Crazymoogle said:
I put on an amulet of magical breathing, and then walked around. The water screws with your movement a little bit but you generally move where you want to and as you enter/exit different bubbles you can see thats in then. Coupled with no enemies follow you out of the bubbles (at least... no enemies that existed since I genocided ; I don't know if they'd be there anyway though and those kinda of enemies would be weak at this point) you have pretty much free reign to walk around un-molested until you happen upon the bubble of the portal by dumb luck.
edit:
I actually *did* initially use the confused/find gold trick as well as put on magical breathing as a precaution until I found that my bubble just sorta... left without me. At which point I just said, 'well... ok then.. screw the bubbles' and just meandered around. The trick didn't end up helping me though because there happend to be a blindfold over the portal square so I eventually happened to step on it and find myself in the final area.