Back on track

Hello everyone!

Good news! It stopped raining! After a week of continuous storms the sun finally started to shine again... and we sure didn't loose any time waiting around! We've been diving as much as possible, every morning. Afternoons are still dedicated to "office work" since we still have a lot to finish before next week.
I've almost finished the fish presentation (which turned out to be even longer than the inverts one... 97 slides) and there's only one left to go... corals. That'll be very tricky... especially since the're often hard to identify because the same species varies so much in appearance depending on its environment...
Life on Koh Sdach is enjoyable, but i'm really missing Koh Rong Sanloem... the morning runs on the beach, attending to clients... the big lunches and dinners... and the people ofc. Here we have no outsiders passing through and it gets a bit boring at times...
Today we went diving on the neighboring

island of Koh Chan... I didn't think it was physically possible, but the visibility is even worse than on Koh Rong. XD
I brought along the coral identification guidebook and started looking at corals while Fia and Owen were looking at fish. After a while Fia found a huge net caught in a coral patch with a couple crabs stuck inside... we decided to free the crabs and bring the net away with us, but it proved to be way more difficult than anticipated. The net was tightly caught in a big chunk of dead coral, and it was full of sand so as soon as we started moving it the viz went down to 0. After trying to cut the coral loose for about 20 mins we realized we weren't gonna accomplish anything anytime soon so we pulled the whole thing up to the surface and managed to untangle the coral chunk from there. We managed to free one of the crabs while underwater, while the second was so tightly tangled up that we had to deal with it on the boat while coming back to Koh Sdach. In the end I managed to cut it free and release it under the unbelieving eyes of our two lifelong fishermen captains. :-P
Tomorrow Owen and I will go on a field-trip to Koh Kong...he has some Shallow Waters business to attend to while I have to sort out my visa situation instead. Visas always seem to have a problem with me.. doesn't matter in which country i am.  Turns out my electronic visa can't be exchanged for a business visa, so i have to cross the border and come back in with a new business visa.
Oh well.. it'll be a good excuse to do some travelling and see a new island...and it won't take more then a couple days anyway.
Only one week left before the next volunteers come in... and we're getting quite exited about it! I can't wait for the science officer to get here so i can bombard her with the million questions i've been asking myself for the mast month and a half... she'll probably start hating me right away.  :-P

Still no reply from all the job ads I e-mailed... I hate when this happens. I'm starting to accept the idea of having to come back to Europe for a month after this... :-(
Oh well... I'm sure I'll enjoy the food and Christmas atmosphere :-)

Until next time!

Rain, Rain... More Rain.

Hello everyone!

Its been a while...  and we've changed location since the last post...
We finally arrived on Koh Sdach, at Shallow Waters Headquarters! Yay!
The trip from Sihanoukville was pretty long... about 6-7 hours on a delivery boat, counting all the stops along the way... but it was enjoyable... and most importantly, dry.
This cannot be said about Koh Sdach instead. It's been raining practically non stop since we got here. Now i see why they call it the rainy season.
Anyhow, there's a lot of "office" work for us to do anyway, so we're not missing out on much. Sofia and Owen have been going through all the welcoming speeches for the new volunteers and updating the emergency action protocols, while i've been working on the ID presentations for almost 4 days now. Inverts down, fish and corals still to go. :-S

Its a very time consuming job, but its turning out to be quite interesting and the final product is like 1000 times better than how it was before. I should have studied to be a designer or something like that instead. :-P
The base itself is really nice... a whole different world compared to the dorms in Koh Rong Sanloem. It has a huge hall, big rooms and a really nice patio in the back that looks directly to the sea.
After getting used to the simple life on Koh Rong being in this "huge" (600 families) village feels like being in a metropolis. Shops at every corner (there are no corners, its just the usual loooong main straight road), people everywhere and foooood! Yes, food! Theres even a man who sells croissant ice cream sandwiches out of a cool box on the back of his bicycle! For 20 euro cents! He's definitely the most important man on the island... at least as far as i'm concerned.
Yesterday we started Khmer lessons with our new teacher... Owen is using a Phonetic-to-Khmer book which is making me way more interested in learning the phonetic alphabet rather than Khmer. Luckily we've got some spare time on our hands these next 2 weeks (before the next volunteers come in) so i guell ill be studying both.
Our cook is really nice... she's Sea's sister... doesn't speak a word of english but we manage to understand each other somehow... and she cooks really well! The portions are way smaller compared to Eco Sea though. :-(
I think i'm gonna meet the owners of the 2 guesthouses on the island this or next week...they both have an oven so i need to befriend them so i can cook something nice. Im thinking banana bread. Yum!
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Aaaaaand it started raining again. Pouring actually.
The roof of the base is made of metal so it gets reeeeeally loud sometimes. Good thing i'm not a light sleeper.
Not many photos to share with you this time around... just a couple of the base.
Gotta get back to looking up fish on the internet...

Cya all soon!

The world is falling apart

Yes you read it right... everything is falling apart... it’s been pissing down with rain all week and we haven’t had any guests for 3 days now… and you know what that means… yup… no deliveries. Everything is finished. First to go were bread and eggs, then ice... vegetables… fruit… drinking water… everything is gone… yesterday we even got to the bottom of the pancake mix… what are we going to do? We still have to stay 3 days here before moving to Koh Sdach…
Yesterday Pekadai and Susan came over to have a look at a presentation Fia and I are working on, it’s all on environmental awareness and teaching the locals how to treat waste appropriately. Luckily they also brought stuff to cook dinner for us: fish, fish and fish… fish everywhere, in every form, for every taste; raw, steamed, grilled fried, sweet, salty, spicy, mild, everything… It was all superb… Susan’s restaurant in the village will surely be a success! Best of luck to them both!


If I remember correctly the last post was about our one day trip to Sihanoukville… what an adventure!  And it didn't end there! When we came back I had to stay out of the water for a couple days so I finished off my Dive Master manual and we started working on the presentation. On the night of my last day of rest I was going to sleep in my bungalow when suddenly I felt a sharp pain on my toe, I looked down but I couldn't see or hear anything moving. At first the pain was bearable, like a pinch, but soon after it started to build up, a lot! I really think it was the worst pain I felt in a very, very long time… bee stings and dog bites were pleasant by comparison.  Sofia got the first aid kit and we tended to the sting as best possible, trying to suck the venom out, without any success. We called the resort owner, Vibol, and he told us it was most probably a scorpion sting… that it would hurt like hell for a while but nothing more… just my luck. XD The searing pain lasted for another hour or so, after that it started to come back down to human levels. Eating helped coping with the pain, and thinking back it must have been fun for Sofia to come back to the tent expecting me to be rolling around in pain and instead finding me sitting in a corner holding on to my food with one hand and gobbling down a pack of crackers with the other… lol. Anyhow,  we sat down and watched an episode of Game of Thrones while waiting for the pain to subside, and went to bed right after, at 5am. The next morning we both would have liked to sleep late, but at 8.30am it was already way too hot to stay in the tents, so we had to get up. My foot was still sore and I couldn't walk on it until today (Thursday).
I still need to finish off all the practical part of my Divemaster course before we go to Koh Sdach, so today I’ll do the search&recovery scenario and possibly the scuba equipment exchange underwater as well. It feels so strange thinking about leaving this place in 3 days… I’m excited about Koh Sdach but im sure I’m gonna miss the simplicity and peacefulness of Koh Rong Sanloem a lot. There’s lots of stuff to be done before the next set of volunteers come in: we need to perfect the Marine Protection Internship program and revamp all the fish, inverts, substrates and dangerous marine life presentations. It’ll be a long, time consuming job, but I already have the final idea in my mind and I’m sure it’ll all be worth it. We also have to catch up with all the surveys we weren't able to do here because of all the drama, still 17 to go. Oh, and I also have to start looking for a job… ishhh. Fingers crossed!
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I just came back from diving… I did my search and recovery scenario looking for a jar full of wafers underwater… Fia knows me too well already. =P  It’s only been a week since I last dived but it felt so strange…like the first time all over again: a sensation of weightlessness and freedom like nothing else in the world… except skydiving maybe… I’ll have to try it out and let you know! We also did the equipment exchange; I think it went pretty smoothly, way better than when I tried it with Owen.. and with no headaches this time. I guess I really needed to take some time off and rest. It’s almost lunch time now, I wonder what they’re cooking since they have no food left in the kitchen… … maybe they’ll start feeding us dog meat soon =S
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Oh, fried rice and veggies! I can’t wait to go back to that Israeli place on Sunday evening!
Time to eat! Talk to you all in 3 days!