Even a cursory glance at the internet will tell you that the question of which 3 things would be best to have to hand in the event that you happened to find yourself stranded on a desert island is a well debated and much discussed problem. We can exclusively reveal that the answers are not the common 'penknife, iPod and a book' but 3 much more important items...

1) Hot Water Shower with built in salt remover...7 weeks of cold saltwater showers really bring home the importance of this.

2) Bacon...Odd? Well, let me tell you that living on a Muslim island with a total ban on pork products for nearly 2 months definitely needs remedying with a fat bacon sandwich. With ketchup. And nice white bread. Homemade bread. Maybe morning rolls. Dipped into the fat in the grill pan.

3)Haribo. That's right - the sweets. Eleanor just likes them. No more, no less.

Apart from these small things, our extensive field testing didn't really find us wanting for anything else on our 7 weeks on Gili Air. It really has been a fantastic time living and working on this little island with it's friendly locals, great food and excellent diving. I don't think we have ever been as close to feeling as if we had slipped into some sort of parallel universe - we were still us, living a life with all its routines but in a setting completely alien to our normal lives in the UK.

London, UK, 7am: The alarm goes off, and is promptly switched off with a groan. 45 minutes later Eleanor has transported herself out of bed and the shower and is making coffee somewhere. I think through what I need to do today and then drag myself out of bed and into the shower before downing my coffee. I put on my suit, shirt, tie and shoes and if I have time for breakfast I don't enjoy it. We walk the 5 mins to the Lancaster Gate Tube, it's still dark, I get off at Bond Street and Change to the Jubilee (if it is working). I spend the next 30 mins with my face in someone's armpit while someone else refuses to move down the carriage as there is not enough room for their paper. I get off at Canary Wharf and get into work. I'm late. Again

Gili Air, Indonesia, 6.30am: The sun has already woken me slightly, the rest of the job is finished off by the cockerels, at least 5. Every morning I wonder the same thing, 'Is it cock-a-doodle-do or coco-rico'. I hope that when I finally decide then the French are wrong but I think they might be right. I drag myself out of bed and have a cold shower before putting on some swimming shorts. I sit outside my bungalow, looking at the sea and letting my eyes get used to daylight properly before pulling on some flip-flops. I walk along the dusty road to the dive shop. I'm late. Again.

London, UK, 9.20am: I get in (on a good day), pull my laptop computer out of my desk and plug it in. I go and get a coffee while it is logging in and decide one isn't enough so have another while checking my blackberry for the 3rd time. I go and add to my to do list and pick up any messages I've had while on the tube. I already know how today will go - I'm at 3 different meetings this afternoon and this deal application needs to be in by tomorrow am. It'll be late.

Gili Air, Indonesia, 8am: I get in, check the board for today's dive groups and go and get the tanks, jackets and other bits and pieces before setting them up with a coffee. No assisting with teaching today so it looks like it's going to be a day of helping guide some dive groups. Another Coffee and I go into the kitchen to make some french toast or a fried egg. The divers start to arrive, 20 mins later we're sitting in the dive boat heading out accross the crystal clear water to the first dive of the day.

London, UK, 2pm: I just realise I haven't had lunch. I go to Pret and buy a sandwich. I take it back to my desk and sit down. I get through half and get called into a meeting.

Gili Air, Indonesia, 11am: Back from the first dive and having a quick snack. Replacing the tanks for the next dive I get told I'm going to be helping teach in the pool after all. I help load the diveboat up for the dive and go back to the dive school to meet the student and to help demonstrate some SCUBA skills in the pool. We're out by 1.30pm so me and Eleanor walk the 10 mins to the centre of the Island where some of the local villagers live, including Johanna who cooks great local Indonesian food for takeaway. We order some food and sit outside her house drinking coke, talking about diving and trying to work out if any of the chickens running around outside yesterday are missing today. Don't think so. We go back to the dive school with chicken and rice.

2.30pm: The 3rd dive of the day goes out and we are both here now just for fun. We jump in the water and sink down together and spend the next hour exploring the nooks and crannies of the coral outcrops in a dive site called Hans Reef, spotting rays, turtles and some massive bumphead parrotfish. As my air begins to get low I unfurl the plastic orange balloon called the surface marker bouy and fill it with air from my mouthpiece. It shoots up through thewater to the surface in a trail of glittering bubbles and bobs there telling the dive boat where we are and that we'll be coming up soon.

London, UK, 8.30pm: Stay late or go home? Decide that the quality of work is going downhill and it's best to go home. Not going to be back until at least half nine so will have to eat something small when I get back. Eat some crisps on the way to the tube.

Gili Air, Indonesia, 6.30pm: Been studying since the diving has finished, got to finish these exams. Can't decide whether to go out and have a nice BBQ fish or a Pizza with the rest of the dive school folk, whether to go around the other side of the island and watch sunset over the volcano on the mainland or whether to go spearfishing so we can have a BBQ tomorrow. Decide on spearfishing, make sure that the locals are ok with this (they don't really like tourists catching their fish but we are living here so it's ok this time). I put on some fins, don a mask and snorkel and swim out into the darkness holding a speargun in the right hand and a torch in the left. While I am playing hunter gatherer, Eleanor is drinking beer on the beach down the road, looking out for my torch in the water a I float past on the current which sweeps down the shore looking for tasty looking, eating sized fish in the torch beam. After 15 mins or so I see one but it's deep. I take 3 deep breaths and dive down about 3 metres to the side of it...down... 7, 8, 9 metres and I'm at the seabed. I level the torch at the fish and it's still there, approaching from the side it is still ignoring me so I take aim...I pull the trigger...the sand explodes around the fish and settles. There's a muffled laugh from the water above me as my spearfishing buddy sees I've missed. Again. I point the light at the surface - it's a long way up and time to go now, I surface slowly, exhaling a dissapointed groan and seeing the phosphorescent alagae light up as I move it with my legs. I burst through the surface and take a huge breath. I start looking again as my fellow spearfisher searches a coral outcrop 7 metres below me. After 3 hours we have enough for a BBQ tomorrow, all the fish threaded onto a line of string and kept afloat by an empty plastic bottle. We swim into shore, stash the fish in a fridge and jump on any bike that's nearby (everyone just borrows everyone's) and cycle in the dark, with no lights, through sand to the bar to meet up with the girls. There's pizza waiting! It turns out that it's not for me. BBQ tomorrow.

That was how most days went, sometimes with some quite big problems or badly trained divers meaning we really had to deal with some tricky underwater situations but this is why we were there and it was great to be able to experience doing this as a job.

The training for the Divemaster qualification was fun and varied - 9 written exams (physics, physiology, dive tables etc etc etc), first aid training and lots of underwater skills which we had to be able to demonstrate broken down into all the important consituent parts as if we were tecahing them and be graded on by all of the instructors in the dive shop before we could pass. Add to that 4 separate swimming tests all timed and graded and finished off by an overall review of your performance and attitude at the end of the internship. This is something I regularly faced in work but despite years of getting used to this I was not prepared for being marked down on my 'professional appearance' because my 'tan lines were so bad'. They were however bad. Really, really bad.

Before any of the divemaster training even begins there is also a 'rescue' course - this involved 5 days of pretty much anything that can get thrown at you being hurled. On one return trip on the boat we were halfway back to the dive school when we heard -

Splash

Splash

Man Over-Board

HEEEEELLLLLLPPPPPP

All simulated but still needing a long swim there, avoiding the 'panicked' diver getting too close and then swimming underneath him to grab his tank from behind, inflate his jacket and then tow back to the boat. Then there was the 'Missing' Diver (again, all simulated), found (by us) unconcious and brought to the surface while their 'buddy' is panicking alongside you and apparently running out of air...

When all of this is passed and the course is nearly over, the hardest test of all is pulled out...after weeks of setting up equipment and helping teach students there's the...'Snorkel Test'. Here, the prospective Divemaster sits on a surface, preferably a bar, and puts a SCUBA mask on, usually blacked out. A snorkel is put in his/her mouth and the subject is allowed 3 breaths before a mixture of, in our case, rum, coke and...beer is poured down the snorkel. How much? No idea, you can't see. That passed and it's time for the celebratory dinner. All the locals we had met, all the boatmen, all the regular divers and dive shop workers all came out that night to Gita Gili bar, we treated the locals and instructors to some beer and food and then proved we still knew our recently acquired, demonstration quality underwater skills by demonstrating to...ahem...music.

The only really different days were a few where we decided to stay on Gili Trawangan, the larger and busier island, for our birthday. We treated ourselves to a 2 floor bungalow with a hot water shower (5 showers and half a bottle of shower-gel for me alone was the best birthday present I have had for a long time) and the end of the pork curfew on this particular island meant bacon for lunch (as well as bacon and egg for breakfast which our friends had smuggled onto our island for the occasion!) followed by and apple pie 'birthday cake' and a night out.

Could stay here forever but next stop, back to India but the south this time for a good friend's wedding. We will write again 10 days, 10 flights and a massive carbon footprint later.