We travel to Bali, Greece, France, and Thailand all in one day!

Our next research trip was to Balesin Island, which is a resort island off the coast of Luzon. Here we got to spend four days doing research and hanging out in the resort. The Balesin resort is going to be one giant resort with five other resorts on the island, each one is based off other locations; Bali, Mykonos, San Tropez, Thailand.

To get there we drove three hours from Manila and got on a large cargo boat and made the trek over to Balesin...in the thunder and rain.

Before we got on the boat we stopped for some snacks. Ian is eating the head of a chicken

 Our first day in Balesin, the rain never stopped. We got to drive around the island and see all of the hotels as they were being built, then we got a tour of where the guests will stay and watched the lightning show. We ended the day with heaps of lab work.

Fortunately, the next day it cleared up and we were able to get some research done!

This is the pirate ship we got to take with us to the research sites

While looking for a good sea grass site we stumbled upon some coral reef. The reef in Balesin is mostly devastated due to dynamite fishing, but hopefully in the next decade or two the reef will start to look better.

On our swim back to the boat we saw this guy (sea snake). Highly venomous, but very fun to watch.

Then we had to get to business

or not...

It wasn't such a bad place to work 

On our second day of work we got a half day! Then we got to do what ever we wanted...which was go swimming in the resort pool (which was empty since the resort wasn't open to the public for one more day!)

The lovely infinity pool

Ice cold fruit smoothies anyone?

Then it was back to work!

But it was rather shallow

Science

After three days of hard work we got to go on our first dive!

 Here are a couple of things we saw diving in Balesin

Tunicate

Nudibranch

Lion fish

On our last morning on Balesin we didn't know when the cargo ship was going to arrive, so we woke up at three am to make sure all of our gear was packed and we were ready to go. Unfortunately, it turned out the cargo ship wasn't coming until eight and would take no passengers. After much negotiation, Angela got us aboard and we were able to make it back to the mainland.