September 29- October 2, 2013-
In China the first week in October is a national holiday (I've heard it called Golden Week). And as you've no doubt figured out by now – we took this week as an opportunity to visit yet one more place on our Asian Bucket List (I really should post my bucket list, shouldn't I???? That way you can see how much progress we've made. 'Cuz I know you want to see what's on our list, right???!?).
Where, oh where, did we go?????
CAMBODIA!!!!!
Any hoo…..after doing some research on tripadvisor we realized that Annika and I could also finish up our open water diving certification in Sihanoukville at a highly rated dive center, Scuba Nation.
Problem is- the only flights we could get were into Siem Reap and Sihanoukville isn't any where near Siem Reap. Problem??? Nope! Through the hotel in Siem Reap we hired a taxi driver to take us all the way to the coast (a little more than 8 hours drive). Oh…and did I tell you that we arrived in Siem Reap a little after midnight AND our driver came to collect us at 4am in the freaking morning??? If you think that's going to feel awful; you're right!)
Why go to all that trouble getting the scuba stuff in the first part of our trip instead of the last part of the trip? Well, with scuba diving you have to wait between 12-18 hours after diving before it's safe to fly. So we crammed the diving into the first part of the week so we wouldn't have to worry about flying home.
More photos to come from that particular drive but here's a glimpse of what it looked like:
Is that really a road????
Our taxi has been retrofitted – it uses natural gas instead of regular gasoline:
We saw lots of people traveling….many of them were piled on top of trucks or crammed into cars and vans. We learned from the taxi driver that a Cambodian public holiday is coming up soon (October 3-5) and that many people are traveling back home.
Our driver suggested that we stop for a meal at a road-side restaurant that was situated next to the Mekong River. Our driver spoke a little bit of English but he found a lady who spoke fluent English who helped us order a nice lunch meal (fried noodles, soup, and two kinds of fried rice…YUM!):
Our driver stopped so that we could purchase a few bananas (they are the best snacks!) at a different road-side stand:
Our room at the Coolabah hotel in Sihanoukville:
We arrived in Sihanoukville, quickly checked into our hotel (Coolabah) and then hurried on over to the dive center, Scuba Nation, to get checked in. Since Annika and I completed our confined water dives in Shanghai our diving instructor, Alan, wanted to verify our diving skills in a local pool. No problem!!!
Trying to swim in the pool…a little more difficult than I thought it'd be. I found it challenging to get my buoyancy just right. Actually, to be honest, I never did get it just right…that's okay! There will be more diving trips in our future!
Poor Ava! She has to wait 2-1/2 years before she can go through the open water diving course (to get the junior certification). I think she's ready to do it now!
Looking out our window from our hotel room at the pouring down rain:
Dinner time:
So we're all on the same page, here's our crazy schedule: drive from Siem Reap to Sihanoukville on Sunday morning, get checked in to our hotel (Coolabah), head on over to the dive center to get checked in there and verify our diving skills. Spend the night at a hotel and then get up early on Monday morning and head out on an overnight dive boat. Sounds good to me!
Except one thing wasn't cooperating with us – The Weather!!!!!!
Aaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!
We got a note under our door that explained that our boat trip had to be postponed one day due to high winds. (Sammy from the dive center checked the weather report as said that it was highly likely that the boat would be able to go out the following day.)
NOOOOOOOOOOOooooooOOOOOOOOooooooo!!!!!!!!
Our schedule is extremely tight as it is – can we make this work????
The answer in short: YES.
We had planned on spending the night after our overnight dive boat trip in Sihanoukville but after talking to a few people they didn't see any issues with having the taxi driver pick us up after our diving trip (on Wednesday late afternoon) and drive through the night to reach Siem Reap. A quick call to the driver confirmed that he was willing to do just that. Whew! That way we won't lose any precious time in Siem Reap.
Soooo….what to do with our freebie day in Sihanoukville???? How about hitting the beach and playing in the waves????
Well, since we're no longer in a hurry how about we enjoy some lattes first???
Walking down one of the street in Sihanoukville:
Alan suggested we hit up Otres Beach as a nicer beach to swim and play at. We took a tuk-tuk from our hotel to the beach (round trip cost 7 USD!!!). The beach was also lined with several small restaurants & bars. It's clear that Sihanoukville caters to the backpacking & single crowd. Huh…I think I just saw an advertisement for Happy Herb Pizza. I'm pretty sure I don't want any of that!!!! I'll find my happiness elsewhere, thank you very much!
Riding in the tuk-tuk to Otres Beach:
We found a bar/restaurant that looked alive (most of the places looked closed- I think due to the weather) and settled down on their beach chairs after ordering a few drinks. I'm not telling you what kind of drinks we got! LOL! 😉 The girls did get juice.
The bartender was a sweet young woman from Holland and she seemed amused with the girls enthusiasm with her cat, dogs and very fluffy bunny. Every bar needs a fluffy bunny!!!
Best of all: playing in the almost-too-rough surf!
Huh…I think I may have forgotten to mention that it's the rainy season in Cambodia which might account for the fact that there was almost nobody on the beach. Pretty wild having the entire beach to ourselves!
Annika, Mark and Ava played All. Day. Long. in the water! Me??? Well, I played for a long time and then decided I was too chilled. I'm sure glad they had fun!
Okay…time for the tuk-tuk ride back to the hotel, shower & dinner at the hotel's restaurant. We're not in the mood to go exploring as we all feel like crashing. (remember, we haven't exactly gotten a lot of sleep on this trip!) I think we'll head to bed EARLY tonight.
Yep.
I'm crashing….good night!
zzzzzzzzzzzzz…………………
Good morning! Hope you're ready for the boat trip…. I am and I'm not (all at the same time). I've been pretty nervous about doing this whole scuba diving thing….I've always said I'd NEVER go scuba diving. I'm going to have to swallow my fear and KEEP CALM!!!!!!
Guess what? The boat trip is ON!!!!! Hooray! We need to be at the dive center at 7:30am to catch the boat. Then it's a two-and-a-half hour boat ride out to the islands where we'll start our diving. Woo hoo!!!!
Here we go:
The boat ride is super slow which is why it's going to take us 2-1/2 hours to get to the islands where we'll be diving. We're passing by lots of little fishing boats with their nets cast out. We can't tell what it is they are catching.
Joining us on our boat trip: Alan (our diving instructor & dive master), Sammy (she's another dive master; also from -surprise, surprise, the UK), Sarah (dive master student from Spain), Alek, Pek (he's from Finland!) and four Cambodian boat crew members. Sarah is coming along to work on her own Master Diver certification AND to watch Ava while we dive. How nice is that?????
We're finally at our first dive sight (Vietnam Bay). After listening to the dive master tell us about our location and what we'll be doing on our dive it's time to saddle up and jump into the water!
In our confined water dive exercises in Shanghai we learned how to enter the water by rolling backwards into it technique. Here, however, we're doing a giant stride entry off the boat and into the water. Annika was pretty skeptical and nervous but once she did it and realized her BCD would keep her floating she relaxed.
Heading down on our first dive: Alan set up a dive line for us to slowly inch our way to the bottom of the ocean.
I have to say…I thought I'd be nervous once I got underwater but I wasn't at all. I was ready to get on with the exercises and start diving!
Ok- scary moment- seeing the boat's anchor move past us. Yikes! I'm glad we were able to dodge that. Can you tell from the photos that the visibility isn't great in the water?
I should also admit that I wasn't focused at all on watching out for interesting creatures living in the sea. I was so focused on getting my buoyancy just right! We did see lots of pointy, spiky sea urchins (don't touch those!!!!) and big fat starfish.
To finish up our open water certification we had to go on four separate dives and on each dive there were certain exercises that we had to demonstrate we could successfully complete. The exercises include things like clearing a flooded mask, learning what to do if you run out of air, how to find your regulator (the thing in your mouth that you breathe in & out of) if it gets knocked out of your mouth. You also learn how to do the pre-dive buddy check (you always dive with a buddy!!!). Our dives weren't very deep (I think we may have 7m but mostly in the 5-6m range).
After the first dive the boat headed over to a different island (Koh Kon) where the boat crew put together our lunch. Mark and I went snorkeling for a bit off the shore while the girls played on the boat and in the water.
Goofing around on the boat while waiting for lunch:
After lunch- time for dive #2! This time the water clarity is ….well….nonexistent. I'll be honest with you, it was kind of scary! The reason there aren't many photos is that Mark spent the entire time holding my hand while Alan held on to Annika. Umm….I think it might be fair for me to say that I clutched Mark's hand. And ….apparently I was clutching it so hard that he kept trying to signal to me to relax. Yeah. Not happening. (his hand is still recovering from that particular dive!) I can't see one meter in front of me! Relaxed, I'm not. We did manage to get our exercises finished and go for a swim. If there were any interesting creatures out in the water I sure didn't see them…and they didn't see me either! (I would like to point out that trip wasn't about sightseeing- it was all about completing our certification).
Whew! I was really ready to be done with Dive #2!
The sun is slowly starting to set….
It's getting dark….and the certified divers are getting ready to head off and do the Night Dive. Night diving???? Are you serious????????? I'm not sure I'll ever want to do that. They've got ultra powerful flashlights on them. Alan, Ava, Annika and I are left behind on board.
WOW!
It just started to rain and OMG…when it rains here it REALLY rains. It doesn't mess around with drizzle or a soft rain. Nope. Eep! Just saw some lightning …. and…wait for it….there's the loud crack of thunder. The sea isn't too rough though. I'm kind of surprised that they haven't called back the divers into the boat. Alan and the crew are keeping watch while the girls and I are trying our best to stay warm and dry.
Whew! The divers are back up at the surface and there's Mark. It sounds like that was an interesting dive. Hmmm….. (maybe I will try a night dive some day…in the distant future)
Dinner time! The boat crew cooked up some noodles with a hearty sauce and freshly caught calamari on the side. Yum!
While we were eating the boat crew finished setting up our sleeping quarters on the top floor. You know what? I don't think we'll stay up late tonight- I think we all need our rest.
Good night!
Day #2 on the boat: woke up to rain. Had a difficult time sleeping as one of the guests (not in our family) snored for most of the night. Sounded like a chainsaw! ;-)
No photos from today. Oopsie. The water clarity was still lousy so Mark left the waterproof camera on the boat. A shame really as we did see something very unique and unusual on our first dive (four snails interacting with each other…I had no idea that those snails could move that fast!!!! It looked like one snail was trying to eat another snail. We saw a large mass of tiny orange looking bubbles- Alan said he thought those were an egg mass from the marine snails. Interesting for sure!!!). We also saw three trevallies (they're in the tuna family…but not nearly as big). Annika got a little spooked by seeing them. You do have to remember that everything underwater looks BIGGER and CLOSER than it really is. So, the fish looked pretty big in reality they weren't more than two feet long. Plus, we could barely make them out as the water clarity wasn't the greatest.
Breakfast was served after the first dive (which was dive #3 for us).
Time for dive #4. Again, the water clarity was horrible. Sadly, Annika nearly lost it on that dive. We don't know what happened but she ended up spooked or worked up about something (maybe those trevally fish we saw earlier??? or maybe the fact that she didn't eat enough for breakfast???) and could not relax. One thing you definitely need to do while diving is to JUST RELAX. (oh, and to never hold your breath) Annika just barely managed to finish her exercises before needing to surface. Thankfully she finished all the requirements for the certification but we kind of wished she could have learned to relax and trust us. It didn't help that the ocean was a little rough at the surface. However, once back on the boat and dried off and a little bit of food in her tummy she was back to her old self again. Mark and Alan went out on another dive – I stayed back on the boat but I do wish I'd gone out with them. Rats!
The last dive- complete! Time to head back to Sihanoukville and fill out the paperwork to get our diving certificates mailed to us. Yay! We also get to log our dives in our new dive log books.
Hooray for us! We did it!!!! We (mostly) conquered our fears and are now certified to go scuba diving.
🙂
Now we just have to wait until Ava turns 10 years old and then we'll be a family of divers!
And yes, we're already planning on where to go for our next diving trip.