VerboCity: Waterlust in B-B-BARLEYYYYY

Bali, if you were wondering what BARLEYYYY meant. It's an expression of our desire for the tantalising empire of water sports and high-class fun we would indulge ourselves in. BARLEYYYY. BARLEYYY. BARLEYYYYYYY.

I'll skip ahead of all the chaos, sleep-deprivation (overnight flight) and tedious travelling that happened in between, 'cuz travel takes up like 3/4 of your overall time. I shit you not. At least 45 minutes from place to place.... by car! 3 hours, sometimes, if you have your destinations set further. My suggestion is to rent a personal chauffeur, or if you have a license, drive.

Villa

If you're heading in with a huge group, it's best to pool your budget for a villa, although it'll probably have rats and geckos the size of cats. Not much of a night partying nature, our staycation in BARLEY, but lots of water sports and scenery to behold.

Post-dive jumpshot with the paddy fields and le buddy

I was aiming to look as stoned as I could when I took this in front of a beautiful, oriental backdrop. You can ask Jas. I swear I wasn't even trying. ^_^

I have a new aim now: To look as stoned as possible at all times.

I just thought this would be funny.. It really didn't hurt too much...

Diving

Tulamben beach, guys. Don't be fooled by its beauty; the pebble beach is excruciatingly painful to wade through for shore dives. Booties don't help at all.

I've got sunshiiiiineee on a cloouuudy day... What can make me feel this way?

All geared up! The couple is truly a package deal; even their poses must be identical

The whole dive felt like we were sequestered from the world above, plunging into the exotic underwater kingdom of fish and marine ecology. We couldn’t get enough. Although I was the only advanced diver, my lungs were determined to inhale the entire oxygen tank before we were halfway content. So we had to pull up a lot. Jas and YM claim I have the breathing power of a horse; they underestimate my power. :P

Spongebob!! Where are you?!

The reefs and corals were magnificent in their splendour of striking colours and effervescent consistency. Most of them emulate the shape of rose bouquets. You’d feel as if you were strolling through a Victorian-themed garden, except you were gliding through the air. Au naturel and gorgeous -- a gift to the eyes. Flower decorators, you should feel ashamed, and you should feel bad. :P

I had a great time practising my buoyancy here, without the need for sea urchins to discourage me from hitting the seabed. This next picture was taken seconds after I’d posed for the camera upside down, so Jasmine thinks I freaked out after colliding with the reefs.

Truth be told, I was more afraid of damaging them than getting injured. And besides, if you notice my posture, I was spreading out my surface resistance so the drag of the water would hold me up. Advanced diver for the win! Oh, I’m so good.

Cruising through sunken wreckage

My buddy and her shenanigans. Is anyone else strongly reminded of that one episode from How I met Your Mother, where Robin gets drunk and starts floating horizontally across the screen?

Just your average, everyday diver ballerina.

My ~~lorry driver~~ superman pose

Product placement is everywhere

School of fish that we all unanimously wanted to swim into

Sights are meant to be seen. The only time they’re not is when you avert your eyes.

Unpuffed pufferfish

The radiant creatures here seem disoriented. The other one’s a fish.

Hey there, little guy!

Angelfish, checked!

And contending for the Fashion Award of the Year are these nominees…

I can honestly say I have never seen a fish with this much swag:

#swagfish

Scale coat. Because fur coats are too mainstream.

After paying a visit to Spongebob, we did a crossover to Nemo’s place.

We were extremely lucky in our encounters of the aquatic kind, since we saw a gambolling sea turtle,

SEA TURTLE

Such grace, such form! Such... turtle-like brilliance!

a white tip shark that thankfully didn’t have an appetite for humans, since I was bleeding a little from brushing against a coral,

and a stingray that almost ambushed us.

Silent Hill, underwater edition

These look creepy as hell though, partly because we dunno what they are. Jas insists they have eyes. *squint*

Evening chillaxation at the Tulamben patio while waiting for the night dive. I don't have such feminine legs, in case you were wondering.

The night dive team line-up.

Lightworks: the accidental recreation of the majestic, translucent northern lights in the dusk waters.

Bravo! We found the floor!

I believe this was our visual when the instructor plugged his torchlight into the seabed, beaming a streak of light through the thick, dense darkness of the ocean.

Later, he gestured to us to switch off our torches and move vigorously, creating little ‘sparks’ that twinkled in the pitch black. Essentially, this was pretty much like producing stars in the wake of our movements, which surrounded us like some kinda Disney pixie dust thing.

Photo by Google Image

I wish Jas had taken a picture of it, but it was probably too amazing a sight to be distracted from. This glowing process is actually brought on by planktons that emit light when disturbed, to warn other creatures to their existence or to attract their predators’ predators.

The official term for it is “bioluminescence”, which literally means life light. How cool is that? Needless to say, I had to fend off a horde of sea serpents and flesh-eating mermaids before the others knew what had happened. So in your face, planktons!

Speckled with silt,water droplets and maybe some bioluminescence

White water rafting

Jas had to choose the class 3 river, the most difficult course in the area. I think I did pretty well for myself. YM thinks I skipped out on rowing, but I had the oar most of the time, even after we capsized. YES, WE DID. :D

Me is so Spartan

While I was preoccupied with seeing my life flash before my eyes because we were about to land on some very hard rocks and rapid water, Jas’s instincts kicked in. The first thing she does is smile ever so widely when her bf backrolls into the surging currents.

Oh, I've never seen her so happy hahaha

If you check out my collage below, you can see that I held my breath and used my arm to push myself away from the rocks.

Surprisingly but maybe so not surprisingly, we were all f**king silent throughout the whole ordeal. Like, totally stumped, balls stuck in our throats. It is only in certain parts of your life, in all-or-nothing situations, that time seems to slow momentarily. If you’ve been on a roller coaster, recall the apprehensive chugging of the ride just before it freefalls down at that 90 degree angle. Now, multiply the scare factor by about 7.

Thanks to that, I got some quick thinking in and realised I wasn’t about to sacrifice my arm, so instead, I bet on my helmet-clad head to cushion the blow. BAM. Booyah!

While Jas and I were trapped underneath the raft, my first thought was that I’d been concussed, since our visions had been reduced to darkness. Okay... maybe I’m a tad melodramatic but that’s what makes me fun. ;) ‘Nuff said.

It's also come to my recent revelation hat Jas had stuck out her foot in the hopes of alerting someone to our situation. Whether it’s hitchhiking or being trapped below a flipped over raft, raising a leg has always worked wonders for the female species.

The instructor, however, saw fit the rescue the other bumbling duo who were being swept down further. The other guy admitted later on he had just given up on swimming to wait until his head hit land or something. Helmet-heads think alike, I suppose.

In a related incident, my China-made slippers had been stolen by the rapids; not much of a loss, really. But it was very painful walking through the jagged rocks back to the boat. It felt like stomping on broken glass barefoot, pushing down with your weight and strength on it so you wouldn’t get washed off by the waves. THE PAIN. That is my OMG-IT-HURTS face. :o YM lost his footwear too, he can vouch for my suffering.

Ok, I'm fessin' up. Jas and I fell overboard TWICE. Hahaha. But that's only because the side we were on impacted something so hard and threw us out of the boat. Here is a POV, albeit shaky, footage of it. Skip to 04:13 for our man overboard experience:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153404890087586

Don't you dare judge my camera skills, I had my hands full trying to survive xD

Apparently, the course wasn’t done with us; we had to survive a gazillion metre drop via a waterfall. Our instructor was having the time of his life, it seems. FOR SPARTA.