Borneo: Land of monkeys and scuba junkies

I looked out the window as the plane made its final decent into Kuala Lumpur. On the horizon stood a modern metropolis surrounded by hills in the distance and a well planned out suburb in the foreground. As the ground grew closer and closer I could make out the contemporary model cars traveling in a steady and orderly stream on the arteries that comprised a network of multi-laned highways. The recognizable brands of hotels and traffic lights completed the picture of a bustling modern first-world city. I breathed a sigh of relief eager for a reprieve from the third-world conditions I'd been living in since August. Kuala Lumpur delivered.

I grabbed my dusty beaten backpack from the baggage carousel, breezed through immigration and after an hour-long bus ride I followed the other Westerners to a hotel in Chinatown. My head touched the pillow and I was out, gone in a 10-hour coma, the kind of sleep that only comes about from complete and total exhaustion.

I arose the next morning, washed up and walked out the front door into the busy streets of KL to explore my new urban surroundings. As the blocks of the city passed me by I found a subway station and decided to press on. 1.40 Malaysian Ringetts and 20 minutes later I arrived at the Surya Mall in the basement of the famed Petronas Twin-Towers. The feeling was overwhelming, I almost cried upon seeing a Banana Republic, Starbucks, Chili's and the kinds of upscale boutiques you would only find at the finest shopping malls in America (Cartier, Versace...)

I was taken back by the emotional response I had, simply from the reintroduction of the simple things I had always taken for granted. It felt like I was freed from a twenty-year prison sentence. Noticing the permanent dirt on my pants and feeling the incessant itch on my cheeks as the only indication informing me that I had a full beard, I watched well-groomed trendy people pass by. I thought to myself,"I must look like a hobo, and I probably smell like one too."

I headed straight for Starbucks and ordered a tall soy latte then I took a seat and just sat there for an hour, breathing. I spent the entire day in elation floating on air through this four story marble and glass cathedral. It was the most beautiful temple I'd visited in months, a temple devoted to commerce and Western ideals, it was the closest taste to home I've had.

I went to Chili's for lunch and gorged myself on fajitas and a Budweiser long-neck. Six months ago it was shit beer, but after eating rice and curry and dead goat and drinking bottled water, it was nothing short of ambrosia. To be honest, I would have paid $100 for that little taste of home.

Next I headed to the cinema to see Max Payne, a crappy Marky Mark Wahlberg flick. And while the film did suck, I was eternally grateful to be able to experience watching it. Over the next 6 hours I visited the national aquarium (in the mall) and ventured up to the observation deck of the Petronas Twin-Towers

After 9 hours of feasting on pedestrian Western familiarity I exhaled and headed back down to the subway station to return to Chinatown for some KFC and some HBO before resting for the night.

Over the following two days I explored KL, taking in the sites, meeting the locals and learning the basics of Malaysian culture, history and language. I had just over 48 hours to kill before heading to Kota Kinabalu, Borneo to meet Andrea, my first visitor from the States.

I touched down in KK and met Andrea an hour later at International Arrivals. We took a taxi to our hotel, dropped our bags and grabbed a late evening beer at the bar next door.

"Wow! you've lost a lot of weight.", she commented as I poured two glasses of Indonesian beer, "You're shoulders have disappeared!" I hadn't noticed (according to the carnival scale at the video arcade a few days later, I am down ~18 lbs from when I left...Oh and as a Cancer, I will find love with an Aquarius this month) We spent the next hour or so catching up and planning the following days of our trip.

We spent 2 days in KK then hopped a bus through endless palm oil plantations to Sipilok, to visit the Orang-utan (I know, I thought it was Orangutang too!) rehabilitation center. And while I was slightly tired of seeing rainforests and jungles and wildlife I thoroughly enjoyed my stay with these silly orange furry little people.

They almost remind me of the Muppets the way they perform to the delight of their onlooking human cousins. Actually, they reminded me of Ryan, my 18 month old nephew.

From Sipilok, Andrea and I headed for a 2-day jungle river safari. It was kinda like the Jungle Cruise ride a Disney World except without the wise ass pimply-faced "guide" pretending to shoot animatronic hippos in the water with his cap gun. We spent hours watching brilliantly colored birds and Macaque and Proboscis Monkeys, the one's with the funny big noses.

Only the males have large noses, it's a sign of sexual maturity and attracts females for mating. The Proboscis male with the largest nose in the group will mate with up to 25 female. I get the short end of the stick again, In the human world, my large nose communicates that I probably celebrate Hannukah and have a nagging mother that peppers her whiny Brooklyn accented English with tid-bits of Yiddish. Oye gevalt!

With our visit to the jungle complete Andrea and I headed to Sipadan, a tiny island off the coast, to dive one of the world's top 5 dive sites.

Now every junkie remembers the unattainable high of their first fix. Mine was in 1992, Cozumel, Mexico. While my friends were enjoying our Junior year homecoming, an event that generated stories still reminisced upon at Fourth of July parties to this day, I was slipping into the crystal blue waters of the Caribbean enjoying what I have since described at the best 45 minutes I've ever spent on Earth. In the 17 years since I've been chasing that dragon. And while I've thoroughly enjoyed the sport of scuba diving, I've never been able to replicate that feeling I experienced in the waters off of the Yucatan Peninsula. That is not until the moment I rolled backward off the side of the boat into the warm azure water off of Sipidan Island, Borneo. In a moment that feeling of, "I never want to return to the surface" I felt all those years ago came rushing back. We hovered over a vibrant city of vivid corals, teeming with the most exotic fish as we hung in mid flight over a wall which dropped into the bottomless cobalt blue abyss.
(Oh yeah, everyone feel free to thank the good people at Olympus for making a wonderful "shock proof/water proof" camera. If their products lived up to their claims, I'd have pictures to show you. Lucky for me the thing was under warranty and they fixed it for free. Now if the terms only included time travel so I could have had the damn thing when I needed it. Son of a bitch!!... Hey at least I'm not bitter)

As we floated along with the warm tropical current through the crystal clear water we were greeted by graceful green turtles, flying effortlessly around us and regal white-tip reef sharks. Five minutes into the dive I looked down at my watch to see that in reality, 45 minutes had passed. I'd lost myself in paradise. Over 4 days I made 13 dives only coming up to eat and sleep.

Alas our time in Sipadan had come to an end and we hopped a short flight back to Kota Kinabalu. We spent our final 2 days wandering around the city, mostly at the Centre Point Mall where we took in some movies, sampled local street food and did some shopping and people watching.

On our final day I realized, "I have no idea where I am going next." So after some thoughtful deliberation, research and a coin flip I decided to go to Laos. I purchased a cheapo ticket on-line, spent a horrible night sleeping in the airport and a day later I landed in Vientiane, Laos where I sit now writing this blog entry.

Last week my friend Rae decided to come out into the world to meet up with me too. She'll be coming to Bangkok for the first 2 weeks of December with Travis and Kelly, two of my acquaintances. Now I just have to find my way to Bangkok by November 29th and decide what to do between now and then. I'm just as curious as you are to see how November unfolds for me.

Lastly to everyone in the US, on behalf of the citizens of the rest of the world who I've spoken to along my travels, go vote!