Back in mid February, after my time in Pai and speaking with many new friends about their positive scuba diving experiences, I decided to get scuba certified as well. Not just my open water certification, but my advanced certification as well that allows a diver to reach 30m depth and do night dives. My friend Catherine who I met through Morgan back in Chiang Mai recommended Manta Dive on Gili Trawangan, where she got certified a few years back. At that moment, I established contact with Manta and was determined to get my Open Water and Advanced Open Water Certifications on Gili Trawangan.
Having such a positive experience with such a fun group for the open water certification, Nicole, Liv, and Solly decided to join me for the Advanced Open Water Certification as well. The Advanced Open Water consists of 5 specialty dives. Two mandatory dives are underwater navigation and deep dive (30m), and then the other three are your choice. Our group would be doing night dive, Nitrox, and perfect buoyancy.
Sadly Simo had to begin the Open Water Certification course with a new cohort today, but thankfully we got to ride with our Italian Stallion Maury for one more day. Dive #1 was our deep dive specialty at Simon’s Reef, duration 25min, max depth 30.3m, and avg. depth 20.0m. Wildlife observed includes a banded sea krait (sea snake; poisonous), lion fish, and the usual Gili gills (angelfish, butterfly fish, clownfish, surgeonfish, sweetlips, grunts, parrotfish, soldierfish, banner fish, and trumpetfish). First dive in the advanced certification and already down to 30m!
On lunch break, I went to a Hellocapitano cafe next door to Manta and enjoyed tasty mie goring and a smoothie bowl. While eating, I began talking diving with a German digital nomad based out of Barcelona named Simon. It felt slightly ironic meeting a Simon immediately after returning from diving Simon's reef. I shared with him my positive recent experiences with diving, and he shared with me that he hadn’t dove in 4 years after a bad and traumatizing experience in Indonesia. After assuring him of my comfort, safety, and enjoyable experiences in the trusted hands of Manta diving instructors, he told me he would consider it. After I finished eating, I went back to Manta to take a nap before our afternoon dive. By the time I woke up, I saw Simon over there speaking with instructors and scheduling a refresher dive for the next day. Love to see it, Simon!
Dive #2 was the underwater navigation specialty, where we were trained on and practiced using compasses to navigate underwater. Compasses, needles, bezels, and lubber lines, so the nerd and former Boy Scout in me geeked out a bit. Bounty wreck was our dive site. That’s right, first wreck dive! This dive’s duration was 39min, max depth 19.0m, and avg. depth 13.0m. Wildlife observed includes turtles, scorpionfish, pufferfish, and the Gili gills. Back at Manta we debriefed, logged, and validated our day’s dives before going separate ways.
Back at Compass Divers, a few friends including Tilda (Sweden), Tore (Danish), and Darra (Ireland) went to a nearby Regina Pizzeria restaurant. I hadn’t had a decent pizza while traveling Asia yet, but Tilda swore by this place and I was willing to get my hopes up out of my craving of a good pizza. I’m glad I trusted her, because the pizzas here were large, delicious, and very affordable. The good company around the table also made this one of my favorite meals while on Gili T. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again, who you’re with is more important than where you are, what you’re doing, or in this case, what you’re eating.