I get asked many times by people what brought me here to the Philippines, when I started scuba diving, why Dumaguete and many more questions. So I thought, why not write some stuff down that I only need to forward the links and don’t need to tell the same story many times.

My whole dive story started in Lombok, a small neighbor island of Bali. I was working in the music business as sound-tech and each time I had a few weeks off I was on the way to south-east asia with Lissy, my long time girlfriend. Together we explored several countries in Asia. We usually went for 3 weeks and covered at least 2 regions of a country with a stopover in a South Asian big City like Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong and other interesting places.

On a 3-week  trip which basically was the beginning of changing my life, we were 2 weeks all over Bali with the last week a lazy week in Senggigi on Lombok. Just after checking into our hotel we walked along the main street to an overview about restaurants and clubs and any kind of night hang-outs for the last week.

I have no idea what had obsessed me, but when we passed a office of Astrid and Gerd’s Dream Divers office situated at that time along the Senggigi main street I just told Lissy that I wanna go and try diving, so we stepped into the office without any clue it will change my life forever.

We were explained that scuba diving is a bit more than just jumping in the water and breath oxygen. Actually this was the first time that I heard that it is not Oxygen but just simple air in this bottles … ok 2^nd lesson … of course scuba tank…. Oh my god those diver are really picky…

Well , ok then … can I have a TANK with some AIR and go diving tomorrow with you guys… After some more explanation Lissy and I found our self sitting there signing up for a dive-course and were watching the first 2 hours of a crappy video tape to start the course right away.

We left the Dream Divers office in Senggigi on Lombok with an PADI Open Water Manual which probably went through 1000 student hands before so the manual was more or less 250 loose paper we need to sort first and with the task to study chapter one two and three over night and be back at the office at 8:00 am.

Great holiday, instead of sitting at the beach or a smoky club and getting drunk with cold beer and colorful cocktails, we were on our veranda with our worn-out manual and studied pages about snorkels, fins and of course AIR pressure in SCUBA TANKS.

tbc

cheers

Rhoody