Diving South East Asia

I enjoy diving.

The smell of salt water, the taste of dry cold air, the touch of cold water on my skin, meditating quiet with only the sound of breathing and bubbles forming and the feeling of effortless and weightless flying. But most of all, I like the colors, shapes and marine life movement. Even the underwater equivalent of a slug - the Nudibranchs appear in the brightest colors and shapes.

Leora once mentioned that I must love diving because when I talk "diving" I sound like her when she talks "gym". She has a point, but what else would you expect from the person they've named the little mermaid after?

On the first week of our trip we arrived at the island of Kho Chang, Thailand - a good place as any to take Leora for her first dive. She likes snorkeling - she is going to love diving.

She didn't.

Perhaps it had to do with the "back flip from boat" technique of entering the water or maybe the poor visibility due to the rain the night before, in any case - diving was now my thing alone.

Over the next 4 months I tried my luck 5 times throughout Vietnam and Thailand. Each and every time it rained the night before, therefore, I had poor visibility. The sites were fine - but murky. Don't get me wrong, I loved the diving, I even got to see sea horses, sting rays and a moray in the open water. But I'm used to Red Sea visibility...

A month later I tried my luck again in one day of diving in Bali, Indonesia. The first dive had good visibility but the current was on the string side so I didn't have time to get a good look at anything.

Before the next dive the dive master told us that if we are lucky we may be able to see a sun fish. Knowing my luck up to then - I wasn't optimistic. Nevertheless, when hitting the water, having no idea what a sun fish is, I started searching for a small round yellow fish that stares at the sun and you split it's seeds, like a sunflower. I was pleasantly surprised when two minutes later a saw a huge thin odd shaped fish just hanging around. I was even more surprised to see four more. They also let me get really close.

After that we continued to Flores, Indonesia, where my luck truly changed.

it started with turtles, all different sizes and very close to me too. It continued with sharks: two meter long white tip reef sharks getting up to one meter away from me, with beautiful smooth movement and shape. I also saw black tip and gray reef sharks swimming close enough to see the whites of there eyes. I was delighted.

On my last dive, at one point, we had to hold on to a rock because the current was strong and letting go wasn't an option. Strong current brings plankton and with the plankton come the plankton eaters. Two minutes into the holding of the stone, one of those "wingdy," "flappedy" things came hovering just above us. Before long we had four manta rays circling our group.

Finally, after close to a hundred dives I got to witness the finesse of the bird of the sea, the giant manta ray, from up close.