Bali-still

Five days left, and it is raining. Bali has been much better than what i had expected. I expected a Spring Break type of touristy town. I think Pre- Terrorist attacks that is what it was. Now it is kind of like a ghost town in terms of tourists. The place is set up for them, hotels, shops and restaurants. The locals are pretty friendly and easily ignored when they try and push you to buy stuff.  It is really hot and muggy here, It rains mostly at night and on occasion, like today during the day.  We have not really done much while we have been here. Johnny bought a surfboard and he and Malika hit the waves at least once a day.  I usually just sit on the beach and watch. I have discovered a Bali dish called Bakso that i am a big fan of. $.50 gets you spicy soup with glass noodles some fish balls, greens and if you are lucky a deep fried battered boiled egg. Malika hitched a ride from the airport with a Canadian named James and we have hooked up with him and his group of friends a few nights for drinks. We were going to see them tonight, but may just stay in and watch movies instead? I’ve booked us a dive for tomorrow. Two dives at the USS Liberty a WWII shipwreck just off the coast. In the evening we are doing our first night dive. We will spend the night in the coastal town of Tulumbane and then do two more dives the next day. $162 for the whole package. We can buy additional dives if we are so inclined to do so.  
  A couple days ago we took  a ride to the small town of Ubud, it reminded me a bit of a tropical Angles Camp, quaint with small little shops. We walked down to the end of Monkey Forrest rd. to a monkey sanctuary. I bought some bananas and had fun feeding them to the little monkeys as we walked around. Johnny and Malika went into a temple to take pictures while i sat on a bench next to the grampa monkey. his tail was sitting right next to my hand so i thought it would be ok to touch it,  Nope! i got away with petting it twice but on the third time he aggressively turned, got this crazed look on his face, opened his mouth showing me his rather large front teeth. He bit me in the lower back and started in on my shoulder as i cautiously jumped up with my hands out front telling him “Wooh, it’s cool!” He went back to sitting where he was and i moved far away. He showed me who was boss. I figured since i had just given him my last banana that we were bro’s
  April 18
     Diving was great.  We were picked up from our hotel in the morning and driven to Tulumben about 2.5 hours away. I slept the first hour, I awoke in time to see some good landscape. Lots of lush jungle mixed in with terraced rice fields. A lot of back and fourth roads up and over a little mountain past the volcano and back down to the ocean.  There is not much in Tulumben. The only thing that brings people around is the diving. We stayed in a little hotel right on the water. We arrived about 10am and were geared up, briefed and on our way to the water by 10:30. We had to walk a few hundred yards dwon the beach to where we enter the water. They had local women carrying our tanks. Barefoot across lava rock with a full tank balanced on their head. Our first dive was the USAT Liberty, an old WWII shipwreck torpedoed by the Japanese. There wasn’t much of a ship. It is pretty much completely covered in coral, you could make out a couple of bulkheads and ship parts. The entire crew had been rescued so there were no ghosts. We cruised around for about 45 minutes. We then took a breather, had lunch and dove straight out from our hotel in the “Coral Garden” an amazing amount of sea life. Not as much as in Borneo, which was kind of good because you could stop and look at just one thing instead of being overloaded with fishes. We spotted our second shark. ‘Black Tipped Reef Shark’ this one was much larger than the white tipped ones we saw in Borneo. It was big, but far enough away not to be nervous. After a five hour break and as soon as the sun went down we went back out to the wreck for our night dive. This was a neat experience, but i like day dives better. We each had a spot light. It seemed really quiet down there. Pitch black except where the light shines. If you turned off your light you could stir up the phosphorescence in the water and the whole area around would glow. It was a clear night when we surfaced so we floated on our backs and watched the stars. The next day we did two more dives and left that afternoon. On the last dive i tried to stay under until my tank was completely empty because i knew it was going to be my last dive for some time.
   Today we are headed up the coast to co?? some little beach that Johnny wants to see. Malika and Johnny will surf and i will just kick it on the beach. I am still nervous about falling in the shallows and jacking up my leg.
   We have heard that there is a really nice beach restaurant down south a bit where they sit you at a table on the beach and you can get cheap lobster, shrimp or whatever seafood. They say it is quite nice at sunset. I think we will go with our Canadian friends one of these nights.

Bali Hai
Been in Bali four days now. We had a one day stop over in Singapore I checked in the airport in hopes of my bag being turned in, but not a chance. Didn’t do much in Singapore. I had lost the charger to my new camera and had to replace that. Then come to find out Malika had it in her bag, so now i have two chargers and a camera i wish i hadn’t bought.
We flew into Bali late, i met a local on the plane who taught me some Indo-talk. The line through imigration was ridiculous, so by the time we got into the city it was quite late. We took the first overpriced place available and went searching for new accomodations the next morning. We found a cheap place at the end of an alley. A small doorway opened up into a beautiful, lush courtyard area with a pool and elephant fountain. We have been staying here the last three nights, the place is great but there is not a lot of air flow through the rooms. the fan is like 100’ feet up, so even on high you can not feel it. I don’t see any marks but my whole back itches so i think we are going to move again today.
Bali is kind of sad. You can tell it was a hugely popular place before the bombings. Now it is practically a ghost town. There are still quite a few tourists. Far more people working the tourists than needed. All sorts of bars and stores sitting empty or shutdown. I talked to one local for a while and he told me that before, in the hight season every room in every hotel was full. In an area the size of downtown Modesto there must be 100 hotels. There are no high rises like i thought there would be, most of them are traditionally down in the style of little temples or tropical bungalow style. The three of us are paying $5 a piece and i think we could find a place with pool for less.
Malika came in two days later with James, who she shared a cab from the airport with. James is cool we all get along with him. He has a few more friends coming in this weekend. We have been talking about maybe heading north where it is quieter and seeing about renting a villa or house and just kick it there the rest of the time.
Johnny took a surf lesson the other day, he liked it but wants to move along at a faster pace. The waves up north are said to be better, but still good for beginners. We will probably rent a car and all drive up together, hopefully find a place and the surfers may even split the cost of a surfboard between them. My funds are pretty low so i will be happy just sitting on the beach the rest of the time. I still have enough to go for a couple of dives too.
Malika is up now so we are off to go new place hunting.

Bali Hai
Been in Bali four days now. We had a one day stop over in Singapore I checked in the airport in hopes of my bag being turned in, but not a chance. Didn’t do much in Singapore. I had lost the charger to my new camera and had to replace that. Then come to find out Malika had it in her bag, so now i have two chargers and a camera i wish i hadn’t bought.
We flew into Bali late, i met a local on the plane who taught me some Indo-talk. The line through imigration was ridiculous, so by the time we got into the city it was quite late. We took the first overpriced place available and went searching for new accomodations the next morning. We found a cheap place at the end of an alley. A small doorway opened up into a beautiful, lush courtyard area with a pool and elephant fountain. We have been staying here the last three nights, the place is great but there is not a lot of air flow through the rooms. the fan is like 100’ feet up, so even on high you can not feel it. I don’t see any marks but my whole back itches so i think we are going to move again today.
Bali is kind of sad. You can tell it was a hugely popular place before the bombings. Now it is practically a ghost town. There are still quite a few tourists. Far more people working the tourists than needed. All sorts of bars and stores sitting empty or shutdown. I talked to one local for a while and he told me that before, in the hight season every room in every hotel was full. In an area the size of downtown Modesto there must be 100 hotels. There are no high rises like i thought there would be, most of them are traditionally down in the style of little temples or tropical bungalow style. The three of us are paying $5 a piece and i think we could find a place with pool for less.
Malika came in two days later with James, who she shared a cab from the airport with. James is cool we all get along with him. He has a few more friends coming in this weekend. We have been talking about maybe heading north where it is quieter and seeing about renting a villa or house and just kick it there the rest of the time.
Johnny took a surf lesson the other day, he liked it but wants to move along at a faster pace. The waves up north are said to be better, but still good for beginners. We will probably rent a car and all drive up together, hopefully find a place and the surfers may even split the cost of a surfboard between them. My funds are pretty low so i will be happy just sitting on the beach the rest of the time. I still have enough to go for a couple of dives too.
Malika is up now so we are off to go new place hunting.

Diving

Sipadan diving, was 100 times better than what i imagined. We spent one night in the fancy hotel on the water. Johnny went to bed around 4pm so i did some emails then went to the fancy resturaunt and stuffed my face with crab by myself. When i got back to the room around 9pm the neighbors were being so loud that i felt like they were in the room with us. This lasted until the wee hours in the morning. I miss my ear plugs. Because i couldn’t understand what was being said, it was in Malay. I was able to tune it out and slept ok. We took off the next morning to Mabul island about 1 hour away. We have a room here which isn’t much. Two matrases in a room over the water. We had coffee readied our gear and took another boat along with five other divers and two diver masters to Sipadan Island. It is a small island sorounded by a huge reef. We were hoping to see a sea turtle and as soon as we hit the water and looked down we spotted three. The smallest one was the size of a large pizza and the biggest, like a patio table. By the end of the day we had seen around 30. At one point my fin was coming off so i headed to the bottom to anchor myself with my finger while i adjusted my fin. As i neared the ocean floor i looked up and saw the shell of an enormous turtle, i quickly took a deep breath and floated up and over him. If it wasn’t morally wrong or possible illeagel i would have loved to grab hold of one and taken it for a ride. We also spotted a few white tipped reef sharks, Maybe three or four feet long. A little school of barracuda swam by at one point. The visability was wonderfull and there was such a huge amount of marine life that i can barely remember everything we saw, wished i had an underwater camera. We did three dives and then headed back to our island. Today we bought a couple of dives around here. The weather on top is nicer than yesterday but down below it is a bit murky. We still saw some great stuff. On our second dive we saw maybe a 300lb grouper and i spotted the biggest cuttle fish i had ever seen. It must have been the size of my torso. We are done diving for the day and waiting for our ride back to the mainland. We will spend the night in the fancy hotel and take the early bus tomorrow to Sandakan and catch our flight to Mainland Malaysia, cross the border to Singapore and be on our way to Bali the next day. Hoping to move on to Advanced Open Water and possible Rescue Diver in Bali.

headed to Sipidan

Sipadan

We had one more day of diving after getting certified. Everyone in our class of 5 did so well that our fourth day was a free dive. We did two boat dives, where we enter the water Jacque Coustoue style. It poured down rain the night before and was still raining when we got there so the water was a little murky. We had camped on the island the first night in a rented tent. If i hadn’t been so tired because of being in the water all day i would have rated it as one of my worst nights sleep. I was terribly uncomfortable and it was easily 150 degrees in the tent. Johnny and Malika were going to stay a second night while i was going back into town, Just as we were about to head on the last boat off the island the sky unleashed its wrath and flooded the tent so we all went back to town. That last day we also did a beach dive without a guide. We made Johnny our guide since he was the only one with a watch.
That night we our graduating class went out to dinner and to a local bar which gives a large discount on Pitchers of Tiger beer to those who get certified. The next morning the two Britts that were in our class took off early in the morning. Johnny and i flew up to Sandakan and Malika took the bus. Sandakan did not have a whole lot to offer, but our guesthouse had AC, a t.v. with a DVD player and loads of movies to choose from. After arriving and getting something to eat Johnny and i sat in the room watching movies. Malika came in that night and we pretty much did the same. We had planned on coming to Sandakan to check out Turtle Island. This is where turtles come at night to lay their eggs. You can stay overnight on the island, but after a little research we learned that it is like $400 for a two day one night stay, well over our budget. We did take a cab over to the Orang-Atang Sanctuary. The try and rehabilitate orphaned Orang-Tangs and get them acclimated to go back into the wild. We were running a few minutes late. They do a 10am feeding and again at 3pm. We bought our tickets and headed down the trail. We had no map and there were no well marked signs as to where this feeding took place. We were walking down the trail rather quiet, because we didn’t want to scare anything away. At a major fork in the trail we were being tailed by a family of very load Malays. The two kids were practically screaming. We opted to take the muddier route towards the watering hole. A prime spot for seeing Orang-tangs, monkeys got to drink right. I can’t believe there was a DO NOT ENTER this trail sign. It did not take us too long to realize we shouldn’t be on this trail. It was at about the time we started crossing the collapsed bridge. As we turned to head back i felt a bug bite me and when i reached back to my calf to itch it i felt something slimy. LEACH!! .......GET IT OFF!! Malika had a lighter and i burned the little guy off my leg. This really freaked Malika out and she kind of got the Heebee jeebee’s and headed back up the trail very fast. Johnny was wearing CROCs and when he pulled his foot out he too had picked up a hitch hiker. I helped burn his little guy off, but instead burned his toe. We finally made it over to where the feeding takes place just in time to watch everyone leaving as there were only Macaque monkeys left. We sat there for a bit, when i felt another bug bite and spotted my second leach up on my thigh. There was a guide there who informed me that it was a Tiger Leach and that they were harmless and if i wanted to wait ten minutes it would triple in size and finally just drop off. What the heck we had five more hours to kill until the next feeding time. I soon became a big hit with all the tourists as we watched the little guy fill up. It felt like a bug bite at first, but other than that i could hardly tell he was even on there. Johnny spotted another little guy on his ankle, so he let him stay there too. We went back to the main area and watched a monkey movie, I was afraid my guy was going to drop off in the theater and be stuck there living on the Airconditioned carpet the rest of his life. The movie was an hour long, he was still there when it was over. 10minutes? All in all he and i hung out for almost two hours, finally another guide came up and flicked him off with a small twig. Then my leg bled for another 30 minutes. There was a nice nurse there from England who helped me out with a couple of sterile wipes that she had in her purse. He left a really strange bite mark with what looks like a little triangle in the middle. I named him Ted.
Johnny and i are now in Semporna, we took off from Sandakan two days ago on the morning bus, a few miles down the road we noticed that Johnny did not have his passport. this was my fault, i had used it to make dive reservations online. I had left it on top of Malikas guide book in the room. I quickly ran to the front of the bus and got the driver to pull over and let us out. I think at one point the driver asked if i wanted him to pull over and wait while my friend ran back to get his passport. Oh no no, we will just try again tomorrow. Then the co-driver or at least the guy sitting next to the driver got off the bus with us. The bus took off and he walked us to the local bus stop and sent us on our way. They are so nice here. We did nothing much yesterday and made the bus to Semporna today.
We are staying in a really cool hotel that sits right over the bay. It is hard to understand the lady but i think we booked a trip out to Sipadan Island tomorrow morning for three dives, a night in the guest house, all our meals and gear, and a ride back the next day. Sipidan is said to be one of the top ten places in the world to dive?? And, i’m probably jinxing it, but they say we have a 75% chance of seeing Sea Turtles, should be cool. I love it under water and i am sure that my future travels plans will be questioned with “Well what is the diving like there”