Over the Christmas, we decided to do a bit of travelling. One of the places that we waned to go for a long time is the watertown. Watertown is like Venice of China where a series of canal crisscross serving a village in the ancient time before road, plumbing and modern sanitation arrived (which I’m sure wasn’t long ago for this remote location).

The town is about an hour and a half from Shanghai by public bus. We boarded the bus at Shanghai stadium and the ticket cost 17RMB including the town pass. It’

We picked Zhouzhuang which supposes to be the best watertown in china. I can see why. It is a beautiful little town with old houses and narrow alleyways.

This is our room. Looks like the room for couple on their wedding night.

Every room has a view to the courtyard. Despite the sun, it was really cold. I can’t see how people live in the old days when they don’t have glass window.

Street cleaners sat down for a chat.

Grandma’s tea, 25RMB a cup. Wait, a cup, not a pot. This is more expensive than in London. They probably won’t tell you and let you keep refilling and charge astronomical price for it. Dream on, I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.

  The sun is setting and tourists left the town. It is very quiet, almost dead as there are not many people actually still live here.

The town’s High street

Early morning of the next day, we woke up really early to come out for a stroll. It was slightly hazy which makes the sun light glow, amazing.

I’ve been wondering for so long why all the bridges have these flat bands which I though were some sort of lane dividers.

An old woman cleaning the street.

Basically, the shop’s shutter system are just planks of timber. Apart from this door on the left, to close their shops owner would have to arrange the planks in order and then slot them into a wooden rail on top. Each plank has tongue and groove detail so they can be interlocked  together. I’m sure there is a rail at the bottom to prevent the plank being pushed in.

There are people who still live here but mostly they work in B&B, restaurant and souvenir shops. So the town is not particularly peryk early in the morning and evening. However, everyday at 10am to 4pm, tourists arrive en mass. The whole street is full of tour groups with old people spitting, young people shouting trying to get their mates attention, tour guide with loud speaker ushering the group to move on. You can’t really appreciate anything with that many background noise.

So this is the best time to see Zhouzhuang.

People still use the canal for every purpose even today. This woman is rinsing meat in canal water. I hope she’s not from our restaurant.

A delivery man transporting dishes to restaurant.

A woman washing her clothes at the delta.

If you really walk around the city, I mean exploring every streets and alleyways, it’s not all nice and tidy. Most of the residents moved out long ago. At the heart of the town, the buildings are all restaurant and hotel which is there to serve tourists. However, some of the back alleyways, there are people who still live there. It’s definitely more rustic and probably won’t make it to postcard shot of Zhouzhuan but i really like it more.

A oldman demonstrate how to make clay roof tile.  This place is for show how they would have made it in the old day. There is a kiln but I’m not sure it’s still working.

Anyway, I somehow managed to get myself a flight, 26 hours and 10 movies later, I was there. It was so nice to see them and some old friends again and the aching and leg cramps from transpacific flight seemed to had disappeared.

Congratulations to both of you.

Slideshow:

http://www.sunphol.com/galleries/Wedding/SoniaMario/index.html

After a long break and a relocation to China, I’m trying to get back to the regular posting and photography again.

Part of the difficulty is that Shanghai where we now live, is such a busy place that you can’t find room to do anything without be surrounded by zillion of people. This weekend we ventured out of Shanghai for the first time on our own. An hour later and a lot of miming, we got to Chongming Island. Amazing how close it is to Shanghai but yet completely empty and surrounded by nature.

Congratulations Xiaoxue and Wei on your engagement.
Look forward to hearing more good news from you soon.

It’s a triflash head. It allows me to mount 3xSB-800s onto a single light stand. The best bit is it only cost me 10£

Now I am standing a chance of shooting against the harsh sun light. The set up I used was two SB-800s on the stand, cross lighting with the sun. I also used another SB-900 on the hotshoe as a fill light.

Now under the shade and away from the intense light, we splited the flash up – one SB-800 per stand. We then placed a stand on each side of the model and polite asked her to climb up the tree. She was reluctant at first but eventually, she agreed.

It’s not that glam….

Ok standing near the branch will do.

If the aiming is right, the subject will just ‘pop’ out of the background.

More to come.

I’m here to visit a couple of friends. When I went to Marsa Alam in 2007, on a diving trip, I hooked up with a group of fellow divers from Belgium and the Netherlands and dived together throughout the whole trip. It was one of the most special and memorable trips I’ve had. Since then, Anneke and Bert has been inviting me to visit them in Belgium. Due to the reasons above, I also keep postponing it.

Underpass in Antwerpen

I had been working until 3 am on the night/morning before so I didn’t have time to sleep. Just went home and pack and took taxi straight to the station. The first day went by in a flash as I was half asleep half awake. It’s become increasing common now that sleeping and taking a trip don’t go together smoothly for me. Oh well, I’m glad to be travelling without sleep than not travelling at all.
Brugge

Look at these two cute babies.

Christmas is about to get really warmed up.

Inside the Bruges Zot brewery museum.

Brugge from the roof top

Bert’s special: steamed mussels.

Old mill in Rupelmonde

One of the feature destinations of this trip is the Nemo33, the deepest pool in the world.  Since this is a reunion of our diving trip, I though I would be nice to dive together again. Unfortunately, they don’t allow anything larger than a compact camera so I didn’t bring the housing with me to take the underwater picture.

Great day for diving

The  window of the restaurant is looking into the pool where 34m pit is.

Appearantly, today is not too busy

One of the things I enjoy the most about diving and underwater photography is that you never know what you might encounter on that day. Sometimes, you are lucky to be the only one in the group who saw a rare creature. Other times, you’re the only one who missed it. A lot of works go toward the preperation of the equipments. Packing, charging battery, cleaning o-rings, making sure there is no hair or dust lodging between the grooves,  testing it, check the grooves and battery again. Underwater photography is perhaps a perfect hobby for the people with mild compulsive disorder. Those who didn’t care too much would have had their housing flooded long ago.

After a long bumpy journey, the next morning we headed off to our dive sites on a small boat. The north coast of Bali it is much quieter and less touristic. The climate seems to be cooler also.  We had a good experience diving here on the last trip so we decided to come back. Now, sitting here on the boat crusing at leisure speed, the journey yesterday seemed very worthwhile.

Our first site is the Gardens eel. It is at the channel between two islands with white sandy bottom. We jumped off the boat at the tip of the island in the shallow and made our way toward the channel.

Not sure this is a group of juvenile wrasses (possibly Halichoeres prosopeion) or juvenile stripe catfishes.  Their perfect formation was suspended over the reef, only to break apart when we approached for a closer look.

A green turtle feeding on the reef. This one dashed away as soon as he saw us. Not a very social turtle, aren’t you.

To be honest, I don’t really blame him because illegal catching and trading turtle was quite a common practice in Bali until a few years ago. Unlike Marsa Alam where the locals has learnt long ago to conserve the marine life as they can make far more money from the diving industry than just quick bucks from illegal catches. Green turtles there live long enough to grow up to 1.5 to 2m size and I flew all the way there to see them. It is definitely a more sustainable way to use your resource.
Sadly during our dive, we heard a loud pop which Janri our dive guide later told us it was from a dynamite fishing in Java island 5-6miles away.

A ball of juvenile striped catfish Plotosus lineatus rolling along the sand. Too bad I had a 10.5mm wide angle on. It means I had to get really really close to the subject to get anything decent. When I got close enough, the formation broke and they decided to turn away. Arghh frustrating.

As the name of the dive site suggests, this site has one of the highest density of garden eels over a large area that I’ve ever seen.

Dive 2, White sand. Drift + wall dive on the west side of the island.

Making an entry

We descended down the slope to about 20m-25m. The slope continues to about 50m before bottom out. The current was mild and constant throughout making it an ideal place for sea fans and crinoids. We drifted by numerous giant seafans. Janri checked each one of them to see whether he could find any pygmy seahorses. Again, my fisheye lens won’t be any use if he found them.

My biggest mistake was probably to give Pao my old compact camera. Before, she used to be such a obedient underwater model. I can call her to swim over a reef four or five times no problem. Now, we either have to fight over a subject or I had to wait for her to finish taking photo before she moves into the position.

Giant barrel sponge

False clown anemonefish Amphiprion Ocellaris

We did our night dive at the Mimpi Channel. This site is famous for the Mandarin fish. But unlike the Philippines where the mating site is directly under the mooring point, here we have to look for them – not an easy task as you have to use the torch to search for them among crevices . The mandarin fish only mate at dusk so the light from our torch may stop the mating behaviour altogether.

To make the matter worse, we don’t know exactly when they’ll mate.  The staffs at Malapascua make a daily Mandarin dive so they can predict the exact time of the mating. Here, it depends on luck and whether you could find the fish before they finish their ritual. Before the dive, I booked a body massage at our hotel hoping to come back smug with good photos and get all relax. As the dive progress,  I wasn’t not so sure I’d achieve any of those..

We found about 4-5 Mandarins during that dive but they didn’t seem to be very active. We waited and waited for them to start the orgy. Nothing. In the end, we gave up and went back.

Hey, I come all the way to see you.  The least you could do is to come out and say hello.

Oh well, no photos, no massage. At least, we took a dip in the natural hot spring last night as a consolation to our failures. I felt so relax and drowsy afterward I slept while writing my log book with the pen still press firmly on the page. Later, I found out that we should be taking the hot bath as it could trigger a decompression sickness, oops.

Ok ok, I get it. It’s salt right?

Having a breakfast by the Jetti.

Our last day of diving. we chose to come to the ‘secret bay’. Being published on every guide book could hardly be categorised as a secret. Anyhow, we were told that the water can be very cold so we donned our gears and waded in. This place supposes to be one the best sites for muck diving in Bali. So I’m here to prove it.

We turned left toward the mouth of the bay on our first dive and went to the opposite side on the following dive.

Longfin Spadefish (Platax teira)

There are a lot of Banggai cardinalfish (Pterapogon kauderni) Most of them take refuge in the artificial reef or among the spines of sea urchin.

Double ended Pipefish (Trachyrhamphus bicoarctatus)

Puffer and filefishes are one of the most common species on this site.

Striped Puffer (Arothron manilensis)

We came to the wooden boat wreck. The wreck itself is nothing special. I suspect it was deliberately sunk to make a refuge for the marine life in the bay. Under the wreck, there were about a hundred of striped Catfish (Plotosus lineatus).

Shrimpfish (Aeoliscus strigatus)

Fingered Dragonet (Dactylopus dactylopus)

Shrimp Goby (Vanderhorstia sp)

Marble snake eel (Callechelys marmorata)

My favourite macro subject, an imperial Partner Shrimp (Periclemenes Imperator) on a sea cucumber.

This one climbed down to the side and feed himself along the muck.

Bristle worms

Spotted Toby (Canthigaster solandri)

A froontal mug shot

A few years earlier, he would have looked like this

Robust Ghost Pipefish (Solenostomus cyanopterus)

Frostfin cardinalfish (Apogon hoevenii)

Cockatoo Waspfish (Ablabys tanianotus)

Juvenile Giant Frogfish (Antennarius commerson)

Yellow Edged Moray (Gymnothorax)flavimarginatus

Yellow Shrimp Goby (Cryptocentrus cinctus)

We made 2 new records here at the Secret bay.  The longest dive we have done so far on the first dive which was 104 minutes and 2nd longest dive of 99 minutes. So our two dives took almost  3 and a half hours. Crazy!

After the dive, we had another long journey back to Ubud. Because diving took so long, we would arrive late at night. So we asked our driver to stop along the way for some photo ops. The sun was setting so taking the picture against the rice field would have been spectacular. However, when I asked him to find a rice field, I guess I should be a little more specific about the location. Anyway, we got our rive field and the sun is disappearing fast. so I took out a SB-800, a lumiquest softbox iii, some gels and started shooting away.

This shot was lit by a handheld SB-800 connected via a sync cord, zooming to the widest angle with diffuser, 1/4 CTO and sbiii on

Arriving at Ulun Ubud hotel. This hotel is set on the cliff overlooking the valley. It is a very nice hotel with a lot of character but unfortunately is not well maintained. You can see paint and plaster peeling off, mould patches. I reckon this hotel has a lot of potential if they renovate it.

Sunrising over the Ubud valley. and yes, we have been drying our kits. I don’t want to be paying  for 2-3 kg of seawater.

If was completely dark when we got here last night. I could hear the sound of the river below but I couldn’t see it. so this is the first view of our balcony.

You literally have to climb up the cliff  to get back to the breakfast hall. The stair was steep and we felt the air was quite thin. Overall, a good exercise. Well done, you earn your breakfast.

On the flight over Denpasar.

It took us 4 hours yesterday to get from Secret bay to Denpasar. Only to fly back over it again in 20 minutes.

So that’s it for our trip to Bali. We have dived all around the Island. We hope to come back again someday. For sure, this is one of the places that we enjoy the most. Many thanks to Aquamarine for organising and making this trip as smooth and painless  for us as possible.

Back to Bangkok. A container city.

It’s been just over a year since we visited Bali last time. It was a great fun and very productive trip (photo-wise) that we feel obliged to return. This trip however, we were a bit tight on time but didn’t want to compromise on the number of dives and location. So it  became a 5 days, 11 dives and a 200 miles ride around the island – with the first 2 dives straight after we landed. Ouch.

The journey was quite similar to last year. We did our usual thing: Go to bed at 11 pm, Get up at 3am, 4.30am arrive at the Suvanabhimi airport  2 hour prior to our flight with the intertion to sleep all the way to Bali. Unlike the Philippines trip, Bali is far enough for a good power nap to give us some energy to deal with the crazy schedule ahead.

Chicken rice with chilli sauce for breakfast.

Arriving at Ngurahrai Airport.

Dear strobists, when taking picture of a massive statue , why not try using 2 suns to light it.

Hell Angels Bali

Junior Hell Angel Bali.

Straight to Candidasa at a neck breaking speed on a neck breaking road. Anyway, before I managed to get a Cervical collar out, we arrived at Topi Inn on Padangbai beach.  People were chillin out, gentle sea breeze coming in.  It’s like we haven’t left.

I did’t write anything naughty in there, honest.

I take this opportunit while we were waiting for our lunch to assemble the UW housing. Obviously, I would prefer to do this indoor to prevent dust and hair lodging on any of the 8 o-rings but having come straight from Bangkok and not checking into our hotel until after the dive, I have to do it on this bread crumb covered table. Fortunately, I knew this is going to happen so I assembled as many connections as possible from home. Camera was already in the housing but I couldn’t put the port on as it won’t fit in the bag so instead I cover it over with a plastic sandwich bag to prevent dust getting in. Batteries are in the strobes which in turn have been connected to the sync cord. All I really have to do now is to connect the sync cord to the housing and put a port on. Much simpler than full kit assembly.

And our lunch arrived

Nasi Goreng fly lice.

OK. Most of you wish I stop blabbing long ago and show the picture. Here it is. First dive, Jepun from a small outrigger boat. It’s round the corner from the Blue lagoon.

Giant Frogfish (Antennarius commersoni). There were two of them there together on an artificial reef. Another one is a yellow but was facing down.

Squat Shrimp (Thor amboinensis)

Black Saddled Toby (Canthigaster Valentini)

Clark’s Anemonefish (Amphiprion clarkii)

What’s difficult about this site is the constant weak current, which, will pose no problem to the wide angle lens but very damaging for the macro,esp 105mm. As the camera finally manage to lock the focus on the subject, the current will move you slightly away from the focal plane but not quite enough to stop you or the shutter firing. Later you realise that most of the pictures were just out of focus.

Discodoris boholiensis

Juvenile yellow boxfish (Ostracion cubicus)

Next dive, Blue lagoon night dive.

Spanish Dancer (Hexabranchus sanguineus). There were a lot of these on this site. We encountered at least 4-5 of them on that dive.

Mid water swimming

Necklace Starfish (Fromia monilis)

Reaper Cuttlefish (Sepia mestus)

Pseudobiceros gloriosus

Anemone hermit crab (Dardanus pedunculatus)

Chromodoris annae

Octopus (Octopus cyanea)

Longhorn Cowfish (Lactoria cornuta)

Mastere of the camouflage,A decorator Crab (Camposcia retusa)

It’d been a very long day. We finally checked into the Water Garden and ate at their restaurant. It was quite good.

Day 2

We woke up to the sound of rooster crowing.It was a good night sleep.

The room here is pretty normal. I think our bungalow was even a spa before. However, what’s nice about this hotel is its setting which blend really well with the nature. There must be about 10 bungalows in there but they cleverly arranged it so that you don’t get to see other bungalows from your porch. Instead, each room has a view of waterlily pond, stream and lush greenery that makes you feel rather private and peaceful.

Our breakfast was served at the porch

A brick path to our bungalow

Today, we were heading out to Nusa Penida in search for the Mola Mola. It’s one of the reasons we came back to Bali. We supposed to be picked up at 8. But at 8.30 there was no sign of our transportation. It turned out that one of the tires blew half way while the driver is heading to pick us up so the guy at Aquamarine arranged with the hotel to drop us at Padangbai in order to save some time.

Anyway, after a 45 minutes of speedboat ride, We got to our first dive site of the day at Crystal bay. The other boat reported that they saw a mola mola earlier which suddenly put a spring in everyone’s fins.

The current was STRONG  (in fact, it was probably quite weak. but when an office worker who never use his muscle for most part of the year i.e. me, swam against it holding a housing with 12″ domeport, it honestly felt like you were pushing a shed against a hurricane.) There was also a down current, dragging you our of the reef and down the slope.  So we had to hug the terrain. Apart from the mola mola, there is no reason for a photographer to dive this site enjoyably.  You can get the dome port scratched being so close to the reef with that kind of current.

Our guide Janri went down to 40m to search for the elusive fish. After a while, he gave up. The fish was gone. So instead, he called me to see this huge frog fish at 30m as a consolation.

The wall at Crystal Bay.

A natural arch formation on the way to Manta Point

Lesson learnt from last yearon this site:

• It’s choppy as hell. Take anti seasickness pill.
• Don’t try to save battery by turning anything off here. The mantas wil arrive suddenly out of the blue.
• Turn on the strobes and make sure they are actually ON
• Wipe away micro bubble from the port.

Because this site is shallow, I had to set the ISO to 100, max out the sync speed and still left with F6.3 which means that my strobes has a range of less than 3.5m at full power. Quite close when dealing with a fast moving manta ray.

The temperature was moderately cold here, around 25c which is colder than Crystal bay.  We swam around the cleaning station to keep warm. At 30 minutes, again there was nothing, I had a sinking feeling that we were not going to see anything this time.

It happened so quickly. A 5m Manta ray just appeared out of the gloom, with another smaller one trailing behind.

As fast as it happen, they disappeared and everything was quite again. Ten minutes later, a lone manta passed by. It’s like they time it so that you’re off guard when they do appear.

It was quite busy and confusing down there. People seemed to be heading in every direction as they though they caught a glimpse of a shape shifting in the blue. Again, the two mantas appear but this time, I’m ready.

While the whole crowd was chasing them as they effordlessly glide around the rock, I predicted the manta’s path knowing it’ll cut in at some point to make a pass over the station…And it did. Right on top of me.

This is quite an intimate moment when the mantas decided to approach you.  It pulled up at the last moment to fly over so I gave a small exploratory puff of bubbles to see whether they’re interested.

and he came right at it.

We left Padangbai and headed north on the road toward Tulamben. That’s it for a while on the search for the sunfish. Now,

Passing this on th way, don’t know what celebration it was but it looked fun.

Mount Agung at sunset

It was a very long ride to the west side of the island. 4 hours is long enough on a normal road but this road was like the surface of the moon. I think it shook so much that my spleen fell off somewhere on the floor…

Finally, we arrived at a warm, quiet, cosy and most importantly static hotel room. Bless.

To be continued.