Jellyfish, lizards and leaches

At the end of my 5 back-to-back courses I was asked to join another course that day which would overlap into my next course: 7-back-to-back courses, no thank you! I took a days holiday to rest and recover and then be on Valser the next day. I had to ask Taufik the Course Director/Watch Instructor what I was to do, good job I double checked or else I would have been ready at 5am on my own for a “dawn kayak”! Evading that prank I still missed the morning run because I was told to be in wet attire at 6.30am, wet shoes really aren’t suitable for running! We had a kayak lesson where I was actually going to get to use the Dancers which are the river kayaks, and then bam jellyfish sting all down the back of my right leg, knee to ankle! No kayaking for me then! I did however get the pleasure of getting to laugh at Libby attempt to roll the dancers and empty the water from them, and Ali being actually being able to do half rolls after not very many attempts but be unable to get out of the kayak with any grace! Next day Ali and Libby were also caught by one of Taufik’s pranks, being half an hour earlier than everyone else! They kayaked over to Pangkor while I got to drive the safety boat! Once on the island we had 4 hours to chill. So hammocks were set up in the wrong place yet again, chilled in some beachside hammocks, went exploring in the coral, ate next mornings breakfast for lunch and mucked about on the golden sand beach: yes I know work is difficult! The tide was super low so all the coral was exposed and some cool animals lurked! Heaps of crabs, sea cucumbers, a few black and white striped fish and a sea urchin! A walk along the beach and we discovered that the cool tree swing had been removed leaving only the ropes: challenge accepted for Ali and Libby to climb said ropes and dangle upside down Batman style, I volunteered as photographer! Before coming on-shore I was given a bag of food and asked if it was enough for lunch, yes it was! Unfortunately for us it was actually next morning’s breakfast and taufik and Ali had walked to the town to get lunch, some pretty tasty noodles. While the participants trekked we were trained in how to set up the rappelling, wrongly the first two times!! On our way up to the site a large monitor lizard about 2m in length ran in front of us! This sparked an interesting conversation later on. The lizard is now called Nigel and according to Libby is Dave the gechos dad! I don’t know much about animals but I’m pretty sure monitor lizards don’t give birth to gechos!! I hope that’s the case anyway, I don’t fancy having Dave grow up to be 2m long, he would need his own room then! We were just chilling at the top of the cliff waiting for the participants to return from their trek to start rappelling when we heard a load of loud squawks, 3 eagles flying overhead for ages! I love how common that is here! This group were pretty capable and didn’t need much help from us. Our dinner was on the motherboat anchored out in the bay. We got to do some diving and swimming off the motherboat at sunset: yet again work is so difficult! With the boat having no toilet facilities girls only have one option, lets just say Ali timed his dive quite nicely to swim through some warmer waters!! The rain started just as we were leaving the motherboat so guess who had to move their hammocks once again…I decided to relocate to the floor again, Ali to a sheltered part of the kitchen hut and Libby to the more exposed outer part, resulting in a mid-night move to the floor! I slept reasonably well despite the fact it was another thunderstorm, pretty sure it was two thunderstorms colliding and raining on a tin roof. Embarrassingly we were woken up by the participants coming to tell us they were ready to leave! Arriving back at OB our job was very simple wash the ration drums! I was free until BBQ prep. Even got a mention in one of the speeches! Next morning I went to briefing for the Vale course to find out I wasn’t on it and had the rest of the weekend off…booyah!! I went for a nap and gotten woken up by a phonecall from Syafri asking me to go to the Executive Directors office asap. What had I done…nothing, he wanted me to meet a guy who was born at the old OB in the Navy base but moved to Scotland when he was 10! This cheered me up no-end! He lived in Inverness as well and get this is related to a guy who runs with my parents!!! Small, small world!! Meanwhile Libby and Ali were away hiking to different campsites with David, returning covered in leach bites and some remaining leaches! Libby particularly had some bad bites with a leach still attached at her hip, all I could do was laugh!! Well until I get my first leach...