Catching up...

I’m sitting in the bar...doing nothing... I think it’s the first time I have a free afternoon in almost two weeks… It’s been a while since the last post and a lot has happened…first of all, my previous post mysteriously disappeared from my PC, so I’ll try to fill in the missing bits and pieces from memory…If I remember correctly the last time I wrote I was telling you how good the weather had been… well ofc after that we had a couple days of continuous, heavy rain… just because I called it.
I can’t remember precisely what we did during those days, probably just chilled in the restaurant drinking hot tea waiting for a dry moment to do a quick dive or two…The bad weather didn’t last too long though, the sun was out and shining again soon enough and we went back to our usual routine…

On one day (25th Aug), two American guys found their way to this deserted island: Brad and Shawn. We soon became good friends, especially after sharing a huge fish-based super dinner (caught and cooked by Pekadai and Susan, a local couple we met two or three weeks back), and enjoying a good bottle of wine, we even lit a bonfire and gazed at a beautiful starlit cloudless sky for over an hour before going to sleep… it was amazing…

Sadly, the next day Shawn had to leave to return to America… Brad instead decided to stay around a while longer…he was supposed to stay just for one more night, but he liked the place (and company) so much that he ended up staying for over a week! During this time we had another important arrival: on Thursday Luca (the Shallow Waters director) came to visit to introduce Owen (the new project leader) to the team… an important moment in Shallow Waters history! :-P
After lunch we decided it was an occasion to celebrate! We took the next day off and headed over to the neighbouring island: Koh Rong. Life there is radically different from Koh Rong Sanloem: the village is fairly developed and a lot more touristy… 2 o 3 dive centres and endless display of bars and guesthouses tightly packed on the main beach, right off the pier. We left our stuff at one of the guesthouses and headed to the bar next door to finally use some internet! First time after almost a month! Ofc it wasn’t working properly, super slow and barely enough to check my ema, that’s why I still haven’t posted anything on the blog yet.

Anyhow, that evening was memorable…very memorable… not just because of the amazing time we had and the great company, but for the epic unforgettable dinner! The Brave One! That’s how the ginormous burger I ate was named… a 4 layered humongous delicious enormity stuffed with meat, bacon, cheese, eggs, salad, tomatoes, peppers, onion and anything else that passed  front of Frank (the South African cook and owner) while he was making it. It was Superb to say the least. I almost had two but I withheld myself just for the sake of decency.

After dinner we stayed up late downing beers, swapping stories and meeting completely random people… culminating with finding ourselves at a bar called “Vagabonds”, lying down on a plastic mat on the beach, and having to rush home when it started to rain… what an unforgettable evening! Thank you so much Brad, Owen, Luca, David & Fia!
The next day was D-day for David…. Time to hop on the boat and go back to England and normal life… on the + side, he can go back to eating all the ice cream and bacon he desires! Lucky bastard. Fia, Owen, Brad and I headed back to Koh Rong Sanloem instead, with a looong week ahead of us. We started off with the Fish & Inverts lists I had learned just a couple weeks back, but this time I was teaching them! It felt a lot like being back in uni, but this time with no grade-related pressure :-P Sofia took on the coral and substrates list instead, since I felt I would benefit from hearing it once over before teaching it. Both Brad and Owen were really interested and they were surprised at how much more stuff you notice while diving when you know what you’re looking at! It’s like looking at the reef for the first time again.
The rest of the week was intense, but not just work… we managed to fit in a couple movie nights (with the usual cookies and snacks, obviously), and enjoy Brad’s and Owen’s company before they left on the following Sunday. Owen went back to Koh Sdach to start running the SW machine, while Brad made his way first to Portugal and then to Austria to start his internship in the wine making industry, lucky him!
It’s been only me and Fia for the last 3 days now, not many customers in the resort either… she’s amazing, super easy going and fun… I couldn’t wish for a better dive instructor/teacher/adventure buddy/movie night pal/faketella eater :-P
I think this is my longest post yet… It’s almost 18.15, time to get ready for our night dive! I’ll try to be more diligent with writing posts, I promise…

Until next time!

In the Middle of Nowhere

Hello everyone!

I want to apologize for the multiple, super late posts... I have a perfectly good explanation for it and this post will tell you why…

04 of August…

After a night at the dive centre staff house in Sihanoukville, we loaded all our stuff on a mini-truck and went to catch the boat to Koh Rong. The boat trip was about 2 and a half hours long, which passed relatively fast… partly because of the gigantic mattresses on the top deck, that allowed us to sleep for another hour or so, and partly because of the numerous Spanish tourists on board with us, sharing all their adventures in the neighbouring countries (Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, etc).

After a quick boat change in Koh Rong , we set off again for Koh Rong Sanloem, which literally translates to “the further away island of Rong”. The trip was fairly fast, roughly 30 minutes, after which we finally arrived to our final destination: the Eco Sea Diving Centre and Bungalow Resort.  The location was incredible… it is the only Resort on this whole side of the island, right next to the local village (known either by its local khmer name, or even just as “Village 23”), of barely 100 families. We soon discovered that the resort is relatively new, just 5 months old, and that it still needed a lot of work to be done.

After meeting our dive instructor Fia (short for Sofia) and enjoying a nice cup of fresh iced tea, we moved from the bar to the dive shop, which is located in the middle of the water, almost at the end of a long pier in front of the resort. Here we sorted out all the bureaucratic paperwork with Fia and received our first training manual:  Emergency First Responder… to be read by the end of the day.

Luckily for me some guests were about to go out on a fun dive, so I got out all my new gear and jumped at the occasion to test it all out. The dive spot was really close, at about 200m from the resort, under which we found the remains of an old wooden pier, probably washed away from the close-by village during a heavy tropical storm some years ago… the visibility was horrendous (about 1m), but we managed to spot out lots of rabbit fish and crabs living in the remains... oh, and also an enormous boxfish… completely different from the small cute yellow ones I got used to in Bora Bora. Anyhow... the purpose of my dive was to test out my new equipment, not sightseeing, so it wasnt too much of a disappointment. We came back up and headed back for shore (everything works perfectly, by the way).
Quick shower, a moment of relax, and soon after it was already dinner time! Yay!
Dinner and lunch here are served as buffet…. So I really had to control myself to leave something for the other guests to eat… in any case, the general menu here is rice, vegetables, meat, chicken or fish (with vegetables) and a soup (again, meat chicken or fish… … … with vegetables)…surely I can’t complain about not eating healthy!

Oh, I almost forgot... the reason i'm posting everything together late is that we don't have any internet on the island and electricity only from 7 to 11 in the evening... digital detox!