Malaysia

I flew into Kuala Lumpur on July 25th. Luckily, this time I had done some planning earlier in the day, and had a hostel booked in advance. My first impression of Malaysia was how much more modern it was compared to all the other places I'd been in Asia, with the exception of Japan. The airport was spotless, and not one single person approached me trying to give me rides into town. I bought a bus ticket for 8 Ringets (about $3 Cdn) for the 1 hour ride into KL centre. After I got off the bus I took a quick subway ride to the stop nearest to my hostel, and was there in no time. Apparently I got extremely lucky, because the hostel that I chose completely randomly, turned out to be absolutely amazing, and had opened only 3 weeks before. Everything was brand new, from the soft beds, to the ice cold AC. The staff was super friendly too. Once I had checked in; and put my bags up in the room, I was asking the front desk about where a guy could get a good meal in the area, and two of them volunteered to come with me to show me a good place. I had some great chinese food and conversation with them, and at the end they even paid for my food! So far, I was loving KL. The next day was spent roaving around China Town with another traveler. At night, while roaming around trying to find the Petronas Towers (they can be quite elusive, despite being the tallest towers in the world), I came across a TGI Fridays, and was in heaven. After gorging myself on boneless buffalo wings, fish and chips, and some beer, I got some directions from the waiter and was off to the towers. My brothers Chris and Corey had been there just over a year ago, and I remembered their pictures of the towers, and couldn't believe how cool they looked. When I saw them in person, they were just as cool. In fact, some guy I ran in to said they were cooler looking than when Chris and Corey were there. Weird, but again, it was easier to not ask questions.

The next day, I was flying to the Perhentian Islands. Now, if you'd asked me about the Perhentian Islands 2 months ago, I would have wondered what the hell you were talking about - maybe even smacked you upside the head. But after traveling around for a month and a half, I'd met 3 separate groups of travelers who raved about these Perhentian Islands, and how it was the highlight of their trip. So I decided I must go see them. And it's true, they are spectacular. Beautiful white sand gives way to the clearest water I've ever seen. And the best part was that even though it had become more touristy over the years, it's still unspoiled for the most part, with just basic accommodation and a few restaurants on the beach to choose from. This was the definition of a true tropical paradise. I was planning on spending maybe 3 days there, but ended up settling in for a week. I signed up for the Advanced Scuba Diving course at the place I was staying. The visibility definitely could have been better, but overall, the diving and the lessons were really fun. The first one we did was underwater navigation, where you have to swim a square pattern following a set heading, count15 kicks, and then turn 90 degrees afterwards to start the next leg. After 4 of these legs, the idea is that if you've followed the headings properly, and done proper 90 degree turns, you should end up within 6 metres from your point of departure. It was a little sketchy on the 3rd and 4th legs, because you have no landmarks to tell you whether you are going in the right direction, but I was relieved when I returned exactly to the departure point. Compasses are cool! The best dive though was easily the night dive. We set out at around 8pm, and while we were on the boat on the way out to the dive site, you could see a weather system moving in, complete with thunder and lightning. To all of our surprise, the instructor decided to carry on, and we backrolled into the black water. Scuba diving at night is so much different than during the day. It must be similar to to being in space, as you just float around in complete darkness, without any sounds at all. You also see all kinds of weird things on the ocean bed you've never seen before. When we surfaced, it was an absolute torrential downpour, with lightning lighting up the sky every few seconds. I felt like I was in some kind of action movie and maybe we were some heroic types tasked with some super cool mission. To makes things even more spicy, the boat which dropped us off was nowhere to be seen! So there we were floating around in the middle of the ocean, rain pounding down on us, and lightning crashing around us against the otherwise black night. It seemed like a worse version of the story depicted in the movie "Open Water". But at the same time, I was loving it. I don't know why, but I found the whole ordeal to be just another adventure. And I felt so alive. I remember thinking that if I hadn't taken on this whole trip, at that exact moment where I was now going through this ordeal, I would have instead been adding and subtracting numbers on my adding machine, sitting in my office at work, staring at my computer all day (we're 12 hours ahead of Winnipeg time here). Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate my job that much, it just made me realize how lucky I was to be able to have such an adventure, and put things in perspective a little. Of course, it wouldn't have been quite as cool if we were left out there for good, never to be seen again. But there is definitely something to be said for living on the edge a little. After about 10 minutes, the boat spotted our torches, and we were saved.

OK that story went on a little longer than anticipated, so I'll leave it at that for the Perhentians. The last item of note however was that I met a couple more travel companions to accompany me on my next destination - Borneo. They were Chris, a fellow Canuck, and Jasmin, from Switzerland. Together, we made quite the team. We took the boat back to the mainland together in the morning, and then booked our first class train tickets (we are a big deal) for later that night. We were so organized. So we rewarded ourselves by spending the majority of our day in McDonald's, eating copious amounts of ice cream cones and Big Macs, and making full use of the free wifi access. Maybe it was all the grease and sugar affecting us, but we somehow lost track of time, and before we knew it, we were rushing around trying to find a taxi to take us to the train station, where our train was leaving in 30 mins. Our relief of finding a taxi driver was quickly replaced with angst as he told us about the traffic jam that awaited us. What we didn't realize was that we had chanced upon the Malaysian equivalent of Michael Schumacher. This guy could drive! For example, why wait in the lineup of cars, when you could simply exit the line and speed down the oncoming traffic lanes, and then desperately plunge back into the lineup when the only other alternative was a head-on collision? He seemed to take our desperate situation as a personal challenge, and at times I could swear he was more worked up than us. Our train left at 6:45pm, and we pulled up at 6:46pm, just as the train whistle was blowing to indicate its immediate departure. Our driver aggressively launched the taxi right up to the front entrance, as onlookers dashed for cover. We got out and started running and yelling like lunatics to indicate our intentions. One of the staff picked up his walkie talkie, and communicated the situation. We jumped onto the nearest car, and within 5 seconds, the train was off. After the adrenaline wore off, we all had a good laugh about it - lesson learned, hopefully.

After spending another day in KL, we were on a flight to Kota Kinabalu, in Malaysian Borneo. After a quick sleep, we were on yet another flight to Tawau, in the Southeast, in order to do some scuba diving while based in Semporna. We ended up diving at a place called Scuba Junkie. Sipidan is famous dive site in the area, but unfortunately we hadn't realized that everyone and their dog would also be there looking to dive Sipidan, and it was booked up Through September. So we ended up doing our diving at Mabul instead. We did 3 dives around the area, and saw lots of turtles, lion fish, moray eels, loads of colourful fish, and even did a wreck dive. It was a good time. And we finished the day off by staying in a chalet on Mabul Island, which was really a charming little island.

After that, I parted ways with Chris and Jasmin. They were going to continue scuba diving the next day, and I just felt that at that point, I was a little scuba dived out. So I caught the bus back up to Kota Kinabalu, where I was booked on a jungle river tour and a white water rafting trip. The jungle river tour highlight was the Proboscis Monkey. They are endemic to the area and are the funniest thing I have ever seen. Picture a monkey with a great big pot belly, and a nose like Pinocchio. White water rafting the next day was pure adrenaline at times, and at other times, pure relaxation as we hopped out of the boat and just floated down the river in the more mild rapids.

Next stop: Vietnam