Slinging it out of Singapore

This is the end of the road for Timmy's Travels - the end is nigh. Tonight I fly back to good ol' SA. The rat race awaits!

Wends and I had a great time lurking around Kuta in Bali over the last week or so. We had planned to venture back down to the Bukit Peninsula, to Dreamland and the like, but never really mustered up the energy. Between my bouts of piss poor attempts at surfing and Wendy's determination to meet every guy in The Bounty we were in a perpetual haze of hungover exhaustion. We did manage to curb Wendy's natural compulsion to buy every dress on sight (note I said "curb" not "stop")... though I think this was more to do with babalaas than anything I ever said.

The lovely duo of Olivia and Danny (met in Bali and rejoined in the Gili's) provided plenty of back-up, meaning I could retreat out of the nightclubs a little before the sunrise they were all determined to see and still leave the little sister in good hands - thanks girls! It was also really good to meet up with Funky, James and Claire again, its amazing how the same great faces keep popping up in so many different places. Note the rhyming in that last sentence... Wends and I have just been sipping Singapore Slings at the Raffles Hotel here in Singapore and I'm feeling duly creative.

Wends takes in a famous Singapore Sling at its home, the Raffles Hotel. Asked if she wanted another one she replied: "I'd rather buy a house..."

One of the lovely colonial style streets lined with flash cars and backed by skyrise buildings. Typical Singapore.

We landed here in Singapore yesterday afternoon and have so kindly been offered the opportunity to freeload with Caitlin, a fellow Maritzburgian. We joined her for dinner at one of the famous hawker centres last night which was great. Today Wends and I have just been doing some of the more well-known walking routes around the city including Chinatown and the Colonial waterfront. Tonight we'll explore Little India as I only fly out at 2am. Tomorrow Wends flies to Bangkok to start her own little solo adventure.

Its been a truly wonderful and incredibly memorable year. The places I've seen have been tremendous, nearly matching the fantastic people I've met. I not even going to try to write a worthy conclusion, but it'll suffice to say... "Its been real!"

A shopping storm is brewing

I think another little update and some photos are overdue. Wends and I are back in Kuta, Bali now after a great 5 days on Gili Trawangan and a short stay in Seminyak. I really enjoyed some chill-out time on the Gili's, but there was the odd party going on to keep my relaxation in check too! I'll never look at mushrooms in the same way ever again...

The sole means of transport on Gili Trawangan, the elaborately decorated horse cart.

Our upmarket digs on the island, Pesona Cottages, complete with beachside pool!

The beach on Gili Trawangan, looking back toward Lombok, with Gili Meno on the left.

The trip back was a long one but Wends and I are now accustomed to motorbiking on these roads now so we actually enjoyed the journey. On getting back to Bali we decided to go and check out the more upmarket beach scene at Seminyak, further up the coast from Kuta. Its a bit out of season now so we didn't really get much bang for the extra bucks, we even ended up partying back in Kuta last night.

It looks like we'll now stay here in Kuta for the remainder of our time in Bali, with the odd surfing day trip down to Dreamland or the like. The surf here in Kuta is disgusting, maybe we've just been unlucky but I fail to see how it ever became famous. Wends is shopping up a storm here so it'll be impossible to move her. She hasn't yet mastered the art of bargaining so I have to try keep an eye on her; she set an all time record for a price paid for a sarong in Lombok and hasn't improved much since. We are yet to have any form of fight though, which will come as a surprise to my folks! We're very different in our tastes but we seem to find common ground easily enough. I'm thinking I can give her some cash and send her out to do my Christmas shopping while I go surfing or watch the rugby... see, compromise is easy!

Its time for an afternoon siesta now. Wooz had me clubbing until some ungodly hour last night and then my determination to surf had me up early (though sleeping in would have seen me find an equal number of catchable waves!).

Lombokke!

Okay, so we're not actually on Lombok anymore, rather on one of the Gili Islands off Lombok's northwest coast, but after the Sprinboks' demolition of the poms last night I had to throw that title in!

Wends and I arrived here on Gili Trawangan yesterday morning. Its a gorgeous little island with beautiful white sandy beaches and coral reefs packed with turtles (my first snorkelling sortie found three). There are also a plethora of bars and cafes on the beach so it should be a blast. True to my style I checked us in to a very good value for money bungalow, recommended by a mate, right on the sand - but it is a little away from the action. This is not Woozle's style. As of 12 noon today we will be breaking the budget and staying at a great spot in the thick of things (with a pool!). I guess I should live it up a little in my last 2 weeks.

And I was in the front row of one of the pubs last night at 3am, waving my flag, to watch the Boks. How satisfying...

The walking wounded

Wends and I are in Sengigi for a night before we head over to the Gili islands tomorrow for a bit of R&R. We only planned to make the trip up here tomorrow, but since we were unable to surf today we thought we might as well get the mileage done a day early.

With our surfing careers skyrocketing in spectacular fashion, with the inevitable lucrative sponsorship deals on the imminent horizon, we have both unfortunately been sidelined by injury. Wends managed to "sit on too many books" (her ass is well red...), getting a touch sunburned while lying on her board (that's what you get for perving over the surfer boys instead of catching waves Wooz!).

I myself got thumped by a tsunami and re-tore an old shoulder injury (sustained while snowboarding in the 2002 Winter Olympics, or thereabouts) and stubbornly refused to get out of the water and made a right mess of myself as a result.

Besides the injuries, the surfing in Kuta was a lot of fun. The area around there is really picturesque and as the surf breaks are offshore we had to hire a fishing boat to take us out each day, which adds to it all. We also had a surfing guide/coach in the form of Mole - a legendary youngster from the surf shop in town. We may even decide to head back down there after the Gili's.

I would love to include a photo or two here but I'm waiting till Wends drops her guard and I can snap a photo of her on her new motorbike. She managed to hire a bright pink one and its quite a sight when the bright pink surfboard is attached! Only Wooz...

Surf's Up... somewhere.

Well, Woozle arrived as scheduled on Thursday, and was immediately ushered into the swing of things by my picking her up on my motorbike (clutching her six bags of luggage and thirteen surfboards...).

Our plan was then to spent the last three days surfing here in Kuta, Bali. Unfortunately there has been a distinct lack of any waves. We really are desperate to get into it so hired another bike for Wooz and missioned down to Dreamland beach to find some surf. Whilst it was gorgeous down there I have seen bigger waves on Midmar dam! I was very impressed though with Wends' enthusiasm and determination to learn to ride a motorbike... in some of the most chaotic traffic I've ever scene. She's been a star.

Dreamland beach. Check out those massive waves at this famous Bali surf spot!

At the entrance to Dreamland beach. At least we are starting to look the part if nothing else!

Wends at the Uluwatu temple near Dreamland.

After a very chilled night in a small backpackers in Dreamland we gave up the dream and chose to head inland to Ubud as we figured we might as well check out some of the interior whilst the beach was a no go. A mate of mine from diving in Pulau Weh, Funky, met up with us in Dreamland and joined us. The ride out there was highly eventful with numerous wrong turns, many stops for directions, and even a little bribery and corruption after we apparently ran a red light... Ubud, however, was worth a bit of effort and we all enjoyed the night we had there. I have even started my art collection with a lovely and relatively inexpensive painting.

Funky gets into a scrap with one of locals in Ubud.

Tomorrow Wends' and I have decided to head over to Bali's neighbouring island, Lombok. I've been told beaches around the south are very beautiful and a good place to get in some more secluded surfing. Tourist transport over there is pretty pricey so we've chosen to hire motorbikes again for the trip - I just hope they let us take them across on the ferry. We'll probably be out of touch for a while, but I do plan for us to be on the Gili Islands come the night of the 14th for the Springboks v England rugby game - I'm not missing that one!

A photographic negative entry

One of the new techniques I learned while diving around Komodo was the negative entry. When the currents are really strong you need to get down to the reef asap to avoid being swept away. That means no bobbing around on the surface etc. I enjoyed the little rush of adrenalin it affords, but its seems an appropriate term to use here too... I need to get some some overdue photos down quickly before Wends arrives and we're swept away on the next adventure.



Playing games off the mast of the Perama boat.

An afternoon of strenuous sailing on the Perama boat...

I woke up early and found the sunrise revealing the mountains of Komodo Island.

At the entrance to Komodo National Park, with my "special stick"in hand to fight off the dragons...

Mean!

This would make a good advert for Coca Cola...

The coke crates give a good idea of the size of these things.

They seem so slow, but they can move really quickly when they need to.

Ooh, he's coming right towards me...

And veers off at the last minute... (obviously checked out my guns!)

Timmy, with a dragon sneaking up behind...

The Perama boat, and attendant dive boat, off Komodo's Red Beach.

The pink coral sands of Komodo's Red Beach.

A guide looks out for dragons on Rinca.

The view from my bungalow in Labuanbajo.

The beach bungalows on Seraya Island.

Nuss, the irrepressible dive boat skipper.

The famous Komodo dive site of Batu Bolong.

Mantas, Geckos, and a Muslim Mosque

I'm once again penning away in my notebook whilst I lurk in Labuanbajo, this time waiting for my flight back to Bali, and also for the massive doses of nitrogen in my blood to escape. My dive computer says I'm only allowed to fly later this evening, while my flight is at 3pm, but its a Finnish contraption so I figure its just being typically conservative.

True to expectations, the last 3 days of diving I've had have been tremendous. We've done such a variety of different dives and I've enjoyed them all. Yesterday in particular was a great send off. Our final dive had us swimming (I personally was simply gliding of course) behind a beautiful Manta ray for a good ten minutes, and then just as we were about to surface it came back out of the deep, swimming right up to my face, almost as if to give me a goodbye kiss...

I really was hoping to get a good sleep-in today but the varied calls of religiosity in this town make that pretty difficult. At 4 am the mosque down the road starts its call to prayer (with a loudspeaker positioned under my pillow). Another mosque on the other side of town then takes up the challenge, before the two catholic churches wake up and start the bells a tolling! Its all very atmospheric actually and I've kind of gotten used to it now. I still wake up at four but manage to get back to sleep... usually. Now, we get geckos back home, but they're the quiet little types. Here the source of their name is made very apparent - the little monster above my bed started up his "GE-KO"ing at every opportunity this morning, lest I ever forgot he was there. I wonder if gecko is good to eat...

Before i forget, thank you to all of you who responded so kindly to my little hint and deposited such generous sums in my bank account. Much appreciated. But unfortunately it seems I've been out of touch with the world of finance for a bit too long, and with the impending arrival of the shopping virtuoso that is Woozle, I'm going to need a much stronger currency... Pounds Sterling will be fine next time. Thanks.

I'm looking forward to Wendy's arrival tomorrow, and I think I'm prepared. I've hired a small truck to meet her at the airport so we can transfer her luggage to the hotel. And hopefully she doesn't get charged too much extra for bringing in her seven surfboards; only Wends has a matching bikini/surfboard combo for every day of the week...


A sunrise over Sumbawa island from the deck of the Perama boat en route to Komodo.

My first dragon on Komodo... Aargh!

Getting ready to take the plunge just north of Komodo, with Mantas spotted on the surface...

One of the gorgeous beaches around the Komodo Islands.

'Ere be Dragons (Part II)

I’ve got an afternoon here in Labuanbajo with nothing to do (shock, horror), so was hoping to be able to do a little blogging, but unfortunately the sole internet connection apparently only works in the early morning. This post is thus being written in my little notebook from the comfort of an armchair on my veranda overlooking the Flores Sea. If you’re reading this I’ve obviously managed to retype and load it.

I may get lucky, but in all likelihood I won’t be able to upload any photos. I’ll thus try to elaborate on my descriptions of where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to; this assuming that you actually read my ramblings and don’t just scan through the pictures going: "Ooh, that’s nice...". Heck, maybe I don’t read the emails you all so kindly send… maybe I just scan them in the hope you’ve included a note to the effect you’ve deposited USD xxx in my bank account. So far no luck on this front, but there’s still a month to go...

I mentioned briefly in my last post that I’m now on the island of Flores, specifically the town of Labuanbajo, a base from which I’ve been exploring and diving around the Komodo Islands. Flores is the largest of a string of islands known together as Nusa Tenggara. These islands stretch from Lombok in the west (next door to Bali) across to East Timor. I’m roughly in the middle right now. The Perama boat from Lombok took 3 days and passed along the northern coast of Sumbawa Island for most of the journey before arriving at Komodo Island, as I said before. From Komodo it was a few hours sailing, past Rinca, on to Labuanbajo.

The 2 days of diving I did at the sites around Komodo and Rinca were spectacular and warrant my forking out for another 3 days worth. The diving is so good, and so different, because of its situation. The hundreds of small islands in this chain form a sieve through which the warm waters of the Pacific and the cooler waters from the depths of the Indian Ocean are forced and mixed. This mix has developed an amazing array of marine life, and also causes incredibly strong currents that make the diving much like an underwater rollercoaster ride!

As a break between my two stints of diving I spent two nights out on a small island called Seraya. There really wasn’t much else to do there except enjoy the gorgeous views from my bungalow on the sand and chill. Okay, okay… I confess… I was actally planning on doing some fishing (but don’t tell the folks at the dive shop – fish are our friends!), but this is what happened:

Imagine my delight when I arrived on the island to find a perfect shallow sand bar stretching out from the beach for 70m before dropping off into very deep water, and a quick look via snorkeling revealed huge schools of jackfish and kingfish patrolling the area! This is what I’d been lugging my flyrod around the world for. I quickly fitted my rod together, pulled out some line, selected a perfect little deceiver pattern and prepared to cast. At that moment a school of jackfish was moving toward me, I could even see their scythe-like tails through the clear water! I had my fly arching over them in a second and was about to land the perfect cast when… (insert your choice of expletive here – just make it a good one!). My rod snapped. Right at the base, making it irreparable. Hell, insert another expletive for good measure!

But, we’ve always got a silver lining filed away somewhere. This time it was that I got to do some awesome snorkeling along the drop-off, even coming face to face with a spotted eagle ray. And I finally got to make some real headway into the adventures of "Hai mian bao bao" (SpongeBob Squarepants).

I really wish I could get some photos uploaded to show how beautiful these islands are. They’re not the palm-fringed, tropical type you see in postcards. The land is much drier, almost barren. But the sea is the most exquisite blue... rather "all" the most exquisite "blues" you can imagine. And the sky is clear all day, with equally dramatic sunrises and sunsets at each end.

It wasn’t the scenery, or even the diving, that first lured my thoughts to these islands though. That honour firmly belongs to the dragons. (And the fact that I’m still bumbling through The Origin of Species is honestly coincidental in its timing). I’ve always wanted to see those massive lizards, and it feels really good to have achieved one of those "lifelong" ambitions. The Komodo dragons really are as impressive as they’re made out to be. The males I’ve seen have been around 3m in length, but its their girth that I find so impressive. A monitor lizard can grow to 2m, but that’s where the similarity ends, these guys are the Os du Randt of lizards! It was good to keep in mind that they eat over 40kg of meat each week and have killed humans, locals and tourists, even recently. Scary stuff, and I’m not even going to get started on the Wild Chickens...

I’ve still got 4 awesome days left here, but it’ll be sad to leave it for the hustle and bustle of Bali. But I’m also excited to see what adventures Woozle and I will get ourselves into...

'Ere be Dragons

I've managed to find the only working internet connection on the island of Flores in eastern Indonesia. Its via cell phone so please excuse an only brief update.

From Sumatra I flew via Jakarta to Bali. After one night there I got a bus and ferry across to Lombok island where I joined a boat bound for Flores. The sailing trip was awesome, despite my having to sleep on the deck. We got to stop for some great snorkelling along the way and the sunrises and sunsets over the islands were spectacular. We also had to chance to stop off at the famed island of Komodo to see the dragons - they are huge!

Over the last 2 days I've also been diving around the Komodo islands. The currents are immense so it makes for exhilarating stuff - and I've seen my first ever Manta Rays and Mandarin fish. I also got to have a stop on Rinca islands yesterday to see its dragons too.

This morning I head out to a remote little island for 3 days R&R, then I plan to come back to Flores for 3 days more diving before flying back to Bali to meet up with Wendy.

Pulau Weh?

I'm back! Well, as much as being in Medan counts as being in civilisation that is...

I was hoping on being able to fly all the way across to Bali today but a stuff-up at Banda Aceh airport means that'll have to wait till tomorrow. I've requested a spot on a boat bound for the island of Flores that leaves Lombok on the 25th and visits the Komodo islands en route. But before getting to that adventure let me explain where I've been since my last rambled posting from this same cafe in Medan.

I flew, as planned out, to Banda Aceh last Thursday and spent the night there in a homestay recommended by a Danish guy I met on the plane. That meant I got to avoid the expensive hotels I mentioned. And I was right about the NGO's by the way. Whilst I'm sure some are doing great work, most seem to have spent your donated money on lovely compounds in amongst the rubble. And there's still a lot of rubble; ferries can still be found in areas tens of miles from the sea for example. The devastation must have been horrific, the whole area is barely above see level and the tsunami smashed everything all the way up to the mountains about 50km inland, and then smashed anything that was left on the way back down.

On Friday morning I caught the ferry out to Pulau Weh, after a good 3 hours in the harbour coffee shop as it was independence day and the boat was duly delayed. But Pulau Weh was gorgeous. I initially headed to Gapang Beach as I'd been recommended a dive shop there by the guys in Borneo, but on a whim I decided to check out the other "tourist" beach, Iboih as well. I loved it and stayed there instead. Iboih is very basic and accommodation is in the form of little wooden huts perched on stilts along the shore. The communal bathrooms up the hill are just squatters with Mandi showers (a bucket). But that didn't bother anyone in the least. The views were stunning and the lack of tour group style tourists was wonderful.

The view from my hut. I could watch the reef fish swimming below from my hammock.

Looking back from the dive boat. That's my hut on the far right, second from the water.

I did my first dive within 15 minutes of putting my bags down and never really looked back. In all I did 8 dives over the last few days, they were cheap, and fantastic. The area is just littered with Moray Eels and Lionfish of all kinds, not to mention the myriad of other fish. I also got to see the massive Napoleon (Maori) wrasse up close on a few occasions, and spotted soaring Eagle Rays for the first time. This in between the now "common" sightings of reef sharks and turtles.

The Rubiah Tirta dive boat, complete with large German divemaster in the foreground.

The wonderfully characterful Mama who rented the hut to me and coaxed me into eating at her place regularly. Her Chapati is legendary by the way.

When not diving I got to relax in my hammock, do some (admittedly unsuccessful) flyfishing, and generally just relax after a hectic period of travel in Borneo and Indochina. Its now back to my version of the Amazing Race though as I dash across Indonesia to see the things I want to before Wooz arrives next month.

A special note of love to my folks after their traumatic run in with the darker side of South African life. I love you guys so much - and its supposed to be me having the life-threatening experiences, not you...

A Polynational Spree

I've found a little internet cafe here in the city of Medan on Sumatra in Indonesia. I have another 5 hours to kill before my next flight so thought I'd add some news.

I left Kuala Lumpur in the wee hours this morning to fly to Penang (Georgetown), further north on the west coast of Malaysia. I only spent one full day in KL, mostly sorting out admin stuff like flights and buying some new scuba gear, but didn't really feel like doing any of the touristy things anyway. I did get to ride the monorail and see the Petronas Towers though so I guess I can tick KL off my list. From Penang I had planned to get the ferry across the Straits of Malacca to here but a typical Air Asia delay meant I wasn't in time to make the 8.45am departure. I thus forked out a bit extra for a plane ticket instead. Now I just have to wait it out here until my flight to Banda Aceh at 4.30pm.

A little look at where in the world I am right now.

Banda Aceh is infamous for a number of reasons. One being the fighting between the Indonesian government and separatists that had the whole Aceh region under martial law until as recently as August 2005. My Rough Guide chose to omit travel details for the region entirely! Banda Aceh was also arguably the worst hit town in the 2004 tsunami disaster, suffering both from the initial earthquake and from the resulting tsunami. In Banda Aceh alone 61 000 people were killed. But I'm not going there for any sort of macabre reasons, I just need to get the ferry from Banda Aceh out to Pulau Weh tomorrow morning. I've been told that island has unbelievable diving and is still relatively undiscovered.

Unfortunately it looks like my one night in Banda Aceh is going to be an expensive one. Most of the hotels haven't been rebuilt yet and those that have are filled with NGO's that have ramped the prices up. As was the case in Laos, the NGO's here in Indonesia are apparently not very popular. They have achieved very little of what they promised and seem content to drive around in their shiny SUV's and dine in the fancier foreign owned restaurants and "contribute" to the economy through purchasing "local produce" such as Jack Daniels.

Excuse me if I'm in a venting mood. I haven't had a full night's sleep in ages and seem to be hopping from one airport to the next constantly at the moment. And flying with Air Asia is very exasperating. The flights are always delayed, if not cancelled outright, and there is no assigned seating so every boarding is a free for all. And the Malaysians have retained a lot of their Chinese ancestry - Chinese people don't queue. Ever. Locals at the opening of a new KFC in Umtata would show more restraint.

I did have some good chuckles on my last 2 flights though. I've just started on Nick Hornby's The Complete Polysyllabic Spree. I highly recommend it. Peter, if you haven't tired of reading my blog back in London, I must comment that the book reminds me of you somehow (in a good way). It's a random ramble about the books he was reading over about a 2 year period, and it makes me feel like a bit of a dunce as I've only read about 3 of the titles he lists in the entire book.

But back to the road less travelled. I'll probably be on Pulau Weh for about a week. The boat dives are cheap, and the shore diving is virtually free so I don't see myself rushing to leave. Whenever I do leave that island I plan to head to Labuanbajo on the island of Flores right out towards the other end of Indonesia in the east. I want to visit the Komodo dragons and check out the diving there before heading back to Bali to meet Wooz on the 6th of September. We'll then spend three weeks between Bali and Lombok before we head back to SA via Singapore and I bid farewell to TimmyTravels. But, no fear, there's still many adventures waiting to be added in these next 6 weeks!

In the footsteps of Jacques Cousteau

In my last post I suggested I thought these 3 days in Semporna would be good. That has turned out to be a severe understatement! I can't believe I have to move on now...

The diving here makes everywhere else I've dived seem like a waste of time. Well, the diving at Pulau Sipada does at least. On my first day here I wasn't booked to go out to Sipadan so I joined the trip to nearby Sibuan Island for 3 dives. The diving on the first 2 dives from the shore wasn't spectacular, but the island itself was gorgeous. Unfortunately the island is not part of the marine reserve so dynamite fishing is still prevalent and hearing a massive BOOM nearby whilst diving is quite disconcerting. For our third dive we headed a bit further offshore and I got my first taste of what the Celebs sea has to offer. There were turtles all over the place and the colours of the coral and sheer volume of fish were amazing.

Some kids playing on the beach at Sibuan Island. I'm sorry about the low resolution of the pictures in this post. The internet is very slow so I've had to resize them all.

A fisherman's house on one of the islands around Semporna.

Finding starfish while wandering around Sibuan during a surface interval.

Sunday saw me on the first of my two trips out to Sipadan Island. "Discovered" by Jacques Cousteau, Pulau Sipadan is an oceanic island that rises straight up from the seabed in the middle of the Celebs sea. If you were to walk five metres off the beach on the north end you would drop 670 metres straight down. And this makes for amazing diving.

The first dive I did was at one of the 2 most famous sites, South Point. Dropping off the shallow reef into deep water saw me land straight in a wonderland. Brightly coloured fish were just everywhere, some turtles glided by, some white-tip reef sharks cruised below, and a fantastic leopard shark passed within 5 yards of me. Wow! Swimming along the wall revealed many more turtles and beautiful fishes, and then at the southern most point numerous sharks were gathered, just resting on the reef or cruising the drop-off. Coming back up onto the reef and the world changes completely again. The brightest corals and fishes I've ever seen were everywhere, making it impossible to know where to look, and yet more turtles were resting in amongst it all, allowing me to swim right up to them. They are just so beautiful.

After that dive at South Point I firmly believed no dive could ever match it, but Barracuda Point (Sipadan's most famous site, and often voted the best in the world) was next up. Again the dive was along the sheer wall with turtles and reef sharks everywhere, but this time, at the northernmost point, I saw the barracuda that make this dive so famous. There were thousands of them. They shoal together in a mass that at times blocks out the sun. Hanging onto the reef to fight the current we were able to just sit and watch this amazing shoal of fish idling in the current and then swirling together in a massive vortex. The fisherman in me was doing his nut! And in amongst the barracuda were also huge kingfish and grouper the size of my old VW citi golf. I've run out of superlatives to describe it all.

After those two dives the 3rd never really stood a chance. To think that a dive into the massive Turtle Tomb underwater cave, with its huge shoals of jackfish could ever be described as second rate would have been unimaginable 3 days ago!

It's off for yet another underwater adventure...

Coming up from Barracuda point off Pulau Sipadan.

I don't have an underwater camera (yet...), but you don't need one when the locals at Sipadan pop up to say hello.

Yesterday I got to go out and do it all again. Whilst the initial wonder of the previous day wasn't quite there, the experience was naturally awesome again. And this time my dive group was made up of more experienced divers, all with Advanced licenses, so we could dive deeper, seeing bigger sharks and turtles and a wider range of fish. I can't begin to describe the feeling of swimming along the wall with dark blue below to over 600m and turtles swimming above silhouetted against the sky. I spent most of my dive time swimming on my back just staring at them. And in every little hollow in the wall yet another turtle stares out from its resting place, gliding out within a whisker of you when disturbed.

Now that I've made a mess of trying to describe the wonders of this place I must now get on a flight tonight back to KL. From there I was planning to explore peninsular Malaysia before meeting my sister for 3 weeks in Bali in September, but the diving gurus here have given me so many ideas of places in Indonesia to explore instead. They range from Wakatobi off Sulawesi to a tiny island near East Timor called La Petit Kepa. But I think I'm going to head to Pulau Weh off the north end of Sumatra and then try to get to Lubuanbajo on Flores to explore the area around the Komodo islands. So if you're not sure where I am in the next few weeks its likely I don't know either...

The Borneo odyssey continues...

Wow! Its been such a mad rush around these past few days. Its hard to think how I've packed it all in.

When I last posted I was about to head out to the Turtle Islands for a night. That was very cool in that we did get to see a Green turtle come ashore to lay her eggs and we also got the pleasure of seeing a bunch of hatchlings being released out onto the beach to start their life in the sea. It wasn't a "wild" experience as the islands are used as hatcheries and the eggs are collected after laying and hatched under supervision. Though I did see one little turtle making his way down the beach on the one afternoon, they obviously missed his one egg whilst collecting. Unfortunately, typically of Borneo everything is done on package tours so I felt like us independent travellers were treated a bit like second rate citizens as other vistors had their own guides who enabled them to flout the strict rules about wandering the beaches at night and using flash photography. But that was the only blemish on an otherwise lovely adventure.

A youngster makes his break into the wide open Celebs sea.

Straight after getting back to Sandakan I headed out to the Sepilok Orangutan Reserve. There are only 3 such places in the world and seeing Orangs in their natural habitat is an undeniably wonderful experience. The Orangs are tempted out of the jungle by some food in the mornings and this gave us tourists the chance of seeing them up close and personal, instead of in a far away tree somewhere.

Such a poser! I think they're more interested in watching us than we are them...

From Sepilok I joined my group for a famous Uncle Tan's jungle tour. We headed out into the Borneon jungle about an hour and a half from Sandakan by car, and then an hour down river into the pristine jungle. Uncle Tan's is a very basic lodge with bucket showers etc. but I really enjoyed it. We did many wildlife spotting boat trips and hikes. Some of my group were lucky enough to see Orangs in the wild, but I didn't get that lucky. I did get to see the amazing Proboscis monkeys though with their huge red noses and fat stomachs. But even just chilling around the camp was great with many visits from bearded pigs, huge hornbills, monitor lizards, a reticulated python, and giant squirrels, just to name a few.

Sunset wildlife watching by boat in the jungles of Borneo with Uncle Tan's.

The male proboscis monkey. The Malay word for them means "Dutchman", in reference to the similarites with colonists back in the day! (Sorry, but I had to cheat and poach a photo from the internet here as I don't have the lens for such a shot...)

Macaques silhouetted at dusk.

I'm now in the town of Semporna on Sabah's east coast, near the border with Indonesia's Kalimantan province. I'm here for the supposedly amazing scuba diving sites, the most famous being Palau Sipadan, often rated as one of the best dive sites in the world. It should be an awesome 3 days.

Conquering Kinabalu!

We made it! Russell and I summitted Mt Kinabalu here in Borneo in the early hours of Sunday morning. Now I can barely walk...

Timmy celebrates on top of Mt Kinabalu!

I flew from KL on Thursday night and after a massive delay from a forced stop in Brunei, due to a combination of typhoon winds and a bird strike to one of the engine, landed in Kota Kinabalu at around 2.20am Friday morning. I met up with Russell and Tanith the next morning and we spent the day exploring the town and the surrounding islands. Russell and I were disappointed to found our booking to climb the mountain had fallen through so we thought we wouldn't be able to climb as planned. But we headed out to the mountain on Saturday morning anyway and through a little use of "African Economics" we secured a booking at one of the lodges for later that night.

My Kinabalu rises to around 4100m, not that high, but you are starting from close to sea level. The first day's climb wasn't too strenuous, though the change in altitude was still felt quite heavily. That night we rose again at 2.30am to attack the summit in time for sunrise. It was bitterly cold! I was totally unprepared, with only a long sleeve Heli and a cheap hooded tracksuit top. I have never been so cold. Despite that though, we made it up just in time to watch the sun appear over Borneo. It was gorgeous. We were very lucky as the weather had stopped people summitting for the previous 3 nights in a row.

Russell and I at the summit marker.

Russell in front of one of the most recognisable of Mt Kinabalu's granite peaks, with Borneo stretched out behind.

After staying up there just long enough to snap a few photos we dashed down the mountain search of warmth. And I'm not joking about the dashing. After only allowing me ten minutes at the lodge to defrost, Russell then had me run down the entire mountain along very steep rocky paths. We were the first people back to park headquarters by a few hours! And that's why I still can't walk up a flight of stairs without nearly crying. That afternoon we visited the Hot Springs and got a chance to see the rare Raffleasia flower.

Tanith shows her dislike of the fly attracting properties of the Raffleasia, the world's biggest flower.

We're now in Sandakan on the east coast of Borneo. Tomorrow morning we head out to the Turtle Islands for a night to see some hatchings. After that we'll visit the Orangutan reserve at Sepilok. Then its off to the jungle for me for a few days before I meet up with Tanith and Russell again in Semporna where I'll get the chance to dive the famous sites of Palau Sipadan.