Where's Nemo? Oh, There He Is ...

8 September - Good thing that i'm still crossingtime zones because it meant relatively little difficulty in getting up in time for getting money's worth from hotel breakfast before heading Marina way to be picked up by Ocean Freedom tours for a journey out to the Reed (which reef? There's only one worth mentioning around here) - typical tour group (mixture of Irish, Australian, Asian, Spanish and loud mouthed Americans) and typical tour operators (token English included) with typical tour patter (the sharks mainly eat humans with the occasional fish ... How many times have you used that one?) - one thing was noticeable was that they all seemed to be very good with remembering first names (my suspicion was that they were doing it so they were aware of the individuals who were on the boat so they wouldn't make the mistake of leaving anyone behind which one of the competition apparently did several years ago providing excellent fodder for inspiring a fairly decent movie) and they were also pretty good with providing refreshment throughout the trip (although pricing was fairly deceptive on activity and extra refreshment but they are tour operators so you can't expect too much) - did a rather pointless sojourn on a glass bottom boat before putting on snorkel and fins for a fairly average wander through the shallows (all very pretty but nothing I really hadn't seen before in Vietnam) before heading off to slightly deeper waters where I finally got a chance to put my certification to use. As the tour specialised in basic supervised dives for the uncertified it turned out that I was the only one with Open Water under my belt so I got a special escort through the deep - Lee took me down to 13 metres through some very pretty other worldly seascape but, once again, there was nothing particularly new about the dive - saw some lionfish, clownfish, giant clams and a smattering of other species and a whole heap of coral but a definite lack of mega fauna was slightly disappointing but i'm not one to complain. A bit more snorkelling afterwards including a guided tour through some of the more boring bits where our friendly guide was probably thankful that none of us were marine bioligists who could correct her on some of her mistakes but a pretty excellent day trip regardless. Heat induced exhaustion meant drifting off as we drifted back to land - couldn't really muster up enough energy for much more than duties and pizza and movie afterwards but it was a decent movie and decent pizza and who's ever going to complain about the duty?