My advanced course is now also behind and I like diving more and more every time I surface. The fun is much more there now that I don’t have to train skills or go right behind the instructors all the time. I’m already looking forward to my next dive, no matter if it happens in Thailand, Bali or Vuohijärvi.

Otherwise today was not that great, especially with the locals. I am struggling to put my thougts out nicely since I want to avoid generalizations, stereotypes and the term “complete jackasses”. Take a simple example of a small car crash with no injuries and minor damage to the cars involved. You would think the first course of action would be to drive the cars to the roadside and see what happened and why, but unfortunately that was not the case. Instead there was a crowd of severals dozens of people in the middle of the road, blocking the traffic both ways and pissing everyone off. How hard can it be to move to the side?

Apparent road rage idiots aside, the second irritation relates to the way of living around here. Every second person I come by wants my money and nothing else (the other 50% are tourists), and they will surely try every trick in the book. Although I knew it beforehand, I still couldn’t prepare to being treated as a stupid object with excess money in his pockets (which I may be, but still). I am sick and tired of the millions of junk sellers all around the place, but avoiding them is a bit difficult in here.

Seems like I’m too misanthropic to write right now, so I’ll be off to one of the nice places I have found, a restaurant called Casandré close to Calangute beach. I need a cold beer or two as well as something to eat.

Oh, just BTW: the third dive was indeed wreck diving, followed by navigation and underwater photography exercises today.

Tags: diving, drink, food, holiday, oh bugger, people in india, tourism, traffic