Dive 54, Where Are You?

There was a sitcom from youth called "Car 54, Where Are You?" about the antics of some wayward NYPD policemen who drove car number 54. This came to mind as I wrote some notes in my dive journal about my 54th dive, which I did yesterday on Pulau Sapi, just off the coast here in Kota Kinbalu.

I recently decided to try and do at least one dive a month while I am here in Malaysia, excluding January, when we arrived, which is generally not a good dive month due to the monsoons.  In early February, I went diving at Mamutik Island, which is close to P. Sapi and also part of the Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park.  I did three dives yesterday, the last day of March, at Pulau Sapi.  And I hope to get two dives in April, if possible -- other travels may get in the way.  In May, I will be diving at Mabul and Sipidan islands, the latter being one of the top dive destinations in the world.  In June we head to Peninsular Malaysia, where I will have a couple of opportunities to dive before we leave Malaysia at the end of the month.

Pulau Sapi is the smallest of the five major islands that make up Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park (the islands) and Marine Park (the underwater areas), which is named after the founding father and first prime minister of Malaysia.  The islands have become a huge tourist attraction for Kota Kinabalu, mostly drawing tourists from East Asia who are looking for a sun, sand and sea destination.  The islands are developed by Sabah Parks as recreational parks, with grassy picnic areas, a small restaurant, roped off areas for swimming and snorkeling, and banana boats and other recreational activities to partake in.  Hiking trails are also found that go into the interior jungles of the smaller islands.  Pulau Gaya is much larger and has several high end resorts scattered on its edges, as well as large illegal immigrant (Filipino) settlements on parts that are outside of the national park.

Many people have told me that Pulau Sapi is their favorite island in the national park.  I actually never stepped foot on it, as I was either on the boat or at a restaurant on P. Gaya, a short distance away from P. Sapi.  My wife (not a diver) signed up for snorkeling and had a great time, seeing a lot of coral and fish while snorkeling with a guide and hanging out on the beach on P. Sapi.  She was the only snorkeler with Diverse Borneo that day, and so she had a personal guide to show her the highlights in the coral reef.  We met for lunch and she did her third guided snorkel off the boat in the same area that I did my dive #54.

Dive #52 and #53 were both really good. Looking back at my photos, the best ones were from the first dive (#52) at Clement Reef. The sunlight must have been just right for that dive to bring out the color, which can be a challenge underwater.  I actually thought the second dive (#53) at Agil Reef was better than the first while I was doing it, both in terms of coral and fish.  I saw a very large porcupine puffer fish, though mostly the fish I saw throughout the Sapi area were on the small side.  My wife said that she saw large fish snorkeling.  The two reefs for #52 and #53 were on the back side (the South China Sea-side) of the island, away from the beach and town side.

After the second dive we picked up my wife and had lunch at the restaurant on P. Gaya.  The food was great!  We had curry chicken with rice and fried kway teow (flat rice noodles) with seafood. The noodles, in particular were delicious.  On the other hand, I think most any food tastes really good when you are diving. We sat with my dive buddy from the second dive.  He was from the Tubingen area of Germany, where I had taught a semester many years ago, though he now lives and works in Shanghai.

Dive #54 was at the Coral Garden reef, which was just beyond the Sapi Beach swimming and snorkeling area.  I was amazed at the great diversity of coral in this area.  There were many different kinds coral, all densely jumbled up and blanketing the ground.  I was going a bit crazy taking photos and videos, though the resulting pictures were less colorful than from the earlier dives.  As I was doing this, I kept falling behind my group and had to paddle to catch up.  Once I lost them entirely in the murky waters  deeper down, but found them quickly by swimming in the direction they were going ... or at least I think I found them.

After taking a short video, I again could not find them.  I again swam in their direction and soon found the orange fins with a white cross on the bottom that our group's guide was wearing.  I did not lose them again, but was kind of surprised when he started heading to the surface, as I still had about 70 bar of oxygen left (normally the dive ends at about 50 bar).  It was also only about 35 minutes into the dive, instead of the ussual 45 or more minutes.  However, sometimes there are reasons to end a dive earlier than expected, so I went up with the others.  At the top of the water, much to my surprise, I discovered that this was not my guide.  It was a different guide for a different company (Borneo Dream).

OOPS!!!  I had lost my group on dive #54.  This was the first time this had ever happened to me, and it was very embarrassing.

I was surprised at how far away my group had come up compared to where I came up.  I am guessing that there was a strong current, which is why my group kept getting so far away from me. The Borneo Dream boat came to pick up its divers and offered to take me to my boat.  That was nice of them.

When I got to our boat, others from my group were just starting to return.  They had told my wife that they had lost me. She thought they might just be kidding -- until the other boat appeared with me on it!  My guide was actually out looking for me and did not get on to our boat until  just after I did.

I readily agree that it was my fault for falling behind the others and not paying close enough attention to where they were.  On the other hand, we did not have "dive buddies" on this last dive, as we did on the second dive.  (My German dive buddy only did the two morning dives and was not with us.)  I kind of think that if I had a dive buddy on this last dive, that I would not have gotten lost. Maybe I need to proactive in asking guides in the future to assign buddies.

Also, in the future, I need to carry my emergency signal tube, which is a long orange plastic tube that you fill with air so people can easily find you on the surface.  I have one, but never bring it when I actually dive.  If I had lost my group and not found another (which I actually thought was my group), I would have slowly made my way to the surface and waited there for someone to find me.  That is the appropriate way to deal with being lost.

Dive 54, where are you?  Yes, I was embarrassed by my dive #54 -- but at least not until the end, after I had actually finished diving for the day!

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On a somewhat related topic....

I am also embarrassed by this new promotional effort to sell Sabah to China.  A local company here in KK has hired 13 "Beachhoney Models" from China (famous for their bikinis) to sell Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park in an effort to get even more Chinese to visit Kota Kinabalu and Sabah.  The Tunku would probably turn over in his grave!  While I find it both exploitative and the wrong message/image for Sabah, it will probably work with China, and unfortunately tells a lot about the future of tourism development here in Sabah, which used to be (and mostly likely still is) among the premier ecotourism destinations in the world.

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Living the Good Life in Kota Kinabalu

So many adventures, and so little free time to write about them....

As I mentioned briefly in a previous post, we arrived in Kota Kinabalu for the first time on this Fulbright trip on January 11, 2012.  It was my second time here, the first time being in January 2007 as an External Examiner for the Universiti Teknologi MARA (aka UiTM) to visit their Sabah branch campus, review exams and write a report.  I was here for three or four nights and fell in love with the place.  In addition the the great diversity of physical landscapes, from Mt. Kinabalu and its surrounding highlands to its beaches and many islands, I think it was the way people here get along and relate to each other that made it the focus of my return.

Kota Kinablau from AirAsia (click on photo for larger view)

Double rainbow over the Central Wet Market area on the KK waterfront at sunset.

This was supported by comments made while I was in KL last month by two friends (one Chinese and one Malay) who separately told me about how special they felt Sabah was.  In essence, they said that people in Sabah are Sabahan first, above their ethnicity, and that the ethnic strains of West Malaysia (aka Peninsular Malaysia) we far less evident in Sabah because of this. An Orang Sungai man who I met this past weekend in Kinabatangan (who was also part Filipino and part Sulawesi) told me the same thing in a discussion about language and the Sabahan accent that they all share.

Anyway, we were here for one week in January to find a place to live and to find a car to rent.  The problem we had was that apartment rentals are mostly either for the day (vacation rentals that are costly in the long term) or they want a one year lease.  We only needed three months (which I have since extended to four months).

After being a bit frustrated in the process of home hunting, we thought to ask the nice lady at the front desk of our hotel, Eden54. She said she had a friend who was a part-time real estate agent and she would ask her. Later that day, we were sitting in the hotel lobby looking at the local paper for rentals, when Susan introduced herself.  She said she had a client who had a place that might work for us, but she needed to confirm with her about the less than one year term.

Later that same day we finally looked at an apartment at the 1Borneo Hypermall -- billed as the largest shopping mall on Borneo.  1Borneo is a large, sprawling complex of structures all jumbled into one, including hotels and a couple of apartment towers. It also has the highest concentration of fully furnished apartments that can be rented on a daily to monthly basis.

1Borneo Hypermall (click on photo for larger view)

The one we looked at there was OK.  It came with everything, including a rice cooker, though the furnishing were quite bare and it was a little worn.  1Borneo is somewhat far from KK's great downtown area, but it is closer to the UiTM campus and would have worked.

We then got a call from Susan and so our hosts from the university took us to look at the place she had.  It was a brand new apartment, no one had ever lived in it!  It had 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, though overall was only about 1200 972 sq ft.

 Our new home (click on photo for larger view)

The location was just outside of the downtown, but only a 10 minute walk to the very popular Foh Sang and Damai eating districts!  It also has a small gym to work off all that great food.  The price was RM2000 a month (USD$667), plus utilities, and after a few minutes of thought we grabbed it. (Fulbright gives us RM1500 a month for housing, and KK tends to be more expensive than most other parts of Malaysia, except KL.)

While it was not fully furnished when we looked at it, Susan and the owner managed to get us everything by the time we moved in on Feb. 1st, including a washing machine, rice cooker and microwave oven.  The only downside has been a second block (apartment building) that is under construction outside our bedroom window, which makes for some noisy daytime hours (actually they work almost 7 days a week and as late as 11pm on some days - the workers live in the building that is under construction).

One nice feature of our apartment is a shoe cabinet outside of the front door.  Here in Malaysia everyone takes their shoes off before entering a home.  Many homes have shoe racks, and some, like ours, has a shoe cabinet where we could actually lock our shoes -- though we never do that.  The floors of homes here are all  very smooth and usually large tiles, which make sweeping easy to do (with the ceiling fan turned off).  They also help to keep the homes cool on very hot days.

Children of the constructions workers playing on the site.

Our friend at Hotel Eden54 also contacted the company that she gets rental cars from for her guests.  He gave us the best deal yet on a monthly rental (with insurance).  We got a 2011 (almost new) Proton Saga for RM1700/month (USD$567; Fulbright does not cover this cost).  It is a four door, automatic transmission sedan that was designed and made in Malaysia. Interestingly, while it has air conditioning, it has no heater, because they are not needed so close to the equator.  There are cheaper cars available, but they are tiny boxes that are more like toys than cars.  Thank you Ling Ling.

I bought a GPS unit because even though KK is fairly small (population about  200,000) and compact, some streets can be pretty confusing.  while I could probably figure it out eventually, the GPS saves a lot of time in having to do that!  Driving in KK is interesting because of the use of center u-turn lanes.  These are often placed in the middle of a long street so people do not need to go all the way to the next intersection to do a u-turn.  They are everywhere and widely used -- first and only place where I have ever seen this.  In addition, I always find driving on the left side of the road a lot of fun (I'm serious, I like it).

Another interesting car-related note is that all of the cars in Malaysia come with backup beeping systems. When you approach an object while backing up it starts beeping.  The closer you get the faster the beeps come, until it goes solid, which means you better stop.  I know that this is an option on some cars in the US. Because of the often tight spaces in Malaysia, it is required for all cars here -- and I really appreciate that.

The Foh Sang morning wet market (click on photo for larger view)

Our purchases typically include some breakfast items, as well.

In our local neighborhood, Foh Sang is our favorite destination.  The 10 minute walk to get there makes a nice little exercise when getting vegetables and breakfast items (like Chinese meet baus) in the morning, or going out to eat in the evening.  We try not to go out too often because we have both put on more pounds than we would like since we got here.  The nearby City Mall (a 20 minute walk, though we usually just drive) is one of the new malls in town and has a really good food court and a huge Giant Hyperstore (groceries and household items; like a smallish Walmart Super Center).

How Lee is one of the more popular evening restaurants in Foh Sang.

(click on photo for larger view)

So now we are living the good in of Kota Kinabalu.  We are enjoying it so much that I managed to change my research plans to spend four months (or close to it) in KK, instead of just three.  Now I need to get back to work...

Chinese New Year lasts 15 days and even though fireworks are illegal in Malaysia, it was a very noisy in our neighborhood each night until the middle of February. (view from our window)

(This blog was brought to you by about 10 cats at http://writtenkitten.net)

Kota Kinablau, Sabah

Photo: Me at Mount Kinabalu, Sabah
Additional photos of my Sabah visit can be found at: http://flickr.com/photos/alew

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you unexpectedly get all the things you were wishing for? Well that happened to me here in Malaysia last week.

As I write this I am at the Universiti of Teknologi MARA in Shah Alam, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. I am here in my capacity as an External Examiner for the tourism degree program. An External Examiner is a concept from the British system of higher education and is technically someone who is brought to the university each year to review the final examination papers to ensure rigor. These days, however, the position involves consultation on a wide range of curricular matters....

For the full blog entry go here:
http://seasiatourism.blogspot.com/2007/01/kota-kinablau-sabah.html

For all the photos from this trip, go to my Flickr site and search on "Sabah"
http://flickr.com/photos/alew