Back in the office, doing nothing, makes it hard to believe that only yesterday I was in Bali, Indonesia.

Bali, the most famous island in the world, is a small, densely populated, predominately Hindu tourist mecca. Kuta, the main tourist destination, seethes in the sweltering tropical sun. Primarily a knick-knack shop where all variety of wooden carvings and silk weavings can be purchased - not to mention bootlegged DVD's and extremely illegal hashish (9 years-to-death for possession) - Kuta is also the main surfer hang-out, night club and beach resort on the island. Equidistant to the airport and a world-class beach break, Kuta exerts its own gravitational force: there is no avoiding the city.

Deeply tanned street hawkers, who offer everything from imitation Oakley's to pedicures, are drawn to the city, and start the bargaining at two or three times the real price. As a counter balance, Billabong, Rusty, and Fresh Jive have erected multi-story, brightly-lit, air-conditioned shops where tourists can buy a pair of shorts for about what a taxi-driver earns in a week, price not negotiable. Beach front versions of the Hard Rock Cafe and McDonalds conduct sunset battle with coconut shell briquette barbeque stands. The contrast in poverty and wealth is offensive and intriguing. It hurt the brain after a while.

We spent two days in Kuta, in order to arrange our scuba diving. We ended up going with the first company we saw: Scuba Dooby Doo. Clever name, eh?

Asril, our dive instructor, came from the Mulaccos, a group of islands bordering another group of islands belonging to the Phillipines, where the Christians and the Muslims are having at one another. Asril is fluent in his native language (similar to Maori), Indonesian, Balinese, English and Dutch, has a smattering of German and Japanese, is studying for his M.Sc. in marine biology, and has just returned from a year-long marine eco-tourism course in Holland.

Over the course of our three-day diving adventure, we had some great talks with Asril about Indonesia, tourism and the environment. He has been working for about two years on a project to develop an eco-tourism vacation to his home island. He spoke passionately about the need to protect the coral reef and forests (Indonesia has some of the worst logging practices in the world - both legal and illegal - and coral is routinely used for concrete), and about how he thought it could be done.

Together with international and local organizations, Asril has helped create a scuba-diving and parrot watching vacation. For $900 (all-inclusive, from Bali), tourists can spend ten days parrot watching, scuba diving, and generally enjoying the tropical heat. Asril believes that by creating work for the villagers, they will devote less time to felling trees for rice paddies and palm plantations and killing the monkeys and birds (parrots) that eat their crops, and more time to education and improving their standard of living. He said that the villager's new job will be to protect the environment, rather than control (degrade) it. All profits from the program will stay on the island, to help maintain traditional courts and educational systems and preserve traditional culture.

Anyway, the scuba diving was amazing. We dived in Tulamben. We saw Nemo swimming around in his home, a huge barracuda and a million other types of fish. We dived in the wreck of the USS Liberty, which started at five metres underwater and ended at 20. It scared me at first when I saw this huge shadow hanging over me in the ocean, but then I saw all the fish swimming around in the coral and I was awestruck. One of the guys we talked to, who spends about one month every year diving, said it was the best wreck he'd ever seen. We dove off the edge of a coral shelf, which dropped toward the middle of the world as far as I could tell. Our hotel was basic, but overlooked the ocean and had a nice little pool and underwater bar stools. It was an unforgettable experience. My only regret is that we didn't spend a couple more days diving. But apparently Japan has some excellent diving as well, so there's always another day.

Speaking of which, I better get back to work, or pretending to study Japanese anyway. Later.