South-East Asia

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Capsule nightstop

We landed in Kuala Lumpur International Airport about 30 minutes late around 2110. I made my way to KLIA2 by train to experience my first capsule hotel stay. Without luggage, I managed to make a reasonably speedy exit. I never expected that my initiation into the capsule hotel experience to be in KL! Necessitated by […]

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Orang utans

Even though we had all been to Semenggoh to see the orang utans, I thought it would be a nice outing combined with Siniawan Night Market (which my guests hadn’t been to). We left around 1330 and got to the park around 1430 for the 1500 feeding session. After a somewhat lengthy introduction and safety briefing, […]

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Worlds’ largest flower

The facebook page of Gunung Gading National Park indicated that there was a rafflesia in bloom. I decided that I’d take Paul and Steevie (my guests) there and suggested that my brother take his guests too. They are all in town for my mother’s 90th birthday. We set off around 1000 for the 1h50 drive […]

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Bangkok overnight

Above:  Our Khao San Road area. We landed at Bangkok’s Survanabhumi Airport at 0830.  This would be my one night here in order to make a safe connection to Kuala Lumpur.  I didn’t want to risk a tight connection nor have a protracted but safe wait after the longhaul night flight. One crew in her […]

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Back to civilisation

We woke before 0700. None of us were hungry so we skipped the muesli which we had brought. Rosli took us back to the mainland Kuching at 0800. I had a few bites from the night. Some turned into huge hemi-spherical blisters. I never respond well to sandfly bites; my last exposure to them in […]

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Turtle nesting and release

  A relative had organised for us to visit one of two turtle hatcheries accessible to Kuching. We are going to Pulau Satang Besar, as opposed to Talang-Talang (which is expensive and available to those doing a 4 day volunteering). We set off at 0830, grabbed some breakfast before driving to Telaga Air to meet […]

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Family time

It was a lazy morning with a late breakfast or brunch until our check-out at 1200. We shared transport with a fellow diver from China. The seat-in-coach arrangement was RM20pp and only a fraction of what the hotel charges! We got to the airport about 2h before departure for Kota Kinabalu and killed some time […]

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2017 Day 3: Sipadan heartbreak

We found out yesterday afternoon that we had been given an extra day of Sipadan (because we asked). So this morning, we paid for the additional permit fee of RM53 pp before we set off at 0830. I missed the name of the first dive. There were some turtles, a white tip reef shark, a […]

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2017 Day 2: Sipadan disappointment

Today, our second day of three days, was at Sipadan. It is the highlight for any diver as it is amongst the best dive sites in the world. Some rate it as #1. We left at 0830 like yesterday but the boat had trouble with one engine. We pulled into the village area for a […]

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2017 Day 1: Underwater Massacre at Mataking

Above:  Docked at Mataking briefly. Today is the first day of three days diving with Sipadan Scuba (officially North Borneo Scuba), an operator I’ve used twice before over a period of eight years. They’re very reliable in terms of guaranteeing Sipadan quota slots once booking has been made and paid for online (non-refundable though). Our […]

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