A Couple’s Journey

Just a quick note as Internet service here is only so so.  I know there are lots of people we need to email, so sorry for the delay.  It will probably be around the 17th or 18th before we get to Kuta in Bali, where we will take a break from diving and have plenty of time for personal emails.  We miss you all though!

The diving here is fantastic, that is if you like diving in so so visibility looking for the small and unusual creatures living in the black sand.  There isn’t much in the way of coral but you are rewarded with Pygmy Seahorses, Flaymbouyant Cuttle Fish, Mimic Octopuss, Nudibranchs, Frog Fish and on and on…  There is so many cool things here, way different diving then what we have done up to this point.  Amazing is the only word!  So far this has been the best diving of the trip, not that it hasn’t been great but this is the most interesting.  Especially since some of this stuff you can’t see anywhere else!  The resort is great, food is good and the diving heaven.  What more can you ask for!  Plus we get to meet up with some friends from Koh Tao in two days!!!  We have tons of photos and will post them when we get to Bali.  You will probably have to wait that long for another post!  I can hear you all crying now, but it will be okay, you can just reread what we have written or post comments 🙂

Gotta run/dive!!  🙂

Alright just wanted to post a quick note (Internet isn’t the best here).  We arrived safely in Manado three days ago, boy what a flight, I really do hate flying.  This side of Indonesia is pretty nice, much better than Banda Aceh on the west side of Indonesia!  We were picked up at the airport in Mando and taken to our boat for the 45 minutes to the island we will stay on for a week right in heart of the Bunaken Marine Park! Oh we had a one night layover in Kuala Lumpur thankfully we had enough time to download a few episodes of Heroes, House, Prison Break and Chuck.  We need something to do when we aren’t diving!  The resort here in Bunaken is pretty nice, way better than Pulau Weh.  The rooms are not as nice as Pulau Weh but the food and dive boats are much better.  The diving is pretty nice too!  The view from the resort at sunset is fantastic, nice volcano which the sun sets right next too!  Plus we can freely drink beer and eat during the day!!  Much different than Pulau Weh!  We will be here till Friday and then off to Lembah Straits which is the other side of the island we are staying on.  There we will meet up with about 8 people we dove with in Koh Tao so it should be a pretty nice reunion!  We will try to post more in a few days also maybe actually respond to some emails!!  Miss you all!

Oh the current that is Pulau Weh!  Since our last posts we have been basically alternating between dives with current and dives without.  Once we went to a site called something drift, obviously to do a drift dive and there was no current!  Go figure!  Well Mark, Deb and Maryanne are getting better diving in the current, however we have learned that I am shit in the current!  Twice I have had to end a dive, once because just getting to the bottom I was breathing hard and could never catch my breathe once down there which really freaked me out, so that dive lasted all of 12min to include a 3 min safety stop.  Luckily the rest of them came up and said the current made the dive not so fun anyway.  Then today the current proved too much for me as well.  This morning we were supposed to do a check dive to 45 meters for our dive on the wreck.  So we hop overboard and swim like crazy down by the time we got to 30 meters the current was too strong to make it to the wall and drop to 45 meters.  While everyone was close to the guide I was taken far down current no where near the wall, oopss.  I really struggled just to get to the bottom of this ledge to grab a hold of some rock to hold onto since there was no way I could kick upstream to get to the group.  I could see Maryanne looking around trying to find me but I was 25 meters away (not good in a current)!  Finally they started swimming towards me, once Maryanne was close I had caught my breathe but wasn’t excited about the dive so yeah I ended that dive.  Maryanne and I drifted off into the blue to do our safety stop, well that proved tricky!  We got stuck a few times trying to swim up during times of down current!  Then during our safety stop we were bouncing between 3 and 7 meters.  Once to the surface we were so far from the boat we had to use our whistles like crazy to get the boat to see us since we drifted so far away!  I did learn two things though, one I suck in the current and two if you wear a wetsuit you need to add more weight!  Here is not like Koh Tao it is a little too chilly for me so I thought I would just wear a wetsuit.  Well I didn’t compensate enough for the extra bouyancy, duh!  So I was working harder to get down then everyone else!  At least now I know, that I don’t completely suck at diving in a current!  We are getting a workout for sure, definetely no 5 dives a day here!  Read the rest of this entry »

Well I will start this out with how things have been going since we got here and end it with my dive from Hell.  So we are on Palau Weh, Indonesia. This island is beautiful and our room at Lumba Lumba is absolutely amazing and the animals around the place are great.  We have goats, dogs, cats, cows, Kamodo Dragon and crabs just to say a few that hang out right out side our door.  So we are not missing any wild life.  The resort would probably a four star if we had hot water and AC, but we are managing well without them.  So we have cool things on land and then go diving and see all the marine under the water! The shore diving alone is amazing, you can pretty much pick up a fish guide and we saw something from every page! Last night we did a night dive the current was not fun at all but we did see a beautiful White Tip shark. I felt a little sorry for it though because we were a big group and it ended up getting pinned against the reef with all of us watching it. We of course then  moved out of its way after a while realizing that it was getting scared.  I dont want to know what would happen once it got to a panic state.   It was great though to be so close to it.  The diving here is alot different then Koh Tao that is for sure.   We see some great things but the currents are very unpreditable here.  We have had a bit of the washing machine effect where you are down at 10 and then wham you are up at 4 meters and then back down to 8 meters in a matter of seconds, definately not a good thing.  But nothing perpared me for the dive that I had today.  So let me tell the story: Read the rest of this entry »

Boy is it tough to call home from a small little island in northern Indonesia!  Sorry about that dad but it was good to hear your voice!

Alright the trip here was awful!  We left Boreno two days ago to head back to KL.  When we got there we had to actually go to town to pick up some supplies, which happens to be an hour away from the airport!  We were really tired by the time we got in so pretty much just crashed.  However we did have to take the elevator one at a time, since our gear was to heavy says the manager 🙂  So the next day we get what we need and head back out to the airport.  The flight was alright, still think flying sucks.  When I die I am going to find the Wright Brothers and punch them in the nose!  🙂  Once at Banda Aceh the starting point for our journey to Pulau Weh, we saw the difference between were tourists go and where very little tourists go!  Okay granted the tsunami came through in 2004, but it was so not what we had expected.  Again we had another hour ride from the airport to our hotel, which we had only quickly research before deciding to stay there.  Well the outside of the hotel looked as if it would be pretty nice, it had tons of rooms but I think about 8 guests!  The rooms were rough for sure, there wasn’t even a sink in the bathroom and no shower.  Just a facet to fill up a little bucket to pour over yourself!  After several days of travelling I was smelling pretty awful, Maryanne wouldn’t let me lift my arms!  So I tried to take a shower but the water that came out smelled worse than me! Thankfully Maryanne had some clean wipes so there was my shower!  We didn’t stay in the room for long as we were hungry and wanted to try to find out where we were going to catch the ferry to Pulau Weh!  Both proved to be very difficult tasks and not many people speak english here!  We were near the river that feed into the ocean so we thought we would just follow it down and have a look for ourselves since the hotel stay hadn’t heard of Pulau Weh, really the big freakin island that all westerns go to to dive, you never heard of it??!?!?!?  So after a 5 mile hike we still couldn’t see the ocean, so lets get something to eat.  We tried to get a taxi to the ferry just to see where it was at and then Pizza Hut (we saw a sign and got excited).  Well they wanted to charge us more than the hour long ride from the airport so we were back to walking!  After about an hour of aimlessly walking around we found Pizza Hut.  Okay for those of you who don’t know it, it is currently Ramadan.  So if you are in a predominately Muslim country almost nothing is open and food isn’t served till sundown.  Not thinking these people would break fast a Pizza Hut we thought it was a good choice.  Boy were we wrong the place was packed and had a long line of people waiting.  Luckily there was an A&W nearby, it is fast food so there shouldn’t be much of a line.  Now that we are feed we were off to find an internet cafe to find out where we were in relation to the ferry.  Come to find out two key things, one the reason why no one knows Pulau Weh is cause the locals call it Spidackadk or something like that.  Secondly no one really knows when the ferry leaves, some websites say 9, 930 or 10am.  They also say the ferry is 15 – 45 min outside the city!!  So no real help there.  We head back to the hotel which was only about 10 min from the hotel come to find out, man if we had only gone right instead of left when we left the hotel!  Well at least we burned off all the calories we just put back into our bodies!  Once at the hotel we ask the same lady about Spidancks and she says “oh Pulau Weh” Maybe it was our accents she couldn’t understand !@**&@#!!! She kindly arranged a taxi for us at 745 even though  she said the ferry leaves at 10 and is only 15 min away.  So the next morning we got in the taxi for our 45 min ride to the ferry which leaves at 930!!!!  Gotta love travelling!  Once to the island we had a nice pretty hour drive to the part of the island where we are staying!  Why everywhere seems to take an hour I have no idea!  Lumba Lumba is fantastic, the rooms are great and man what a view.  We even have cows, goats, chickens and dogs roaming around.  Today we are just recovering, can’t wait to dive tomorrow!

 Alright in this last one, I might have gone overboard protecting myself from the critters at night!!  LOL  And I still got bit by a leech! 

Jade – The monkeys are cute aren’t they? 

Well we left Seaventures Platform to a nice farewell from the staff, we sure are going to miss it there!  However we were headed to Sepilok and the orangatang reserve to see the nice orange monkeys!!  The trip was over 4 hours long by taxi it was about 500RM but worth it for the 4 of us and all our gear!  Each of us not only has our day pack but also our backpack and a dive bag.  I think total all our gear comes to about 40 – 50kg per person!!!  I wish we would have taken up darts instead lol!  Anyway after a really long ride we finally made it to Sandakan!  Here we spent the night as the Sepilok Resort was going to be picking us up around 830 the following morning.  Oh back to the ride, I think we saw every type of palm tree in the world!!  Okay I am sure not every one but close.  Mom and Dad you would have loved it.  I can’t wait to go back and explore more of Borneo.  Anyway after a sleepless night, it is Ramadan so call to prayer late at night and early in the morning kept us awake.  I think the speaker for call to prayer was right out our window!!  Unlike the middle east were call to prayer is short, here it goes on forever!  Oh well!  We got picked up and off to the resort!  Wow what a place, nice manicured lawns, good food and a lovely bungalow.  We even had a proper bath tube!   We were in walking distance to the reserve were we made it in time for the morning feeding.  These guys are so so cute!!  They are just babies and teens, very playful!  During the afternoon feeding one jumped up on the rail and got within arms reach of us!  That night we did a night walk through the reserve as our resort was right next to it.  It was pretty boring, but still nice to walk around at night.  Maryanne did have a leech land on our hand that freaked her out, so we had a nice laugh about that!  Later I found one on my hip, okay I never saw it just found a lot of blood on the bed!  It was a nice place.  That afternoon, we headed to the airport for our flight to KL.  We will sure miss Sabah Borneo and will anxiously await our return visit.  Today we fly out to Banda Ache in northern Borneo, lets hope it is a nice gentle flight! 

PS welcome home Mom and Dad can’t wait to hear about your trip, we will try to give you a call this weekend from Pulau Weh!

Jade – We will get the pictures of the Orange Monkeys posted this weekend for you!!

<Well the flight over here sucked really bad, not only did we have to wake up at stupid o’clock in the morning, the turbulance was awful!  I know Maryanne, Mark and Deb all enjoyed it but it freaked me out for the whole flight!  Thankfully we made it in one piece! Borneo is so beautiful, we had a hour and a half drive to the ferry were we saw almost every type of palm tree there is.  Okay probably not every type but pretty darn close!  There was a bit of rain on the ferry ride to the dive platform, but luckily we out ran it and had a nice sunny arrival.  The boat pulled up to the bottom of the platform where they lowered the lift to bring us up!  How cool!!  We dropped our gear off, and straight up set it up for our check dive in an hour!  Quickly we ran up stairs put our stuff in the room and then back downstairs for a quick lunch.  Then we headed under the platform which gets down to about 16m.  Wow there were loads of Scorpian Fish of different sizes and colors, 1/2 meter long crocodile fish, common and spotfin lionfish, moray eels, a frog fish out swimming around, bumphead parrot fish, 3 big box fish!  Plus tons of the usual fish, wow what a dive!  Everywhere you looked was something that used to be hard to find in Koh Tao but here is all over!  After an hour surface interval we were back in the water to Mabul to a site called Paradise!  Another great dive seeing Yellow Trumphet Fish, Razor fish, Leaf fish, 2 large cuddle fish, jaw fish, turtles, nudis, pipe fish, box fish, scribbled file fish, puffers, box fish!!  The diving just gets better and better!  After the dive came back to the platform setup our gear for our night dive! An hour later! Can’t believe we got in three dives on the first day!  Oh yeah and the best part besides the 4 of us there was only one other diver!!  We had the place to ourselves, the weather is sunny and warm and visibility quite good.  After a small dinner we crashed since we had to be up early for our dive at Sipadan!  Woke up the following day to Maryanne being sick 🙁 so no diving for her in the morning.  I know she was really upset not to go diving.  So Mark, Deb, Frank other diver and I headed to Sipadan.  The water was flat and the sun was out for our 20 min boat ride.  Our first site was Baracuda Point, not many baracudas though.  However it was a nice wall that dropped off to 600m, so you had to be sure not go too deep 🙂 Visibility was 20-30m and we saw plenty – sharks, seal puffers, fire gobies, octopuss, many types of angel fish, eels, bannerfish and many types of triggers.  After a snack on the beach we jumped back in to do a nice wall drift dive!  The coolest thing we saw was probably Turtle Tomb, which is a huge cave in the wall at about 21m that holds many skeletons of turtles.  We didn’t go in far enough, but is was still amazing.  On the way out there was the biggest turtle I have every seen sleeping against the wall!  There was also clown trigger fish, Napolian Wrasse, Magpie and Harlequin sweetligps, blotched porcupine puffer, seal puffers!  Amazing can’t even describe it!  That was only in the morning we still had three more dives that day!  All just as good! 

Today had to be the best visibility wise 30 to 40m at Sipadan.  Turtles, turtles and more turtles!  Wow Travis and Yvonne this reminded us of that snorkel in the Maldives behind your bungalow, but with three times the amount of fish!  I tell ya even the safety stops are amazing to see the loads of differnt types butterfly, juvenile triggers, parrot fishes, wrasses, puffers, box fish.  This is so not Koh Tao, there is no hunting for stuff to see it is out in the open!  Incredible

Below is some pictures that our friend Mark took of the Dives here in Sipadan. Enjoy!

Here are some photos of the Perhenthians, KL and 2 from Koh Tao.  We have been in KL for a few days now, waiting for our flight on Wed. The plan was to be here for a few days cause our Visa for Indonesia was supposed to take 3 days.  Well it turned out that we could get it in 1 day (one day being a full day).  Of course I wasn’t allowed into the embassy cause I had shorts on, what crap!! I can go all over the middle east in shorts but not the Indonesian Embassy… Thankfully we had to go get copies of a bunch of things as well as go online to print out our tickets so they know we are leaving their country.  So I was able to buy a pair of pants for when we went back.  Alright so we got everything done, so time for Nandos!!  Well wouldn’t you know it they don’t have Chicken Strips and Fries, only rice, plus they had no hommous or lentil soup and rolls!  What crap!!  At least Starbucks is next door and I can get a White Chocolate Mocha, nope they don’t have them in this country!!!  Man KL sucks!! Okay it isn’t all bad but man they don’t have anything I want.  I couldn’t even get buttered popcorn at them movies!!!  The one good thing is that we have internet in the room at the hotel!  Oh and so much for sightseeing as this weekend is there National Day, something like 50 years so it jammed packed with people.  Not really the time to go out and about in the city.  I so can’t wait to go to Borneo!!!  Enjoy the photos

Well what a sad time leaving Koh Tao, but it was time.  Thank you so much Steve for coming to the pier to see us off, you are going to be missed! 

After a nice long train ride from Chumpon to the Thai border, we had an interesting time trying to get a taxi to Kuala Busit.  They wanted to charge us more than we wanted to pay but we had to do it in order to make the last ferry to the Perhentians at 5.  Well not only did the taxi guys (Yes we had to take two taxis cause we had so much luggage!), they drove like mad to get us there in time, phoned ahead to hold the ferry and stopped so we could get money!  What nice people in this country!  Alright so we get to the ferry and the boat driver I think was trying to set a record for getting to the island.  We so thought the speed boat was going to break.  Word to the wise if you come here make sure you have a place booked.  After getting our stuff on the beach, they ladies went off to find a place.  After 4 places they were either booked, nasty, too expensive and one was okay.  Well we checked a few more and nothing so went back to the one that was okay, but unfortunately one room was already taken 🙁 so Mark and Deb took that room and we took the expensive room.  Well aside from us having AC and two big beds, paying three times what Mark and Deb paid, thier room was way nicer.  Oh well the next morning we checked out the other side of the island which was a bit of a hike, but managed to find the Dive Center we wanted to dive with and some great cheap rooms!  Oh I forgot to mention, our gear is heavy as hell.  Not too bad when there is a road, but dragging it across the beach about killed me.  I told Maryanne to only take one and that I could manage with my bag and both dive bags.  I am so not 21 anymore, I about had a heart attack three times going the 500m down the beach!!  Luckily we are on a quieter side of the island and I didn’t have to carry my bags too far.  Although the steps up to our place on the hill is quiet a workout!  We are so going to lose some weight here! 

So we did one dive yesterday and man was it awesome!  Rays, Giant Moray Eel, nudis, whip coral shrimp, one Bump Head parrot fish and just had a wonderful dive. Todays dives were just as good well most of them anyways. We did our first dive of the day in a bay and it was really nice.  We say Scribble file fish, a giant moral eel, 2 box fish and a bunch other things… Next we went to a wreck the visablity was not so good and it had a current from hell.  We saw some great stuff like big puffer fish, a lion fish, baby sharks and tons of Barracuda but the dive was really not the best.  Fighting the current and having to stay close together was making me feel very closterphobic.  But we ended the day great our last dive of the day was at a laguna and it was absolutely amazing… hump head parrot fish, Moral eels, 2 beautiful Turtles, cleaner shrimp,  Clown fish,  and so so much more it was a nice relaxing dive for 75 mins.    Lets just say we are really enjoying the diving.   Cant wait for tomorrow.