Bali in a week. Part 3: Searching for turtles, finding sharks, and getting bit by invisible piranhas

(Part 1 & Part 2 in case you need a refresher after the month of anticipation for part 3)

Apologies to my three or four readers for the extended delay between parts two and three. The excuse I'll use is that I've started writing a post-apocalyptic dystopian young adult novel. That's actually true, I have started doing that. My New Year Resolution is to finish it this year and I'm like 33% for resolutions the past few years so there's a better than zero chance it'll happen. It's part parody, part self-indulgence, and hopefully part entertaining as well.

As for the Bali vacation, where did we leave off? Snorkeling? We actually snorkeled two different days while in Bali because snorkeling is the best. Here's the first trip.

On Wednesday we got picked up from our villa and taken to Padang Bai, a super small town on the water. Well really more like a handful of buildings along a road next to the water. Candidasa is a small town, Pandang Bai was more like an extravagant fort. Mike was going scuba diving and the rest of the us were snorkeling.

Padang Bai. Almost all of it.

The dive shop was owned by a German couple who realized that living in paradise where the cost of living is almost free seemed like a better life decision than living in Germany, where it's probably a lot more expensive and there are very few houses where you can scuba from your front yard. Probably almost no houses like that.

We all went out on the same boat, the divers dove and the snorkelers snorkeled.

Riding the boat out to snorkel. My eyes don't work in the sun.

Snorkeling is super cool. Just generally speaking, it's a cool thing. But it was also really cool in Bali. We were told there was a chance we'd see turtles, small sharks (not big enough to eat us), and asshole fish (big fish that will sometimes ram you if they think you're threatening their nest).

Turtles are my favorite. So after admiring the hundreds of colorful fishies for a few minutes, I went into full "find a turtle mode". The tough thing about finding a turtle in an ocean is that oceans are really really big and turtles are only big relative to little fish. But compared to an ocean, turtles are super tiny. I had my work cut out for me.

I started thinking, "if I were a turtle, where would I be?" I figured they wouldn't be swimming around the coral as much as the little fish so I focused more on areas where the ground was sandy. This separated me from the group by a bit but I realized I was also probably the slowest swimmer so if a shark did attack us, I was a going to be lunch even if I was in the group.

Then I saw a shark.

At least I'm 60-70% sure I saw a shark. It was five or six feet long, which sounds pretty big and looks really big. But beforehand, we were told that it's not actually that big for a shark. Like not big enough to eat people. I got a surge of adrenaline either way and called for the rest of the crew to come see. By the time anyone else got to me though the shark was gone. Either that or I hallucinated the entire thing. It's a mystery that plagues me to this day.

Relieved that I wasn't eaten, but also disheartened that I hadn't found a turtle, I decided to stay closer to the group and admire the pretty fish. It'd been maybe 35 minutes of snorkeling and we were about ready to head to the boat when we all started getting what felt like little bites. At first none of us were sure whether we actually felt anything but after asking around whether anyone else was feeling sharp little pinches all over their body, we knew we couldn't all be imagining it.

It escalated from there. As we swam back to our boat, it felt like we were being attacked by hundreds of invisible piranhas. It was totally something out of the start of a bad horror movie. Some unsuspecting tourist starts feeling tiny bites all over their body and the camera pans away for a moment. When it pans back, all that's left is a bloody pool and maybe a finger floating in the middle. Luckily, we were in Bali and not Piranha 4: Attack of the tiny ghost fish. We swam through the pain -- or mild discomfort -- and climbed back into the boat.

We learned later that what we were likely feeling was minced jellyfish. What happens is a jellyfish will be floating along minding its own business and a boat will cruise right over the top of it, chopping it into tiny jellyfish bits with the motor. Then snorkelers like us end up unknowingly swimming through the jellyfish bits and getting stung by the remains. Unpleasant, but at least explainable. And way better than invisible baby piranhas.

After giving the divers a little time at regular pressure, we went out for another round of snorkeling and diving. No turtles. No sharks. But some really warm hot springs in the bay where we were swimming. The springs were much more pleasant to swim through than jellyfish puree.

For lunch ate at a pizza place. Good food and tall towers of beer. What more could you ask for?

Tower of Bintang. It was probably like $3.

To be continued. Hopefully in less than a month.