In October 2015 I got married to my beautiful wife Jodie. We picked South East Asia and the wonderful country of Indonesia for our honeymoon.

Indonesia is the world's largest island country with seventeen thousand islands and with 260 million people it is the world's fourth most populous country in the World. Straddling the Equator, it has a tropical climate and is just a daunting sixteen-hour flight, with a three-hour stopover in Singapore, from London.

We booked a trip to the Gili Islands, three small islands off the coast of a bigger island called Lombok. Our guide, Korang, had hired a boat skippered by two local fishermen Roni and Teja. Roni was short, squat and tough looking. He looked harder than a coffin nail. Teja was younger, wiry, but his weather beaten skin told of years on the ocean so I felt safe in their hands.

First we went to Gili Trawangan, the largest of the three. There we snorkelled in a beautiful coral reef. I'd never done that before and when I got in that warm water with all those colorful fish I never wanted to come out. We stayed there for about an hour and moved onto the next island, Gili Air. This time they took us put to the deep ocean to go looking for turtles. I didn't like this part. I'm not the greatest of swimmers and when I jumped in and saw how deep it was I panicked. The water was so clear but I could see all the way down to the bottom. I saw three scuba divers following a turtle on the sea bed. The divers looked mouse-sized to me, that's how deep it was. I didn't like it, so I got out. On route to the last island, Gili Meno, I chatted with Korang about something I was worried about: sharks.

"Hey, Korang, are there any sharks in there?" I asked.

"No, there's no sharks, man."

"Really?"

"The boat scares them."

"The engine's off."

"They were scared before."

I didn't believe him. I read up about places where I'm going; laws, customs and wildlife. I knew that there were sharks there: Oceanic White Tips, Great Whites, Hammerheads, Bull and Tiger Sharks and dozens of smaller species' local to the area. I also knew that an Australian surfer had been bitten on the hand a few months before whilst he was resting on his surf board. Was Korang being untruthful? Maybe, or maybe he genuinely didn't know if there would be sharks at that exact location. How would you know unless you see one?

Jodie and I strapped on our vests, snorkels and flippers and jumped into the water. Teja jumped in too. He was to be our underwater guide. The water was around twenty-five feet deep and clearer than a bottle of Evian and warmer than a hot bath. I loved it. I don't know why, but somehow I felt more exposed here. I think it might have been something to do with the depth of the water. At the reef it was ten inches deep in places and was full of boats and noise so I thought the noise would scare them off. In the open ocean it was so deep and vast and I hardly saw any fish of size so I thought that the sharks would be out further away looking for larger food. Where we were was just perfect for sharks and I had seen a couple of small reef sharks zipping about. I wasn't worried as I knew they were quite timorous.

I was feeling a little paranoid, so I'd swim for about twenty feet, stop, swim in a circle looking behind and below me and move on. Jodie was swimming about thirty feet from me and Teja was about twenty five feet behind me. I'd swim about then break the surface checking on the position of the boat. I could still see it, so was relatively happy.

About thirty minutes in it all changed. Teja swan over to me and said, "We have to go." At first I thought our time was up. "Shark," he said. A power surge travelling at the speed of light hit my brain. My muscles locked as if tasered by a cop. The sky and water turned red as I saw flashes of flesh covered chomping teeth and the slow pop of crushed bones echoed in my ear. Shark. Bloody hell. Seconds after the thunderbolt a slow black feeling crept over me from my crown to the tips of my fingers and toes. This was it, this is what I had dreaded: tired, one hundred yards from the boat and near to a shark scary enough to frighten a guy who knows what he's talking about.

What can I do? What should I do? I've never been in this kind of situation before. Whilst I was thinking about what to do I was fighting the urge to shout 'shark' and swim as fast as I could, cutting people as I flew past them. A voice in my head repeated, "Remain calm, do not scream, do not splash, do not do anything to attract it. I swam over to Jodie and said, "We've got to go, luv."

"Why?"

"Time's up, bubs."

Right so and off we swam towards the boat. Teja took the rear and I went in the middle; two delicious humans in-between Jodie and the Kracken. I hadn't seen it at that stage but from the look on Teja's face I knew it wasn't good. No one batted an eyelid when we saw the reef sharks so I know it's not one of them which means that it's got one of the big four: Great White, Bull, Hammerhead or Tiger. I go with the Tiger because of the earlier incident with the surfer.

Initially I was feeling exposed and terrified. I don't get scared often. I have a job which puts me in danger every day and I know that when I walk out the door each morning that it might just be the day that something happens. That doesn't mean that I'm some swaggering tough guy because I'm not, it just means that I have reached a point in my life where I no longer worry about what is going to happen to me. If it happens, it will happen and there's nothing that I can do to stop it. I don't see the shark, I'm thinking every second it's going to get me, but it doesn't.

We reached the boat and safety. I had a short spell of absolute terror when I realized that I wasn't going to get in as quick as I would like. There was only one set of stairs. I pushed Jodie up saying, "Quickly now, quickly," with increasing panic as Teja came flying out of the water. He grabbed onto a beam five feet above us. I have no idea how he did that. I thought the shark was right there right then. Now. At that point, it was just me and the shark in the water. Now I am in trouble. This was it. I was going to get eaten by a shark and I haden't finished reading the Game of Thrones novels yet. I thought about poor Jodie. She'd waited ten years to get married and when she finally does I die within five days. I watched the water for signs of the shark. Nothing. Where was it? I was hanging off the ladder being pulled by the current. The flippers were making it impossible to climb up the ladder but somehow I managed to get one flipper off. My flipper-less hoof connected with the ladder and with my last squirt of adrenaline I managed to haul myself halfway up the ladder. Roni pulled me up the rest of the way.

I went over to Teja and said extending my arms out wide, "How big?" He laughed and nodded his head. "Tiger?" Another nod. Jodie heard.

"What was that? Was there a shark? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Didn't want to scare you, bub."

"No sharks?" I said to Korang.

He laughed. Roni revved the engine and we started heading back to the mainland. Just as we started Teja shouted and pointed at the water. I looked and saw a long, dark shape glide under the boat like an angel carrying a soul to Heaven. We shared a moment as we looked into each other's eyes. There was no other place I would rather have been at that moment.

"Hey, guys," Korang shouted, "want to go back to the reef for a swim before lunch?"

"You getting in as well," I answered back.

He smiled. Roni and Teja laughed. Jodie looked cross and I thought about what could have been and I was okay with it.