Bali: Underwater Paradise, Jury's Still Out on the Shore

I got my SCUBA diving license! Nathan and I went through the super intense course (we condensed the 4 pool dives to one and turned our four open water training dives into pleasure dives). The first dive was on one of those vertical coral reefs which was pretty incredible, especially for my first ever dive... Mangku, our instructor, would give us about 10 tasks we'd accomplish right under the boat, we'd do two of them then we'd spend the rest of the time swimming around in a sea of fish, coral, and other crazy things that fell in between those two categories. We saw lion fish, real Nemo fish and all sorts of creatures that I'm pretty sure went home at night and plugged themselves in to recharge the crazy assortment of blues glowing from their bodies. Pretty cool. The second day of "training dives" were at the wreck of a WWII transport sunk by a Japanese submarine in 1942. The diver in me was in awe of the challange and fun while the historian in me was absolutely in raptures as well. And presto! We were certified.

To celebrate, Nathan, Meredith and I had a bottle of Bali wine (quite good) and a few rum and cokes. Then Nathan and I went out to the beach and came across a pack of Indonesian men clustered around a camp light. Sure enough, it was a gambling ring with fistfulls of cash being thrown onto a roulette type apparatus and a ball getting rolled around over numbers. Nathan and I watched and even participated a bit with the aid of a helpful local, but we never did figure out the rules of the game... Needless to say, we limited our losses and headed home. And that was it for Lovina Beach, Bali! We just arrived at Padang-Padang on the south of the island and I think I'm in paradise. Pictures and description later, but I think we're staying in a tree house on the side of the cliff over the ocean. Not bad...