Snorkeling with manta rays and a visit to the hospital

Just when I thought that my early mornings were thing of the past I had yet another early rise at 7 this morning in order to get on a snorkeling trip to see local coral and manta ray colony at Manta Point !

 my ears were still blocked from the scuba diving but I was able to snorkel as we don't go deep enough to cause any problems.

The visibility wasn't great again but at least this time I got to see around 6 manta rays although they were at the bottom of the ocean around 12 meters below me because we are surrounded by millions of struggling Chinese snorkelers that were barely able to swim!

The manta rays weren't as big as the one I saw at Labuan Bajo but the coral that we got to see as other sites such as Crystal Bay was some of the best that I've seen on the entire trip. As part of the deal with the snorkel company I also managed to get a stand up paddle board rental for one hour but as I left the boat from the snorkel trip I stub my toe pretty badly so much so that I thought I broke it.

So this along with my sore ear made me decide to go to the hospital just to make sure everything was okay. Took a bit of a trek to find the hospital it's near the mangrove forest, but when I arrived hardly anyone spoke English it seemed a very makeshift operation. Nevertheless I persevered and they eventually found a doctor with some broken English explain that my toe was most likely sprained and then he tried to flush out the liquid in my ear but we eventually decided it was water in the ear canal (I had to help him a bit with the diagnosis!) which is pretty unretrievable

I assume this is only going to be around 250 Rupiah which is around 14 Euro, for 5 minutes work. But you can never discount the skills of the medical Department accounting team and I was presented with a bill for 500 Rupiah. Nice that's approximately the cost of renting a room for two nights!

 I paid up but I made sure to get a note for the insurance company as I might be able to claim it back we'll see how that goes. They still haven't responded to my email I sent about the delayed flight over from Dublin at the start :(

I had a weird side effect after the hospital treatment . I went to have lunch at the nearby restaurants on the music playing sounded Out Of Tune it was really weird . It must have been something to do with the water they forced into my ear. Ironically after I got back to the hotel I tried out the scuba equalizing method where you pinch your nostrils and force water out. This seem to actually clear the air better than anything they did in the hospital. D'oh!

After this I was due for some relaxation so just headed to Sunset Beach which is beside dream Beach. It's a little bit more deserted and certainly not swimmable as there is nothing but sharp volcanic rock under the water but at least the sound was white and the sun was out so I almost fell asleep getting burnt. Perfick.

A pretty tame evening of sushi and watching sunsets which is what I'm after at this stage in the holiday.

Plan tomorrow is to use my sup credit once my toe has eased up a bit!