Up at 5:30, had breakfast, bus picked us up about 7:15. About 14 other divers on the bus with the four newbies. All had some certification. The bus took us to the harbour, and we got on the boat. Grant (our instructor) introduced the entire boat to the dive team, perhaps 9 or 10 people, all are dive masters or instructor level of some sort. It was interesting, because the dive team wasn't just Rainbow employees, they had dive masters from all around the world, one girl from Scotland, another from Japan. Grant (and Ben) are from England. Some of them had over 20 years of diving, and over 15,000 dives!!!!
We went to Moray Beach for our first open water dive. Amazing!!! The stuff we saw was totally cool. We went down to a depth of about 9 metres (although we put in the log book 12 metres). The fish and corals and other sea life, the colours are amazing. Just like you'd see in a National Geographic special on TV. It was stupendous. We saw a seahorse (which is rare, apparently), a scorpion devil fish, and a flower urchin. Of course, there were hundreds and hundreds of other fish and marine life around too. So colourful.
AFter the dive, we swam back to the boat, and dumped all our scuba gear off, then the four of us had to swim 5 times around the boat, as part of the course. We have to show we have the ability to swim, in case we get stranded. While we did this, everybody else had lunch. We got done our exercise, and fortunately, there was still plenty of food left, so we ate, and it was very good. The cook did a fine job in a kitchen the size of an outhouse! After lunch, the boat motored toward Madonna Rock (named, because the two rocks look like Madonna's boobs). We got dropped off a distance from the actual rock, because we were doing a confined water dive for this afternoon. The confined water dive consisted of a bunch of activities, like removing your regulator (breathing thingie), and having to swim over, holding your breath (actually, slowly releasing air) to your buddy, and grab is secondary regulator to breath on. You're *NEVER* supposed to hold your breath scuba diving. That is the number one rule of scuba. Always breath. Court and I did fine, we didn't have any problems with the exercises. But Court was getting very cold, and shivering, so we ended the confined water dive a little early...we'll finish up tomorrow. After our exercises, we swam over another coral reef to get back to the boat. Amazing. The one this morning didn't compare at all to the one this afternoon. I can't even explain it, other than what you see on TV and in those pictures is actually what it's like!
Scuba is so much fun, such an amazing experience. Everything is so colourful, the fish, the plant life, all the other creatures. Snorkelling doesn't even hold a candle. What you see diving you could never see snorkelling.
We got back to the rainbow office about 2:00, and back to the hotel. Court slept, she was dead tired, and her neck was stiff from being so cold, she could barely move it. I went for a walk around town, to see some of the sights. Walked to the Nha Trang Cathedral, built by the French in 1908 (give or take a year or two). This was impressive, actually. Then went to see a pagoda (Long Son Pagoda, I think it was called), and near that is a huge, 14m white buddha in the sitting position (zen position?). The buddha was on a big hill, overlooking Nha Trang, and was kinda neat. Then I walked back to one of the two Banana Split Cafe's and had a hot fudge sundae. It was pretty small, but also relatively cheap, only 7000 dong (70 cents), and it was very good. Walked back to the hotel, then Court and I went to David's hotel (he's from Sweden), because we had made arrangements to go to Crazy Kim Cafe for their BBQ Buffet. He was going to shower and meet us there, so we went to pick up Martin and Louis (from Denmark), and found them at the internet cafe, and they told us the buffet doesn't start until 7:00, so we sat on the internet for a while, then headed to Crazy Kim's.
INcidentally, CRazy Kim's Bar is run by a Vietnamese-Canadian woman, who puts part of the profits of the bar to help stop pedophilia in Vietnam, apparently a growing problem. Her campaign is entitled "Hands Off The Kids" or something like that. Very commendable.
When we got there, David was waiting, and the buffet didn't start until 7:45. It was deeeelicious! They had pork, chicken, beef, macaroni salad, another salad, bread and (of course) rice. Yumm!!
Court and I headed back home about 8:45 and did our homework, then to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment