Missing… Presumed Having A Good Time

Just a quick update! On a whim, I decided to go to Sipadan, one of the worlds top dive sites. After a 10 hour bus(es) ride from hell, I arrived in Semporna, coastal town at southern tip of Borneo, and I immediately started studying for my Open Water course. Within 2 hours, I went through the first 3 of 5 modules for the course. The next day, I did 3 dives and loads of skills tests off of Sibuan Island. Sibuan has a gentle beach slope perfect for learning in the open ocean. The island comes to a sharp point where the waves from both sides of the island meet.

The best part of the day was after 2 dives and lunch. I managed to pass the Open Water swim and float test after only learning how to swim about 3 weeks ago on the Perhentian Island. What a relief! Thanks for the Help Alja and Eva. I can’t even believe I did it! I did another 3 dives today up to 18 Meters and tomorrow, I’m going to dive the Sipadan Marine reserve itself with my fresh new Open Water Cert. I hope to see loads of sharks, black tip and white tip reef sharks, leopard sharks, and maybe even some hammer head sharks. Maybe if I’m really lucky, I’ll get to see a Whale shark. I’ve already seen loads of sea turtles and more fish than I can count. Pictures to follow. SWEEET!!

WOW! Sipadan RULES! Seconds after dropping into the water I saw tons of Reef Sharks, Green Turtles and loads of fish! My first dive at South Point off Sipadan was amazing! Visibility of 35-40 meters (that’s like 120feet). Click this link to watch a video of a sea turtle swimming straight at the camera.

This is what diving is all about. The previous 2 days I saw lots of small aquatic life, today, I saw a huge 3 meter Grey Reef Shark (click linkto see video of shark). I have a video of this magnificent creature, but at 12.5MB it’s too large to upload. I also have a nice video of a large sea turtle swimming directly into the camera. If anyone wants to see them, find me on MSN Messenger and I’ll send it to you. Here’s a closeup of a Moray Eel.

On my third dive of the day, we went to “The Drop Off” where the sea literally drops off to a depth of 600 Meters. On the way down, there is a cave that is filled with turtles skelletons. It’s a very deep cave with tons of caution signs not to enter. Unfotunately, the turtles can’t read. The dive instructor and I swam into it until we couldn’t see any more. While we still had some light if you looked up you could see your air bubbles run along the cave’s ceiling like a stream of mercury. Very kewl.

Well, this post is about a month and a half out of order, but it seemed to fit well after my Mt. Batur story of the bastards in Bali. Since I wasn’t able to make the ascent to that pissant little volcano at 1,717 metres (5,633 feet), I decided to climb the tallest mountain in SE Asia instead. Mt. Kinabalu is in Malaysian Borneo (not BASTARD Indonesian Borneo) and stands at 4,095 m (13,436 ft) Wiki Mt. Kinabalu. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my camera to the internet cafe with me tonight. So I’ll give u a link to a site about the climb w/ photos. I’ll post my own when I get a chance.

I arrived in Sabah and gave myself 2 weeks to get a reservation on the mountain. You can’t climb the mountain unless you have a room reservation and they are usually booked out well in advance. I was told that there was no way to just rock up and get a reservation and that I should make a res. at least 1 week in advance. Of course, that would be too difficult for me to do. …What u want me to plan something…? I get to Kota Kinabalu and just happen to meet the brother of a former tour guide in Sabah. What luck! His mom not only picks us up from the airport and gives me a ride into town, but helps me find a place to stay and asks her son to help me get a reservation on the mountain. Chee Hou and I walk over to the agency and within 10 mins we both have reservations for the climb the next day, 25% cheaper than I was quoted by myself. He had wanted to go also, so this was the perfect opportunity for him to go as well.

We decide that we should leave town at 7.30am and head up to the park HQ about 2 hours away in order to get a reasonable start on the ascent. I find 4 other people 2 go up with us to split the cost of the guide and we start at 11am. 4-6 hours is a typical climb from Park HQ to Laban Rata at 3300 Meters (10,000 feet). The only place worth staying on the mountain is the Laban Rata Guesthouse. The others don’t have heat or hot water. The group I was with were a bit slow, so I took a scenic detour while I waited for them and still got to Laban Rata in 4 hours 15 mins. I had been in the Cameron Highlands for the last week training for this climb with much lower mountains, 2000M. But after sitting on islands for the past 3 months, I figured I was gonna need some stamina training in order to summit a 13K foot mountain. I had hiked 3 hours a day while I was in the Highlands and didn’t expect to summit until sometime next week. So I figured I’d get some recuperation time. But no rest for the wicked I guess, I started my climb for the summit the day after I got here. I was pretty tired after reaching the guest house and took a nap at 5.30.

Unfortunately, I woke up to watch a beautiful sunset at 6.30 and couldn’t get back to sleep all night. We “woke up” at 2am and started the climb at 3am. I didn’t want to leave too early because I was woefully unprepared for the cold at the summit. It was 0 degrees Celcius at the top. I figured I could climb the last 3KM with a verticle of 800M in 2 to 2.5 hours in the dark. Except for the fact that all the really slow people left at 2-2.30 in order to reach the summit in time for sunrise, it worked out perfectly. Within 15 mins, I had already caught up to the hordes of people following the path up to the summit and was stuck in a traffic jam worse than any in Bangkok. Fortunately, there were planned rest breaks on the way that got a lot of the slow pokes out of the way and then in the last Kilometer, the trail opened up a lot and I could climb around the others. At 4000KM, I started to get altitude sickness. I was within a hundred meters of the summit and I just had to sit down. I was very dizzy and wasn’t getting enough oxygen. But I could see the sun just starting to crack above the cloud line and forged on to the summit and got a great spot to view the sunrise. I can’t wait to post my pics.

It was one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen. There were clouds all over the place probably 1000M+ under where I was standing. The lighting was surreal, all sorts of reds, oranges, yellows and whites intermixed in a sea of blackness. It worked out perfectly because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stay at the top very long. I was freezing! I asked one of the guys in our group if I could borrow his girlfriend for a few minutes and we huddled together like the penguins in the AntArtic trying to keep their eggs warm. I spent about 30-40 mins watching the night sky’s darkness turn into light and quickly started my descent. I wore everything that I brought up the mountain: 2 pairs of pants, 4 t-shirts, a scarf, hat, gloves and my windbreaker. We got back to the lodge and ate a huge breakfast and then headed down to the bottom. 8 hours later, I was back on solid ground in a minibus back to town. All in all, it doesn’t sound that impressive, but I walked a total of 12Km today with a 4000M+ climb and descent. I’m wiped and going to bed, but I thought I’d share that with you before I went to sleep. G’nite folks.

I decided to go and check out one of the few rain forests in Malaysia that Mitsubishi hasn’t cut down yet. Set in the middle of Penninsular Malaysia, Taman Negara is a massive rain forest preserve where there are tons of mosquitos, rain and forest. As far as animals, I can’t say I saw any except for a few monkeys that we got into a berry fight with. I got hit in the back with a berry so I started to throw berries back at them. One of them started to pee on Ben as we walked underneath him. I guess that’s why they call them Cheeky monkeys.

The only other animals I saw was a snake eating a lizard. Click this link to watch the video. Then use back function to come back to this page. This was probably the highlight of my trip to the rain forest, the food chain at work. We spent about 30 minutes watching this snake slowly devour the poor hapless lizzard. There were some really nice hikes through the forest and a canopy walk.

We also took a 4 hour hike to a really crappy (guana) cave. The cave was very narrow in places, wet and was stuffed full of thousands of bats, literally covered in guana and spiders. I’m not quite sure why this cave was so popular. They often say that getting there is half the fun, but in this case, I’d have to say it was 90% of the fun.

I was told that there’s absolutely nothing to do in Taman Negara after dark. For the most part, that’s true. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. I really wanted a beer after the long hikes, but when we got back to the resort, the bastards wanted 18RM (like $5 for a small draft when my accomodation was only 10RM). So we found the Woodlands resort which only charged 9RM for a beer (at least it wasn’t more than my accomodation). We were only going to have 1 beer there anyway. But 1 beer led to 2, then 3 and that led to 4 which led to 1 for the road. We decided to head back to my room to play some cards and listen to some music with this Belgian girl and this guy she met online to travel with that was totally trying to get on her. Poor fellow. Of course, 1 beer is not nearly enough when your playing cards so Sarah and I decided to go back to Woodlands to get more. Stanley, the manager at Ekoton Lodge, was good enough to give us a ride there. Unfortunately, it was closed by the time we got back so we ended up driving all over town to find an open shop. We finally gave up, but Stanley had a couple bottles of Guinness and a bottle of Vodka that we managed to polish off. Thanks Stanley. Who says there’s nothing to do in Taman Negara after dark?

Long Beach was beautiful at sunrise. The water was warmer than a bath, but a beautiful turquoise green. It’s too bad that I went to Gili Trawangan so early in my Island tour through SE Asia. When you start with your favorite island it’s just so difficult for any island to compare favorably. It’s sorta like meeting the love of your life, leaving her shores and trying to find another that has nice islets, long curving beaches, a couple good sized mountains, good fresh seafood, a relaxed feel yet a healthy bit of sophistication and doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg. Come to think of it, islands and women have a lot in common. Now I just have to find the right island with the right woman and I will have my paradise. (Thailand, here I come!)

That said, let me introduce you to a nice girl at the wrong time, Pulau Perhentian. She has beautiful beaches with soft yellow sand, great snorkeling where you can see hundreds of multi-coloured (translated for my English/Aussie friends) fish, sharks, octopus, and vibrant coral reefs. Her only problem is that she has crappy accomodations at expensive prices. She can’t cook but costs a lot and the worst is that beers are almost the same as 1 night’s accomodation on the love of my life. She certainly was fun, but I knew it wasn’t going to last. I only stayed 6 days with her and had to leave. One can only take so much of beautiful beaches, turqoise waters, good volleyball, good snorkeling and beautiful women.

Although, I have to say that the ample supply of beautiful women kept me on the island longer than I would have without them. We met these great girls from Slovenia on our second night on the island and ended up spending most of the rest of our time with them partying ’til dawn. Hey Anja, Alja and Eva! Hope ur having fun in Bali!

Finally after 4 days, I managed to get some direction and headed out of KL. I got an email from Ben, who I met 2 months before at the Hanoi Backpackers. He said he was heading to the Perhentians so I decided to go to Long Beach to meet up with him. There were a four Brits that were also heading up there so I figured it’d be good to head out with them on the local long distance bus in the middle of the night. It’s usually better to travel in a group especially when u r not sure where u r going to end up at 4am because most individual travelers depend on each other for just about everything.

The bus dropped us off in Jerteh (middle of nowhere) as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. We found ourselves in a dimly lit bus stop with only a few taxis hanging around trying to rip us off for the short trip to the port in Kuala Besut. These Brits were pretty much idiots and had no barganing skills whatsoever so they paid what was asked. The Taxis wanted 20RM(~$6) for the trip when the bus ride all the way from Kuala Lumpur (7 hours) cost 30RM. There were 5 of us and we were not going to fit in 1 taxi with all our packs. The four of them decided to hop in a taxi and head to the pier leaving me on my own. Fair enough, they had been traveling together and really didn’t owe me anything, but come on.

Only complete twats, pictured here, would leave a lone traveler in a dim bus station by himself at 4am and ask him to foot the whole taxi bill by himself instead of splitting 2 taxis btw/ 5 people. I guess they thought it was worth it to save 2RM each (.55 cents) though. All I have to say is Karma. Anyway, by myself, I negotiated the fare down to 10RM and ended up at the ticket office a few minutes after them. Unfortunately, it was 5am and still 2 hours before the first boat. Now lets talk about instant Karma coming to get you. The girls realized that they didn’t have enough money so they had to take a taxi back to the nearest ATM (in Jerteh) and back to get more cash because the island doesn’t have any ATMs. LOL

After almost 13 years, I’ve returned to KL. I didn’t see much of KL the last time I was here because I spent most of my time in KL studying at Poh Gong Temple, a Taoist/Buddhist temple. But since I’m not a big fan of big cities, KL never has had much to offer. The only thing that remotely interested me was the ummm… “tallest twin tower buildings in the world”. They used to claim to be the tallest building in the world, but there is some doubt that it was ever really the tallest since the Sear’s Tower in my home town of Chicago is actually taller 1518ft vs 1483ft if you include the spires on top of both buildings. But in 2004 Taipei 101 eclipsed both for sure at 1670ft, which will soon be topped by a massive 2400+ft building in Dubai.

But I digress.

I find out that they only let like 1000 people up the towers everyday and if ur not in line by 9am, ur not getting up to the observation deck. The funny thing about Petronas Towers is that their observation deck in only 41 stories high on the bottom level of the skybridge. Now since I didn’t have anything else I wanted to do in KL and I was already there at 8:30am, I decided to wait in line to get my ticket to go up to the skybridge at 12:30pm. But all the time I’m thinking to myself that 41 stories is not that high nor very impressive since I’ve been to Taipei 101 already and hell, I’ve lived in a 34th story penthouse suite in Hong Kong set in the mid-levels that were higher than this stupid skybridge.

Fortunately after I finally got a ticket, KLCC mall and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel are in the same complex and they’re air conditioned! If you’re in KL, I totally do not recommend wasting 4 hours of your life to see the “vista” from the skybridge.

Well after 13 years, I have to say I don’t remember much about Kuta except that it’s very different and built out. I remember a bar with nothing but a roof and the lack of 4 walls. Now everything is wall to wall either hotel, restaurant or shop. Which was quite disturbing, but also very nice. I had a great time in Kuta. The beach was the same with it’s famous never ending surf breaks.

I went out into the ocean to body surf the waves, but after about 20 mins. the lifeguard called me back in. The rip current was quite strong and I don’t blame him for calling everyone in. There were times where I actually had to “swim” quite hard to get back in to shore. So at least the beach was just as I remembered it. Prices seemed to creep up over time, but after 13 years, I can’t really blame surfer’s paradise beach for adding .50 cents (double) for a beer. I actually had far too much Rupiah left before I left Indonesia so I ended up blowing 150,000 Rupiah on a steak and a few beers for dinner on my last night in Bali. I figure the Balinese were hurting pretty bad with all the natural disaters, civil strife and terrorism going on in Indonesia, I felt good for helping out the economy.

I can’t figure out why with all the problems they have why they now have a $25 cover charge to get into the country and then only give the few tourists that they get only 30 days to stay in the country. Wtih 17,508 islands in Indonesia, I could stay there for a whole year and not cover but a fraction of the country. Off to Kuala Lumpur only because it was the cheapest way to get off of Bali. I met a surfer that went to KL just for the day to get a stamp and flew right back to Bali.

I know from experience that one can get stuck on an island for quite some time. I over stayed my visa in Thailand a few years back by over 30 days on Koh Phanghan when I stayed just on the island for 45 days. So before that happened again in Indonesia, I decided that we had to leave Trawangan. My visa was running out for Indo in a few days and I had to get back to Bali for my flight to KL. I had to spend at least a few days in Kuta before I left to see how it had changed in the past 13 years.

Instead of paying the exhorbitant prices the tour agencies were charging for a shuttle to Kuta, I decided to take the local way off the island all the way back to Bali so I could stop off back in Padangbai to update my MP3 player. This involved taking multiple local transport modes including the local long boat to Lombok, a cidomo, pony driven cart, to a local bus ‘terminal’ (guy at side of the road with a van) to Mataram and a minivan to Lembar port to catch a car ferry back to Padangbai. We decided to stop a night in Mataram and try to meet up with some people.

I managed to get a case of delly belly in Mataram, capital of Lombok, and had a not so pleasant journey back to Bali the next day. All in all, eventho it was a bit more difficult than sitting on a tourist bus/boat back to Kuta, I managed to get back to Kuta for less than half of what the tourist agencies were charging. And of course, it was more fun interacting with the locals. Although one of those interactions was dealing with the drivers of the “bus” to Lembar trying to rip us off by charging us 30X the local price. They actually tried to grab my bag when I wouldn’t pay them anything but the local price. They threatened to call the police, but when I actually went to the police they said OK.

Of course my favorite island would have to have more than 1 entry for 2 weeks. I liked the island so much, I decided to spend my birthday on it partying at Rudy’s Pub. Jacko kept offering to send me to the moon for free, “no transport needed” with his infamous bloody fresh mushroom shakes on my birthday. But after a week and a half of partying, I was pretty wiped out by the time my bday came around, so I just had a load of beers and some whiskey with a few friends on the island. Jacko wouldn’t even let me pay for my beers that night. In the backpacker world mostly populated by 18-25 year olds, anyone over 30 is a rarity and really just a curiosity to the people wandering around the world on or around the backpacker trail. So celebrating your 38th birthday is quite a bit more than just a mere curiosity. Most people don’t even believe me when they ask me how old I am. Some are a bit freaked out because I’m literally 2x their age. Fortunately, for me, I can still sorta blend in because most people think I look about 27-28. It’s a little difficult to grasp the fact that many of the people i meet travelling were born when I was in high school or after I graduated… and thats how old they are now.

On a side note… It’s a little annoying, but my 3 taboo questions that I never ask anyone is: Where are you from?, What do you do? and How old are you?. Unfortunately, it’s usually the first 3 questions most people ask you when they meet you. I’ve been trying to make a concerted effort to change people trying to pidgeon hole others into a stereotype so they can categorize you and fit you into their ideas of who you are without actually talking to you. (I’ll go more into that on the predominantly Muslim Tioman Island) It’s much more interesting to try and figure out for yourself who they are by talking to people you meet (…and then pidgeoning them into your stereotypes). LOL OK, off my soapbox.

The strange thing about Gili Trawangan at the time I was there was the “large” concentration of Dinosaurs wandering around the island, myself inclusive. From talking to Jamie, we found out that he was on my other favorite island in Thailand, Koh Phanghan, 13 years ago when I was there. Small world, eh?

Simon Picture Welcome to My Paradise is a song by Steven and the Coconut Trees, a Reggae band from Java. It also describes the time I had on Gili Trawangan. After a 5+ hour boat ride from hell bobbing up and down in the choppy sea between Bali and Lombok where people were puking over and onboard, I have arrived in my most recent paradise, Gili Trawangan. We arrived just after dark and needed to find a place to stay.

I just wanted to find a nice quite place where I could chill when I wanted to and not too far from the parties when I wanted to party. I decided to be a nice guy and offered to help a girl that had a particularly difficult time on the boat (think onboard) find a place 2 crash and maybe share a place. We ended up a little ways from the jetty at a nice place called Sagita Homestay. She was feeling a bit rough so I gave her the nice room with a sitter toilet vs the squatter that I got and we’d share a room the next night. We ended up staying there for 2 weeks. This is the type of island that Jimmy Buffett would write songs about. In fact, I think he already did because the weather was certainly here, The skies are too clear, life’s so easy today, The beer is too cold, the daiquiri’s too fruitful, There’s no place like home when it’s this far away. Anyway, I digress. The island was so chill and the people so friendly, it took me 6 days just to bother figuring out how to get off the island. I had a goal of 1 activity a day. It could either be snorkeling, walking around the island, biking around the island, walking over the hill, playing volleyball, or even playing chess with the locals. I made that goal on most days.

A typical day on Gili T would start off with waking up around when I woke up. Sitting out on my porch and listening to my MP3 player thru my speakers while having breakfast for a few hours chatting with Sandy Onboard(remember my disclaimer) or reading a book. Then lunch at a local (not more than 100 meters away) restaurant. After the hottest part of the day, I’d venture out to the beach and go ’swimming’ or lay out in the shade and do some more reading. Somehow or another it would get towards dark and time to shower up for the evening movie and drinks until the weeeee hours of the next morning. This one ‘restaurant’/movie theater showed 2 movies a night with the best “Engrish” subtitles. I’m not sure why, but they invariably had Engrish subtitles for movies in English. They must have hired a non-english speaking person to do the subtitles because every time he didn’t know a word, he used ’soyabean cakes’ instead and evil became ‘the dickens’. So, “that evil perpetrator” would be subtitled as “The dickens soyabean cake”. In fact, the subtitles were the only reason that made watching the remake of The Omen bareable.

Rudy’s Pub Picture After the movie we would invariably work our way down to Rudy’s Pub where Jacko the friendliest bartender in the world would say Welcome Ray, welcome Sandy and put a large Bingtang beer in front of us with 2 chilled glasses. And for some reason, Jacko always made sure it was happy hour prices for me all day. I even helped out behind the bar sometimes. And thus the cycle repeated…

I had heard that there were no ATMs, no banks, and only extortionists mascarading as moneychangers on this island, but the ATM in Padangbai didn’t accept my card and the dive shops wouldn’t give me a cash advance on my Visa. I showed up on the island with a mere million Rupiah. Now that might sound like a lot of money (except for the mere bit), but it’s really only about $100 USD. Fortunately for me, and part of why I love this island so much is that I only spent an average of $15 a day here. That’s including my $4 room with attached bath and breakfast included (emmm….. baaaanaanaaahh pancakes), eating, drinking and any entertainment I might have chosen ie.. snorkeling, movies. Unfortunately, 100/15 = < 7 days on my favorite island. Fortunately I found Simon, a diver that could use his credit card to pay for his dives and happened to have a huge surplus of cash I could buy which held me over for another week in the land of turquoise waters and beautiful sunsets. Sunset Hammock Sunset