Scuba Diving in the Whitsunday Islands: Hamilton Island

From the beginning it was the Great Barrier Reef that drew me to visit Australia. And to think that since my first visit I'd only been one other time when Michelle was visiting in 2011.

I was headed to Italy right after Christmas, so Hamilton Island in the Whitsunday Islands at the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef was a quick and easy trip to squeeze in before the long haul trip to Europe.

Hamilton Island is owned by Oatley Winery so unsurprisingly all of the restaurants and wine shops on the island sold Oatley Wine.

I stayed at a fantastic resort, Beach Club Resort, which had a beautiful white sandy beach and beach chairs with wait service.  The room had a beach side view with a great big patio that was ideal for relaxing and watching the sunset, with none other than an Oatley Wine.

All of the restaurants on the island had spectacular food and views.  My favorite was the Bommie Restaurant in the Yacht Club which was architected with the sleek lines of a sailboat from the days of pirates long ago. Sailboats and even our scuba diving boat entered and exited the harbour each day sailing by the Yacht Club past the lighthouse.

Coca Chu Restaurant was on the beach and an average Thai Restaurant which was in what felt like a wide open tiki hut that frustratingly didn't allow take-aways for left-overs.  Mariners Seafood Restaurant was right on the mainstreet and had a nice outdoor patio that looked over the marina and had great seafood.

What did surprise me was that the scuba diving required a minimum 2-hour boat ride to the Great Barrier Reef. For some reason, I thought that by being on an island, I'd be a heck of a lot closer to the reef and could crank out 3-4 dives each day. Yet, when I stopped by H2O Sports Scuba Diving Shop, the trips all involved a 2 hour boat ride to the reef, 2 dives and then a 2 hour boat ride back. All totaled, it took a big chunk of the day and I was really hoping to do more diving.

All that aside, H2O Sports was a great dive shop to spend my three days of diving. It was nice to be diving with just a thin lycra protective suit and not a neoprene wet suit that always makes me feel like Gumby. So the water was warm, the reef not as flourishing or as large and further up North in the outer Great Barrier Reef near the Osprey Reef. I saw a shark, a turtle, bat fish, some large grouper that are the size of humans but mostly very small fish.

I've included a few slides shows of my photos and movies taken with my Canon G20, but here are my top underwater photos.

 Photo library of my above water activities



Photo library of Day 1 Scuba Diving

Dive # 167 on Dec. 21, 2012
The Maze, 54 minutes at 12.2 meters. 24 degrees C with visibility of 8 meters.
Saw a white tipped shark, yellow trumpet fish called a flute mouth, and a green moray eel.

Dive # 168 on Dec. 21, 2012
Drift dived from the Stepping Stones to Shark Alley, 45 minutes at 12.4 meters, 27 degrees C with fantastic visibility.
Saw a gigantic hump maori wrasse fish (nick named "Morri"), 3 band damsel fish (black and white), a giant clam, crown of thorn sea star and 2 black nudibranch.



Photo library and movie of Day 2 Scuba Diving

Dive #169 on Dec. 22, 2012
Luncheon Bay, 42 minutes at 15.9 meters, 27 degrees C
Saw large wrasse fish, nice soft coral and did a few swim throughs.

Dive #170 on Dec. 22, 2012
Manta Ray Bay, 44 minutes at 15.4 meters.
Fed human-sized Maori Wrasse in the beginning, giant travelli, bat fish and a flat worm (poisonous) swirling in the water (see movie video).







Photo library and movie of Day 3 of Scuba Diving

Dive #171 on Dec. 23, 2012
The Maze, 45 minutes at 12.9 meters, 29 degrees C with 8 meters of visbility
There were calm sea conditions, I saw a Queen Sea Turtle in the beginning (great video). I bumped my right need on some coral while I was waiting at depth for the dive master to bring two other dives low on air back to the boat which caused a rash despite pouring vinegar on the cut.

Dive #172 on Dec. 23, 2012
Stepping Stones, 45 minutes at 14.8 meters with 8 meters of visibility.
I saw a family of clown fish and another white tipped shark at the end but I had no memory left on my SD card. I won't have that problem again as I purchased a 32 GB memory card for next time.

Ending the Year the Way it Started

Years ago I read The Celestine Prophecy and I remember that one of the "Insights" was that there's no such thing as coincidences and that one needed to seek the greater meaning.

So I wonder what the deeper meaning is that on New Year's Day, I spent the day in Bangkok visiting The Grand Palace.  Then due to a business trip, I visited The Grand Palace not once but twice more at the end of the year (Dec. 7 and Dec. 8). 

It was after the Cisco Asia Pacific, Greater China and Japan Partner-led Conference in Bangkok, that we took journalists on a city tour of Bangkok. Then the next day, Jennifer from Australian Reseller News (ARN) who'd missed the city tour the day before and I did an expanded version of the city tour with the addition to two more temples.

1. On New Year's Day, The Grand Palace was closed so the Thai government invited visitors to see the Temple of the Emerald Buddha at no cost. When I visited the next two times, they were on equally hot, incredibly sunny bright days. 

2. On the tour of The Grand Palace, I saw where the King and Queen of Thailand live and welcome international guests. I didn't realise that previously Thailand was known as Siam and that this was the palace from the "King and I" which brought world attention to the country. 

3. Wat Pho houses the image of the reclining Buddha which is 15 meters high and 43 meters long.  It's in this gigantic hall and when you first enter, it's quite spectacular! And it's hard to get the whole image in the same photo.  Funnily, when we entered the long hall, Jennifer exclaimed at the bells making the clinking noises.  When we rounded the feet of the reclining Buddha, we soon realised what was making the clinking noises. There were a line of 100+ metal bowls along the side where upon a donation to the temple, you're given tokens to drop into each bowl for good luck.

4. My work colleague Surpriya's favorite temple to visit each time she's in Bangkok is Wat Arun - the Temple of the Dawn.  And I agree, the temple is very unique with colorful porcelain covering its exterior and glorious views of the city.  The porcelain looks like it came from everyday household plates as well as precious family heirloom collections. I especially loved the blue and white porcelain plates. 

5. Jennifer and I also visited the temple of Wat Traimit with the Golden Buddha which has the world's largest solid gold statue. In addition to the Golden Buddha, what impressed me is the original wall paper. Rather than use a template for the repeating pattern of the "wall paper" artisans painted each floral pattern over and over and over again along the very high walls of temple. 

6. The Banyan Tree is literally at the very top of the Banyan Tree Hotel, with side panels that were not incredibly high which was intimidating. Fantastic 360 degree views!

Photo gallery of Cisco City Tour of Bangkok

City Tour of Bangkok

Climbing to the top of Wat Arun (Part 1)

Climbing to the top of Wat Arun (Part 2)

#1 Technical Band in Bangkok

Wat Pho - Temple of the Reclining Buddha

Fish Feeding outside of Wat Arun

Elephants at The Grand Palace

Bangkok in Thai is 147 Words long!

Photo gallery of Temple Tour in Bangkok

Treasured Time with Family and Friends in Tokyo

The last time I visited Tokyo was on my own in Dec. 2011 and then before that was the last time I visited with my Father which was in October 2007.  Papa typically goes every few years, usually connected to when his shakuhachi club goes on an outing, and then he just stays on for the whole month.

I joined him on this trip and it was quite the adventure!

1. I arrived very early in the morning on Sat. Nov. 17 at Narita Airport. After taking a very early bus from Kichijyoji, Papa met me at Narita and we headed to Fujisawa to visit Fujio Ojisan and Yasuko Obasan. We had an enjoyable visit and it was great to hear the two brothers reminiscing over old times.

Here's the mini-beer that we did "kampai" with... can they be any smaller?

The first "adventure" was finding lodging in Fujisawa, a suburb about an hour outside of Tokyo. No problem, right? Wrong, after calling about 10 places we finally found this Edo-Era Ryokan two-train lines away!

Rustic is a compliment for this place. It had no hot water, bath, shower (that we could find) and the wash basin was more like a trough a farm animal would feed out of. The rooms were clean and quiet (as we had the whole entire place to ourselves, no other guests) and Japanese-style with sliding doors, low table and futon. The best part of it was the view overlooking the beach.

Here's a video of the ryo-kan



On the way to this ryo-kan we took this train line that had a special pink seated car that women travel in during rush-hour so they are not harassed by groping men.

In a very odd coincidence, the same cab driver that took us from Fujio-Ojisan's home to the train station and then a few hours later when we gave up on the train re-starting (stopped due to high winds and heavy rain) and waited in an incredibly long taxi line ... it was the same cab driver that ultimately took us back to our ryo-kan.  How did we realise this, the ease in which we were able to continue to the conversation from our first ride ... i.e., ah yes, you're the pair from Chicago and Sydney, Australia.   :)

Here's Papa with our dilapidated umbrella in the torrential rain, standing in the cab line. Like I said, always an adventure.

2. After visiting Fujio-Ojisan and Yasuko-Obasan again in the morning (Nov. 18), we met up with Ohoi-san for a visit to a local park well known for its beautiful Fall foilage. There was a local Farmer's Market where we tried some local fruit.

Ohoi-san's wife has climbed Mt. Fuji which is something I've always wanted to do. What I learned is that you're only allowed to climb during certain months of the year (changes but typically July-September) and that it can be done in two days. Ideally, I'd want to stay overnight at one of the accommodations so that the next morning I can rise early to enjoy the sunrise. Here's an overview of how climbing Mt. Fuji is accomplished. 

3.  On Nov. 19, our last day in the Fujisawa area, we visited Enoshima which is a place Papa visited on a school field trip. As we climbed up and down stair cases as we explored the area, Papa remembered having much more energy back then :)

4. On Nov. 21, we took the shinkansen to Izu. We took a very early shinkansen, arriving at around 10 a.m., at our lovely 5-star ryokan.  As check-in was not until later, we walked to the shore and had an early lunch at a restaurant specializing in the local seafood.

Then we walked into the park area where we had a spectacular view of Mt. Fuji.

The onsen at the ryokan was beautiful. The outdoor part had a lovely Japanese rock garden and waterfall. 

The next day, Ohoi-san and his wife took us towards the southern part of Izu and up along the eastern shore. There was a museum of shikue which is art of terra cotta/ceramic.

I especially enjoyed this Izu restaurant they took us to, it was hidden away in a residential area along a stream and on the edge of the forest the restaurant owner hunts in for boar and fish. 

Delicacy from Izu: Aiyo Sakana



Delicacy from Izu: Boar (I'm Year of the Boar)



Delicacy from Izu: Deer



Photo gallery from Izu

Bullet train from Izu back to Tokyo

5. Visiting the Horiuchi Ohaka, we paid our respects by cleaning the area of leaves and presenting colorful flowers. In a nearby ohaka I saw that a can of beer was left and I made a mental note of it for next time I visit as I remembered that Kikue-Obasan appreciated a small can of beer once and a while with dinner.

Afterwards we visited the Horiuchi home in Mitaka where Papa grew up. It’s being renovated into two new homes and we saw the framework being built of the two-storied homes.

For lunch we visited Tamiko Obasan who was married to my Obachan’s youngest brother Yasuo. My Obachan on Papa’s side was the oldest of 12 children. Papa had not seen Tamiko Obasan’s three children (his cousins) Chieko, Tetsuo and Fujio for many years so it was a wonderful lunch of reminiscing. It was fascinating to learn that Chieko and Tetsuo spent a few years in Baltimore, Maryland  and when they were in elementary schools there was no English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher so they had to rely on other students teaching them English. Both of them also trained up to New York and were present at my parents’ wedding in 1963. We also went to the senior home where Papa’s Umeko Obasan (she was the 11^th child, youngest daughter) and thus my Great Aunt. Papa played the shakuhachi for Umeko Obasan who seemed to recognize Papa. 

6. Afterwards we went to Asakusa, my favorite place in Tokyo to visit as a tourist. I love going to the delectable sweet place where Haruko Obasan took me on my very first visit to Asakusa when I was in elementary school.  And of course I had my #1 favorite dessert – Kuri zenzai.

Papa and I went on to the temple and then had dinner at a place famous for its unagi donburi. 

Here's a video from just outside the Kaminari-Mon

7. On my last day in Japan (Nov. 25), Papa and I explored the area around the ANA Intercontinental Hotel. First we visited a nearby temple, then we walked towards Parliament House, the Emperor's Palace and then we walked all the way to the newly renovated Tokyo eki.

Newly renovated Tokyo-eki

8. One of the "adventures" we had on this trip was the number of  hotels we stayed in and the number of times we shuttled our luggage back and forth to this hotel in Kichijyoji. As we hadn't planned what we were going to do each day, we hadn't booked hotels in advance. When we had determined our plans and searched for hotels, we learned that due to the holiday long weekend there were no hotel rooms on the Friday night, Nov. 23  (we stayed with Papa's friend from Waseda University) and on the Saturday, Nov. 24 we booked the last hotel room available at the ANA Intercontinental Hotel which was a "Club level" room for $500/night. 

Lesson learned is that there are ryokan that are not on the typical hotels.com Websites.  

9. Here's a slide show of some odd things I notices on the trip. 

10. And when I saw this Green Tea flavored Kit Kat and Wasabi flavored Kit Kat I thought of my friend Michelle who loves Kit Kats. I doubt they'd go over very well in the US :)