By: Mayawati NH (MyTrip Magazine)

Four days on a boat with limited facilities is not a problem for me. I have been on several diving trips that are live-on-board (LOB). Sleeping, bathing, eating in the condition of the ship rocking in the waves, not a problem.

Normally, on an expedition trip, I would have to set up the equipment and lift the tank by myself (don't expect to be served by the ship's crew like on a diving trip), but OK, I can still do it. After all, there is an advantage to being a girl, surely if you are not strong there must be someone to help, whether it's a teammate or the ship's crew. Hehe.

But.... I'm not one to easily mingle with new people. Moreover, this is an expedition, maybe the team members are all serious. Maybe they will rarely talk to each other except for work matters, do everything by themselves, and there is only work, work, and work.

I imagined a dozen days on the ship, with the 'zombies'. If I go on a LOB diving trip at least with 8 or 9 friends, all gokil-gokil. So it's impossible to get bored let alone bete while on the boat. There are just exciting chats and new jokes.

It didn't take long to get along and luckily I was able to joke around with all 12 team members, most of whom were young!

There was Derta (Reef Check Indonesia) who always appeared with her jokes that made me laugh, there was Kusnanto (WWF-Indonesia) who was very willing to be bully, Kasman (Reef Check Indonesia), the youngest member who I thought was underage turned out to be 21 years old.

There was Fikri (WWF-Indonesia) and Sila (Reef Check Indonesia) who were very diligent in cleaning up. There was Novi (WWF-Indonesia), the Expedition Team Leader, who was keen to collect data from all team members every night. There was Nisa (WWF-Indonesia) who asked team members to write articles about interesting experiences that day. And the others, too, were all fun.

The chats, jokes, and jabs got wilder and wackier by the day. The center of the bully was Kusnanto. It's like he's making himself available for ridicule. Deliberately show off calling his girlfriend (eh, boyfriend or TTM?) whenever there's a signal. To the point that Fikri and Prakas (WWF-Indonesia) memorized what Kusnanto said and told us the next day. So Kusnanto got more bully, and note: he was happy and really enjoyed our bully.

I was thoroughly entertained every day. To the point where I said to Mbak Novi, "Mbak, it's a good thing that the team members are so funny, so you don't get bored on the boat. No one is cute, it's okay, just funny." Uh, is anyone offended? Hihihi.