2024.03 - The one with jellyfish and elephants

I've now given up any pretense of my blog being a regular thing. There might be a time in my future when I get the luxury of writing whatever I want, whenever I want, but this is currently not that time. I know there is a time and season for everything in life, but it can be challenging to wait. 

As a teenager, I remember my mom telling me, "Joanna, you can do anything you want in life, but you cannot do everything you want." I think about that a lot; it helps me actively choose what I give attention to. While I'd love to have a fancy blog with specially curated stories, themes, and pictures, I am learning to accept that less can be okay, too.

Between Christmas and now, we've kept busy. Lunar New Year is a huge celebration here, bigger than Christmas, and there were lights and lion dance performances and mandarin oranges and decorations everywhere. We had a lion dance troupe perform at our building, and no one could drive in or out past security for two hours. We didn't actually know about it until a delivery person told us that they would have to come back in two hours to bring our plants.

We also did something very hard and very satisfying—we became Open Water SCUBA certified! We flew to Indonesia, Banda Aceh, then took a ferry to Pulah Weh, a small island where the diving is amazing. It was low-key, with very few people, and the perfect environment for me to learn. 

I had difficulty with our initial dive the next morning. Abbi and Erik seemed to go down effortlessly to the bottom (12 feet), but I had difficulty equalizing the pressure in my ears. I also floated extremely well and couldn't manipulate my BCD (buoyancy control device) with enough finesse to not send me up and down like a raisin in Sprite. The instructor had to take a weight off her belt and add it to mine. My snorkeling mask (which would always leak a little bit when snorkeling) was continuously filling up with water, making it nearly impossible to see.

The water was very choppy, and because of the extra weight on my belt, when I would surface to try again, I kept rolling face down into the water. All reason fled, and I started to panic because breathing underwater is instinctually unnatural. My dive instructor towed me ignominiously back to shore, sobbing and crushed that I would never be able to dive the reefs on my bucket list with Erik. Did I mention that this was my birthday trip?

Abbi and Erik did perfectly fine, and so while I showered and napped, they went back out and got their skills tests done. When they returned that afternoon, they mentioned that our instructor (Anna at Lumba Lumba Dive gets 5+ stars!!) offered to spend some time with me 1 on 1 the next morning and take as long as needed to feel comfortable underwater. I was grateful for the second chance and her ridiculous amount of patience, and with a borrowed mask (smaller, so no leaking), I finally figured out how to equalize and adapt. Seeing all the beautiful things under the ocean was the thrill of a lifetime. Learning can be intimidating because they teach all the ways you might die and how to prevent that, then make you practice them. It was so worth it in the end, and I'm grateful for a supporting dive group (Erik, Abbi and our instructor) who made it possible for me to learn. Also, massive props to Abbi, who also learned and certified WITH A HEAD COLD. I'm so proud of her determination and toughness.

The resident cat resting after a vigorous game of checkers

Forgot to mention that on our last skills test dive we surfaced in a hatch of jellyfish. I started feeling a stinging sensation on my legs, then on my neck, and when I looked down into the water, I could see millions of tiny jellyfish, about the size of a BB pellet. Dipping my face underwater, they started stinging my face, and there was nowhere to go for relief. We started wildly swimming for the shore, and it felt like the longest swim ever since my face felt like it was on fire and I just couldn't see anything but jellyfish. I was wearing a swim shirt, and on land we carried our tanks to the dive shop, shaking and stinging. I was still hurting when our instructor told me to rinse out my swim shirt. I had jellyfish stuck inside there, and ended up with these welts that have almost faded 40 days later. 

About three weeks later, we headed to Thailand to visit Krabi and Chiang Mai. Abbi's roommate Emma came over to visit with us; she served her mission in Thailand and was so helpful with the language (besides being a fun person to hang out with too!). It was a short flight there, and Krabi was spectacularly beautiful despite being overrun with tourists. The tall cliffs just outside our hotel, the bat cave where we watched thousands of Flying Foxes stream out at sunset, the entertaining monkeys (dusky and macaques) jumping around the trees with their babies, and the quiet beaches in the mornings. The coconut shakes are the best I've ever tasted. It is a big place for rock climbers to visit, and they are up early in the mornings climbing the limestone cliffs. There were a few jellyfish there, too...with the water being almost uncomfortably warm this year, there are lots of jellyfish. We got away with only a minor sting each, but it kept me out of the water. A few pics and videos:

Finally we headed to Chiang Mai...a wonderful area in Thailand with NO HUMIDITY! It was so comfortable. It was 100 degrees, and it was so much more comfortable than Krabi's 89, plus the humidity. We stayed in an arts district, and the food was incredible. There are so many places to try and so little time. The trip's highlight for me was the visit to the Elephant Farm. The Ka Ren people have lived in the mountains of Thailand for hundreds of years and have been working with and training elephants. We felt so lucky to bathe them; they walked them down to a dammed stream near a waterfall, and the elephants sat and let us scrub them, take pictures, and splash us. Seeing their intelligence and gentle nature was incredible and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

We're looking forward to a return trip to Chiang Mai and Thailand - this time hopefully to do some diving!