TravelStream™ news feed for member varney on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/varney en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:31:09 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1258780931/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1258780931/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1258780931/tpod.html Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:31:09 -0500 Divemaster

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Gili Trawangan, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

This past week has been more of the same. Lots of time in the water + studying heaps and helping out around the dive shop.Discovered the 'house reef' out front of the dive centres during the week. It's super - I've done 5 dives there now, over the past few days. See plenty of lion fish, nudibranches, huge pufferfish, cornet fish, unicorn fish, even octopus on the night dive and loads of other good stuff. Nice and handy too - we can just decide whenever to go for a quick dive, grab a tank and our kit and head down to the water. Haven't been diving with the camera yet, but I'll put up some pictures as soon as I have. On this side of Trawangan they have been working at rebuilding the reef which was largely ruined by dynamite fishing up until a 10 years ago or so. They've put out steel cage constructions in various shapes and feed them with a mild electrical current which encourages coral growth. It's impressive to see the corals that are already growing on them and the fish that surround them. It's all good really.Kristina has started relearning German as a way to fill the days, otherwise it's full on sunbathing and floating on the lilo. It's a hard life for some :)Tomorrow we're off to Komodo for the week. We're going by boat so hopefully the weather holds. Very excited about it - looking forward to seeing the world's largest lizards...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1258355255/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1258355255/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1258355255/tpod.html Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:34:22 -0500 Divemaster

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Gili Trawangan, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

Today I did my 4th Divemaster exam and then took the rest of the day off :)Over the past few days I've dived, helped Instructors out with teaching, listened to a couple of lectures, done a CPR/first aid course and studied. And it's pretty tiring to be honest!There are 4 DMTs (Dive Master Trainees) at Blue Marlin here on Gili Trawangan which is probably a pretty good number - we can help each other out with stuff and we all have our own strengths and weaknesses.The diving is lovely - 30 degree water, plenty to see. I saw a white tipped reef shark on my 2nd or 3rd dive and have seen turtles on most of my dives here. The titan trigger fish are nesting at the moment, so they can be a bit aggressive, but otherwise it's like swimming around in a big fish tank :)Heard from a diver at another shop yesterday that they saw a manta ray, so they've obviously arrived now - looking forward to seeing one while we're here (fingers crossed).Kristina has been filling her days with lounging around on the beach, snorkelling and chatting with the old guy who runs the sea turtle project here. Sea turtle project? I hear you ask - well...Turns out that the locals here have put together a project to help protect the sea turtles in this area. There are apparently 5 different species here on the islands - Green, Loggerhead, Hawksbill and two others that he only knows the name of in Indonesian (which I can't remember, let alone spell). They collect the eggs when they are laid and look after them in an enclosure until they hatch. Then they keep the turtles in safety until they are around a year old. Then some big official from Jakarta comes over and they release them out to sea. Cool :)  The next release will be the 15th of December, but we're not sure if we'll be here then - hope so :)At the moment he has those three species I mentioned above - ranging from 10 days to 9 or 10 months old. Been sitting here loading up pictures from Hong Kong so if you're interested they should be there now.I'll be 'working' until the weekend now so no updates for a while - and we may be heading to Komodo on Sunday. Exciting stuff!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1257934390/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1257934390/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1257934390/tpod.html Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:22:46 -0500 Divemaster

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Gili Trawangan, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

Well... Seems that the minor power outage in Ubud at the time we bought our Perama tickets caused them some issues - they forgot that we existed! The pickup was supposed to be at 11 and sure enough at 5 past a Perama mini-van came past. But he was pretty full and the driver waved indicating that he'd drive round and come back. So we waited, and waited, and waited and at 11:30 (when the bus to Padang Bai was supposed to leave) Kristina went to get the hotel to ring Perama, then 2 minutes later the mini-bus turned up again with the driver asking if we were supposed to be going somewhere with them and could he see our ticket. That sorted, we madly drove to the Perama office with him yelling on the phone all the way. When we got there, they put us into another mini-bus and we had a rather quick, and fairly comfortable ride down to the coast, by ourselves. Still not sure if there was a bus that day or not, but anyway, we made it in time to grab a quick bite before the boat ride. The channel between Bali and Lombok is pretty interesting actually. It goes down to more than 1 1/2 km deep and is around 50km wide. But it's one of the main places that water can travel between the Pacific and the Indian Oceans so the current can be really strong. It's enough of a barrier that it actually forms the dividing line between Asia and Australasia - biologically at least. On the Bali side the animals and plants are more like on the SE Asian peninsula, whereas on the Lombok side the animals and plants are more like the ones found in Australia. Some guy who's name escapes me figured this out a while back, so the line is named after him. The island where we are now, Gili Trawangan, is one of a group of three islands (the Gilis - gili meaning small island) just off the NW coast of Lombok. People come here to dive, maybe surf on the back side and generally just chill. There are a LOT of other Swedes here - the weather being what it is back home, you'll generally find a large accumulation of Swedes on any given warm tropical beach. Go figure. Anyway, the trip over from Bali was calm, saw a few dolphins, even got fed on the boat. Only weird thing was that they'd turned part of their upper deck into a 'beach' with sand - but others on the boat seemed to enjoy it. Swung past the dive shop (Blue Marlin Dive) to say hi and had a bit of a chat with their newly arrived Course Director, Matt, who'll be 'running' my DM training. Starting to feel a bit more settled. Staying tonight at Pondok Lita (150', cold salt water, fan, bf) until we can find somewhere along the beach where we want to stay.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1257934489/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1257934489/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1257934489/tpod.html Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:09:13 -0500 Divemaster

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Gili Trawangan, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

Yesterday we wandered around the town, checking out the accomodation. We ended up deciding on Warna Homestay (200', cold salt water, fan, bf) and moved over in the afternoon.  Went for my first dive in the afternoon too - 30 degree water, great visibility, loads of fish and healthy looking corals. Didn't have my camera with me, this being my first dive of the season, but the fish were huge :) Ok, maybe not huge, but they were pretty big - puffers, box fish, trumpet fish, blue-spotted sting rays, an octopus and your usual reef denizens. Nice. Today we're doing an EFR course (CPR/first aid), which I need for my Divemaster and Kristina is taking because it's useful to know.
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Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

The dance show on Friday night was much better than I was expecting. Really amazing how the girls can bend their fingers backwards and fascinating the way their eyes flick around. We took a few photos but no idea when we'll end up somewhere with quick internet, so it may be a while before we can load them up. Speaking of internet, it's no where near as cheap and prevalent here as in Thailand, so updates may be few and far between too... Spent most of yesterday at the tender mercies of a couple of fine masseurs. Kristina opted for the White Jasmine body scrub while I took a wonderous mixture of spices and mud for a body pack. Started off with an hour long Balinese massage - a bit stronger than your average aromatherapy massage, but not as strong as a thai massage and none of the walking on your back that goes on there. Amazing massage - absolutely heavenly. Then packed in in this wonderous mixture and left to cook. Must have been something in there related to chili or something because it was seriously warm - in a chili sort of way. While I was cooking, Kristina was being scrubbed, and not with your namby-pamby buy it in a shop sort of scrub either - this was a potent mixture of jasmine and sea salt - really peel that dead skin :) After lying around for 20 minutes or so it was into the shower and then a nice long flower bath. Followed up by a facial, we were ready to face the day. Of course, by now the day was almost over so we just went and ate some crispy duck at the Dirty Duck restaurant instead. Yummo! Today we didn't do a heck of a lot - I studied a bit and Kristina went and got a hair cut, but otherwise it was just relaxing and enjoying the lovely garden here at Pramesti. Tomorrow we're off to Gili Trawangan with Perama (360'Rp each) including pickup, bus to Padang Bai and then a 4 hour boat trip to the island.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1257498151/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1257498151/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1257498151/tpod.html Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:17:11 -0500 Divemaster

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Hong Kong, China

We started off with 3 days in Hong Kong where we first met 9 years ago now while we were working there. Despite having only 3 days, we managed a trip over to 'our' island - Lamma - where we reenacted our 'first date' :) with a walk across the island followed by a fish & seafood dinner by the waterfront. Ahhh.... Also found time to visit the Blue Bar in Lan Kwai Fong (actually, it's called Al's Diner, but to us it'll always be the Blue Bar), The Peak and Kowloon side as well as taking trips on the Star Ferry and the trams.  Have to say that we were pretty happy with only having 3 days there - we did the things we wanted to and of course having been there so long previously, didn't have need to do all the tourist things. The whole place hasn't changed much. Oh sure, there are a couple of new skyscrapers and so on, but on the whole it's the same as it was in 2000. Next stop, Bali...
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Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Arrived in Ubud yesterday afternoon, after an uneventful trip here (taxi from the airport for 195'Rp). We were pretty tired since I hadn't slept much at all in Hong Kong) so once we'd found a room at Pramesti Bungalows (150'Rp, cold water, fan) we just took a quick walk around town, grabbed a bite to eat and hit the sack. Today we explored a bit more. Our 'hotel' is fantastic - it's down the end of a really narrow alleyway, and has a lovely garden area which means that we get none of the noises from the street, just cicadas, birds and geckos to keep us awake at night :) Started off the day with Lonely Planet's walking tour, as we do. Wandered through the Monkey Forest Temple and then around through rice fields and past galleries and studios from some of the many artists and craftsmen in the Ubud area. Really lovely walk and if we'd been the sort of people that collect things instead of experiences then we'd have no trouble at all shopping here :) We'll probably end up buying something small to take home but maybe not until after our time on the Gilis. Finished up our walk with visit to Warung Ibu Oka and some mighty tasty grilled pig.  This evening we're going to see a traditional(ish) Balinese dance, then tomorrow it'll be a hard day hitting the spas and massage parlours :) We're here in Ubud for 4 nights and have decided just to stay in the area instead of doing a tour from here. We'll see a bit more of Bali after our Gili sojourn instead.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1256991257/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1256991257/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varney/4/1256991257/tpod.html Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:18:27 -0400 Divemaster

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Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden

In 6 short hours we'll be sitting in a plane to London on the first leg of our journey. Everything is packed - including most of my dive gear. At 50kg it came in a bit heavier than we'd have liked, but not much we can do about that. Think we need to invest in some lighter packs :)All that's left now is the wait...
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Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden

Only a week left before we head off. Madly packing and repacking, trying to keep the weight down while still making sure we have everything I need for my courses. We bought a mighty scanner the other month with a document feeder, so I've spent the last few weeks scanning in all my dive books - little bit lighter than having them all with us :)
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Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden

Finally back home after a LONG trip. We left Bangkok at 1:20 this morning, 5 hours to Beijing, 7 hours waiting there and then 10 hours to Stockholm. Pretty tired after all that unsuprisingly.Have just put up photos from Bangkok, so that's it for this trip. See you next time ;)
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