I headed round to the dive shop early on 27th April and found there was a German called Henry who was also coming. The dive master and boat driver took the 2 of us round the coast to the west side of Gili Trawangan. The water was warm enough not to need a wet suit at all – I just wore a t-shirt so that the the BCD didn’t chafe. It was a small open boat… and I suddenly realised something a bit disconcerting…

There was still an aspect of scuba diving that made me really nervous. It was something that stemmed from watching The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau as a teenager. Starting a dive, Captain Cousteau’s expert “frogmen” would confidently backwards-roll simultaneously out of one of Calypso’s Zodiacs, one each side, to immediately face sharks and other lethal creatures. The idea of rolling backwards out of a small boat into deep water still filled me with dread! We had practised this entry technique once, off the side of the training pool in Townsville, but now it looked like there was going to be no other way to get in the water…

Perched, nervously, on the side of the boat, facing Henry, I was hyperventilating a bit when I flashed him the OK signal that that I was ready. We both put 3 fingers up, other hand over mask and regulator, me desperately trying not to think of Calypso and sharks… 3 fingers… 2 fingers… 1 finger… we both rolled backwards and… SPLASH! I was just congratulating myself that it wasn’t really that hard, when I put my face in the water, squinted down through 20 metre visibility and could just make out 3 sharks cruising slowly near the bottom…

But the dive master was expecting them and assured us that they were small and non aggressive. The tremendous visibility at least meant I could see what was coming with plenty of warning. I had never been below 15 metres before, so 21 metres (70 feet) was a new experience, and there was plenty to see down there. A squid squirted some ink at us when we got close and there was a stingray and some giant clams.

After lunch the little dive boat took us to the the neighbouring island of Gili Meno, where we did a drift dive along a drop-off. This was a tremendous experience – the boat dropped us off up-current, we descended and let the current move us slowly along the face of an underwater cliff. It provided good practice for holding depth and horizontal position in the current. To stop and look at something involved turning back into the current and swimming continuously. I was evidently controlling my breathing well because I reached the “no decompression” time limit before getting low on air. When we surfaced we found it was raining, but fortunately we were already fairly wet…

In the evening I went to the proudly named “Excellent Pub” where I met 2 girls from my home county of Kent – one of them, Melanie, was from just 30 km from my birthplace. They were with a crazy Dutch nurse called Yolanda, who occasionally stopped talking. The drinks flowed, and around 1 am I crawled back to my beach bungalow.

Though 28th April started bright, it rapidly clouded over – I had an easy morning reading my thriller, and then went snorkelling. For lunch I went to the simple restaurant near the bungalows, and ordered a type of fish that I’d found to be delicious the previous day. Just after ordering it, I heard a heated argument in the kitchen and a moment later the kitchen assistant went running out of the restaurant towards the beach, with a mask and a little harpoon gun in his hands. He was back within 5 minutes, and within another 10 minutes the fish he’d caught was scaled, fileted, cooked and on a plate in front of me, accompanied by spicy vegetables and fried rice!

I went for a wander up to the little hill in the centre of the island and took a couple of photos, while listening to the BBC news on my little radio.

I have to wonder if this green, remote little paradise with just a handful of backpackers visiting, will one day be full of tacky hotels and package tourists…

After a bite to eat, I was sitting out outside my beach hut contemplating a quiet evening reading and an early night, when I was espied by Yolanda, the boisterous Dutch nurse, who decided that I actually needed to go to the bar for another drinking session. I made it out by midnight this time.