This video is sideways, sorry. Mykie and I were in Indonesia on a snorkeling tour and this lighthouse was one of our stops. It is in the middle of the water with a beautiful coral reef around it and a cave for advanced snorkelers to dive through. This lighthouse is 10+ meters high and Mykie decides that he wants to jump off it. I am sitting safely in the boat filming and doing the commentary. Enjoy!
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
From Asia back to OZ
Well, it appears that just around the corner our trip is coming to an end. Unfortunately, we have to go back to OZ Oct 22. I am not looking forward to getting back in the grind of things but we need to make some more money for the Philippines. I think that the both of us enjoyed Kula Lumpur. It is an easy city to get lost in for an easy week. I think that out of all the crazy south east asian cities, this one is the most tame.
Through out this journey, there were things that i was not so comfortable with. Something that would make me unhappy if I had to deal with them back home. But this is asian life out here, and if you really want to live it the real way, you have to do it this way....
First, cold showers are not a normal experience for me. At first it was very hard to get used to but when the day is so hot and sticky, that cold shower feels amazing. You can get rooms with hot and cold showers but it is more expensive and I am sure that we would spend our money on other better things.
If you go to a 'hostel' they are usually not so pretty to look at. THe place we have in Kula lumpur looks like a jail cell with no window to the outside world. If you don't count the hallway. The bed is an iron bed with a small side table and a fan. That is the luxurious life of a budget traveller. There is an upside to this....it costs $5 per person per day. Can't beat that. You probably don't want to spend too much time there anyway unless you buy the new christopher paolini book about dragons. It is all the rage in our room with Mykie so engrossed that he doesn't even know that i am talking sometimes. I tried to get into it but there are too many weird references to bangdlers and dragons and semi people etc. By he first chapter i was so lost i did not know who was what.
That reminds me of a funny experience we had a this burger joint called carl juniors. I think it is like a licks back home. They have a great burger menu. They had this yummy guacamole burger and under it there was a double guacamole burger. I was so excited i thought twice the amount of guacamole, i was in heaven. i love that stuff. To my horror, the burger was the size of mykie's head and double guacamole does not mean you get twice the amount of guacamole. It means you get two patties. I was like what am i going to do with two patties the size of Mykie's head. I wanted guacamole....in the end the burger was so tasty and to those wondering, no i couldn't fully finish it. I was so disappointed :( But this was also the day we bought our new snorkels and we wore them in the restaurant while taking tons of photos. I get started at enough, why not add to the fire.
Another asian point: For those who do not like bugs, well this is not your place to visit. As i tried to explain to my grandpa, the roaches here re the size of mice and some fly. yes, they fly. and they are fast. We see them everywhere and at first i was really grossed out by them, but now i just step over them and keep going. If they were in my house back home, I would probably have a heart attack but i will let them stay here.
We found this local restaurant, where i am probably the only white person that goes in there. This fact I am sure of because the moment we go in all the waiters come running to us to serve us. Sometimes it seems that if i closed my eyes for one second they would fight for a place in front of me waiting for me to look again. But, there is this one waitree/waiter that works there that i really like. It is a lady boy ( a man who lives as a lady). She is so sweet I just want to take her out for coffee and ask thousands of questions. There are lady boys downstairs at the local bar, and they are great. So pleasant. Aside from the funny enthusiastic staff there are roaches there too that always seem to crawl on the wall beside Mykie as we are waiting for our food. They are usually small, but yesterday a big one came to say Hello.... Goodbye, and I flinged it with the menu, over Mykie's head. So nasty! Not my Favourite!
Through out this journey, there were things that i was not so comfortable with. Something that would make me unhappy if I had to deal with them back home. But this is asian life out here, and if you really want to live it the real way, you have to do it this way....
First, cold showers are not a normal experience for me. At first it was very hard to get used to but when the day is so hot and sticky, that cold shower feels amazing. You can get rooms with hot and cold showers but it is more expensive and I am sure that we would spend our money on other better things.
If you go to a 'hostel' they are usually not so pretty to look at. THe place we have in Kula lumpur looks like a jail cell with no window to the outside world. If you don't count the hallway. The bed is an iron bed with a small side table and a fan. That is the luxurious life of a budget traveller. There is an upside to this....it costs $5 per person per day. Can't beat that. You probably don't want to spend too much time there anyway unless you buy the new christopher paolini book about dragons. It is all the rage in our room with Mykie so engrossed that he doesn't even know that i am talking sometimes. I tried to get into it but there are too many weird references to bangdlers and dragons and semi people etc. By he first chapter i was so lost i did not know who was what.
That reminds me of a funny experience we had a this burger joint called carl juniors. I think it is like a licks back home. They have a great burger menu. They had this yummy guacamole burger and under it there was a double guacamole burger. I was so excited i thought twice the amount of guacamole, i was in heaven. i love that stuff. To my horror, the burger was the size of mykie's head and double guacamole does not mean you get twice the amount of guacamole. It means you get two patties. I was like what am i going to do with two patties the size of Mykie's head. I wanted guacamole....in the end the burger was so tasty and to those wondering, no i couldn't fully finish it. I was so disappointed :( But this was also the day we bought our new snorkels and we wore them in the restaurant while taking tons of photos. I get started at enough, why not add to the fire.
Another asian point: For those who do not like bugs, well this is not your place to visit. As i tried to explain to my grandpa, the roaches here re the size of mice and some fly. yes, they fly. and they are fast. We see them everywhere and at first i was really grossed out by them, but now i just step over them and keep going. If they were in my house back home, I would probably have a heart attack but i will let them stay here.
We found this local restaurant, where i am probably the only white person that goes in there. This fact I am sure of because the moment we go in all the waiters come running to us to serve us. Sometimes it seems that if i closed my eyes for one second they would fight for a place in front of me waiting for me to look again. But, there is this one waitree/waiter that works there that i really like. It is a lady boy ( a man who lives as a lady). She is so sweet I just want to take her out for coffee and ask thousands of questions. There are lady boys downstairs at the local bar, and they are great. So pleasant. Aside from the funny enthusiastic staff there are roaches there too that always seem to crawl on the wall beside Mykie as we are waiting for our food. They are usually small, but yesterday a big one came to say Hello.... Goodbye, and I flinged it with the menu, over Mykie's head. So nasty! Not my Favourite!
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Melaka to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
From singapore we took a bus to the city of Melaka which is on the way to Kula Lumpur in Malaysia. BTW i don't remember if i mentioned this but the buses here in asia are great because they all have recliner seats and are never full. it is really nice and comfortable. Melaka was supposed to be a two day stop to see its famous historic dutch remains. We ended up staying one week instead! We loved it. Not so much the city. It was small and there was not very much to do. We saw the historic dutch remains which remained to be a disappointment probably for most people that visit there. It consisted of crumbled remains of some building that was built in 1511. Mind you , that is impressive in itself that it is still standing. But aside form that, it was had nothing else to offer. There was a funny man sitting at the top of the stairs asking for change. Interesting enough he did not ask Mykie for anything as he walked by but insisted on telling me that he had an accident and wanted change. The accident apparently was hidden underneath a tensor bandage around his ankle. Please, i have seen a lot more 'accidents' in my life. I once fell from the monkey bars in the playground. Now that hurt a lot! LOL (laugh out loud)
Mykie and I saw five movie at the beautiful new theatre and enjoy the theatre to ourselves almost each time. We spent some hot days swimming at the local public pool. The pool was olympic sized, that was nice. On our last day Mykie got in trouble by some rambling man about not wearing speedo type swim shorts. Apparently, everyone wears them. Maybe they are all the rage down here. I don't know what the rage would be about though.
The lure of this place was the unique and totally welcoming hostel that we stumbled upon. The local bus had dropped us off a little to far from our original bus stop, so now we had to walk. Fortunately, we walked right by emily's guest house. It was a tropical garden oasis that was trapped behind the smouldering asphalt and humming from excessively loud passing traffic. Once we walked in we knew that we would be staying here longer than our planned two days. They had created this place from the ground up with their bare hands. Two brothers owned and ran it. They had a pet rabbit named mister playboy, with whom i fell in love with instantly. The had two turtles and lots of fish!!!!!!! It was like a garden oasis, with a hammock under a tree. tables and chairs made of wood stumps and very interesting travellers.
Note: i bought carrots and bananas for mister playboy. He loved it!!!!!!!!!!!! This rabbit just decided a year or so ago to take shelter at the hostel and now he is one of the locals.
We happen to meet a couple from Holland who i thought had the worst luck in the world but after long consideration, i realized they were just pretty stupid. First, they got their Ipod stolen from a safe. They rented out a safe at the hotel next to their own. Once they put the ipod into the safe, the guy heard someone mention ipod in malay but they just walked out and left it there anyway. When they returned after a couple of days everything but the ipod was gone. Surprisingly, they did not check their stuff until they got to another island and realized their ipod was gone. So dumb! It gets better.... They were sitting on a train, and there was a suspicious guy lurking around the doors. Even though he was suspicious, they did nothing. All of a sudden he reaches over them and picks up their 40 lbs pack and runs out of the train. They sat their all confused about what was going on. By the time they realized, he was gone somewhere in the shadows of the tracks(it was a t night) and there with him was his pack. So dumb, they just sat there screaming. AS the train started moving, the man emerged holding the pack in his arms as they watched him standing there. They never took the normal precautions they usually did like tying the bag to the rack.They always did that, not this time though.
At the hostel, the girl left her wallet under the couch and did not even know it was there. so dumb.... i thought it was a string of bad luck but when you hear the full story, you know they are not the sharpest pencils in the drawer.
They also had some bad experiences with bed bugs here in malaysia...but i guess you should learn from your mistakes and choose better. well, they got it after the 3rd time, LOL
Mykie and I saw five movie at the beautiful new theatre and enjoy the theatre to ourselves almost each time. We spent some hot days swimming at the local public pool. The pool was olympic sized, that was nice. On our last day Mykie got in trouble by some rambling man about not wearing speedo type swim shorts. Apparently, everyone wears them. Maybe they are all the rage down here. I don't know what the rage would be about though.
The lure of this place was the unique and totally welcoming hostel that we stumbled upon. The local bus had dropped us off a little to far from our original bus stop, so now we had to walk. Fortunately, we walked right by emily's guest house. It was a tropical garden oasis that was trapped behind the smouldering asphalt and humming from excessively loud passing traffic. Once we walked in we knew that we would be staying here longer than our planned two days. They had created this place from the ground up with their bare hands. Two brothers owned and ran it. They had a pet rabbit named mister playboy, with whom i fell in love with instantly. The had two turtles and lots of fish!!!!!!! It was like a garden oasis, with a hammock under a tree. tables and chairs made of wood stumps and very interesting travellers.
Note: i bought carrots and bananas for mister playboy. He loved it!!!!!!!!!!!! This rabbit just decided a year or so ago to take shelter at the hostel and now he is one of the locals.
We happen to meet a couple from Holland who i thought had the worst luck in the world but after long consideration, i realized they were just pretty stupid. First, they got their Ipod stolen from a safe. They rented out a safe at the hotel next to their own. Once they put the ipod into the safe, the guy heard someone mention ipod in malay but they just walked out and left it there anyway. When they returned after a couple of days everything but the ipod was gone. Surprisingly, they did not check their stuff until they got to another island and realized their ipod was gone. So dumb! It gets better.... They were sitting on a train, and there was a suspicious guy lurking around the doors. Even though he was suspicious, they did nothing. All of a sudden he reaches over them and picks up their 40 lbs pack and runs out of the train. They sat their all confused about what was going on. By the time they realized, he was gone somewhere in the shadows of the tracks(it was a t night) and there with him was his pack. So dumb, they just sat there screaming. AS the train started moving, the man emerged holding the pack in his arms as they watched him standing there. They never took the normal precautions they usually did like tying the bag to the rack.They always did that, not this time though.
At the hostel, the girl left her wallet under the couch and did not even know it was there. so dumb.... i thought it was a string of bad luck but when you hear the full story, you know they are not the sharpest pencils in the drawer.
They also had some bad experiences with bed bugs here in malaysia...but i guess you should learn from your mistakes and choose better. well, they got it after the 3rd time, LOL
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Indonesia to Singapore to Malaysia
I believe that another update is due. This one will not be as long as the other one, LOL. I hope.
Mykie and I were in the north of Sulawesi at an island called Bunaken (Indonesia), pronounced Boo na can. I was made fun of a lot since i never pronounced it right. This island had a scuba diving resort on it and Mykie and I decided to become certified scuba divers. Well this turned out to be an adventure in itself. The resort is run by two british expatriates who love diving so much that they decided to open a diving school (PADI). The resort was amazing. beautiful bamboo huts on stilts and the clear, hot water right at your door. It was really how I pictured paradise to look like in asia. The thing that threw me off the most was that the water temperature was about 27 degrees. I have never experienced this before. It was really warm!!!!!! It was so nice.
Bunaken is world known for its diving, because they have some amazing drop off cliffs and all the marine life you can think of, including sharks , dolphins and giant turtles.
Becoming a certified scuba divers is no joke it is serious. To fast forward a little, Mykie got certified and completed the entire training but as for me.....it was a premature decision to dive simply because of my lack of deep water exposure. Mykie did so well! I am very proud of him. He is now a certified open water scuba diver.
Well, my story isn't so sad though. I did not complete the water part of the diving but completed all the test and theoretical work. Half way done. I got to the resort with only being in deep water once in 2005 in the mediterranean and never snorkelled in my life. My instructor was so confused when i told him about my lack of exposure to water, but i wanted to try. The first day at the resort, Mykie and I snorkelled for the first time ever. We walked from the shore in the water. At first i was really nervous because the water was so murky and so much sea grass was everywhere. It was creeping me out a lot. It took me a few minutes to adjust to the water looking so undesirable.......BUT....... I just sucked in the fear and started to float. The moment i started to relax the water became crystal clear and we became surrounded by marine life you see in aquariums. There were so many cool fish and star fish everywhere. I felt like we were floating in a real aquarium.
My first ever experience was wonderful. 1.5 hours of snorkelling was great. BTW we had our instructor leading us. We don't know the area it was necessary. I was so excited about diving. the water was not as scary as i thought. The drills underwater with all the heavy bulky equipment is what freaked me out. my breathing devise was too small for my mouth and i felt like i was struggling to keep it in. even mykie thought it was uncomfortable. so from that day i decided that I was not ready for scuba diving. The equipment was not comfortable at all!
I went on the boat a total of 3 times after that and snorkelled as everyone was scuba diving. I started to fear the deep water less and less. i really enjoyed being on top of the water and seeing life below me. It is a nice feeling knowing you can just float and breath and everything will be ok. I saw so many cool things including a sting ray which no one else saw but me. sometimes it is easier to see things from up top you get a better view than when you are down there. In total we saw I huge turtle come up for air and dolphins (black). Never got to see the sharks because they were to close to the ground.
Before we go back to australia, i will finish my certification. I can just continue from where I finished off at.
I am addicted to what is underneath. There is so much that i can not even explain what happens below, but i believe that everyone should try it at least once in their life!
After the scuba diving and snorkelling, we were off to our favourite city thus far...singapore!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, singpaore. It was such a refreshing place to be after seeing and being in a country with so many slums everywhere, being hassled every second, and especially for me... be treated like a walking dollar!
Singapore is a brand new country. it is really small and you can drive around the whole place in one day, taking breaks. It is not a cheap place to visit though. There is world class shopping and dinning there and entertainment galour. we could even drink the tap water. You cannot dothat in indonesia, you will die from it. but it is so expensive! It is like new york without the lights. The people are really helpful. .literally every time we took out our map, someone was there to help us in a mtter of seconds. We felt and acted like we were in Toronto. It felt like home!
I am going to end this update by saying more about singapore in my next update.....
we are in melaka malaysia right now, and it is different than indonesia in many many ways... and for that we are glad....
Mykie and I were in the north of Sulawesi at an island called Bunaken (Indonesia), pronounced Boo na can. I was made fun of a lot since i never pronounced it right. This island had a scuba diving resort on it and Mykie and I decided to become certified scuba divers. Well this turned out to be an adventure in itself. The resort is run by two british expatriates who love diving so much that they decided to open a diving school (PADI). The resort was amazing. beautiful bamboo huts on stilts and the clear, hot water right at your door. It was really how I pictured paradise to look like in asia. The thing that threw me off the most was that the water temperature was about 27 degrees. I have never experienced this before. It was really warm!!!!!! It was so nice.
Bunaken is world known for its diving, because they have some amazing drop off cliffs and all the marine life you can think of, including sharks , dolphins and giant turtles.
Becoming a certified scuba divers is no joke it is serious. To fast forward a little, Mykie got certified and completed the entire training but as for me.....it was a premature decision to dive simply because of my lack of deep water exposure. Mykie did so well! I am very proud of him. He is now a certified open water scuba diver.
Well, my story isn't so sad though. I did not complete the water part of the diving but completed all the test and theoretical work. Half way done. I got to the resort with only being in deep water once in 2005 in the mediterranean and never snorkelled in my life. My instructor was so confused when i told him about my lack of exposure to water, but i wanted to try. The first day at the resort, Mykie and I snorkelled for the first time ever. We walked from the shore in the water. At first i was really nervous because the water was so murky and so much sea grass was everywhere. It was creeping me out a lot. It took me a few minutes to adjust to the water looking so undesirable.......BUT....... I just sucked in the fear and started to float. The moment i started to relax the water became crystal clear and we became surrounded by marine life you see in aquariums. There were so many cool fish and star fish everywhere. I felt like we were floating in a real aquarium.
My first ever experience was wonderful. 1.5 hours of snorkelling was great. BTW we had our instructor leading us. We don't know the area it was necessary. I was so excited about diving. the water was not as scary as i thought. The drills underwater with all the heavy bulky equipment is what freaked me out. my breathing devise was too small for my mouth and i felt like i was struggling to keep it in. even mykie thought it was uncomfortable. so from that day i decided that I was not ready for scuba diving. The equipment was not comfortable at all!
I went on the boat a total of 3 times after that and snorkelled as everyone was scuba diving. I started to fear the deep water less and less. i really enjoyed being on top of the water and seeing life below me. It is a nice feeling knowing you can just float and breath and everything will be ok. I saw so many cool things including a sting ray which no one else saw but me. sometimes it is easier to see things from up top you get a better view than when you are down there. In total we saw I huge turtle come up for air and dolphins (black). Never got to see the sharks because they were to close to the ground.
Before we go back to australia, i will finish my certification. I can just continue from where I finished off at.
I am addicted to what is underneath. There is so much that i can not even explain what happens below, but i believe that everyone should try it at least once in their life!
After the scuba diving and snorkelling, we were off to our favourite city thus far...singapore!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, singpaore. It was such a refreshing place to be after seeing and being in a country with so many slums everywhere, being hassled every second, and especially for me... be treated like a walking dollar!
Singapore is a brand new country. it is really small and you can drive around the whole place in one day, taking breaks. It is not a cheap place to visit though. There is world class shopping and dinning there and entertainment galour. we could even drink the tap water. You cannot dothat in indonesia, you will die from it. but it is so expensive! It is like new york without the lights. The people are really helpful. .literally every time we took out our map, someone was there to help us in a mtter of seconds. We felt and acted like we were in Toronto. It felt like home!
I am going to end this update by saying more about singapore in my next update.....
we are in melaka malaysia right now, and it is different than indonesia in many many ways... and for that we are glad....
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