Amed, Bali

We are now in the area of Amed on the west coast of Bali. It's a very quiet place, mainly a destination for scuba diving and snorkelling. We arrived here from Bali 3 nights ago. The place we stayed in - Hotel Uyah - was fine, but we cut short our planned 5 night stay there and this morning moved to a different hotel, mainly because the Uyah is not on a great beach and the place we moved to - Coral View Hotel - is on a superb beach for snorkelling. Also it is next door to the dive centre we chose to dive with because there is a Hungarian lady Viki working there.

Because we like it so much here we might extend our planned stay in the area by a couple of nights and do a bit more diving. Already we have done 3 dives - on Saturday twice at a wreck of a US ship from around WWII time, plus one on Sunday at a Japanese wreck. Another two planned for tomorrow. Both of these wreck dives were great - the boats are just metres off the beach, having originally been pulled-in for salvage I believe and in the case of the US ship, the 1963 volcanic eruption here broke it up and pushed it back into the water. The US wreck is covered with coral, and while the Japanese boat itself is not much it is just beside a reef. None of the dives were pricy as no boat was needed.

For both of tomorrow's dives we will go out in a Jukung fishing boat. The kids will stay at the dive center and someone will watch them. Briana and Fiona were really great when we went out for the dives over the last few days, someone watched them but they didn't complain about us disappearing into the sea!

Fiona has developed a lot of confidence now in the water. Within the last few weeks she has got comfortable putting her head underwater first, then swimming a little with her head down so long as she was held, then swimming on her own, and yesterday she went out with me to snorkel over a coral reef. Actually she didn't use the snorkel as such but held her breath and looked under the water using the mask. We were in waters about 3-4m deep and she had no fear, holding onto my neck with one arm. On the other hand Briana (who swims very well and happily snorkels in the pool), is finding it very hard to conquer her nervousness about going out into the sea. I am determined to get her out to snorkel with me before we leave here as the conditions are ideal - great coral and lots of colourful fishes just metres off the beach.

We travelled to Amed from Ubud with a fellow traveller Richard who works in the French embassy in Seoul. He hadn't dived in 20 years, so we were in good company as Gy hadn't dived in 7 and I was the same except a couple of dives last month in Thailand. Richard was great company for the trip, and joined us in the hotel we had booked so we had meals together for a couple of days too, and lots of good conversation. Otherwise the place is quiet, it's the low season. There are a very large number of French people on Bali for some reason.

We are really warming to Bali. The people are very very friendly, it's very cheap (typically we have a meal for 4 for around 15 Euro or so incl drinks, govt tax, service - and we are definitely not skimping), and the range of things you can do is large - top-class surfing on the East coast, cultural life in the town of Ubud, excellent diving on the West coast, ...

There is little wealth here. Apart from tourism the only occupations around Amed are fishing and sea-salt harvesting one month a year. The obviously very poor kids living around the beach (6-10 yrs old) had made little decorative weaved baskets containing salt, and were selling them to benefit their school. They spoke a little English, learnt at school, enough to introduce themselves and tell us a little about themselves. We bought a bunch of them to bring home as gifts, unfortunately that left a bunch of disappointed kids too whose baskets we couldn't buy. Briana gave them a Disney magazine she was finished with to bring to school, I hope they get value from it.

So, that's all for now...

We've only seen one or two instances of