Indonesia: Bali (Tulamben, Kuta Beach)
Singapore
Soon we were on our way back to Bali, we landed at Denpasar and were picked up by the driver from Tulamben Wreck Divers who would drive us north on a dark and windy (for the most part) road for a 2 hours ride to the hotel. Jorunn did get carsick...
The next day we woke to a warm and sunny day and Christer got ready for diving, the tanks were carried to the water's edge by women of Tulamben as they have been doing for many years (this is a deal made with locals so that they would also benefit from the dive industry and it helps the local economy). I found my tank on the shore and we were soon in the water. We dived out over the black volcanic sand and soon saw the shadows of the Liberty wreck, the USS Liberty was a WW2 cargo ship that had been badly damaged by a torpedo from a Japanese submarine close to Lombok where a Dutch destroyer tried to drive it to safety but the ship was too damaged so the captain decided that in order to save as many people as possible the best was to run the ship aground where it eventually sank.
The Liberty wreck itself is in very good condition and lays from 6 to 30 meters parallel to the beach. At the time the visibility was about 20 meters and Christer had several great dives, Jorunn also got to see the wreck snorkelling. Tulamben is a very small town with not much to do, a few good restaurants, the beach was all rocks so we stayed by the pool or watched DVDs in our room. Actually it was great to watch DVDs after a lot of travelling and staying in remote areas without TV. The owner of the dive centre (an Australian) organised a BBQ out by the pool a couple of days a week, which was lot's of fun and we got to know some of the people there. There was some really good diving and Christer dived the following sites: 2X Liberty wreck, 2x the drop off, coral garden, Noisy reef, Soriga secret (in the next bay), and Kubu reef. things to see: Harlequin shrimps, boxer crabs, pygmy seahorses, blacktip sharks, 200+ trevally, Napoleon wrasse, tiger shrimp and an amazing amount of nudibranch.
Once again we are on the move and driving through the beautiful Bali countryside doted with small villages, rice fields, green tropical forests and volcanoes that reach to the sky. After a couple of hours of driving to Kuta Beach we found a great hotel close to the beach. Kuta beach is very crowded, too much traffic, people were trying to sell you stuff all the time (even on the beach it was non stop), the beaches were crowded with surfers and people learning to surf so you had to be careful. Still you can not complain, it's a tourist spot, and we'd spent a lot of time at small dive resorts, and just having Internet with a better speed was great. We spoiled ourselves a little and stayed in a bungalow with a nice hallway entrance, a large room with a four poster bed, a sitting area with two chairs and table, a small garden with a little waterfall that fell into the pond. The bathroom was Balinese style, semi outdoors so there was plenty of ventilation (there was also a wall around the gardens including the bathroom). We spent most of our time on the beach and walking in the city.
About this time I started feeling much worse as I had been having stomach problems for about a month, so we went to a pharmacy where I got antibiotics and thought things would soon get better. I had been taking the pills I received 3 times a day for a day and a half and I was just getting worse so we tried a local doctor but he could not help. We took a taxi to an International hospital where they found out that the medication I was given had sulfa in it which I am highly allergic to. I was having some trouble breathing so first I was given oxygen and the they started an IV. I lay there for the day until I was stable enough to go back to the hotel for the night but had to come back first thing in the morning for more treatment, they were still not sure if they were going to send me to a hospital in Singapore.
I will stop there as there is a funny story here too, I was not feeling too well and not sleeping well at all, that night we had a little rain shower and when it began it brought out the frogs living in our little pond and they decided to have a concert, this did not help me at all. After laying there trying to sleep and listening to the noise for an hour I gave up, I got one of the rubber gloves I carry in the medical kit and went frog hunting in my bithday suit (not a pretty sight). In the end I found 5 little guys and promptly threw them over the wall (no dead frogs in the morning so they survived their short fight), after that I fell into a short restless sleep.
The next day they were still worried and were still thinking about sending me to Singapore, the thing was that we had left stuff at a hotel in KL and needed to pick them up as we were soon going home (lot's of problems). After half a day they told me we could fly to KL and if there were any more problems to go to the hospital. The next day I was week but we made it to KL and the hotel with little problems, sad to say things did not stop there, they had forgotten my intestinal problems. That night I woke with stomach problems and found out I was bleeding, so the next morning after a talked with the insurance company I was off to the hospital where I would stay 4 days in treatment and would be released the day we were to fly to Singapore and later from Singapore home (I had to sit in a wheel chair how embarrassing is that!).
While I was in the hospital Jorunn had her purse stolen while having breakfast, losing a credit card, our mobile phones and some cash (what a day). In Singapore we needed a cheep place I could rest, that night when we left we found out we were right in the middle of the red light district. Finally on the plane and on the way home what else could go wrong, as it was there was a group of Australians there (this was a night flight) who were very excited about going to Europe and five of them decided they would talk about it right in front of our seats, after a half hour I had enough and we called the stewardess and finally got some peace, only to have them come back later and again to be chased away. We finally arrived in Paris and the worst airport we have ever been to, and we have been to a lot of airports, no place to sit, overly crowded, poorly organized, hard to find a restaurant, cold and more. We will in the future, if we have to, pay a little extra to avoid Charles de Gaulle airport. So ends our last long trip for a while as this was just a bit too much, time for some shorter trips for a while.
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