In the late ‘Eighties – before tourism to that country had taken off – Sylvia and I were granted visas to visit Vietnam, spending just over two weeks visiting Hanoi, Hue, Da Nang, Hoi An and Saigon (re-named Ho Chi… Read More ›
General
Stuff and Nonsense
Not many people realise that the idea of stuffing olives was hit upon by an obscure sect of Spanish nuns who, when there was a seasonal glut of the things, came up with the idea of removing the pit and… Read More ›
Safety At Depth
Regardless of depth, there’s no such thing as an ‘easy’ dive: once a diver recognises that fact then many of the so-called ‘accidents’ that sometimes occur in deeper technical diving become avoidable. Rather than being, ‘events without apparent cause’, incidents… Read More ›
The Wonders of Salvage
Periodically, I make the decision to sell off all of the diving-related books, manuals and documents that I’ve acquired over many years. It’s a ritual that involves taking them down from the book-shelf, blowing off the dust and then taking… Read More ›
Legislating For Safety
The basis of the new professionalism that crept into the occupational diving industry belonged to the discovery, during the late sixties, of huge oil and natural gas reserves in the North Sea. With demand for qualified divers to work on… Read More ›
Time Travel
In May 1993, Asian Diver magazine, with six issues to its credit, was barely a year old when Rainer Sigel – the magazine’s Founder and Publisher; Michael Loh – its Creative Director and I attended the annual PATA (Pacific Asia… Read More ›