had just gone down to quickly.
When the guide got back in the boat, he said "How many dives have you done". Well, maybe he should have asked me that before we went down, then he might have given me more time to descend. Most people that dive here are quite experienced so I guess he assumed the same of me. So after the dive my ears were a bit sore and I can hear my voice in my head, like when you have a cold, so I have decided not to dive tomorrow, and I will move on. I will have other chances to dive in the coming weeks. At least I have refreshed my skills and feel confident about diving again.
It was fun looking at the other divers' photos and finding out the names of the fish. In the evening we all went to Barracuda's for dinner. Up at our huts there was a group of about 5 large lizards hanging around the outside light, preying on the flying insects that were drawn to the light. It was a great show and funny to watch them stalking and then sticking out their tongues, catching and gobbling up their dinner.
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