Borneo

Well hello there! :) Yes, belive it or not (but it works best if you are a beliver ;) it’s me again - Kristian, your fellow traveller and writer of this blog "the adventure" and believe me - some of the times, it is... ;) Again, thanks for all e-mails and comments here - it’s something to look forward to for me. Since I happen to know that a few of you out there have the good habbit to check if something new came up here on... fridays, here it is :)

Did a somewhat expensive trip (well for me at the rates I got used to, that is) to Coron, Busuanga Island to dive the wrecks of Japanese warships, sunken by the Americans during World War II. To make a not so long story a bit shorter: On the first dive I got down to one of the wrecks at 34m depth and the *("/#=)* regulator gave me 10% water 90% air (that’s bad) - believe me its not nice and especially if your supposed to penetrate (you guys liked that world, huh ;) the wreck - so I aborted the dive and that’s it for me, missed out on wreck diving, but that life.. Didn’t have to pay for that for sure.

Took the International flight from the Philippines - Air Asia is cheap, the ticket was only 43 USD for 2 hours flight - and landed safe and sound in the town Kota Kinabalu of Borneo (Malaysia). Yes that’s right, I must tell you (Swedish) people about "Göran”, från KändisResor - HippHipp". I have now seen his equivalent in real life. He was offcourse Swedish and travelled with his family (not with an Ukrainian wife though..) and he looked and sounded just as Göran – *haha* that was so funny (no picture, sorry) .

And if the Philippines BIG thing was mobile phones (everybody had one, or two) then "pimp-my-ride" cars in the THING here - even if you only have money to buy a body kit for you car and no money for rent (well, I’m guessing here) - the car gets it first. I mean more or less everybody modifies their cars and proudly drives around, even if they are long from being finished - crazy and looks so too.

I have had the most wonderful experience, I have visited the Sepilok Orang-Utan rehabilitation centre. Did you know that these monkeys are genetically 97% the same as humans, scary huh? The one in the picture is Anna-Lisa who did a stroll (well, I don’t know if you can call it strolling, but she kind of moved in a way of her own) and happily modelled for me and a bunch of other camera hunters until the keepers came to carry her "home" again. I stayed at the centre almost the whole day and I have some really cool pictures to take home :-)

Yapp, if you’d ask me, I would answer: Yes I went to the premiere of "Pirates of the Caribbean" and a ticket here is only 2 USD which was ok, the movie that is, the theatre was really good. And now the not so good thing, and that is the serious question about "how much is the beer where you are right now?" and here my answer is "Well, it’s almost 5 times more expensive than in the Philippines and it hurts my heart but makes my liver happy." Yeah, okay - its still cheap - but not dirt cheap as I got used to... :(

Wreck diving sucked (due to bad equipment) but diving at one of the top spots in the world - PULAU SIPADAN out of Sempora, must be one of the best ever! AWESOME and then some - since the posh "Scuba-Junkie" was booked out for 5 days ahead, another company took me and three other divers in a private boat to do some amazing dives. I can’t truly explain it, but from the island, there is 15 meters sand bottom and then it drops off to 600 METERS DEPTH. Diving along this “wall” and having loads of sharks, turtles, schools of barracuda and more.. accompanying you is just... AWESOME

Stay cool, and if needed - turn on the air-con. /Kristian