GOD's Trip to Manado

From the 27th August to the 1st of September 2009, I joined GOD's (Great Ocean Divers) and 15 other GOD buddies on a diving trip to Manado.

Having only dived a handful of times since my certification in 1996, I was a little apprehensive about the dives here, as it would include wall dives, meaning one would dive along the face of a cliff!! Now for someone who doesn't like heights, floating over an area where you can't see the bottom really isn't my idea of fun.

Diving at the sheer Wall of Bunaken

Anyway, packing aside my nervousness and a new underwater camera housing, I climbed on board Air Asia's flight AK432 to Manado (albeit 20 minutes late) and joined in the fun.

The drama began almost as soon as we reached Tasik Ria Resort. We arrived almost at mid-night and began the process of checking in. As the hotel staff were a little overwhelmed with the amount of luggage (lots of dive equipment), I decided ( as I had very little dive stuff) to haul my luggage and myself to the room. BAD idea!!!! The resort was sprawling and there were no signs! So having rapidly lost sight of most people within the first few minutes, I ended up walking around the gardens for half an hour hoping to stumble upon the room or at the very least Reception so that I could get guidance. Thankfully out of the shadows steps a slightly drunk German guest who rather unsteadily pointed out the general direction of the Reception and despite my better judgment, I followed his advice. Thankfully German efficiency won through, and I did find Reception and the receptionist did lead me to my room and I settled in for a good sleep.

I unpacked my toiletries and went to the bathroom to clean up. However I stepped back into the bedroom and it was still warm and stuffy!!! Hell!!! the air-conditioning wasn't working!!!! So I called up reception, who promised to send a maintenance staff to check. Dubious as I was that Maintenance would be on duty at 1 am, I waited and to my surprise, he turned up within 15 minutes. As I suspected, he could not solve the problem as the fault was either a faulty compressor or a compressor which is short of refrigerant, he said he'll check the outdoor unit. After 15 minutes, he still had not returned to fix the problem whence I promptly called Reception, who promised to check on hte matter and promised to get the problem solved in 15 minutes. (Yeah right!) 15 minutes later.... still the blower was blowing hot air, so once again I picked up the phone and called Reception, who tried to sell me the idea that the problem will be fixed within 15 minutes! I promptly told him that that's not going to happen and that insisted that I be placed in another room for the night. After much more hot air.... he finally agreed and came over to the room to lead me to the new room. So I packed up my toiletries and followed him to the new room and promptly fell asleep at about 3am.

The next morning I arose and went for breakfast at the appointed time of 7am Indonesian time (1 hour behind Malaysian time right?) I sat down for breakfast and felt strange as I was the only person there. Sensing something wrong, I promptly went off to the dive centre (which I noticed during my late night wanderings from last night) when I found the rest of the group preping up for the morning's dive. I hurriedly apologised to everyone and completed the necessary preparations (filled out forms, ordered the necessary dive equipment, rushed back to my room to pop in my contacts etc.) The dive centre was sceptical about my dive credentials as I did not bring my dive card along with me and said that I would not be able to dive the second day if I did not show them some proof of certification. So I had to 'phone home and arrange for my certification form to be faxed to the dive centre to be able to continue diving.

After that drama, We went diving (finally...)

Then the drama of the first dive!!!

(to be continued.....)