July 3rd, 2019
Since we had WIFI at our chalet, Brendan was watching some YouTube videos. I thought it was funny because YouTube was smart enough to know where we were and have local advertisements for their commercials, but dumb enough to think we would have learned another language overnight to understand those commercials…
Today was a really awesome day. We got up and checked out of our chalet and went to the dive shop for our dives. While we were getting ready with our gear the people at the shop were eating breakfast and gave Brendan a big plate of the noodle dish they had. The locals have all been very friendly. We were the only people that went out on the dive boat. Just us and the guide. We did 2 dives at two different reefs. We also saw two ship wrecks. One very old wreck that was all broken down was a place where there were a lot of fish. A newer ship had less fish, but the structure of the boat looked totally intact. We saw 3 black finned reef sharks and a couple really big turtles. We also saw squid and there was quite a lot of fish.
The sad part was much of the coral was bleached or already dead. The guide said he has been diving here for 5 years and during that time has seen a big change. The water temperature used to be around 20 Celsius and now is 29. I could imagine that when the reefs were alive and flourishing it was unbelievable. Although we saw some cool stuff, it was nowhere near as vibrant as the outer Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
The nice thing was, for the first time I was not cold when I got out of the water and onto the boat. After our dives we went back to the shop and they were nice enough to store our big bags for a couple days so we could go over to the east side of the island. Since we just had the little scooter there was no way we could take all of our luggage. I packed a small backpack to take with us for the couple of days and we were off to conquer the scary road to the other side.
Brendan did a good job driving the scooter, but it was a bit scary. The road was very steep and windy with many potholes. Several times he had to uses his legs to try to walk the bike up the steep parts as he was full throttle and it was barely making it. After about 45 minutes we made it to the other side. We checked into another chalet and it had the most perfect location and was right on a beautiful beach! It’s so cool for $32 a night we could get our own little place with a front porch and mini fridge right on the sand.
We walked down the beach to a restaurant that was recommended, and we finally got a really great meal. It was the same price as the food we had been eating (only about $3 a plate) but it was really good and had the perfect ocean view.
We were told their pizza was great but they only serve it at night so we said we will definitely be back (haven’t seen pizza anywhere in Asia yet so I was really excited). The restaurants do not sell beer here, but we were told there might be a few people you could buy it from on this side of the island and that you are welcome to bring it into the restaurant.
After lunch we walked down the beach to a dive shop that we were told might have beer and the owner was there. He told us we could take as much beer as we wanted out of the fridge, and just leave the money in the fridge. Brendan thought this was the coolest thing ever and loved the laid-back vibe on this beach. The owner of the dive shop invited us to sit down with him and we ended up staying for a couple of hours. Chatting with him and some of the other dive masters, we got some tips about the area and other diving in Malaysia and Indonesia. After talking we decided we should dive with them on this side of the island tomorrow.
We went back to our little place on the beach and rested for a bit. It became kind of stormy. Brendan went back out to get the pizza to-go from that great little restaurant and it was very good. This place was almost perfect, and we were thinking maybe we should stay here awhile longer. Even with the door and windows closed you could hear the sound of the waves from bed. Everything was great until bedtime and the mosquitos came out in full force. I killed many of them before turning out the light and going to bed but there was an endless supply. I knew our room was full of bugs. All night you would wake up to them buzzing in your ear. It reminded me of Panama all over again. Where we were in a perfect paradise except the bugs were brutal. By morning we were both eaten alive.