Friendly Visitors

By admin on February 26, 2012 in Diving in Bali

Throughout my 7 month stay in Bali I have met several great people and made friends from all over the globe. Unfortunately, since my home is literally on the far side of the world from Bali, I haven’t had many visitors. Many had plans to make it out but due to last minute complications and high flight costs, many had to pull the plug on their visits to the island of the gods.

Thankfully, just as my time in Bali neared an end I got a visit from my parents. My mom decided to come out a week earlier than my dad to take the Open Water course with her son who was now a PADI instructor. My girlfriend, who had put her open water course on hold until I became an instructor decided to take the course as well so I was faced with the challenge of teaching my mom and girlfriend and the same time… Something that many would say was an ambitious task to take on… To thicken the plot even more so, I got hit with a sinus infection during the tail end of day 1 of the course. Luckily we got through confined water 3 so we did what we could and finished up with the book work and put the rest of the open water and pool sessions on hold. When we finally were able to continue nearly a week later, we were off to Sanur for dives 1 and 2. Unfortunately my girlfriend has problems with motion sickness so almost immediately after setting out to see, we had that barrier to deal with. On top of that, conditions were less than ideal and surface winds were picking up but in the end we were able to get dives 1 and 2 finished without any puking and looked on to graduation day in Tulamben.

We arrived the next morning and conditions were perfect. We didn’t have to deal with boats and thus no sea sickness issues so all was looking promising… Upon entering the water some complications arose. Both Danielle and my mom seemed to be dealing with equalization problems so we took things slow and had to spend extra time getting everyone down safely. After a lengthy decent were able to complete all the necessary skills and explore the wonders of the USAT Liberty wreck. Spirits were high after surfacing as now we were only one dive away from a week long open water course. On dive number 4 we were once again faced with equalization issues and after the constant up down pressure changes I was staring to feel slight pain in my sinuses. This was a worrying feeling considering I was just coming off a sinus infection… Luckily once again we managed to get down, finish all the skills and went for an amazing dive ending off with a visit from 4 blacktip reef sharks. I must say, after all the open water students I have congratulated this one was truly special. What a great feeling to be able to certify my mom and girlfriend! Their is always a rewarding feeling coming up from dive 4 and congratulating your student on their success but this was truly unique.

Apart from the open water experience with my mom, I took my parents on the grand tour of Bali. After spending 6 months exploring the island I had a pretty good grasp on things to do and see. My mom the more adventurous of my parents went for a ride on the back of my scooter on a scenic drive up to Tana Lot. We did a volcano climb up Mount Batur, explored many beaches, and toured Kuta, Semenyak, and Sanur. My dad who wanted a more relaxing holiday enjoyed the many flavourful foods of Bali and took part in many massages. I must say I had to take part as well. Throughout my entire stay in Bali prior to my parents visiting I maybe had 3 massages, in the 2 weeks they were here I think I had about 10. We also went up north to the beautiful Blue Season Zen resort to celebrate my dads birthday and spent 2 nights over in Lombok. All in all it was an excellent finish on my time in Bali. My parents got to see where I’ve been living the past 6 months and I got to show them all that Bali had to offer.