"If you are for scuba, then I am a pea!"

So.  Having checked out of the Sheraton, Happy and I waited for a boat back to Bali for quite a long time, rented some motos and zipped along the Balinese coastline until we arrived at our second dream destination of the trip.  As I had been party responsible for the booking of this hotel (I clicked the button on the internet), I was quite pleased with my success, and repeatedly asked Happy if she had noticed how wonderful the hotel was.  Happy was very patient with me and confirmed over and over again that yes; indeed; Candidasa was a sleepy holiday village with dramatic coastal scenery, and the hotel pool was, indeed, a dream.

We spent our first day in Candidasa whizzing around the roads they use for all the National Institute of Tourism post cards: the rice terraces and winding roads and green and mountains were exaclty what I had always imagined Bali to be like, so we were very pleased that the island had lived up to our naive and stereotyped expectations.  We saw lots of beautiful things on our ride, and also a group of fully grown men splashing around naked in a river.  Sadly, we were riding along the bridge above them, so we couldn't join in, but in all honesty, we were both so surprised to see this, that we simply rode past with our mouths open and then stopped a little way away to giggle like scandalised school girls.  Photos of the hotel and the terraces will come, soon!

We discovered - through a very curt and reprimanding email from the owner of the dive shop - that we were supposed to have turned up to dive that very same morning.  Oops!  I felt terribly, apologised profoundly, and we turned up (after I had locked us out of our room) only five minutes late the next morning.

We spent the next two days with our instructor (who was aweome), Darta, learning how to float in the lotus position under water, how to get over our disapproval of snorkels (they are a pain), how to throw ourselves off the back of a boat without giving ourselves concussion, how to avoid floating, uncontrollably to the surface and how to high five under water.  Most of these are recognised PADI skills.  High fiving is one of the hardest skills to master.

On one occasion, I decided to throw a spanner in the works by having a panic attack at around 6 metres down.  Don't judge me, guys: there's this horrible skill where you have to take your mask off completely, whereupon water rushes excitedly up your nose, and your brain says 'DON'T BREATHE IN THROUGH YOUR NOSE; IMMEDIATE DEATH WILL FOLLOW!', but your nose gets confused, and so do your lungs, and then your brain gets confused, and your legs say, 'There's nothing else for it, guys, we better abort and kick up,' but then a very small, calm voice in your brain, that I imagine to look like Patrick Stewart on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, gripping calmly onto his chair's armrests as the ship is thrown back and forth under a Klingon attack, and some minor character goes flying through the air behind him, screaming for his mother, says 'No; no, breathe through your regulator, don't kick up.  This too will result in immediate lung explosion, and therefore death.  Breathe through your regulator, Lieutenant, finish the skill.'  My eyes were also upset at this point, as well, because I had to close them and therefore was panicking in suffocating darkness.

Anyway, I didn't die, but I did stress Darta out for a few minutes.  Happy, on the other hand, had been floating around quite peacefully, waiting for me to finish the skill and hadn't noticed a thing.

During the two days, we saw these cool things:

White tipped reef shark - not dangerous at all, but pretty cool!

Manta shrimp.  Surprisingly dangerous, and very weird looking.

Frog fish.  Ugly.

Stone fish.  Ugly.

Nudibranch.  Silly name.  Pretty slug.

And passed our PADI certificate, so now I can join the leagues of people who spend all their money on dive holidays.  Hoorah!  So, whilst it's not that Li Hi, I at least scraped back some form of Li Highness and can once again consider myself Extreme Royalty, even if I'm the impoverished cousin of royalty, selling off their land to car dealership owners to soften the blow of ancestral bankruptcy.

Remember: if you are for scuba, then I am a pea!