On the highest mountain of South East Asia somebody told me about the amazing diving possibilities on Borneo. As I had arrived without a plan it seemed a great idea to check it out.

The arrival was tough. After ascending 1000 meters and descending 2000 meters, I continued with sitting 7 hours on a cramped bus. The muscle ache was unforgiving.

The small city of Samporna was ‘uninspiring’, to say the least. Fortunately, I could arrange to leave it the following day. I had booked the ‘open water’ diving course on Mabul.

The first day was a theory day in a small room without air-conditioning at 30+ degrees: not much fun. The second day promised a whole lot more: lessons in the water combined with several dives. However, as I descended into the water I  suddenly remembered why I never dived again after a trip in Egypt many years ago: I don’t like the feeling of having to breath through something, masks always leek and seemingly another ‘dimension’ is created under water which my brain fills with many dangerous animals. ‘why am I doing this? I don’t even like it and now I’m even paying to do suffer’ was my first reaction.

Things literally cleared up afterwards. The diving lessons went smoothly and my initial fears disappeared rapidly. To my own surprise I signed up for a day trip to another island. The diving there is called ‘muck’ diving. I soon experienced what that meant. We were about 8 people and the idea seemed to be to find the smallest possible animal and to get big time excited about it. I once was staring for a couple of minutes at something that seemed to me like a twig of about 3 centimeters in length. Judging by the enthusiastic reaction of my co-divers it was not (it’s called a ‘nudie branch’) I’ve got great respect for people who know a lot about animals, but I can only identify elephant, lion and giraffe, leaving me to be a social outcast in the post-dive discussions. I guess it would have been the same if I would have joined a group of coin or stamp collectors. With one big difference: I loved every part of it!

> I must have been around 17 years old and it was a warm summer holiday in the South of France. Just shortly before I had picked up a book in the library of my small hometown in The Netherlands. It had a nice picture on the cover with an image I had seen before. The book was called ‘Chaos’ and was written by James Gleick. I read and re-read the book more than five times during that holiday and the weeks that followed. Some of the math in the book exceeded my knowledge, but the story resonated in a way that only ‘The Internet’ would in the two decades that followed.
> > James Gleick published several other books, mostly below my radar. But suddenly the book appeared into focus: ‘The Information, a history, a theory, a flood’. I bought it for my Kindle (ebook) and forgot about with good reason as I was reading the (brilliant) ‘Zero history’ by William Gibson at that time, something that wasn’t to be interrupted. When an old friend mailed me a review and I had just finished ‘Zero history’, I started reading immediately.
> > According to my ebook I’ve only finished 16% of The Information, still, I fully recommend this book. We’re living in the ‘information age’ and we don’t even know what information is. James Gleick won’t provide you the ‘final’ answer, but he will enlighten you with a thoughtfully written and extremely well researched book, written in a style that makes this deep subject as exciting as ‘pageturner’ novel.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375423729

Once you travel a bit in Asia there are several things that are pervasive: WWF wrestling, overacted TV soaps and street dogs.

I’ve seen many a type of street dog: the ‘faithful’ that accompanies you for hours, the ‘old fighter’ which can still chew a nice leg, the ‘ambitious king-to-be’ which is always ready to fight, and the ‘ugly one’.

This dog is one of the latter category. Without hair except for the top of his back (where he can’t reach with scratching), bite wounds on his nose, and a friendly smile that would melt a heart made of stone. This dog lives in ‘heaven’: right next to a $400 / night resort on an island that would be disqualified for a Bounty commercial as it is unbelievably pretty. He seemed quite happy.

Rumor has it that I have an easy life on this trip. However, these friends and family members can’t be more wrong.

Long term travel involves endlessly packing your stuff, finding something new to do, finding a new place to sleep, loads of scary stuff and exhausting activities….

I had no idea what else I could do here except climb Mt Kinabalu. I met several people who spoke highly of the diving possibilities. Not deterred by any advance planning, I immediately took the first bus after climbing the highest mountain of South East Asia. Sitting on a cramped bus for 7 hours wasn’t a smart idea. Massive muscle ache was the result.

The first of my diving course on Mabul was actually a full day of studying inside a room at 30 degrees without aircon. My ‘hotel’ was a crappy house on the water. The next day, I remembered why I had never dived again after doing it once in Egypt. Claustrophobic feelings when I went under water hooked up to a machine that I didn’t understand, a leaking mask that I didn’t manage to clear. I wondered why I was paying for this stuff, wasn’t my trip supposed to be fun? My diving experience was of to a bad start.

Things changed quickly though. The locals are amazingly friendly, the fellow divers are fun and the diving is truly amazing. On my first two trips I was fortunate to see a turtle that would make a great soup for an entire medium-sized village, a 1.2 meter long fish and god knows how many other small and big water animals (I’ll never know their names). I also realized that it had been ‘ages’ since I had been at a beach (which is quite an achievement in south east Asia). So I confess: It takes 45 minutes to walk around ‘my’ island. The room including all meals cost 20 euro/night. I’ve got my PADI ‘open water diving’ certificate and have scheduled several ‘fun’ dives. Now life is easy!
🙂

I woke up in Kuala Lumpur (‘KL’ for insiders) with the idea to do some hiking/trekking. I quickly found out that there were 2 good spots, spot one was a nice nature park in the north of Malaysia, spot two was on Borneo: Mt Kinabalu, the highest mountain in south east Asia.

Those who know me a bit, will know which option I chose. I packed my stuff and went to KL airport and bought a ticket on the first plane to Borneo. Only then I remembered what happened two days ago: I was walking from one site to another in KL and due to the excruciating pain in my left leg I had to sit down after only 1 hour of walking. As it was at the exact location where a motorbike had ran into during the water festival in Laos, I went to the hospital for X-rays as the pain was only getting worse. Nothing broken fortunately, but the advice was to ‘take it easy’. And there I stood at the airport with my boarding pass for Borneo.

The first day on Mt Kinabalu went relatively smooth. But that night I wasn’t able to sleep due to the altitude and adrenaline. The wake up at 02.15 (!) in order to be on time for sunrise was a very tough one. Together with another Dutch guy we were advised to leave last (as we had been quite fast the previous day) as otherwise we’d be to early on the freezing top of the mountain. We soon noticed the disadvantage of starting last: we had to overtake large groups of Japanese on a very small trail. Which was pretty ok until the trail gave way to solid granite and there was just one rope to hold on to. Needless to say that all this happened in the pitch dark. And the only light came from ‘hands free’ torches, actually making it easier to climb in the dark than during the day. I won’t easily forget the view from the top of the mountain on the ‘caravan’ of lights from our co-climbers.

Five persons out of 199 made it before us to the top (not bad for a 37 year old who doesn’t do any sports). The top was windy, cold, and even became crowded, but damn it was beautiful. High above the clouds, on a granite rock, we could clearly see the ocean tens of kilometers away. I was happy that after over 6 months of traveling, I could still be amazed by climbing a mountain. The descent was hell. With no other objective than to come home in one piece, the 8 kilometer downhill route took us 7 hours. And we were completely exhausted when we arrived at the bottom of the hill.

A trip of this style and duration is full of surprises. ‘Normal’ life isn’t predictable either, but due to an decreased familiarity with places, people and events, life ‘on the road’ takes ‘surprise’ to a different level.

The last 24 hrs had it all: from Nepal to (surprise!) Malaysia, saying goodbye to people you love and situations that are to unlikely to be true if you would read them in a book or see them in a film.

Typically Tom Yorke gets it right, but longing for ‘no surprises’ is longing for the end of your trip. Don’t get me wrong: to much surprise at once can be overwhelming. But when that happens, just turn the dial: meet fewer new people, stay longer in the same place and stop looking for ‘trouble’. Once you’re a master of your ‘surprise universe’, you can extend your trip as long as your finances allow you.

If this is the last you ever hear from me, I’m probably rotting away in a prison somewhere in the ‘picturesque’ outskirts of Delhi.

Why?
Because I want to go to Nepal.

Why would you end up in a prison in Delhi?
Because I change airlines there.

Surely that’s no reason to throw you in prison. Explain?
I fly from Bangkok to Delhi and a couple of hours later I fly from Delhi to Kathmandu. As I change carriers and they don’t have a luggage transfer agreement, I need to go through immigration to pick up my luggage. And I don’t have an Indian visa.

Oops. That doesn’t look good. Why can’t you pickup your luggage at the airplane? Or a transferdesk?
The ways of AirAsia are not to be understood by mere mortals.

Why didn’t you gena visa?
It takes 3 days and I only discovered this after I bought the tickets.

What’s the plan?
I’ll try to make it to Delhi (AirAsia might refuse to take me on board if they notice that I don’t have the visa, but fortunately I already have a boarding pass). Once I’m in Delhi I’ll try to get access to my luggage. Try to send me a card for my birthday, I’d love to get mail in prison.

This is what I thought when waiting at the airport. Despite the help of a friendly Swiss guy, I made the wrong choice. AirAsia spotted the absence of a valid visa and no amount of trying could convince them to let me on board. The drama continued: the only airline that had a reasonable price didn’t do ticketing at the airport and their website didn’t allow for booking tickets at such short notice.

However, AirIndia came to the rescue. They had an early morning flight to Delhi and allowed me to change my Delhi-Kathmandu to later that day to allow for sufficient connection time.

A hotel was quickly found. Cancellation of the original flight from Delhi-India too. With a flight between my least favorite cities (a stopover in Hannover would have made it perfect), this was bound to happen.

Let’s hope for an uneventful flight tomorrow.

My stay in Laos is nearing it's end, so I had been thinking about selling my beloved motorbike for some time already. I had no clue about the price, though. I had bought it for 360 euro and treated it very badly for weeks (typical spoiled western behavior). The front of the bike had been damaged significantly by getting on and off buses and boats, in addition my 2000+ km motorcross-like drives through mud, rivers and over mountains hadn't really helped for the state of the bike either.

I decided to ask a local for an offer to get an price indication what I could ask a couple of days later. He requested an asking price and I decided for 320 euro. Ridiculously high in my opinion. He countered with an offer of 250, which gave me a 'floor' price for later on. I refused and thanked him for the offer. He then countered with higher prices: 280, 300 and then 320 euro: my asking price. I hesitated, but despite that he didn't speak a word of English and my Laos is non-existent, he made it clear that he expected ownership of the bike….

Sure, I had cursed that bike to death. Especially that day when I visited 4 garages, or the other day where missed the boat due to a repair that took ages. to A really nice part of the motorbike trip lay ahead: the return to Luang Prabang. The longest day trip ever on a motorbike (268 km) and I had been really looking forward to it. In short: I wasn't mentally ready to say goodbye to my "travel companion".

In the end I payed the guy for not buying my bike. The concept of receiving money for not obtaining something seemed completely alien to him. So he was delighted (or maybe it was because he got two days' worth of salary?). A wise lesson for me to wait with selling something until I really want to sell it.