West Coast Style

The morning I left for Kota Kinabalu, we had no idea how we were going to get there. Theresa has done an amazing job of planning this dive/jungle escapade but she left some things open for us to do things on the fly. We wanted to get from Sandakan on the east coast of Borneo to Kota Kinabalu on the opposite side and there were several ways to do it. Hire a taxi and split it four ways, take the local bus, take the aircon tourist bus, or try to find a flight. In the interest of time (and comfort,) we decided on the plane and headed to the airport to buy tickets. Wellington and I got put on standby and started to make other plans, but luckily made the flight.

For a town I never heard of, KK is a very happening place. It's way bigger than I expected and there are lots of things to do. It is pretty cosmopolitan with lots of nightlife, shopping, wild adventures like whitewater rafting and mountain climbing are an hour or two away, and best of all there is a big five island national marine park Tunku Abdul Rahman, just off the coast. After one night's mistake of a scary local hotel, the four of us got a fabulous family room at the Daya Hotel and felt like we were living in luxury. We also discovered a fantastic Italian restaurant - who would have thougth I would be enjoying fresh, hand-made gnocchi in Borneo???

The next day, the girls elected to spend the day exploring the beaches of the island parks and Wellington and I went diving. Not just any diving, but diving on MY REEF! That's right, our dive spot for the day was named Clement's Reef - evidently a Course Director a couple of years ago discovered and named it and as soon as I saw it on the dive map I knew I had to get there. The reef around KK is not as good as Sipadan, (hell, what is?) they have a history of dynamite fishing and it showed. Dynamite fishing is when local fisherman, too impatient for lines or nets, toss lit sticks of dynamite in the water and wait for the fish to float up after the explosion. Easy fishing but unbelievably destructive to the coral and it causes permanent damage - which isn't good for the fisherman's long-term but they don't seem to think about that. Saw lots of big rubble patches, but also some encouraging signs of growth too - the park is making a difference I think. Still, the fields of coral rubble and encroaching algae were sad to see. Still, there was all kinds of good stuff to find - rays, nudis, and my new favorite crab - the Orangutan Crab! They are really cool looking but the best part about them is the underwater signal when you spot them. First you scratch your underarms in a monkey pose and then you make the fingers to thumbs motion for crab claws - I don't know why but it cracks me up. When I did it I made the "hoot hoot" noise of an orangutan in my reg when I scratched my pits...

Wellington and I dove two out of the three days we were there, spending one day lounging on the beaches and exploring all the park's little islands. At night, we wandered KK - trying all kinds of great local food at the huge local market, hitting an Indian restaurant during a blackout, and trying to find something fun to do while the girls went shop crazy. KK has lots of great shopping, and if I had brought along a sherpa, I might have indulged in some collecting.

KK was great - I am so glad we went and discovered such a neat little coastal town. It was nice and cosmo, had good local stuff to do, and of course any place with some decent local diving 30 minutes off shore is fine with me. Sadly, our time there came to an end and it was time to go. Not so sadly, actually, because our next destination was an encore performance of the awesome reef walls of Sipadan!!!

That's right, some of the best diving I hace ever done in my life - part 2!!! Only this time, with 5-star accommodations...

Debating whether or not to write about it, since I did before... Oh what the hell, it was so awesome again, I'll tell you all about it next time.

Salamat Pagi,
Clement

Jungle Boot Camp

Wellington, my travel buddy in Borneo, described our most recent adventure as "Boot Camp in the Jungle," and in some ways he is totally right. There were no drill sergeants and no rifles (though there are rumors of head-hunting tribes around and lots of big crocs, so maybe an M-16 wouldn't have been a bad idea,) but things were definitely basic on the the Kinabatangan River.

There were lots of boots and it was definitely camping - in the mud!!

Just a couple of weeks ago it was the rainy season and the camp was closed due to the flooding. Now it's a bit drier (it only rains once or twice a day,) and the river is back within its banks, but the mud remains and it is everywhere. It is really sticky and soupy and loose and wet all at the same time and threatens to keep your boot as you walk away. Our camp consisted of some wooden huts connected by walkways and everywhere else we wore rubber boots (Wellingtons, how appropriate,) and slogged through the deep mud and leftover puddles. When we arrived by outboard riverboat and clambered up the bank, there was a big pile of dirty boots waiting for us - but none of them had sizes printed on them! So we kicked off our shoes and hopped around trying to put together a pair that fit our feet. It took a while, but I finally found some in the general range of my big hobbit feet (though the left was a half-size too small I am sure.) Then we shouldered our gear and headed to the camp, constantly pulling our sucking feet out of mud bogs all along the way. Once we got to camp, we were supposed to pile up the boots near the start of the boardwalk, but since we all took so long to find some that kind of fit, everyone snagged that pair and stashed them away for easy finding later. Since the insides of the boots were almost as sloppy as the outside, every excursion ended with a trip to the water buckets near the squat privys (yup, bucket baths too,) for rinsing with ladles of river water. Accommodations were wonderfully basic - plank huts with the smelliest thinnest mattresses I've ever seen right on the floor, and mosquito netting - that's it. Sharing with a bed with Wellington was cozy, but we were so beat from trekking in the mud several times a day that I slept great anyway. Unfortunately for him, he didn't. And he was kind enough to not accuse me of snoring. Each hut is covered in chicken wire to keep the monkeys out, but we needed to be careful in the dining area - there were always one or two looking to snag a bite. One of the guys in camp almost lost a jar of vitamins to them , but he charged them like a crazy man, with flailing arms and strange Irish warrior cries and the startled monkey dropped its prize and fled for the trees. There were also wild boars on the volleyball court, spiders in the heads of a size I haven't seen since the Seychelles, and a five foot long monitor lizard living in the puddle under the kitchen to avoid. Electric power was on from 6PM to midnight only and with one outlet for the four of us in the hut, the iPod speakers and Wellington's 20 hour Borneo playlist always got 1st priority!

It sounds like it was rough but I had a great time - boat rides and jungle treks at all hours to spy on the amazing jungle creatures is right up my alley. We saw all kinds of monitor lizards, strange birds, huge crocodiles, several kinds of monkeys (including the strange looking big-nosed Proboscis Monkeys,) wild boars, and insects and spiders galore. I politely declined to hold the scorpion (Jeez, I jumped out of a plane last summer despite my fear of heights, do I need to prove anything else to you?) I didn't get to see any wild orangutans or pygmy elephants but some in camp saw some of the cute apes on the trek back from the boat and we could hear them calling to each other every day. An added bonus was that the food at the camp was plentiful and fantastic, especially considering that every item has to be boated in and then carried up that 400m mud trail! One of the best times was when we played soccer with the camp staff in the mud. The guys working there were amazing, dealing with some hard work in difficult conditions, but I never saw one without a smile on his face and they went way out of their way to make sure we had a great time, all the time. If you are in the area, Uncle Tan's Jungle Camp is the way to go.

Sadly, our visit came to an end and we rode the river back from "Camp Kurtz" to civilization and by that afternoon we were washed, fed, and visiting the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary. It is an orphanage and rehabilitation center for baby orangutans with regular feeding times so you get to see the babies and older apes come in for a daily load of fruit to supplement what they find in the forest. I met and talked to some volunteers there and they were loving their three month programs! We must have seen 20 orangutans sweeping through for their banana lunch, they ranged in age from impossibly cute (less than a year maybe?) to grumpy old farts and everything in between. With their keen expressions, human-like hands and balding old man faces, they are very sweet looking and make you want to take one home. But they are also very powerful, and we saw decent sized tree limbs they had torn in two as easy as you would snap a chopstick!

That night we headed to the port town of Sandanak, had some dinner and poked around and Theresa and Katja did a little shopping. The next morning we were off to the airport and bought tickets to Kota Kinabalu, the site of our next round of diving...

Next installment: an amazingly cool city on the coast and a relaxing island sanctuary...

Salamat Pagi,
Clement

Finally Wet Again!

I'm wet again, finally, and it is so good!! I've been dry to long and really needed to feel it!



I am back on the road again and back in SE Asia - which is now my favorite destination on earth. Sorry Caribbean, but despite your proximity to the east coast and some wonderful diving, the phenomenal reefs, awesome food and wonderful friendly people in this corner of the world completely blow you away.

I had not been diving since just before New Year's and was really starting to feel it in my bones. My hands needed to get pruny. I am so happy to be on this dive trip with my my good dive buddies Theresa, Wellington and the brand newly certified Katja!! My hair is salty, my neck is sunburned, I've got mask-marks on my face, and I am loving being back underwater - it feels like I'm home again.

I get wet a little sooner than planned when I arrived in Bangkok last week - turns out it was Songkran festival time. I had no idea what that was either, but it is Thai New Year's and they celebrate with a nationwide water fight. Everyone from 4 to 84 has a super soaker or a bag full of water balloons and they love to douse the farangs (foreigners,) as often as possible. Once I wised up and got my camera into a ziploc bag, I enjoyed myself and tried to make it fun for my attackers, pretending to be upset and then breaking into a broad smile. With some I pretended to wrestle for their watergun a little and one time wet-hugged a grandma who had just sprayed me - sharing the soaking back - she laughed and laughed! I walked past one open square where about a thousand people were having an all-out liquid melee and watched a while until attention turned my way and then skedaddled! What a great time - I wish I'd known ahead and gotten a soaker and managed to ditch anything I needed to stay dry so I could really go all out...

After a day in Bangkok, I hopped a flight to Kuala Lumpur the next morning on the way to a diving and jungle adventure in Borneo. I ran into my to German friends in the airport and we shared flights the whole way. Wellington showed up in KL looking a little bit harried - every flight along the way had been late and he had to rush every single connection for thirty hours or so - gotta love modern air travel... Someone once said the key to foreign travel is earplugs and a blindfold and after the screaming baby on my flight from KL to Tawau, I would add that an iPod is just as wonderful!

We landed after dark on the island of Borneo and hopped a taxi to Semporna, a small town on the coast where we would be based for our first several days. Most of the town is on stilts over the water and, though our hostel was pretty nice, the smell of the port and its inhabitants can be a little strong when the wind and tide are the wrong way.

Ever since I started diving, one of the destinations always mentioned in a respectful hushed voice is Sipadan. Coral, walls, sharks, exotic macro - it is all supposed to be here in abundance and the fabled huge variety stretched my imagination. Turns out it is completely true. I simply cannot believe the dozen or so dive sites around this tiny island can have so much going on of everything divers fantasize about. Towering vertical walls, massive schools of fish, darting colorful tropicals, exotic little creatures, big pelagics cruising through looking for a meal, bright healthy coral covering almost every square inch of space. It's all here. I should have known I'd be happy when I heard our first dive site was named "Turtle Patch!" Oh and did I mention I've seen turtles on every single dive so far (10 and counting...) and saw a dozen greens and one loggerhead on just one dive yesterday!! I am in heaven! I have literally swam around a coral head and bumped into the beautiful shell of a sleeping green turtle, who could barely be bothered to move away... Oh and on top of all the sharks (white-tips, black-tips, and hammerheads,) I also dove through a school of about three thousand five foot long barracudas. Wow wow and again wow. And did I mention the nudibranchs? Yes, they are here too, in an explosion of wild colors and styles - we even got to watch some hot nudi on nudi action today... I am now spoiled forever, but will just have to survive. T, Wellngton and I have come up from dives just laughing in amazement at everything we have seen - there is just nothing to say!

Katja has been plugging away on her open water since we arrived and T and I jumped in to help a bit today for her final two cert dives. She is now PADI's newest Open Water Diver and ready to take it all in.

So we are leaving tomorrow to go do some jungle trekking. Go figure. We are booked for a three day river rafting and jungle adventure. Between my fear of centipedes and Wellington's terror of leeches and the prospect of crapping in a bucket for the rest of the week, you gotta wonder, "Why are they leaving?" And honestly, I am wondering the same thing.

Wish me luck!

Ciao and it's great to be back with you!
Clement

Itchy Feet

Well, you had to guess this was coming...  I leave for Borneo on Thursday.  

First let me backtrack a bit to let you know what I've been up to and how I've been doing re-adjusting to home.

These last two months, I've kept busy with friend and family commitments, getting to know my almost year old nephew Andrew, (when I left he was basically a lump on a blanket, now he's taking steps!) a couple of weekends of snowboarding, settling in to Charlottesville, DC United games and going out and making new friends.  

My Nana, Violet Burtt, turned 100 in March and we had a great family and friends party for her.  She made the local papers and a TV news crew showed up so that night, there she was on TV - dancing to "Y-M-C-A!"  Really.  She had a great time, but was a little tired after all the excitement.  Friends have come down from DC to visit and  we've explored C-Ville's nightlife, hit some wineries and gone hiking on the Appalachian Trail.  I even joined the local scuba club!  I also spent a week baby-sitting my six year old nephew CJ (we had lots of fun breaking my sister's rules, please don't tell her!) and ran a 10K last weekend.  Whew, I've been busy!

Life in the states is a bit weird and I've really felt a little out of step.  I am continually astounded by the choices we have - multiple strip malls each with basically the same stores over and over again.  You spend so much time in third world countries assessing where to get things you need and mentally marking them for future reference, ("hmm this store has a brand of shaving cream I recognize, or a cookie I might try,...") yet when I do that at home it feels almost silly.  Driving was weird too - when I first got back on the road I felt like I was flying when I was really almost always 10mph under the limit.  And if you know me, I tend to NOT be under any limit ;)  Also, the things we worry about as a culture seem less important to me now - I've seen some poverty and pain, people in desperate situations, damaged environments and poor outlooks.  We in the western world and especially in America don't always realize how truly lucky we are just to be fortunate enough to live here in the midst of such prosperity and opportunity.  Not everyone here has it easy or perfect, but even the poorest person has chances for survival that millions of people around the world couldn't dream of.  I realize we all have essentially won a genetic/geographic lottery by being born in America, and it has changed my view of things quite a bit.  Makes it kind of hard to worry about J Lo's baby pics, who is still on American Idol, or what some politician's advisor said about somebody else.  

I've really missed the diving - I haven't been in the water since Zanzibar and man, am I dying to get wet!  So when my German friend Theresa (you might remember her as my dive buddy in Thailand,) told me she and a friend from home were heading to Sipadan, on the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo, the wheels started turning in my brain...  

At first I was a bit reluctant, after all, I've already been to Malaysia and wouldn't be earning a new passport stamp for returning.  "Wait a minute," I realized, "how silly is that - turning your nose up at a trip to one of the greatest places for diving on earth because you cannot tick off a new country on your mental map of the world?  Get real!"  So I looked at my schedule (open) and finances, (grim but WTF,) and made it work.  Now my friend Wellington is coming along so I've even got someone to travel with, (finally.)  

So here's how it's gonna work - roundtrips were expensive so when I noticed a cheap one-way fare to Bangkok I jumped on it, planning on working out how to get home later.  So I've got a little over three weeks in Malaysia where we plan to do lots of diving in a couple different areas, go rafting through the jungle, visit an orangutan sanctuary and maybe climb a mountain (though after Kilimanjaro, that's not really high on my list...)  Next, I had to decide what route to get home.  If you read my blog from last August, you might remember that I realized that by traveling west around the world I was actually getting a day younger.  Well I decided to knock another day off my age and come home in that direction.  Now I just needed to decide where to stop - I played on kayak.com for a while, tracking airfares, and dreaming about destinations.  I checked fares to Munich, Krakow, Dubai, Istanbul, Prague, Moscow, and finally found 

a really cheap one to London.  Hey, I've never been before so it appeases the passport snob in me, and I've got some friends there I can hit up for tour advice (and maybe a couch or two...,) so the choice was pretty easy.  Now I've got 10 days in the UK and am still deciding what to see.  Not doing so hot on the couch hunt so far, but I've got a trusty Risk Steve's in hand and we'll just have to see what pops up!  

I don't have a fare home yet, but I plan on being back around the 12th so that I'm here for my sister's birthday and also a week ahead of school.

Yup, that's right, I said school.  I'm taking summer classes locally in C-Ville to get ready for Grad School in Marine Bio.  This summer are Chemistry and Bio2 (plus labs,) so wish me luck as I embark on a completely new stage of my life.  I'd love to do more work with turtles but really, anything involving the amazing life to be found in the undersea world is so exciting.

Boy, it feels good to be writing to you again, I hope you keep reading and enjoy the next chapter of my journeys...

Stay Wet,

Clement