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Last week, I spent some time traveling around Bali on scooter. The clear highlight of the trip was Mengangan Island, also called the "Deer Island", because, well, there's deer all over it. It's also pretty well known for all the diving sitres surrouding it, and since I've just recently picked up diving as a hobby, it felt only right for me to try it out. The day started with me following the dive school van for about 60 kilometers to the dock. The driver didn't go easy on me; we ended up going 100km/h for the most part. Driving with locals is always an experience. To my relief, I made it safely to the boat, we loaded all of the gear and took off to the sea. I've been through couple of dives these past weeks so I felt quite confident and relaxed. The real fun started when the dive master for the day started briefing me. He basically said that we're gonna spend an hour down there no matter what. No words on remaining gas, no words on safety stops. This might not seem like a big deal to non-divers but trust me, establishing these things before the dive is generally considered essential. The fact the guy's English wasn't really good didn't help neither. After few unsuccessful attempts of talking some sense into him, I gave up and just went on with it. And boy oh boy, what a dive. We got about 20 meters deep, the corals were shining all kinds of colors in the sunrays making their way through the water. All the life, all the fish, all the turtles just hanging around - it was awesome. I stopped caring about the fact the dive master doesn't pay attention to me in about 2 minutes. There was just too much to focus on. About 40 minutes into the dive we got a bit deeper and got into a pretty strong current. While the dive master managed to get under it, I was not deep enough to do the same so I ended up struggline for a bit and eventually got shot up almost all the way to the surface. I'm talking about 25 meters in about 10 seconds. The dive master panicked, hopped into the stream and instead of leaving me chill 5 meters deep for couple of minutes (which is the standard procedure), he just grabbed my hand and pulled me all the way up the surface. His explanation: he already inflated his vest. So there I was. Sitting on a boat with a severe headache, looking at the guy in disbelief. He tried to explain himself a bit more, but the language barrier was too high for us to overcome. At the end of the day everything turned out great. Everyone survived and I saw quite a lot of stuff. However, there is a lesson here. When traveling for diving, expect very different levels of dive centers. Sometimes saving couple of bucks and go for a cheaper center might not be worth it. On the other hand, playing it safe all the time can get boring, right?