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
Monday, July 25, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
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
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
Friday, July 8, 2011
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
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
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