Imagine this....

Imagine this...
Everyday you wake up, you can walk to the balcony and enjoy the sun rising from behind the the island (if you are early enough). You can enjoy the 28-35 degrees temperature all year around, night and day. You can slowly get yourself ready for breakfast, and walk to the great breakfast buffet served at this resort. When eating your breakfast you have a full view over the ocean and you can see people and children playing in the swimming pool.

After breakfast you can go to the dive center and sign up for the afternoon dives, and maybe hang a bit out with the many friends and colleagues at the dive center. Around 12 o'clock you can start prep'ing the afternoon boat, and 12:30 you head out for the 2 afternoon dives.

Depending on the day, you either dive with customers or with other colleagues. Both is great. With colleagues you will usually go exploring unknown areas of the dive sites, as well as you can try to find new caves or swim throughs ("To boldly go where no man has gone before" - maybe).

With customers, the joy comes from the happiness that they get when they see different fish, sting-rays, morey eals etc. Or from the happiness they get when they successfully can dive through a swim-through without touching the sides, bottom or the roof. The happiness in diving generally comes from tiny things. Of course seeing a shark, a turtle or even a whale shark can make that day even more special, but on most days, the happiness comes from just feeling more confident in the water, from the true feeling of being totally weightless, from finding a new cave, from seeing a type of small fish you have never or rarely seen before... Or simply from being under water...

Diving is the best meditation I have experienced. Where else in this world can you be weightless for 2+ hours every day without using extensive equipment (like a spacecraft)? Where else than underwater can you focus on your breathing, feel like flying and just look at beautiful things?

Of course, especially when leading customers, you need to keep an eye on them and make sure that they are ok. But if you are calm and look professional under water, well then they usually never have any serious problems either.

Also the dive sites change almost every day. Sometimes you dive at the popular Twins and White Rock, where you may find new and surprising fish and corals even after diving there 30-40 times. Or you go to the other side of the island, to shark island or some other less visited dive sites and you find new ways to dive these places, and you may see seldomly spotted fish etc.

After the diving you can relax and enjoy some time with the customers you were diving with, while you look at the great sunset. And you can enjoy time with your colleagues discussing today's dives.

After a shower to get rid of the salty hair etc, you can go for a great dinner, eating some of the best food in the world: Thai food. Well, if you not feel for Thai food on a specific day, then you can learn where to get almost perfect french, italian or mexican food within 5 minutes walking distance. No matter what you choose you can expect a very reasonable price for the meal, maybe 3-5 euros including a drink.

Before going to sleep you can have a beer if you want, or sit on the balcony writing a bit on your blog, send email to friends or family.

Imagine this life...
I live it....
Yes, this life has a price. It will cost you around 20-35.000 euro a year (depending on your life style here) plus of course all the money, pension etc that you could have earned back home. But it all comes back to what you think is quality of life (and of course to your life situation and available potential cash)... This life will also cost you to be away from your friends and family for longer periods...

I have now spend around 200 hours underwater now (including a lot of training dives which officially do not count as real dives). And I still love every single minute under water. Maybe I was a fish in a previous life? ;o)

Since my second underwater camera also got flooded (a new one is being sent from Canada now, the insurance pays), I still cannot show photos from under water, but I can show photos from the dive boats, the food, crazy colleagues and from the sunset which is also magnificient and different every day here.