Monday, May 12, 2008

Diving: Can't Get Enough

I'm sitting next to a window in Jaipur, Rajasthan. The sky is completely grey and it's about to rain. The breeze is a welcomed change from the typical 35C weather. I just finished four cups of chai masala. I originally ordered double so that Eric could share with me, but he went to use the internet instead. So I accidentally got to drink four cups. An awesome accident.

Before I write more about India, I need to finish Malaysia as well as Thailand and Cambodia. Here we go...


Mabul Island (Mar. 15 - Mar. 17)
Can't say much more about diving at Sipadan than: amazing. I flew to Tawau, in the eastern part of Sabah, on a Saturday morning. Then bused to Semporna and took a boat to Mabul Island. Mabul Island has about 3 really nice resorts and one local village. The island is tiny and would only take about 30 minutes to walk its entire perimeter. I stayed in the village with a local family that had built additional rooms for tourists. I orignally booked only 3 dives, but that quickly changed.

Immediately after I had settled into my room I met a Dutch couple that currently live in Costa Rica and run a dive shop there. They told me they were about to leave for a late afternoon dive around Mabul Island so I too went along. The visibility was a bit murky, but everything else was beautiful. There was a ridge of beautiful hard and soft coral hosting tiny pygmy seahorses, and I mean tiny (about 1 inch long), colorful nudibranchs, and we ended the dive in the presence of a massive sea turtle - she was at least as long as I am tall.

There was a group of about 18 Malaysians diving with the same company as me. They were wonderfully friendly and I even met up with one of the guy's (Sam) when I was back in Kuala Lumpur. After grabbing a coffee in the mall below the Petronas Towers and giving me a DVD full of underwater pictures from the Sipadan dive trip, Sam gave me a tour of KL in his company van. Unfortunately it was pouring, so the tour was largely conducted from inside the van. The roads were flooded and at one point a car drove past us and blinded us with water. A scary moment considering how people drive in KL (however, after being in India, driving in KL is like driving through State College, PA). That was a bit off topic, back to Mabul Island:

The next day: 4 more dives. We left at 5:30AM for Pulau (island) Sipadan. Sipadan is one of top diving destinations in the world and until recently, the island used to be populated with resorts and tourists. A couple years ago, in the interest of conserving the rapidly declining reefs around the island, the Malaysian government closed all of the resorts. Now only 120 people can dive around Sipadan per day. Our first dive was along a steep wall. We went down to about 30 meters, and even from that depth we couldn't see the bottom. The coral really wasn't that impressive, but the visibility was amazing and we saw at least 6 reef sharks.

The second dive was at a site called Coral Garden and was absolutely spectacular. We entered the water over a densely covered reef flat. We swam over all different types and colors of coral until the reef opened into a seemingly bottomless abyss. We descended, surrounded on three sides by walls of coral and then began swimming along one of the walls. I could see forever in front of me, forever below me, and the sky above. I could have stayed underwater forever. The wall was so densely covered with coral and as we swam closer we could see that it was teeming with much smaller life: sea stars, nudibranchs, sea squirts, sea cucumbers, huge sea turtles nestled into coves within the wall... It was amazing. We ended the dive back on the reef flat in the company of at least 3 sea turtles. Minutes before we ascended we heard what sounded like one of our air tanks crashing into the coral below. It was a bomb, probably about 40 miles away. Dynamite fishing is illegal, but apparently still practiced by fisherman. It's sad that such a destructive method of fishing is still in use, especially in an area hosting some of highest marine diversity in the world.

I had an amazing weekend. Although the diving was the best I've ever done, the experience wouldn't have been quite the same without the people I met, the dive masters with whom I dove, the company of the local villagers, and the traditional Malay meals. It's so nice to be part of a community as opposed to observing it from the luxury of a resort.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

A Little Hiking

Kinabatangan River (Mar. 7 - Mar. 9)

There were so many things that I wanted to do while in Borneo: scuba dive, climb Mt. Kinabalu, see orangutans... But I quickly learned that I couldn't do everything and that it's ok not to do everything. Anyway, I've already accepted the fact that I'm going back to Borneo.

After 2 days of staying in Vincent the Drunk's guest-house I moved to the North Borneo Cabin. So much nicer. And my home for the next 16 days. The rooms were spotless, bathrooms were nice, and the staff was awesome. So awesome that they booked and arranged all of my travel around Sabah for me. I didn't have to think at all; I just sat at the reception, told them what I wanted to do, and a few quick phone calls later my itinerary was set.

After 4 days of volunteering, I headed east toward the Kinabatangan River on a 6 hour bus ride. I got off the bus at a small roadside cafe in a tiny town. I'm not even sure it could be considered a town. I was then supposed to be picked up by a guide who would take me to a jungle lodge on the Kinabatangan. I did find a guide (Jay), but he was looking for Amanda. Apparently I was Amanda, or that's at least what he decided. We were soon picked up by Sam, who was also looking for Amanda and who also readily accepted that I was she. The three of us first stopped at a small grocery store to pick up a some food supplies. I still wasn't sure whether I was with the correct guides, but for some reason I felt quite comfortable with Jay and Sam. Everything turned out fine. After driving for about an hour through endless palm oil plantations, we arrived at the river.

The lodge was absolutely basic and absolutely lovely. It was run by locals (river people - orang sunai) and when I arrived was immediately greeted with a warm cup of rose tea. The women then showed me to my room: a dorm shared with David, a British guy that I actually knew! I had previously shared a dorm with David while at Vincent's guest house. It was so nice to see a familiar face, especially considering that everyone else at the lodge (13 other guys) was part of a Dutch fraternity reunion.

Less than an hour after I arrived, the 15 of us piled into a boat just in time for the rain. It poured. And the leeches were out in force - the guys still had leeches on their rain gear from jungle trekking earlier that day. It was pretty funny watching those grown men squirm away from the little leeches. One of the Dutch guys had a leech on his cheek and David had one on his chair. After watching him try to flick it off for a few minutes I grabbed it and tossed it overboard.

The rain slowly cleared and we saw heaps of macaques and a few proboscis monkeys as we boated down the river. The highlight of the trip was a green tree viper. One of the Dutch guys (Strong Man) pointed it out and our guide, Kai, positioned the boat directly beneath the overhanging branch on which the viper was perched. Kai got a kick out of placing the boat and us so close to the poisonous snake. More than once, the boys scrambled to the far side of the boat as the snake approached their heads. I was already on the far side of the boat and didn't have to move - I just hoped we wouldn't capsize. Crocodiles or a viper? Don't know which I'd prefer.

That evening we all ate together. I quickly got to know the Dutch guys quite well. This was their second reunion. Since graduating from university they have organized a trip every 5 years. They fund these vacations by creating a pool of money to which everyone contributes a portion of their monthly salary. Then when year 5 rolls around they have all the money they need to travel together in a foreign country for a couple weeks! Amazing, huh? Such an awesomely simple idea. After eating we decided to play a game. I can't remember the name or even all of the rules, but it had to do with putting celebrity names in a bucket and each person would pull a name and try to describe the celebrity to their teammates without using proper nouns. The next round we used the same names, but you could only use one word to describe the celebrity, and for the final round you could only pantomime. The added twist was that everything had to be in English - for the sake of David and me. It was hilarious. The 13 Dutch were constantly arguing. In Dutch "I" is not a proper noun, so lots of the guys used it to describe their celebrity only to be quickly admonished by people from the opposite team. The game got pretty heated and was made even more exciting when "Strong Man's" plastic chair broke under his weight - an entire leg snapped in half. I think I almost peed my pants. The next morning one of the women asked what happened and the only answer she got was, "Oh, it was Strong Man."

David and the Dutch guys left the following day and I spent the afternoon trekking with Nelly, my guide, in the jungle. The banks of the Kinabatangan are teeming with wildlife: monitor lizards, macaques, proboscis monkeys, orangutans, pygmy elephants, hundreds of birds, and snakes. The high diversity of rare animals in such a small space is quite spectacular, but also very sad. Palm oil plantations are all over Malaysia. Native forests are cleared and replaced with the economically important palm oil trees. The palms take about 2 years to mature and can then be harvested for their fruit, from which oil is extracted, every month for about 20 years. The success of the palm oil industry has resulted in the mass destruction of much of Malaysia's natural forests. The high diversity of rare animals along the Kinabatangan is a direct result of palm oil plantations: palm plantations are slowly encroaching upon the Kinabatangan, destroying these animals' habitat and forcing them closer and closer to the river's banks.

On the third day I started my journey back to Kota Kinabalu. Sam drove me from the lodge back to the small roadside cafe, where together we waited for the bus. To pass the time Sam and I practiced his English and he taught me some Malay. It was an awesome exchange of information - I even learned how to construct some simple Malay sentences. I was also very grateful for his company. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to wave down the bus, much less know which one to stop. Sam took care of everything for me; he even escorted me to the bus door.