Indonesia Pictures - 1st instalment...

Well, no great surprise to hear that i still haven't completely got my ass in gear but we have been back off holiday for one week now and i have been working for all of that! I know, excuses, excuses... Anyway, i didn't want you all switching off so here is a beginning...

Please note that all of these 'land' pictures were taken with Mik's new Digital-SLR camera he got for his birthday! I let him have it on the 2nd day of the holiday (while we were in Bunaken, North Sulawesi) so that is where our holiday will have to begin...

Here are my dive buddies - Mik & Gary (Mik's mate from England)...

And here i am... Oh yes, girl on holiday. Sooooo relaxed...

The place we stayed and dived at was called Two Fish Divers. Nice enough place but very basic so don't expect the Ritz! But then we were there for the diving anyways. Owned by an English couple Tina and Nigel. It works well and they offered us an amazing 50% discount for being working instructors in Thailand which made the holiday far more affordable!

Our cottage was basically like this on the outside... complete with hammock :)

And then it was like this on the inside...





The resort in general was very well maintained and Mik got some lovely pics of it for us... Here is general resort area, our diving boats, dining area and some randoms we met along the way (dogs at the resort, random Indonesian man complete with fish on an exploratory walk along the beach)...






Then we would dive...








And our dive guide, 'Bull' or 'Char-lez' depending on what you feel like calling him! He was called 'Char-lez' but then all the Indonesian's think that he looks foreign and not like a local indonesian at all. 'Bull' is similar to 'farang' in Thai, kind of meaning 'westerner'. He found us lots of weird and wonderful stuff on our dives!!
Then we would sleep...

Then we would drink...

And here are a few added others to show just how spectacular the scenery was in Bunaken... The water was knee-deep for a good couple of hundred metres out from shore but then with one step further the reef shelved away steeply creating the most amazing wall dives to hundreds of metres. (We did not go that deep! But it did give me vertigo on a couple of the dives!)



On the land here you may just be able to make out a church. Indonesia is always thought of as a Muslim country but on North Sulawesi it is predominantly Christian so you see lots of churches and crosses. Rather amusingly, the in-house instructor at 'Two Fish' was telling us about the local Muslim-Christian football match. It all went off and the one policeman on the island was drunk, didn't know what to do so just stood in the middle of the pitch and let his gun off. Genius - only in Asia!

With breath-taking views like this one of the local volcano, it is no wonder that they give thanks to God! So beautiful...

Stay tuned for my next post where i will introduce you all to our 2nd week of holiday in Lembeh!
Love to you all x x x