For a number of years, a big part of my activities along with my cooking was in scuba diving. The closest I had come to diving was snorkelling on the Great Barrier reef years before, but once Marg and I arrived in Bali to open the kitchens of the Sheraton Nusa Dua, the opportunity came up to become a certified diver. There were three other hotels all opening up at the same time as us, the Hilton, the Grand Hyatt and second Sheraton Conference Hotel plus the existing Club Med, the Nusa Dua Beach Hotel and the Putri Bali hotels.  The area has since expanded with hotels such as the Aman, a Kempinski hotel, the Marriott Vacation Club along with a Novotel, the St. Regis, the Ritz-Carlton and others. But it was not so busy when we arrived in 1990 and started in outfitting and starting up the resort, which had big wrap around swimming pools basically coming outside every ground floor room. We met Chris there, and Australian Padi dive instructor and so the Chef’s and the Executive Sous Chefs of the six hotels who did not have dive certification quickly did the course and became qualified divers! Some of the chefs already had their dive tickets. And so, especially in the first few months before the hotels opened and got busy, we used to go out and about as a group, along with Chris for dive days, usually about five or six of us hotel chefs! Jeff, the number two at that stage of the Hilton, was my dive buddy. Even the non-diving wives used to come out on the outriggers, or sometimes bigger boats, along with the kids for a day on the water and great picnic lunches! Afterwards, the Bali dive club was formed and as a choice between the two of us, Jeff received the first membership 001, while I picked up the second one with number 002. Nearly 35 years later, I do not know if the club or our memberships are still valid or active! Chris is still in Bali, still running his dive operation while Jeff & his wife Joan are back in Canada from what I hear. One story from the opening the Sheraton, was that we stayed in a local hotel until ours was habitable with the rooms, and so we used to get picked up by their hotel van to go back and have lunch each day. How-ever, there was never a guarantee that the van turned up, so it became a phone conversation somewhat along the lines of; “We are ready for lunch, is the van there? Is there another booking for the van? Does it have petrol? Is the driver available? Has he finished lunch? Can he come and pick us up?” and then we more than likely would receive out transport back for our own lunch! Before I left Bali, I stayed with Chris up at his new operation called Reef Seen in 1992 at Pemuteran, north-west Bali, and together we were doing exploratory dives to discover and check out the reefs that the local fishermen were telling us about. Chris, whom is called Pak Nyoman with earned respect, works comprehensively with helping the local populace understand just how and why they need to protect the marine environment, plus started the Turtle Project, Reef Seen Dancers, Reef Gardeners and many more community projects around Pemuteran. A good man and if you are ever in Bali for some diving, you should look him up! Since then, I have had a dive trip to Sipidan Island of the east coast of Malaysia, and this was about three weeks before the southern Pilipino terrorists came and kidnapped the staff and divers on the island for ransom purposes! This was a very small island, white, white beaches and easy to walk around it and great for three or four dives a day. Limited accommodation and basic food, but it was a good diving trip! I also had a dive stay at just outside Manado, which is the capital city of North Sulawesi in Indonesia. We could walk into the city and so it was not too far away. It is fun diving with Mount Klabat spewing forth smoke but it seemed to be harmless for the time we were there. What a boozy week that was in Manado and we were diving with all the safety rules being ignored, as each night we used to go into the bars and have a great time, and then be up early the next days for our dives. It is the only time I have sat on the airplane seat to come home, remembering that I had a meal and then crashing out sitting upright in the seat, open tray and finished meal in front of me! Woke up just on landing, so must have needed some catch up sleep. Some coral relocation work in Singapore and a couple of dives in Oman finishes of the more than 100 dives I have had. In Oman, I was a little stressed with having a first dive after so long, that I came back up after 15 minutes, sat and calmed myself down. When the rest of the divers went for their second dive with fresh tanks on, I went back in with my partially used one, and this time I was very calm and lasted longer on my tank than the rest of the divers with full air! I was proud of myself for that one! So, not too may pictures, but part of my activities as I did my cooking life around Asia!