Diving Tulamben Bali on Liberty Wreck, Coral Garden, Silayukih Wall and Pasir Puti

What do you say if I go: 'Visibility 30-40 m, water 27 C, max depth 27 m, max time 50 min, giant groupers, spider shrimps, baby box fish, sea snakes, bump head parrot fish, cuttle fish, stone fish..' Maybe 'Awesome!'? One should and it was.

Before the first dive, all full of excitement!

And it was so great.. We started off on the US Liberty wreck and the visibility was fantastic. All under water pics are attributed our fearless camera man Toshi-san; great job!

The corral was really thriving in Corral Garden

We saw quite a few moray eels with 'leopard spots' in Thailand as well; here sighted at the Silayukih Wall

Gorgeous dragon fish. Dangerous, but gorgeous.

Cuttle fish reminds me of one of the first science fiction movies I saw as a kid: Dune. They look exactly as the creatures in the end of the movie, who are somehow connected to the emperor's family in the film, if I remember correctly.

Nemo fish at Pasir Puti!

I hadn't seen stone fish before and this one was almost the same color as the corrals around it, hence very hard to spot initially. Here she was on the move, so Toshi managed to get a better picture.

At one dive we went down to the beach while it was still dark, got in and waited for the first sun rays to break over the horizon. We then swam in the darkness, down to no more than about 12 m, along quite a boring sandy bottom and were really wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. The dive instructors had promised us a highly rare school of fish, the bump heads, who resides on the far end of the US Liberty wreck, where they stand in the stream every morning upon sun rise. Then they disappear in the deep. It sounded almost like a ghost story. And definitely felt like one, as we rounded a corner and they suddenly appeared in front of us like grey shadows. The sun light hadn't really caught up and it was slightly chilly, but we were all in awe at the sight in front of us.  

I had no idea these bump head parrot fish existed, and until I saw them for real, I didn't necessarily believe it either. They were however very real. And huge! 

Not to brag or anything, but I started this dive with air in: 200 Bar and had more than 60 Bar left after 50 min which was actually most air left in the group ;) Much of this is due to the very good tip I got about 'half lungs' i. e., breathe out only half of the air for each breath and breathe in the same. This way you keep a much more steady buoyancy and I used considerably less air.  

I really don't understand why, but if there's a camera, everyone wants to be caught on it ;)

AND you definitely want someone to catch you doing highly sophisticated things like crossing your legs. In the water. The madness of my skills;)

Or hanging up-side down, beautifully illustrated by husband Jonas; we are just an insanely talented couple.

I actually think we were quite talented all of us; here managing to stay almost still for group pics. It's in fact rather hard ;)

Even the dive master played along and is here demonstrating how much fun you can have with a hard piece of corral; peekaboo!

Planning and prepping diving Tulamben

Singapore is a great and easy place to live for foreigners as already established several times on this blog. People overall mostly speak English, almost all information is written in Romanji and the weather is rather consistent throughout the year (+35 C, ~90% DP). In addition, the country is very clean, a lot safer than for instance Sweden and has a rather well organized infrastructure.

Going jogging by Marine Parade is not entirely bad ;)

 

Another great thing: outdoor gyms are available in very many parks around the island

A typical clean street in our hood

 

And there are beautiful flowers!

However, it's really quite small with the entire country being roughly 700 km2. You can generally drive from the north to south parts of Singapore (Woodlands to Marina Bay ~ 25 km) in around 20 minutes or from east to west (Changi to Tuas ~ 45 km) in roughly 40. Just to compare, Gothenburg together with for instance Lerum Commune is about the same size as Singapore (~710 km2) and you can place more than 52 Singapores in Greater Tokyo Area (The 47 Wards + Kawasaki, Yokohama and Chiba ~ 37 000 km2).

There are a lot of nice 'rain forest parks' here, with the really cool trees almost functioning like sun umbrellas, with several different kinds of plants growing densely 'in the middle' of them; it's perfectly alright to for instance go jogging here, but you have to watch out for lizards and avoid stepping on snakes ;)  

Hence, most of the people who have been here for about a year, have probably done more or less all the things you can do and tried out practically all the places you can go on this island (just learned Singapore is actually alike Stockholm i. e. comprised of more than 60 small islands). Many of us have also been tour guides to x numbers of visitors, which of course is smashing having fantastic guests over, but we have been showing pretty near the same route every time.

 

We did try one new thing not that long ago though: windsurfing!

Therefore, there might be some connection in between traveling in the region and your time of stay in Singsing, since only just coming back from the adventure on Koh Tao in Thailand, had made us very keen on getting back under water as soon as possible and we were not alone.

Parts of the pack on the 20th something floor, planning away on computers and pads for the next trip

The main drive for many of us foreigners, is of course to see as much of the APAC region as possible with a shared passion for diving. It also helps regarding the fact that you can more or less reach most interesting places from Singapore in 1-2 hours. For Swedes, who spend somewhere around 12 hours all in all, going from for instance Gothenburg to Krabi, it's a huge difference and become very accessible.

 Our planning session was also helped by a smashingly organized brunch, where the choices of food were immense. Thank you again Lisen and Robert!

The verdict of the next adventure was finalized and a group of highly energetic more or less experienced divers became scheduled to go together to Tulamben! Since this was so outstandingly organized last time by our friends, Jonas and I decided we would put together a traveling plan, flying from Changi, Singapore to Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, staying at Liberty Dive Resort. Jonas also has a friend who has been a dive master on Bali for the past years, so we received a lot of info about where and with whom to dive. I wanted to continue with my advanced dives to finish the certificate and was contemplating if I would dare to go wreck diving with the others at the sunken ship USA Liberty. Since I didn't really like the cave passage dive we did last round, I was a bit hesitant, but thought this might be different.

I had been looking forward to going to Bali since we came to Singapore, so I was definitely expecting beaches even better than the ones in Malaysia

Or Thailand ;)

The only other thing which really freaked me out was the Ocean Sunfish or Mola Mola, where individuals between 3-4 meters at weights of more than 2000 kg have been observed. I actually had no idea they existed until not that long ago (same with the really weird looking bump-head Parrot fish) and they almost look like they are artificial. I found a descent video on youtube which might be worth while watching (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coVp1dhhxIE&feature=related). Again, I was of course hoping for Manta rays, but that's probably every divers secret dream ;)

Ulricehamn, Sweden

(should be read after Girls Weekend!)

The next few days I spent in my hometown Ulricehamn, roughly 100 km in-lands from Gothenburg. The town houses around 8 000 people (including adjacent farms), is situated by the lake Asunden and climbs up one of the mountain sides of Vistabergen. The highest building is six floors, during winter time it's common practice to drive on the lake and for fun at night you can engage in tipping over cows that fall asleep standing. The town is very picturesque and some even say it overall looks like a painting. 

 Starting the day with fermented milk (filmjolk), mom's hand-picked blue- and red current berries on the top sun-deck with a view over the town and lake, is amazing.

Mother Ingrid in the city park, with my favorite climbing-tree in the background. Coming back as an adult, I find it amazing that I didn't get myself killed or at least seriously injured as a child, considering all the trees, houses, fences, bars etc I was constantly climbing. Mentioning this to mams she just looked at me over the glasses and said 'Dear, it was one thing when you got old enough to dare to get yourself down from where you had climbed up to. It was a completely different story when you were happy getting up for instance a tree, but then got scared and refused to come down, so in the end I had to climb up after you. I really hope you get very active children'. Lol!

An old barn in the city park. I'm so glad I didn't live 'in the good old days'.

The museum, just across the street from where we used to live.

The oldest building in town: the book store.

The lake with parts of the small piers and boats with the ski slope in the far background.

A stone pier from which we used to swim as far as possible straight into the lake; again, completely surprised I never drowned.

The Swan Boats.

Swedish Daisies on a summer meadow; that's hard to beat!

I've always loved these flowers (Rallarros), which have their name from old rail road workers in Sweden (rallare).

Typical Swedish red cottage with Falu rodfarg (typical Swedish paint from mine areas, rich of iron) and white details and a Volvo parked outside; it doesn't get much more Swedish than that!

The lake facing south.

Already there are signs of autumn.

However, it was still possible to eat wild raspberries, warm from the sun!

One of the organized places to go for a swim: Skotteksbadet.

The station building. 

View over the bath house (in the far).

Pier out to the bath house; every board is sponsored by a private person or a company from town.

Out at the very end it almost looked slightly Singaporean ;)

One of the electric centrals in town.

The pedestrian town street.

City hall.

We were actually looking at the top apartment in this house to live in at one point.

The movie theater. The roof makes a really exciting climb. Again: alive?!

Our old house; the 2nd floor corner room used to be mine and the little roof just beneath the window to the right made a really cool stand off point if you climbed out on it and swung yourself into the big pear tree that used to be there. I probably deserve 'very active' children.

One of the coolest houses in my opinion in town and also our previous neighbors'.

Probably my favorite house of all times ;)

Dinner was prepared on the top balcony..

.. and with an amazing view..

..plenty of flowers..

..good bubbly..

..Swedish strawberries..

..breathtaking sunset..

..it was hard to find reasons not to move back. However, the cold really is one. Here I am geared up in one of my old favorite knitted shirts. And it's in the middle of summer.

Before I left I also managed to get my hair cut; now it's very short!

One of the last days, dear Petra came by to visit, before we headed back to Gothenburg; so long Ulricehamn!

Thank you mom, Uffe, Dagmar, Tage and Petra for fantastic days and see you all soon!