Our group tends to be a very active see-as-many-things-as-possible in one day type of vacationers. Since Alex was born we’ve never really taken a beach vacation, it’s either been visiting family, or a whirlwind quick trip to a new place. Our honeymoon was the last beach vacation we really had, and even then was 5 days in Cairo and 4 days at a beach resort. I really didn’t know how our group would handle 7 days on a beach island with little to no activities or sights to see. I like the beach and am usually content to sit in the sand and read all day- and Alex used to love going to the beach when we lived in California.
This island was great for our group, tons of snorkeling- and we booked a scuba trip for Mark right away. Because it was low season, not all the restaurants on the island were open but it also wasn’t as crowded.
Mark found this bigish lizard climbing on the rocks by our hotel, we don’t know what kind of lizard it was, and we only saw it the once, but it was really cool.
We discovered that Alex didn’t know how to sit in a hammock, clearly we have neglected his relaxation education.
The 2nd night we were in the hotel, the shower wasn’t draining quite right and the staff moved us to another room that didn’t have that problem. It was slightly lower down on the hillside, so a few less stairs to walk up.
One of the highlights for Alex on this trip, was that he is finally old enough to do a bubblemaker scuba dive adventure. While we prepped Mark to go out diving, Alex learned how to dive too. With a Bubblemaker dive, kids from 8 and up can go diving with an instructor, no deeper than 2 meters. We went to Adang Sea Divers dive shop, www.adangseadivers.com and Kris was the instructor who helped Alex out. Couldn’t have asked for a better person to go with Alex, he had a ton of patience, good sense of humor and really seemed to enjoy his job.
These local kids got a kick out of watching Alex practice dive, I don’t think they ever really saw someone as young as them going diving.
While Alex went diving, Mark went snorkeling in the same area. I stayed on the boat, and took pictures- I hadn’t dived since before Alex was born so I didn’t feel comfortable going in just yet.
This dive spot was at the island next to ours and while the boys worked on their water adventures I relaxed on the boat. In the beginning they were alone on this particular reef, about 10 minutes in a huge boatload of tourists snorkeling came to the same spot.
Alex came back with such a grin on his face telling me all about the fish and clams and corals he had seen. I’ve been told since then that these videos sparked a lot of debate around the dive shop that my parents work/hang out at- Whether or not Alex should have been allowed to go into the water on his own before the instructor. Most of the dive instructors have said no students get in the water without an instructor already in. I wasn’t too worried about it at the time, but next time we will think about that before letting him jump in.
Diving was pretty much the whole day that day, it was exhausting for Mark and Alex- but a really good time was had. We walked to a local famous restaurant the Elephant Bar. It was ok, but we weren’t impressed with the overall experience. I think this was the night that we showed Alex Arachnophobia, that was a scary but good movie- Alex says it’s in his top 5 movies ever!
Traveling Expat Family 