Daniel's Post - Diving Day Three - Whale Sharks??!?!

November 6 – Third Day of Diving (Whale Sharks)

The trend of the first diving being awesome continues today. Kudarah Thila is the name and fish is the game. This was an underwater pinnacle with a small amount of current and a large amount of fish…Blue Corner (from Palau) number of fish…

The two negatives were the visibility was still not awesome, but it is good enough to not be too much of a bother. The other bad side was that because this is one of the more famous sites, there were about 5-6 boats by the time we were done. We were the first ones in but we felt like we were under siege the whole time. Oh well.

Now that the dive is over, we are promised Whale sharks…we are going to go to the south barrier where they always hang out. We will see how lucky we are…

The dive briefing is called at 9:30 a.m. – the only drawing on the dive board is that of a whale shark…they seem pretty confident. The plan is to go catch it on a boat and then jump in the water in front of it so it swims past. They said not to get in front of it and to avoid the tail. This was all find and good, but we had to actually see one first.

As we get in the dive boat and head out, we see two things; 6 boats headed in the same direction and rain…neither of which are exciting sights. As we cruise along the shoreline, it starts pouring rain. That sucks because if we saw one, the lighting wouldn’t be very good because the sun wasn’t out. We press onward. As we pass ships going in the opposite direction, they indicate to us that they have seen a bunch of whale sharks…our hope grows. We press onward…the rain stops. We press on. Soon we run out of shoreline and turn around. By now we have been boating for almost an hour with no sight. There are maybe 10 other boats going back and forth around us…they said the thing to look for was snorkelers…we saw plenty but they were all on the boats…After what must have been 1.25 hours, we decide to call it and go for our dive. I joke that Beth is haunting the boat causing us not to see one…

The dive is basically along the same coastline that we have been putting in the boat. At first, we see a huge ray…probably 6 feet long…just chilling in the sand. Dad was hanging around looking at that when I see that the lens cap is still on my camera. It is frustrating because I told him to just leave it off and that it will get lost. I hand it to him and he puts it in his pocket. Shortly after, I hear BANG BANG BANG. I start to look around. The banging is much harder than normal and that leads me to believe there is a whale shark! Because we were the last ones to look at the ray, there weren’t very many people around,so I start swimming in the direction of the last person I saw. I see one of the dive masters and he is making the shark symbol and pointing into the blue. My heart starts to beat faster… I look back and Dad is still fiddling with the lens cap and I make the executive decision to leave him. Now, I would like to think that my legs are stronger than any one on the boats…I mean,running 35 miles a week has to count for something…so I put those bad boys into overdrive. I shoot off as fast as I can into the blue…all I see is the fins of some of the other divers. I blow past them and still just follow fins. I check my depth…100 feet…it isn’t wise to go all out that deep, but I go anyway. Soon, I see a whale shark fin appear between all the divers…my heart beats faster… I get close enough to see the whole thing, spots and all! I start recording on my camera and I manage to snap a picture. The shark is a ways beneath me, surrounded by divers. I check and I am still at 100 feet, so I decide not to chase after it – shortly after, it takes a nose dive and is gone into the blue. I manage to snap one still picture. We head back to the reef. I only saw the whale shark for 10-15 seconds, but I at least saw the whole thing! Dad missed it completely. Once back on the reef, I catch my breath and start cruising to a shallower depth. I spend the rest of the diving looking into the blue, but we don’t see anything…

Once we get back to the boat, some of the other divers share their story. As soon as the master diver starts banging on his tank, Jeff looks over and sees the whale shark – he b-lines it over. He said he was swimming with it for a good 2-3 minutes, close enough to touch it! Jim caught a video of it – it was the classic encounter that I was hoping for. I am excited to see it, but I am pretty jealous they got to get as close as they did. He did mention that he went down to 135 feet…on nitrox…That is about 36 feet deeper than the safest depth with nitrox, but he wasn’t down there very long. He made he was back up for a long safety stop.

To make matters worse, I went to download the pictures and video off of my camera and the memory card starts to crap out! I manage to grab the one still picture I took, but the memory card soon craps out and demands to be reformatted! OH NOOOO! All my pictures are lost for the trip – I didn’t take that many so I didn’t bother downloading them yet. Dad says “oh yeah, I think that’s the memory card I’ve had trouble with before.” NOOOO Why didn’t you give me a working memory card??? Why didn’t you throw that one away…they are so cheap…it’s not worth it??? Oh well, it’s not like I got anything good anyway…After lunch, we are going to head back out and see if we can see another whale shark.

***********Beth's Interjection in the story...***************

Daniel sent me only this part of the story first. I happened to wake up around 4 am (EST) to use the restroom and read the message above. This was my response:

Hey babe,

Ahhhhhhhhhh. So full of cliff hangers and frustration!!! I woke up to pee amd then got hooked on your angst! Sounds amazing and frustrating at the same time! ...maybe I am cursing you after all. Hmmm if I'm the "bigger person" and wave my whale shark wand I wonder if you'll have more luck. ...you know the WSs and I are one in the same at the moment size wise...

(Before you roll your eyes at me, yes I know I am not remotely pregnant whale size yet...but when you are currently bigger than you have ever been in your life...bigger feels HUGE)

*I will also say that after only a moment's hesitation I literally, physically waved my hand as if I had a "whale shark wand" and went back to sleep...which would have coincided more or less with the moment Daniel is dropping into the water for his next dive...

*********Daniel's Post Continued**********

The next dive briefing is at 2 p.m. – I spent most of the time being envious of the other people’s encounter with the whale shark. The next dive is not a whale shark dive but it is on the same side of the island. The plan is that we will look for sharks on the way out, but we aren’t very hopeful. As we near the dive site, we start to hear some yelling, “whale shark! whale shark!” I literally fly to my equipment, throw it on as I am jumping out of the boat and start looking around. I don’t see anything, so I poke my head up to see where everyone is looking…as they look up it almost appears that they are looking up at me…almost like some sort of horror show effect. I look back under the water and I see a huge gapping mouth headed right towards me! I start taking pictures/movies. I swim as fast as I can for as long as I can…I can keep up with it! I don’t even look back to see if the boat is following me…I don’t care. I dive down, take pictures really close to the eyes, and almost forget that I need to surface for air again. It was a very similar experience to the Mola Mola from the Galapagos!

I finally give up, out of breath and panting. I see that the boat is picking up a string of people who couldn’t make it as far as I did…I smile. Once I get back on the boat, I hear everyone saying “hurry, hurry, we’re going again!” I couldn’t believe it. This time the whale shark is easy to find because it has a long string of snorkelers. We head up current and get ready to jump again. This time, I don’t go first to let the other people have a shot. As I jump in, the water is full of bubbles from all the other people jumping off the boat. Through the bubbles, the whale shark emerges – it was almost scary! I manage to swim with this one for another 10-15 minutes. This time there are divers that are keeping up with him…one of the divers even gets “run over” by the whale shark; he laid flat on the bottom of the ocean and let the whale shark swim directly over him. By this point, the water is relatively shallow – maybe 25 feet. As I keep following him, the water gets deeper and deeper. I give up after he reaches ~30 feet…I can keep up with him, but having to dive that deep while swimming that fast becomes too much…I couldn’t believe the experience…it was amazing! This one was about 25 feet long…it was impressive. I wish that Beth could have been here to see it too…under normal circumstances, she would have had no problem keeping up…being pregnant, I am not sure how easy it would have been…

The third dive was a bust – horrible visibility. It was a deep dive (~80-85 feet), which was a bit much after the last deep dive (I reached 100 feet). It wasn’t very good anyway. The ride back to the boat was almost 45 minutes and it was pretty exhausting. I wasn’t sure if I was going to do the night dive, but I’ve gained some energy back up again. Speaking of which, the bell has just tolled…

The night dive ended up being … interesting. There was a strong current, so it ended up being a pretty quick drift dive. There were only 6 of us, so the amount of extra light was smaller…meaning it was harder to see the full picture of your surroundings. Also, people kept trying to stop to take pictures of something, which meant I had to fight the current to wait for them. All of that wouldn’t have been too terrible but I forgot my dive watch! I didn’t realize until I started going down and the boat was already pulling away. My dive watch has my depth gauge…I had absolutely no idea how deep I was! Night dives are already unnerving, but this didn’t help.

Also, on a side note, one of the things that are different about this Aggressor trip compared to other dive boats is the lack of remoteness. There are 1199 islands in the Maldives and almost all of them are populated…many of them with resorts. That means that when we travel to a dive site, there is always a chance that other divers will be there. There are always lights on the horizon wherever we go. We see lots of boats, planes, and fisherman. None of that is very distracting, but it’s just different than normal. One of the plus sides is that we have 3G coverage everywhere (I still have Brian’s wireless password, so I have been checking emails throughout the trip), but I don’t like having that connection…half the people on the boat have their noses stuck in their phones the whole trip…making phone calls. I like getting away from that aspect of technology and this time I’m not as far as normal. That said, here I go about to check my email…

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Daniel's Post - Second Day of Diving

November 5 - Second Day of Diving

The first dive of the day is at Guraidyoo Corner. It is a channel/reef that is on the ocean side of the lagoon. Most of the island chains in the Maldives are grouped in lagoon areas – when we first looked at the map we thought they were big islands. This dive site was on the outside boarder.

They said that we may have to do an alternate site depending on how strong the current it, but luckily we were able to do this dive; apparently it is one of the more famous sites. The ocean is pretty rough outside the protection of the reef and we are all pretty anxious to get in the water to avoid the bumpy ride. Once in the water we quickly descend and are immediately surrounded by fish!

This dive is by far the best one of the trip so far. The visibility has greatly improved from yesterday, but it still isn’t terribly great – I would consider it “moderate.” It was good enough for us to watch thousands of fish swim around us. We saw Napoleon Wrasse, Honeycomb Eels, white tip sharks, and lots of fish. When we first went down, I didn’t think we were very deep, but when I looked at my watch, I saw it we were 90 feet down! There was so much life and the water was clear enough that I didn’t even notice how deep we were.

I did seem to feel a little weird part-way through the dive. I tried to power through it and it was ok, but my gums are already sore from my regulator and that didn’t help. Once we got back to the boat, the waves were really bad and I’m embarrassed to say that my breakfast didn’t make it…doesn’t happen often.

Second breakfast for me consisted of four pieces of French toast. I was feeling better enough to eat, but I still felt a little uneasy after breakfast, so I went to lie down. I went outside, but all the shaded places were taken so I ended up going back into the room. I remembered thinking I wasn’t tired but I woke up 2.5 hours later for lunch…I felt so much better!

Lunch was good and consisted of Red Snapper and beef burritos. I tried not to eat too much in case my stomach started acting up again. So far it’s been good. After the first dive, the boat was making the 3.5 hour trek to another lagoon of island. There was potential for rough waters (which would have been bad for me) but we were lucky and the water was as smooth as you could ask for! As we approached the next chain of islands, we got some really great pictures of very scenic islands – I was taking mental notes of where Beth and I could come for that classic water hotel spot…so far I have seen a bunch of those but only one or two that fit the bill for truly unique.

After some lounging again, our next dive started at 2:15. This was another wreck dive off the coast of an island resort. The wreck was between 60-90 feet and was surrounded by lots of little fish, several lion fish, and a boat-load of scuba divers (literally!). Apparently we decided to do this site at the same time as another dive boat, so the wreck was a little crowded. We spent about 30 minutes on the wreck and I was getting a little bored, but we spend the next 25 minutes floating along the reef – these are definitely my favorite type of dives on this trip – there was a slight current so that if I just floated it took me at the perfect speed for observing. It got to the point where I didn’t have to kick at all – I would just manage my depth by breathing in and out. It was so peaceful and relaxing – Dad even had to check that I didn’t fall asleep! Unfortunately, the visibility is still moderate which my biggest complaint is at the moment. At least the sun came out, so we are very close to perfect conditions…just need better visibility…

The last dive started at 5, which was pretty close to the end of the second one. This one was a sunset dive that is supposed to end in a night dive. It was supposed to be a drift dive alongside a reef – there was current, but it was going in the wrong direction…so we ended up fighting it the whole time. Plus, there just wasn’t much to see – it was kind of a bust dive. :-/ Tomorrow we are supposed to have good chances to see Whale sharks – I hope the visibility improves!

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Daniel's Post - Bandos Island, Boarding the Boat, and Day 1 of Diving!

November 3 - Bandos Island and the Boat

I manage to sleep in until around 7:30.  Dad is really confused because he set his alarm for 6 a.m. so he could catch the sunrise, but the alarm never went off.  He was also really confused because he couldn’t find the portrait frame lens hood.  We ended up concluding that he left the hood at home and that the daylight savings time caused his phone to revert an hour which made him miss the sunset.  He felt better, but it was a weird set of problems for me to wake up too…

First order of business is breakfast – dinner last night felt really good, but we were pretty hungry again.  It was a buffet again and they had lots of tasty fruits, eggs, pastries, hot food, etc.  They even had some curried dishes, which I felt was a bit much for breakfast.  After we finish, we head back to the room.  Shortly after we get to the room, it starts to rain.  Rain rain rain – it doesn’t stop…

We are supposed to have our luggage ready to be picked up at 11:15 – it is still pouring rain.  The guy comes in a golf cart and takes our stuff, but it gets all wet.  We wait until 12 – still raining.  After eating a full breakfast and having nothing to do but sit in the bed, I found it very difficult to stay awake – I napped a bunch of times.  It was nice.

At noon, we took the umbrellas in our room and walked to the reception area.  It was still raining, but not as hard.  One of the nice things about the rain was that it was relatively cool outside, which was nice since we had to sit in the outdoor reception area from 12 until 3.  Dad was going stir crazy, but I was really enjoying the relaxing.

At 3, the boat took a bunch of us back to the airport.  We were with one other couple who was going on the Aggressor.  Some of the other people were diving, but on a different boat.  The Aggressor couple said that they have done every single Aggressor ship with the Maldives being the final one!  We get to the airport around 3:30 and have to wait for pick up at 4.  Dad checked on his Allen wrenches, but they weren’t even in the system.  Luckily he already asked the couple from our hotel and they had some he can borrow.

They used the dive boat as the shuttle to take us to the “mother ship” but it was extremely crowded with everyone’s luggage.  It took a while to get it all loaded and we almost didn’t fit.  They shuttled us to the boat, took our shoes, and let us free on the boat!

We got the standard introduction speech, got our bunk assignments and started to unpack.  Dad and I got room #2 which was at the front of the boat.  This boat is a little different than most Aggressor boats in that there is only below-deck rooming – there are no rooms above.  The rooms are the standard boat rooms; small and compact.  After unpacking, we head up for dinner only to discover that it isn’t served until 7:30 – it is 6:30 now.  We kill some of the time with registration and beer. 

During registration, we are told that we only have Open Water certification which means that we are limited to 60 feet.  They say we can take the course for the Advanced Open Water and it involves some training dives.  Needless to say, we weren’t very happy to hear that.  So far, it hasn’t been a big deal.

Dinner was pretty good – salad, soup, and beef nuggets and veggies.  Dinner ended around 9:30, at which point everyone was starting to fade fast – especially the lady from Toronto who just landed earlier today.  We don’t have any problems sleeping tonight…

November 4 - First Day of Diving

Wake up is at 5:45 a.m.  I only woke up once last night and that was because it got very hot.  Luckily there was a fan and turning that on made a huge difference.  We had a light breakfast and then the dive briefing was at 6:15 – it was time for our first dive!

We did two dives in the morning and they were both very similar wall dives.  Unfortunately the visibility was very poor on both.  It was raining really hard on our way out to the first dive which made it surprisingly cold out.  The water was actually not as warm as I thought it would be and I later found out it was only 75* - that’s pretty cold!  

Despite those setbacks, as soon as I jumped in the water, I was reminded why I live diving and there are a couple of reasons.  One is that it is so quiet – all I hear is my breathing and occasional beeping from a dive computer.  Another is that part of diving is focusing on a lack of movement – the faster you move the faster you burn up your air.  As a result, I end up slowing down my movements.  In a similar fashion, I focus a lot of my breathing, trying to make it as slow and calm as possible.  The result is a euphoric state of existence, sort of like a medication state, where I just swim by all the life and observe.  All of that adds up to a very relaxing experience!

Both dives had a small amount of current, so I found myself just floating by without even kicking – I would just breathe in and out to go up and down – sort of like a hot air balloon underwater!  The second dive was a little warmer than the first, which was nice, but because the sun is not out, it isn’t very warm.  The dives themselves were just so-so; I feel that being so close to the very busy Male area hurts the wildlife chances – I want to move away to a more remote area!  We just had lunch and are on the move, so hopefully that is what the plan is.

After lunch, the water was pretty choppy so I lay down on the bed.  I wasn’t tired, but I did fall asleep again.  I like naps.  For this dive, we moved away from Male city – we were far enough that we could just barely see it in the distance.  I was hopeful that being this remote would result in better diving, but the visibility was still pretty poor.  This dive was a wreck dive from about 60-90 feet where we finished up on the shallow reef.  The current was strong which is partly why the visibility was bad, but it made it tricky to find the wreck.  I’m glad we were following a dive guide because we were just descending into nothing – I would have thought we were going the wrong direction – but all of a sudden, I see the outline of the ship.  We stick around down there – I miss the Napoleon Wrasse that most people see.  Then we head back to the reef and zig zag around with the current.  I did a poor job cleaning my mask before hand, so it was fogging a lot – that stunk, but I learned my lesson!  The dive is finished around 4:45 and the next briefing is at 6 – I guess that means we will get a night dive!

Before the briefing, I noticed that there were several wifi hotspots!  I was really confused but then noticed that we were driving around other islands with hotels – I was picking up their Internet!  Unfortunately, we were too far away for me to make a strong connection – oh well!

The night dive briefing starts at 6 and the dive crowd is significantly smaller than the dives earlier today…it was getting a little chilly outside.  We will be diving another reef off of a resort island.  At 6 it wasn’t fully dark out, but by the time that we arrived at the dive site, it was completely dark.  The dive itself wasn’t terribly eventful, but doing a night dive was pretty fun.  A few of the guys with big cameras look like space ships floating around because they have multiple colored lights on at all times.  The water wasn’t too cold, but it was pretty chilly by the time we got out – we took the boat back, ate dinner, and then processed pictures.

As I was starting to process pictures, one of the guys on the boat brought out his 3G to USB adapter and was broadcasting a wifi that he let people on..so, I will get to send Beth an update!  Yay technology!

 

Daniel's Post - Making it to Male and Exploring Our Island!

November 2nd - Travel Day and First Day in Male

(Starting at the in-airport hotel in Singapore...)

I managed to have 4 hours allotted towards sleep – I couldn’t fall asleep right away so I probably only slept 2 of those hours. Even still, sleeping in a bed after a shower worked wonders! We wake up at 7 a.m., quickly pack and then head out in search of some breakfast.

I see a Dunkin Donuts on the map which I vote for since they have bagels. We don’t find it right away so we eat at a smoothie place instead. To supplement the sugar, Dad pulls out the Bronk Bars that he smuggled half-way across the world. Once we finish, we head downstairs and see the Dunkin Donuts – but they don’t have bagels anyway. We spend some time on the free Internet, expecting that this may be the last reliable source for a long time and then we head to gate E28 for our flight.

The gate starts letting people enter through another security checkpoint at 8:55 a.m. Our flight leaves at 10 a.m. and we get to the gate around 8:45. We both use the restroom because we notice that there are not any behind the checkpoint (Beth would have had a hard time with that setup!). As we go through security, we expect to get flagged for our camera gear, but all we get yelled at for is brining a 1L bottle full of water. I forgot that we filled it up at the hotel. Luckily they let us drink it – so I drink 1L of water in about 60 seconds. It feels great – I’ve been dehydrated for a while now. I look around with a well-hydrated smile and remember that there are no bathrooms…da da daaaah. We enjoy the last bit of free Internet but I am very happy when we board and I immediately use the restroom on the plane.

This flight is only 4 hours and it already feels like we are done. I watch The Heat, an episode of Billion Dollar Room, and an episode of Wipeout. Then we are there. I really enjoy having these entertainment options!

The Male airport is very small, much like we expected. We wait through a customs line and then baggage return. Dad tries to find someone to ask about his Allen wrenches while I get the luggage. The good news is that the luggage arrives, but the bad news is that no one knows anything about this envelope with the wrenches. We leave with a phone number to try calling…

There are a lot of hotel kiosks in the outside, humid section of the airport. We find the Bandos sign, check in, and then grab the boat to our island…yes, our island. Bandos is an island with nothing but a hotel resort located on it. The ride is ten minutes long. We have to wait for an hour or so to go through the check in processes, but it doesn’t matter because we’ve arrived! Oh, and everything is crazy-beautiful…

Our room is a 10 minute walk from checking and they cart our luggage to us. Once our luggage arrives, we head off on a walking tour of the island with cameras in hand. The island is not large, but it is not small – it probably takes 20-30 minutes to walk around the entire perimeter. We walk along pristine white beaches. They aren’t very crowded because people are pretty well distributed across the island – and there are beaches all the way around…

After our walking tour with 10,000 pictures, we head back and get ready to snorkel. The snorkeling is a lot better than I expected – lots of animals and lots of color – it’s an excited sign of what is in store for us later! We head back after about 30 minutes – Dad gets the camera and I head to the Sand Bar to grab a drink and send some email. I really wanted a Gatorade, but I had to settle for a banana shake…woe is me! The internet is frustratingly slow – I tried to attach some pictures and that was a big mistake! After fiddling around some, Dad comes to get me and we head back to go on our sunset walking picture tour…

I think this is a "Where Beth Would Go" picture...

I spy with my little eye...

This time I grab the 7D in an attempt to get a picture of the bats that we’ve seen everywhere. I get a few pictures, but nothing great. We then proceed to take sunset pictures…lots of sunset pictures…so many…The sun sets around 6 p.m. and dinner does not start until 7 p.m., so we had about an hour to kill. I started catching up on pictures, but was soon overtaken by a wave of exhaustion. I passed out for about 25 minutes and slept hard. Dad woke me for dinner.

Dinner is included and is a large buffet-style restaurant. There was everything from salads, fruits, rice, Indian cuisine, steaks, casseroles, pastas, fried fish, and desserts. We thought about it and this is our first real meal in several days…we got there at 7 p.m. and didn’t finish eating until 7:50 p.m….we ate for 50 minutes without stopping…it felt so good! We both felt amazingly better.

By now it was dark outside and there were a lot of people hanging around the center area. I tried to send some emails again, managed to talk to Beth some on Hangouts, but ultimately failed with Internet again. I’m going to go back and type up some on my computer and then head out to email just that.

As we walked back, we noticed just how dark the island is – there are lights here and there along the pathway, but it really is pretty dark. We head out on the beach near our hotel and there isn’t a light around – and we can see stars…lots of stars! We play around with pictures and manage to get a few good ones. After that, we went back and Dad showered and is asleep. I am catching up on pictures and journals. Now that that is done, I am going to go take a quick shower and head to bed. It is 9:42 p.m. here and I set my alarm for 9 a.m. – we’ll see just how well I can sleep in!

Boat boarding day...

It is raining all day today, so we haven't taken much. Dad's been going stir crazy. We're waiting in the lobby for the shuttle to the boat - it's still raining and there are no power outlets...I have to run my poor 5+ year old battery to the limit...

 

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Daniel, Gary, and the Maldives - Prologue and Anecdotes from BWI to San Fran to Seoul to Singapore to Male...

Prologue

This trip is occurring in the middle of one of the biggest transition periods of my life:

 

1) I have a new job. I resigned from my position at Harris and accepted a position on the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. I voluntarily wear ties to subliminally affect people’s opinions of me.

2) We have left Florida and are now living in Jessup, Maryland which is outside of Boston and D.C. by about 30 minutes each. It is in the middle of Fall there – we have not had a fall in 8 years…I’ve had to buy sweat pants, running clothes, slippers, sweaters, etc. It’s great.

3) Beth is 21 weeks pregnant. I always keep thinking I should list this one first…

 

Needless to say, Beth, Chance, baby Hals, and I are going through some crazy changes. We have officially been in Maryland 4 weeks, but have only been in our town home for just over 1 week. The cramped hotel that we were in before that did not have a kitchen and only had a queen bed – we needed out of there fast! Our town home is three stories, brand new, and has a great layout for hosting. We are really excited but are still overloaded with boxes…

My job has been going really great, but this trip ended up falling at a poor time; having just started a new job, I didn’t have enough vacation for this trip. This was known ahead of time, but the solution involved me working extra hours before I left. Normally that isn’t a problem, but since I am just started, I need to become more familiar with my surroundings before I can become self reliant and efficient. That has not happened yet. Trying to work extra without much to do other than read documents can be a very difficult task…

Oh yeah, the pregnancy – Beth is now 21 weeks pregnant with our baby girl. Everything is going very well and all in all, there haven’t been very many problems. Definitely the biggest problem so far is the fact that I am going on this trip and Beth is not – something about flying for 40 hours, living on a dive boat where she can’t take sea sickness patches and where she cannot dive, being at much higher risk for food borne illnesses, only to fly 40 hours back sounded a little unappealing. That means that it is just me and my Dad on this trip. Beth is not very pleased about it, but is doing well with it.

Along those lines, the intent of these journals is to act as emails for Beth so she can catch up on what we are doing.

October 31 and November 1st - Travel Days

I left for BWI airport at 5 a.m. on Halloween day. We are very close to the airport and Beth was gracious enough to drive me. After we said goodbye, I got on my flight to San Francisco after getting a bagel in the airport. This flight was rather uneventful. I slept for a few hours and then watched 95% of Monsters University (it was the airplane that only showed one movie on the overhead screens, so I had no choice).

Dad was leaving from Columbia and was going to meet me in San Francisco. His flight was supposed to get in 45 minutes after mine, but he ended up being early. I got my checked luggage, headed over to the international terminal and waited for him to arrive. After a few games of phone tag, I see a man dressed in what appears to be a fat suit holding what appears to be enough equipment to man a small army – it was dad…

Dad's fat suit

The first thing he does is offloads some of the things he is carrying into my luggage to balance the weight of his bags (one of his carry-ons is 14 kilos and the limit is 7…). After that, we grab some lunch outside of security. I get a chicken skewer and salad meal which ends up being good and not too greasy – I try to avoid eating greasy foods before long flights because I find it makes me feel grimier.

We are checked in by Batgirl (remember, it is Halloween), and we head through security. We end up only having about 1 hour to spare before our flight boards. I am glad that we are now flying the same airline because last time Beth and I flew two separate airlines to one destination, we had delays on the first half and they did not reimburse our second half. That was the time it took us over 50 hours to get from Florida to Greece…10 hours longer than these flights are supposed to be (to India). I send some update emails, make some calls, and then board the plane.

Our flight durations are as follows: BWI->San Francisco (5.5 hours), San Francisco->Seoul (12 hours), Seoul->Singapore (6.5 hours), and Singapore to Male (4 hours). We also have a 9 hour layover in Singapore, which would really suck if not for the fact that we have an in-Airport hotel.

The flight to Seoul really wasn’t that bad. Dad and I each had an aisle seat, which was nice. We bought neck pillows made of memory foam and those were REALLY nice to have. The food was good as far as airplane food goes, but it was a little greasy for me. There were a huge number of babies and they all seemed to have parents who didn’t care if they cried. Oh, and it was FREEZING – at least 65*. I usually like to sit on my blanket for extra cushioning, but I had to actually use it just to survive…I ended up sleeping most of the flight, which was really nice.

Our layover in Seoul was only about an hour and we really just got off the plane and then got back on the same one. The only weird thing was that they made us go through security again. We are usually flagged because of the massive amounts of camera gear we bring, but Dad was having extra trouble at this place – they really didn’t like him having his Allen wrenches. Now, these are camera Allen wrenches, so they are no longer than 2 inches and thin enough I could snap them with my bare hands. Dad was starting to get nervous because he literally cannot put together his underwater camera without that kit and they were trying to throw them away. Luckily a manager came over and allowed us to check it to Male.

You have been travellnated...

And shot in the genitals...

 

Back on the plane we went….same seats, same crying babies,same freezing temperatures. I slept a few hours of this 6.5 hours flight, but I ended up watching a couple of movies. Between the three flights, I watched 5 movies (Monsters University, Wolverine (something – the 5th or 6th one?), Red 2, The Internship, and 2 Guns). Other than that, this flight was also pretty uneventful.

We landed in Singapore at 1:30 a.m. their time (1:30 p.m. home time). The hotel is easy to find – we check in, shower and catch up on emails/journals. That is where I am now. I’m about to go run out to the lobby where the internet is so I can send a bigger update. After that, I will come back to the room and try to catch a few hours of sleep.

 

 

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