Our New Home in Pictures...

This is our Gekko. He eats the bugs in our house and Ryan is trying really hard to get him on a bread diet as thrice he's left the bread bag wide open for Gekko to crawl into an make himself a home. Look at how beautiful the coloring is on Gekko.



This is our kitchen. The picture of Gekko was taken in the upper left hand corner, though this morning I did notice Gekko was hanging out in the upper right hand corner. Note our appliances - all picked up for the combined price of less than $40. We scored most at the Salvation Army. We should be getting a larger fridge. Though the fact that the freezer in this one doesn't really freeze is a blessing in disguise - it means that we can't keep ice-cream in the house. The teeny weeny bathroom is to the left - door in front of stove. It has a stand-up shower stall and a toilet. Brush your teeth over the sink. That seems a bit of an oversight to me.



This is our bedroom. We bought a bed off of Craigslist for $120 (+$20 delivery - cheaper than a U-Haul). The bed is fantastic - it's a Serta sheep counting bed. Queen sized, loaded up with four pillows so I can build my fort every night. We argued about the number of pillows. I won. And now I have a fort. We did not find flannel sheets, though I think they will be necessary come winter. It is substantially colder here than I would have thought.



This is the room that will be our living room. This shot was taken during the move. It still looks a lot like that except that the big plastic bags to the right have been removed. As you can see it needs furniture, but we're so used to living in our bedroom that we're not in a huge hurry to furnish it. The bedroom is behind the wall on the left.



This is our house.



This is our house. Oh, you thought I meant the big house in the back. No - we live in the garage. Here they call it an Ohana. It's amazing how big a two car garage really is.



This is our street. Note the ocean down there.



This is Brownie, our 1985 Toyota Camry with original radio. I didn't name her. Her name was on the keys.



And this is what we did last night!

Life is good!

Peace out xoxoxox

Next stop, 96740!

Well, we’re off to Hawaii, folks. After what will be the yet another grueling trip, we will be in Kona on the morning of July 28th local time. That’s only three or so short days away. We received an email from Jack’s Diving Locker Saturday morning offering us jobs. So, let’s see how this experiment of merging what we love with a more normal life works out.

I had visions of going to see my parents first and of going to California first, but having spent all Saturday on orbitz, kayak, airasia.com and the like, the best, read cheapest, option we found was direct on Wednesday.

I first pieced together an itinerary from 3 different websites. It was all going to start with taking the night bus to Kota Kinabalu, then a Royal Brunei flight to Manila (via Brunei). But when I tried to book the flight last night, the website crashed at the part where it processes my credit card info. UBOC’s website was down so I couldn’t check to see if the charge had gone through. This morning I was still having the same problem, so I got on Skype and called customer service who wanted twice the price for the same flight. All argument that I shouldn’t get penalized for the fact that their service was down fell on deaf ears.

Unwilling to pay 200 each for a one way flight, we were looking at taking Air Asia direct from KK to Manila. The problem with that was that Air Asia flies into Manila Clark and our reserved Continental flight flew out of Manila International 2 hours away. And there is no shuttle service and no well-described way of making the connection. This was making me uncomfortable.

Assuming we got to Manila International, we’d have been taking a Continental flight to Honolulu via Guam. Then I still had to find us a puddle jumper to Kona.
In this scenario there was a few possible problems. My baggage getting lost at any point and not finding its way to Hawaii. My baggage being too heavy and having to pay ridiculous amounts of money to get it on the flight. And mostly, by building 3 different itineraries, if any flight was delayed and we missed a connection, it would cost us masses of money to fix it.

So, $93 each extra bought me peace of mind. First, we don’t have to spend the night on a 16 degree Celsius bus, because we’re flying from Tawau, a mere hour bus ride away. From there we are going to KL. That’s on Air Asia and I’ve pre-purchased 60 KG of luggage. In KL, we have a 10 hour layover, so even if our flight is late or canceled, we’ve plenty of time and 3 other possible flights to get there. From KL, it’s a single itinerary - we fly Korean Air to Honolulu via Seoul and then to Kona. We have a 12 hour layover in Seoul and the Internet has nice things to say about having a layover in Seoul. We’ll see how we feel when we get there.

It has been such a juggling act to get this trip done. And every permutation was either costing too much money or had the possibility for way too much headache. Saturday night I didn’t sleep well because I was really excited. Last night I didn’t sleep well because I just didn’t have a good feeling about how this trip was panning out. Now I feel great. After we made the decision to simplify things, I just felt like a huge weight had been lifted. And let’s face it, traveling makes Ryan extraordinarily grumpy and it doesn’t make me a ray of sunshine either– there’s no reason to compound frustration by adding problems to the mix.

Anyway, after all this, I'm more than qualified to be a travel agent if the scuba thing doesn't work out.

Once in Kona, we’ll need to find a place to live and possibly transportation fairly quickly. I know that it’s going to be quite a shock to the system at first – it is most definitely not SE Asia. Hotel will be $65 per night and rental car is looking like $165 per week. And food is not going to be 30-cent rotis. So no dilly-dallying in getting ourselves settled.

Today we spent the day in Semporna. Initially we went there to pay for our reserved Continental flight by Western Union. It was while we were there that we decided to stop this nonsense and spend the extra bucks for peace of mind. So mostly we ate roti, Ryan bought a luggage scale and I got my hair cut by a Filipino trany who successfully got rid of all my split ends but left me almost bald in the process (well bald by Ryan standards in that my hair is now barely longer than shoulder length). We learned that gays were very poorly treated in Philippines and that it is much easier to be gay in Muslim Malaysia. Something we’d never considered. In Thailand, for example, ladyboys just are. I don’t think it’s ever occurred to me to ask myself how ladyboys are or aren’t accepted within the Thai culture.

I thought I’d do a top ten list of the things I’m looking forward to:

1. A grocery store where I can buy any item I want. Especially avocado, yogurt, vine ripe tomatoes and because it’s Hawaii, passion fruit.
2. A kitchen where I can cook almost anything I want for dinner. I say almost anything because, clearly, I’m not going to run out and buy a Cuisinart my first week there. Ryan said I can have a knife, a wooden spoon and a cast iron skillet, though I think a Teflon pan would be much more versatile. Rice will not be included in any meal for a very long time!
3. A bed that doesn’t break my back. And multiple pillows to sleep in Fort Alexia every night.
4. Real world hair.
5. Exercise – I’m going to take up running again like I had on PP – there’s a marathon/half marathon/10K/5K event in June 2012 in which I would like to participate. And I think that a year is enough time to prepare.
6. Friends and fam coming to visit.
7. Yoga studios for the occasional led practice. And Yoga teacher training for when I decide to do that.
8. High speed, reliable Internet.
9. TARJAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! (Target)
10. No more visa runs and border bounces!

Anyway, that’s my top ten list. You’ll have to ask Ryan for his, but I’m pretty sure that it includes beef jerky and balsamic vinegar.

Peace xoxoxoxox

Hawaii Revisited?

July 19, 2011

On Sunday, I went diving with two Malay discos. All went well after I protested being left on the beach with six tanks, gear and two girls who’d never dived before while the boat went off 15 minutes away for two dives. I don’t care that the divers who want to go 15 minutes away are friends of the owner. If I have a problem, or God forbid, an emergency, what am I supposed to do? CPR on a desert island under the tropical sun with no oxygen for two hours?

Then during the surface interval, I painstakingly kept my mouth shut while they retrieved mostly dead jellyfish from shallow water. Those ended up as soup later that evening (they’ll eat anything, I swear). Back at the resort, I stopped keeping my mouth shut when one of the guys indicated to me that the sea grass growing on the aquarium wall makes for really good eats then went to ask the front desk for a plastic bag. My brain finally processed what he was intending to do and I put an end to that.

Yesterday, the zebra shark that they keep in the fish farm enclosure which I’ve never been to visit for the explicit reason that if I ignore it, I don’t have to think about it, got moved to the aquarium. At least he has a little more room in there, but now I have to think about it. And Ryan’s point that at least it’s alive whereas if we went rogue and freed it, it would probably be caught by a fisherman within a day – that point, that’s pathetic!

Today, the manager of the resort asked Ryan if he knew anything about the new Polish divemaster telling the same idiots from above that they can’t harass the turtles. He got he distinct impression that management’s attitude is to let the customers do whatever they want. I could have told him that.

Today, Ryan asked me where we could go if we quit. Now’s not the perfect time to be asking this question. I have been depressed over this place pretty much since we got here. I think I’m done with SE Asia – we’ll spend another winter here if it has to be that way, but otherwise I’m done.

The way I see it, there are two options – either we commit to a country and we wage a war and probably consider some jail time in our future. Or we go somewhere where the environment is respected and protected. Somewhere where the dive shop you work for will back you up when you put a customer back on the boat no refund because they harassed a turtle. Somewhere where the senior staff of the dive shop doesn’t put you in awkward and potentially dangerous situations.

This morning, Ryan was told that on the 21st we would start teaching five Chinese students, two of whom don’t speak English. The part of me that’s been the one to deal with every Asian student that we’ve been given thus far wants to say, “it’s Ryan’s turn.” The part of me that enjoys a happy boyfriend and doesn’t want to deal with three days a moody grumpy boyfriend knows that I should probably do it.

This morning we had a job interview with Jack’s Diving Locker in Kona, HI. Five months after going through this with Maui, we pulled out the old bank statements, calculators and craigslist to do math and budgeting to figure out if we could viably make it work on a different island. What’s the difference between Maui and the Big Island – about $500 a month in rent for starters. I pulled out a cost of living website which places Maui well above the cost of living of San Jose, while placing the Big Island well below. We asked about pay and cost of living before anything else simply because there was no point in going through the interview process if the result was going to be exactly the same as with Maui.

So why Hawaii revisited again? Hawaii (or Floriduh for that matter) continues to be the perfect balance between doing what we love and living a more normal life where at the end of the day there’s an apartment with a kitchen and a fridge and a grocery store. A life with health insurance and health care that doesn’t suck. A life with a five day work week and weekends to relax and enjoy. A life without visa runs every three months. And a life where maybe our friends and family occasionally come to visit us.

Now we are waiting to find out if they will offer us positions. We should hear at the end of the week.

In the meantime we are meant to be making plans for a visa run at the end of the month. Both of us are procrastinating, I think. Every time I bring it up, I get Ryan’s stock answer, “this is so stupid, why do we have to do this.” It irritates me because he knows the answer. Despite my enthusiasm for finding frogfish, I’m procrastinating because I’m not sure that I want to come back. Again, in the spirit of being a grown up and making decisions that are thought out, we should come back. But in the spirit of sanity, we should go elsewhere. But where? We’ve moved two times in 5 months. And it’s typhoon season in PH!

Do I sound grumpy? I don’t mean to sound grumpy.

Peace xoxoxoxox

It's Pissing Down Rain!

July 4, 2011

Ryan said to me this morning as he looked out to the Semporna coastline, “Hey, it’s fourth of July.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, thinking he’d seen something that he associated with Independence Day.”

“It’s July fourth.”

“Oh. I get it.”

It would be nice to celebrate the true meaning of Independence Day – independence from persecution because of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation. As a peoples, we’re not quite there yet though, are we. We continue to persecute the unknown – if it’s not just like us, it’s scary. What happened to curiosity? As we travel, children, especially, stare at us because we’re different. They don’t run from us. I know blond people who are constantly touched by children because the children are curious to see someone so different from them. In America, if you’re not a heterosexual WASP, people don’t want to touch you to see what you’re like, they want to run from you and take away you’re rights.

I know, you will rebut me with, “but in some countries, you get burned at the stake for x, y or z. At least we’re not like them. “ You don’t have to be Satan himself to be known as a devil.

I’m just saying – we flaunt that piece of paper known as the Declaration of Independence in the face of dictators and crazies everywhere and it seems to me that before we wave that freak flag at anybody else, we should clean up our own backyard a little bit.

End of soapbox.

I’ve had a couple of really good days of diving. On Saturday, we helped a Swedish family successfully discover Scuba diving. And I discovered 3 frogfish – a black one, a red one and a pink one. These things are not easy to find as they are very well camouflaged to look like pieces of sponge or coral. So finding them as easily as Nemos strutting out of their anemones was a little funny. Now I’m on a mission to find more.

Today, I dived Mabul for the second time and it completely 180’ed my opinion of it. My customers and I found loads of little critters, including the elusive female ribbon eel, four other types of eels, a stonefish, the jacks and some nice nudis. Oh and more turtles than you can shake a stick at – again! It’s like “yawn, there’s another turtle,” around here. Maybe the company helped as well. I had a very enthusiastic German family this time who got very excited about everything they saw. Our last dive was a ripping drift dive like I haven’t experienced since Isla Verde, Philippines 3 years ago. And it ended with a washing machine where two ripping currents met creating a weird vortex. Fun times!

Last Thursday was the celebration of our 4th time around the sun together. It was a wasted day. I hate that. I guess that as part of this existentialist crisis that I’ve had ongoing for the better part of a year now, wasting precious time angers me. In the mantra of “live each day as though it were your last,” I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t willingly spend my last day holed up in my room with my laptop, listening to it piss down rain. But on the floating resort, there is NOTHING to do when a tropical storm moves in above us and stays here for the day.

It’s been about a year since our last trip home and in that year, we’ve yet to have any significant time without rain. I’d like to fold up the poncho and put it away for 3 or 4 consecutive months. Instead, the ponchos I hemmed and hawed over at REI, trying to decide if they were a worthwhile investment, have paid for themselves 20 times over in the past year.

Ryan, of course, loves this because it means cooler weather.

It is early July and that means that we’re meant to decide what we’re doing at the end of the month. We are going to stay in Malaysia longer. So at the end of July, we will bounce across a border, most likely the Indonesian one, then bounce back into Malaysia and present our passports at immigration for another 90-day stamp.
We’ve seen nothing of Borneo, except the cesspit that is Semporna. There are beautiful jungles and mountains to trek, proboscis monkeys and Orang Utans to go see. If we need a break, we’ll go explore our backyard.

We’ve been offered a job on Koh Lanta for next Thai high season.

July 8, 2011

It’s raining again.

So where did I leave off before I started diving again…

Yes, we’ve been offered jobs on Koh Lanta for next Thai high season starting November. Lanta is a larger island off the coast of Krabi – not far from PP. It’s much larger and more quiet and resort-y. It is not catering to the 18-25 party scene that seems to attract droves of drones to PP. They dive PP as well as a group of islands called Koh Ha and Hin Daeng/Hin Muang. This means a little more variety. We’ve been offered these jobs for high season by our friend Gareth who’s now managing a small dive shop over there.

Ryan is very much on the fence about it all. He’s concerned that the political situation in Thailand is such that it will affect tourism. He’s concerned that the king is getting old and will die and that will affect the political situation. He also thinks that Lanta won’t be any different from PP. On the other hand, I’m very much keen to try it. I’d like to experience something different of Thailand – something that’s not 24/7 party island. Maybe something that’s a little more authentic. I also like the idea of knowing where we’re going and having a job all ready for us.

The alternative is Philippines. Which is tempting, but it means going somewhere completely new without a job. It means spending whatever money we manage to save up here on travel and looking for a job. I’m not sure I’m up to that again so soon after our Bali-Gili-Borneo travels. I’m just not sure that I’m ready to get used to the ins and outs of a whole new culture again. And I wouldn’t mind filling up the old Thai bank account again so that in April we can travel a bit and then move wherever we want.
Ryan seems more content to live in the moment than I am. It seems like I always need to be planning our next step. This time it seems imperative though. Malaysia cannot possibly be a long-term location for us. In the 4 years that I’ve been a dive professional, I’ve never had so many moments fraught with problems. There is absolutely no due-diligence done on the customers that we’re given. And we still don’t have oxygen.

In a way it’s also depressing to be here. I can’t impress upon you how extraordinary the diving is – beautiful reefs, loads of incredible little critters – not as fishatastic as PP, but the variety is outstanding. And then you have Asians stomping all over it. These cultures are 50 years behind in their attitudes towards the environment. The ocean is their garbage can. They take sea stars and cucumbers out of the water without any compassion for the fact that it’s a living creature that they’re killing by removing it from its environment – never mind all the little critters that in turn live on them. There is no education telling them that treating the ocean this way is criminal, so they don’t know better. The only voice they hear is either Ryan’s or mine telling them to put the sea star back in the water. And I’m increasingly tempted to say this as I’m shoving their heads underwater. These are not people who are comfortable in the water, so I’m fairly confident that my message will come through loud and clear after I’ve drowned one or two of them.

We were on Mabul a few days ago and there were eight or so Chinese snorkelers on the boat. Most cannot maintain themselves on the water’s surface without the help of floatation. I was mesmerized watching them in the water with life vests on AND clinging to life buoys as though if they let go, they would sink. They’re wearing life vests that are intended to keep their unconscious mass afloat for crying out loud. Why are these people getting on a boat to go snorkeling in the first place? One woman was in panic mode when she returned to the boat and could not quite figure out how to get from the life ring to the ladder without letting go of the life ring. Then despite my telling her to take her fins off, tried climbing the ladder with her fins on as I’m saying to her in a very mean tone that she should listen to my years of experience instead of thinking she knows better. Why doesn’t Karma come down and help me out a little in these instances? Karma could have made her trip and pushed her drowning ass right back into the sea. But no. Karma’s a little bitch sometimes.

There are loads of Chinese who can swim. I don’t believe that the difference between the Chinese and westerners is that more westerners can swim. I believe the main difference between Chinese and westerners is that no westerner in their right mind wants to get in the water if they don’t know how to swim. Chinese on the other hand, don’t see the disconnect.

Anyway, back to the environment…the locals are no better in Thailand, but westerners front the dive industry, so there’s a much bigger push from the dive community to be environmentally conscious. Here the dive industry is fronted and consumed by an Asian population, so the environment stands absolutely no chance. And that is really depressing. And that makes me want to go running to Hawaii.

I need new fins. I don’t know if my fins will last until we leave, though I’d like them to because I’m really not inclined to buy gear here. My Volo Races have lasted one year and a half or approximately 800 dives and many confined water session. This is a little disappointing and not very good value for money. I wonder if I wrote to Mares, if they’d stand behind their product and send me new fins.

Ryan said he wouldn’t go diving today because it was cold and rainy. Cold and rainy? That sounds like such a girl thing to say. Is he never going to dive California in the winter again?

Peace and love xoxoxoxo

Adventures in Diving

As I sat next to my student’s hospital bed, watching her go in and out of sleep, I couldn’t help but notice all the local Malay people visiting their sick friends and relatives. Instead of being preoccupied with their own little world of their ill or injured person’s sickbed, they were all staring at me in my wetsuit, hair windblown into an Einstein ‘fro from the speedboat ride and no shoes. The no shoes seemed to amuse the nurses greatly.

Accidents happen so fast. There is a psychology to the onset of a panic and I suppose sometimes you can prevent it, but there was no slow motion to this one. One minute we were in 5 meters of water doing skills. And in a split second (well 20 to be precise), Janet’s eyes went wide as flying saucers, mask came off and regulator got spit out and she started to claw her way to the surface. I held onto her the whole time trying to put the regulator back in her mouth, but she kept spitting it right back out. And with no bubbles coming out of her to indicate that she was exhaling, I was freaking that she would over-expand her lungs. It probably saved her from more serious injury that she did take a breath while under there.

At the surface, she was responsive in that she was coughing and expelling water – and so much water came out of her in the half hour that followed. Otherwise, she was completely non-responsive. Thankfully since we’d just gone down, the boat was right there to pick us up and there were still a few divers at the surface who were also able to help me. I stripped her weights and gear and with the help of the boat captain and one of Ryan’s newly certified Rescue students, I carried her up the ladder. (I had told Ryan’s students the previous day that I would show them how to exit someone up a ladder. That’s not exactly what I’d meant.) The staff was a little slow in some of their reactions, but I was screaming that we had to go. I left my own gear in the water and asked the Rescue student to take care of it, pressed the captain to step on it and we went flying back towards Semporna.

I kept Janet in the recovery position on the boat as she kept coughing and expelling more water and vomiting water. I monitored her breathing, praying to random deities that I wouldn’t have to start CPR. I was also concerned because her breathing was very labored and I was worried about confusing agonal breaths with normal breathing. A few minutes before we reached Semporna she started becoming more alert and started to talk to me. I reassured her. I asked her if her chest and lungs hurt. She said it was a bit hard to take a breath, but it didn’t hurt. I took that and all the water that had poured out of her as hopeful signs that she might not have over-expanded.
On shore, the Singamata truck was ready waiting to take us to the hospital. We were at the hospital within minutes.

In my opinion, the hospital was a bit slow to react. I wasn’t feeling a sense of urgency. No one asked me what had happened. I forced the information and my choice of diagnosis on them to try to light a bit of a fire under them. They x-rayed her chest and confirmed near-drowning and no lung-overexpansion. At that moment, I felt so relieved. And then I acted as intermediary, making sure that they didn’t touch her or do anything without first explaining what they were doing.

When we first arrived at the hospital the staff was making noise like she could just go home and I was ready to full on argue with them that if she’d had a near-drowning there was no way she was leaving the hospital without first being properly monitored. We don’t learn a lot about near-drowning in our EFR courses, but I do remember that much. Especially since Janet wanted to leave and would probably have been happy if they’d told her she could go, I knew I was going to have to be mean cop on this subject. Thankfully as soon as they took the xray and saw that there was still water in her lungs, they treated the situation with a bit more urgency, got a proper doctor and got her going on oxygen and an IV with antibiotics.

Looking back on the day, I’m first of all so grateful that Janet will be just fine. She checked out this morning and proceeded on with her trip. I’m also grateful that I was able to do what needed to be done in a cool, calm and collected manner. I know that staying calm helped her tremendously because she told me so. Huge improvement over the last time I faced a crisis situation and completely came unhinged. Of course, as Ryan pointed out, it’s very different. Lisa was in a coma with little chance of survival. Janet never even lost consciousness.

Today my body is screaming at me from the efforts made getting her unto the boat. And I am a bit emotionally hung-over from the adrenaline rush. I have found myself lost in thought a few times and caught myself going to those dark places of “what ifs.” What if I had let her go to the surface? She probably wouldn’t have drowned. But then she probably would have had a lung over expansion injury. You can play that game for ages and get absolutely nowhere.

And so I have to file another incident report with PADI.

I think about instructors I’ve seen who think that it’s okay to be 1 or 2 meters away from your students as you’re watching them do skills. From that vantage point, they could not have responded, the student would have been at the surface before the neurons even fired that there was a problem. I insist with my divemaster trainees that they have to have their hands on the students at all times while a student is doing skills. And I know they think that I’m being ridiculous. But boys, I tell you, this is why!

A few weeks ago, we had another traumatic experience. There’s a lot of “fuck yous” to the environment around here. As I’ve already mentioned, pollution is a monumental problem and the dynamite fishing is out of control. I can’t do a dive without hearing bombs go off. About two weeks ago, I was on the boat doing island dives with an open water student and I was last to come up from the last dive of the day. In fact, we came up because Jose free-dived down to tell me to come up. He gave me the sign of a turtle and then made a gesture with his hands that looked like a sign for explosion. We surfaced and he explained that they had a turtle on the boat who had been hit by a speed boat and its head was exploded. Indeed, you could see its brains. But it was still alive. It was a national holiday of some sort, so we weren’t able to get any kind of support from the marine protection people. Shameful! The turtle ended back up at the resort. And Ryan took care of it. He took it back into the sea. I don’t know what he did with it and I don’t know if we’ll ever talk about it. For now I still get teary thinking about it – I can’t talk about it. All I can say is that in 4 years, it was the first time that I ever saw my boy in tears. Humans being stupid towards humans is one thing. But we get so angry and emotional when human stupidity hurts the creatures we covet. That turtle was going on about her happy turtle business, coming up to the surface for air. And some idiot motoring too fast and much too close to the reef and not being careful caused this. Humans suck in general. And in this part of the world, they suck even more when it comes to their attitudes to the marine environment.

For the number of adventures we’ve had, I have to say that I’m enjoying our time at Singamata tremendously. I’ve started getting into a rhythm for conducting my courses where it’s flowing like an oiled (albeit sometimes a tiny bit sticky) machine. The diving is lovely. Also, where Vicky originally said she probably only needed one of us, it’s proven that both of us are quite useful and being kept quite busy. So we’re rolling in fat wads of dough. Not really, but we’ll be able to pay for our exit ticket outta here when it’s time to go.

There are some kinks. There are essential materials that we need that are slow to come though the appearance of new BCDs that I’d asked for gave me hope that the other stuff we’ve been promised is coming as well. The manager, Vicky, is very blunt and set in her ways, but she’s also thus far given me the impression of being fair and they are aspiring to upgrading the resort to a PADI 5 Star IDC center which gives me a bit of confidence that they are interested in fixing the safety issues that we’ve presented to them.

Jose left on Ryan’s birthday. I accompanied him to Semporna so that I could buy Ryan some birthday treats – ginger snaps, chocolate and candy. We are living in an area destitute of proper shopping, so not even a funny t-shirt. He did much better for my birthday than I was able to do for his.

We miss Jose. He’d helped me out with the last few courses I’d had and I have to say that the lack of his presence was profoundly noticed yesterday. He would have been very handy to have around to turn to in order to keep things organized at sea while I sped off to land.

And Ryan misses being called “Chico de California.”

We are left with the kid couple of divemasters from Sweden who are one disaster after another. They are young and we can attribute a lot of the immaturity and lack of oral filtration system to that. But I’m ready to smack one of them. Whoever trained them for their divemaster forgot to go over the professionalism chapter with them. But worst yet, whoever did their divemaster signed them off on professionalism.

We’ve had a special bunch of customers these past 10 days. Lots of Ozzies and Europeans – lovely, lovely people. With their help, I’ve started a fund to help certify some of the local staff. There is a young boy who is the snorkeling guide and an amazing one at that who wants to be a divemaster. I am going to train him and I am going to keep collecting funds to pay for his certifications.

I don’t know why it surprises me that we meet so many like-minded people. We are all in very similar boats, if not the exact same boat. All of us are travelers, exploring new lands, new cultures, different ways of living. We meet a lot of people who are not just on a two-week holiday from the 9 to 5 grind, but on longer trips. It’s easy to get lost in this life. If you can work to keep going one year easily turns into two and on and on.

I could have used a day off, but we’re busy on the floating resort. Today I started an Advanced Class with a Malay woman who is from Kuala Lumpur but lives in Singapore. I feel like we get even more cultural diversity here than we did on PP.

Love and Peace to all. xoxoxoxo

Sweet Home Singamata

We are living at Singamata Reef and Dive Resort off the coast of Semporna, Borneo, Malaysia. Semporna is a dirty little town with a massive fish market, loads of little shops selling mostly cellphone cards, tools, beauty and food products. Amidst are a spattering of dive shops and dive resort offices that cater and liaison for the Sipadan-Mabul area.

Singamata is exactly a 5-minute speed-boat ride from Semporna and our view is of the Semporna coastline and Bum Bum Island. Farther away and to the south, we can also see some of the smaller islands. Like so many constructions in this area, the resort is built on stilts on a sandbar. It boasts 40 rooms, a dive shop and a large dining hall area. It is a very small world – 150 steps across the farthest stretch. Most of our world is 40 steps in one direction to the dive shop and 40 steps in the other direction to the dining hall.

We have been given a small room with two twin beds that I’ve pushed together so I don’t have to get up to kiss Ryan goodnight, a small desk, a bedside table, a chair and a hanging rack with 3 hangers. It is not intended for long-term living. When Paige left Phi Phi and gave so much stuff away, Ryan had gotten from her a hanging clothes cubby from Ikea. It’s mesh with six slots and pretty much fits all my clothes. I’ve just been told that I have to share with Ryan. The bedsheets are not made of 100% cotton so they slip and slide and make me sweat.

We get free room and board and get paid a small stipend on the courses we teach. The manager realistically only needed one of us, but said she would take us both after spending some time telling us she was worried about how much money we wouldn’t make. She kept telling us that we should go to Redang or Perhentians because that’s where you make money in Malaysia. But the diving here is better and that’s what drew us here in the first place. We hemmed and hawed a long time about accepting the job, but having been turned away from all the other shops we spoke to and emailed, we were starting to feel like at the very least we would stop spending money by moving here.

The resort caters heavily to the Chinese. So the food is very biased. I'm eating a lot of rice and veg - mostly cabbage, spinach, bean sprouts and aubergine (my favorite). Sometimes there's white people noodles, but very rarely. And everyday watermelon for dessert. Not the American kind that's got no seeds. We keep snacks from the Giant supermarket in Semporna, but with no fridge, the options are limited. And the options are limited anyway. We treat ourselves to chocolate to have a little something sweet at night. And I've taken to toast with peanut butter for breakfast since I can't bring myself to eat rice and fishballs first thing in the morning.

The people are lovely – a mix of Malay and Filipino, one Spanish DM, 2 Swedish DMs and a Malay/Chinese instructor. Most of them are kids – and when I say kids, I mean as young as 16. I laugh at them so often because they are children forced into an adult world, but their reactions and attitudes are very much those of kids. There’s also a lot of singing and laughing and guitar playing which is lovely. Apparently Karaoke is a favorite pastime among the youth of Malaysia.

The Spanish DM is from Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria off the coast of Marrocco (but belongs to Spain). He is our age, well-traveled, educated, and fun to converse with. I am practicing my Spanish. Unfortunately he leaves in about a week.

Since the resort is built on a sandbar, it has a reef structure running along the side of it. This reef has a few off-shoots and extends quite far, so we can do all the diving that we want whenever we’re not working. We’ve fallen into the habit of doing one long dive per day. The reef is not in great shape, but there’s quite a bit of life to be found, especially nudibranches. I’m in macro photography heaven. Since we’ve arrived, I believe that we’ve seen 10 new species that we’d never seen before. At first we were seeing at least 2 new species every dive we did – now they’re starting to repeat themselves a bit, but still new ones crop up now and again.

The area between Borneo, Philippines and the eastern end of Indonesia (encompassing Sulawesi and Papua) is supposed to be the most biodiverse. There certainly are a lot of neat little critters around here. We’ve both enjoyed two island excursions with nice reef diving, visibility and more critters than on the house reef. And we hope to enjoy more in the coming weeks. The islands here are mostly sandbars with palm trees – a small oasis in a desert, if you will. Some of the larger ones are surrounded by resorts on stilts, thereby extending the usable real estate. A couple of the more substantial land masses are volcanic formations.

What is bit shocking is the quantity of trash in the water. Plastic bags galore, candy wrappers, chip bags, diapers (that’s just disgusting) and of course, soda cans and bottles – by no means the worse offenders. Not once have I felt indisposed while in Semporna as to where to put my trash. There are trash bins around. But it’s education – when people are done with some packaging, they drop it on the floor, or better yet, in the sea. On Phi Phi, the trash is a constant battle, but the infrastructure of PP has chosen against providing trash bins, so you can’t really blame people for leaving their trash everywhere. But in the time we’ve spent in Indo and now in Malaysia, this is simply not the case. It’s a real shame.

Our days are predictable. Reading, watching TV, various projects – Spanish for me – tech crap for Ryan, diving, eating, sleeping. Lather, rinse, repeat. And periodically we’ll get a student and teach some diving.

The million-dollar question that no one is asking (well except the manager) and neither of us has an answer to is “how long are we going to stay.” We did tend to go a bit mental after 3 straight months on PP - what will 3 straight months on stilts do to our sanity? The main appeal of Malaysia as a work destination is the ease of obtaining visas. Basically, there is no visa, we get 90 days on arrival. That means that we arrive by land, sea or air, go through customs and they get out their big rubber stamp, smack it down on a page in our passports and we can stay 90 days. No costs, no trips to immigration this and thats to extend, to check in, whatever. At the end of 90 days, we can repeat the process or go away. Our 90 days is up July 29th. I reckon we’ll have to start seriously asking the question, “should we stay or should we go?” around July 1.

Balinese Adventures

First of all, I had a fantastic birthday. All because I have bestest boyfriend ever! So that we wouldn’t leave the Gilis without fully exploring our options there, we decided to go check out Gili Air. It was a 45-minute slow boat ride to cover the distance of about 2 miles, past Gili Meno and over. Air (which in Bahasa means “water”) is much less developed than Trawangan, with only about 5 dive shops and a handful of sleepy little bungalows. It took us a surprising 2 hours to walk around it, but we did stop a lot. We had the best curry we’ve had in Indonesia at a little warung and then it was back to Gili T on the same excruciatingly slow boat.

I went to yoga after which I was greeted by Ryan, Andy and Nicky and a big old chocolate cake AND presents. We ate desert before dinner so that the ants wouldn’t get to it.

We finished out the day at Trawangan Dive’s Pub Quiz night, devouring proper Mexican food and winning the pub quiz. The pub quiz prize just about paid for our dinner.

The following day we (Ryan, Andy and me) caught the boat from Gili headed for Amed. It felt a little bit like we were out for a three-hour tour, if you catch my drift. But for puker’s little helper, it would have been a hurlfest. There was a very boisterous (drunk) American active military (stationed in Afghanistan) in his late 40s, early 50s with his Indo wife who looked to be all of about 14. They had just been married in January and he was all gooey gaga, talking about settling down in Indo and having a couple kids. I still don’t get it. Unfortunately this part of the world does seem to collect all the pedophiles.

We arrived in Tulamben just in time for an afternoon dive and a quick shower later we were reunited with Chris and Carolyn. Carolyn is lovely. Very down to earth and seems to be a good match for Chris so I’m very happy that he’s found himself a nice easy going gal.

Tulamben once again gave us some super diving, including the opportunity for some great shark pictures. Unfortunately Ryan caught a nasty cold and was out of commission after only three dives and then got to listen to tales of Napoleon Wrasses and Bumphead Parrotfish and other wonderful critters that hang out on that superb wreck.





























Our two weeks in Bali turned into a whirlwind tour of the island. We gave up the quiet of Tulamben after only four days and started town hopping looking for the ultimate diving experience.

We first went to Amed, sleepy little town just 20 minutes south of Tulamben where the diving proved to be Meh. Since Ryan was getting over a cold and we wanted to pick up a rental car, we descended down to Ubud and spent three lovely days there. Ubud is a hippy dippy little town, but the cultural center of Bali. We spent all our time walking around exploring the town, the Sacred Monkey Forest, rice paddies and temples galore, oh my! And we attended a Balinese dance performance which we admired, but did not understand very well.













We left Ubud in our rental car packed with people and luggage without any extra room whatsoever and headed up north to Lovina in search of more diving, ultimately ending up in Pemuteran, which gave us access to the lovely little Menjangan Island where we booked ourselves for a three dive trip. It started as a lovely day on a little boat puttering over to a quite little island with great dropoffs covered in exceptional coral. The diversity of the marine life wasn’t any great shakes, but we did get to see a couple of nudis we hadn’t seen before, a beautiful rust colored frogfish and a pigmy seahorse that couldn’t’ve been more than ½ a centimeter long – impossible to photograph.



















After three dives pushing the limits of our computers – Andy and I both went into deco multiple times – stupid Suunto – we returned back to Pemuteran in the classic tropical pissing down rain. Streets were flooded – mud rivers flowed freely. And then, maybe because the previous day I’d made a wise-ass comment, Shiva the destroyer raged vengeance on me. We’d erred into a little alleyway and kids were gawking at us and then an adult told us we were going the wrong way. Then I saw a goat and said, “oooh, look a goat.” Then I said, “See, now everyone’s happy, they (the kids) have seen white people and I’ve seen a goat.” For this comment, or maybe it’s just the Balinese obsession with building outdoor areas with bathroom tile, I slipped, feet came completely out from under me and I landed on my elbow. And then I cried. And then Ryan put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

It’s very frustrating being the clumsiest kid on the block.

Bali is probably one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. The rice paddies surrounded by a variety of trees redefine the color green. The temples are reminiscent of Indiana Jones. The costumes of elaborately woven silk blare colors of reds and golds and greens and blues. The artwork is colorful and fun. Hinduism, which I’ve yet to read much about, has interesting deities and rituals (and is much less annoying than Islam with their Allah Akbars at 5:00 a.m.). And the volcanoes soar into the heavens, often obscured by low clouds, and reaching far into the Bali Sea with their black sands.
















And I said, Bali would be a lovely place if it wasn’t for the people.

The presence of white people in these little villages means money and people are constantly harassing tourists and asking for money. We visited Gunung Kawi, a temple. In order to visit temples, it is required that you be wearing the proper dress of a sarong and sash. The street leading up to Gunung Kawi is lined with merchants who will pull you off the street and force merchandise into your hands. They do not accept the word “no” kindly and I somehow managed to offend one of them. However, I held strong and continued on down the street. When I purchased my ticket, the man at the counter told me there were sarongs inside that we could borrow (for a small donation of course, but up to us the donation). I then went to rescue Chris and Carolyn who were modeling sarongs that had been strewn on them and were in the midst of negotiations. Andy had already given in and was marching down the street looking very regal in his gold and blue sarong.


(What Andy looked like)


(What the rest of us looked like)

Towards the end of our trip when people would ask where I was from, I started to answer “Thailand.” That would confuse them to no end, but I was at a point where I did not even want people talking to me. The morning we woke up in Lovina, at a lovely homestay on the water, I went to take a look at the sea and was accosted by a couple of women who asked me name, where I was from, yadda, yadda. They asked how long we were staying and I told them we were checking out today. One of them said, “Oh, you check out today after you have massage.” I smiled and said “no massage today.” Then another said, “you buy sarong to have memory.” I pointed at my head and said, “This is where my memories are. “ This is constant and I was so annoyed that I couldn’t even just take in the early morning quiet of the water and it was after this that I started saying I was from Thailand.

My favorite tourist spot was Sacred Monkey Forest in the center of Ubud. For a minimal entry fee, you can go play with the monkeys. You can also purchase bananas to feed the monkeys for a whopping $2 per banana (that’s taking the piss), but all you have to do is sit down next to a monkey and he’ll come play with you. If you take stuff out of your bag they get very curious and you get very worried because that’s when we face the bite potential. You don’t want them to think you’re hiding food from them, but I had the pieces of my nice SLR camera in my dry bag and I wasn’t letting a monkey have a go at that. Also, as Andy discovered, when a monkey is standing on your lap, don’t blow up the monkey’s butt. That makes the monkey very mad.

















After Pemuteran and my slip and slide accident, we hit the road for Kuta where we were to spend our last night together before Ryan and I left Indonesia. The country wanted us out by May 2 and as Ryan put it on Facebook, the Indonesian Experiment is over for now. The drive down to Pemuteran tested everyone’s patience. Carolyn was getting progressively sicker going from a stomach bug to a cold, Andy had to drive and listen to us all gripe, I was in the way back seat getting tossed around like a rag doll the day after suffering a nasty fall. Only Ryan seemed cool as a cucumber until we got to Kuta, the butt-crack of the world. Then he started swearing at buildings. But he did manage to find us a beautiful and expensive room to spend our final Balinese night. Unfortunately, after spending so much time in traffic getting through Denpasar and into Kuta, it was 9:00 p.m. by the time we were checked in and ready for dinner. With a 5:30 alarm clock looming, there would be no final disco disco night with our friends.

Last night we arrived in Semporna, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia after what seemed like interminable travel. This part of the world is bigger than it looks on the map!
Semporna is a port town – dirty, grungy, armpit sort of town. Today we’ve been very lazy (and it’s been very dreary out), but tomorrow we start looking for work.