Diving at Gili Trawangan; after the lessons, to Senggigi

Day 6 — The final exam, and farewell to Trawangan

Pleasantly sunny again from the morning. At midday today we would take a written test on diving, and by getting a pass mark we could get our final certification (C-card). On the way from our lodging to the main street there is a primary school, and today again they were doing morning exercises.

Revising before the exam at a café bar on the beach. Apparently when you dive deep, nitrogen builds up in your body, and if you surface suddenly it forms bubbles inside you. This is called decompression sickness, and to prevent it you have to calculate your no-decompression limit from your depth. The card in my hand is the tool for that. The result...

We both got a pass mark and got our licences. A commemorative photo with our instructor and a man who happened to be there. Thank you so much. It was only four days, but the days we spent learning at this diving school became very memorable.

We would go back to the main island of Lombok at 4 p.m., so with time until then we decided to walk to the island's viewpoint, the top of a small hill almost in the middle of Gili Trawangan. Intense sunlight poured down from almost directly overhead. On the way there were cattle grazing.

From the hill we could see the neighbouring island of Gili Meno, Gili Air beyond it, and Mt. Rinjani on Lombok hidden in cloud. Thinking we were saying goodbye today to these islands ringed with coral, we were very sorry to leave.

It was nearly midday, so the sun beat down from almost directly overhead. So shadows formed almost only right at our feet.

After our walk we came back to the front of the dive shop. This is a map of the dive sites around the three Gili islands. We enjoyed diving at four of them: Bounty, Meno Wall, Shark Point and Coral Fun Garden. Looking at this, it's as if the three Gilis sit in the middle of a diving spot.

Goodbye, Gili Trawangan. And the people of Dream Divers.

That day we headed to a town called Senggigi on Lombok, where we stayed when we first came to the island. Raja's Bungalows, where we stayed then, was very comfortable but a little pricey (even so, about 750 yen each a night), so to cut our lodging costs a bit we chose New Pondok Sinta. The facilities were perfect, and above all it was big. And only 400 yen each a night, amazingly.

While Yamabe was checking in, Ooi found a monitor lizard behind the lodging! He hurriedly took a photo, but can you see where it is in this photo? Its back is captured near the middle of the photo.

Perhaps the owner was being thoughtful since it was two men staying. In the room was a portrait of a woman. Ooi is gazing at it, enchanted.

Dinner at a nearby warung (diner). We ordered pasta and nasi goreng with krupuk and a fried egg. After this we went to the front of the dive shop office in Senggigi. Why? Because when we arrived in Senggigi we had visited the instructor's home and been invited to a sate ayam (chicken skewer) party in the evening. But when we got there, nobody was around. Had we got the time wrong? We waited a while but nobody came, so we reluctantly went back to the lodging and went to bed. About a week since leaving Japan. The first stage of our trip, getting our diving licences, had ended safely. Tomorrow was finally the day we would meet KEN, who was coming alone from Japan, at last freed from his research. The second stage: a jungle expedition on Sumatra, an island bigger than all of Japan.

To the next day