Under the Sea: Tioman Island Diving

From KL, we grabbed a bus to the coast and then a ferry (the next day, as Malaysian transport rarely lines up properly) to Pulau Tioman, an island in the South China Sea well known as a diving hub. This is where I'd be doing my PADI Open Water Diver certification.

After a full day of scuba theory, cheesy PADI videos, and anticipation, it was finally time to go underwater. I pulled on the wet suit  ignoring the pungent smell of old sweat and salt water. On went the weight-belt, the inflatable vest (called a BCD), the tank, and the breathing regulator, with its four hoses that snaked along my body to poke into various bits of the vest, like the arms of Shiva going in for a feel.

Despite the wet suit, scuba equipment does not as such make one feel svelte.

My classmates, two Danish girls, our instructor, Rosie, and I began shuffling down into the waves, fins in hand. We plopped into the sea, yanked on our fins and face masks, and swam away from shore. And, with the BCD inflated, the cumbersome equipment and I floated easily. Sneaky.

The first time we descended was only into two metres of water to land on the sandy bottom. Despite the many hours of theory and the regulator in my mouth, I forgot to breathe for a good fifteen seconds.

We did a few dives like this, in the sandy shallows, to practice our buoyancy and learn emergency procedures, and then finally it was time to go on a real dive.

We rolled backwards off the boat and descended into the stunningly turquoise waters of the South China Sea, through schools of bright fish. We stopped just above the reef and swam forward over coral of every shape and colour and size, swarming with fish and covered with plants.

What a strange feeling, to breathe effortlessly in this brilliantly-coloured new world, to look up to see the pale plane of the surface stretched over the water above us, undulating gently in waves that, at ten metres deep, we could no longer feel.

By the end of our nearly two weeks on Tioman, I'd taken seven dives at different locations around island: four for my certification  one to certify me for deep diving and two for fun. We'd seen Hawksbill turtles, stingrays, cuttlefish (a small, colour-changing squid), baracuda, pufferfish, two huge napoleon wrasse and a number of triggerfish, who eyed us suspiciously - not to mention the clouds of colourful fish and the stunning coral we encountered on each dive. Big thanks to Rosie and the ladies at the Tioman Dive Centre for taking excellent care of us!

We didn't do a lot else on Tioman. In the second week, we took a rainy trek across the steep hills to Juara, a quiet town on a stunning beach, where we spent a night before trekking back - no rain on the way back, and we saw some long-tailed macaques playing (fighting?) in the trees on the Juara side.

Despite the encroaching monsoon season, our weather held out pretty well - although its hard to be upset with the weather in a place where even the rainy days are warm and beautiful.

S.

Underground in Edinburgh

We follow a woman in a long, voluminous skirt, dyed deep red, down a dark, musty tunnel. Straining my eyes upwards I can see former windows and doors cut into the walls. No stairs will take you there now, no light shines to welcome in the windows. She leads us with a dim, yellow light as we slip through low doorway into a room. We draw close, hushed, breathing the damp, old dust as she tells us ghost stories.

She eases our alarm with a loud laugh and pokes fun in her Scottish brogue. She gives us some cute, corny jokes and off we go through the maze of underground rooms.

This is the tour of Mary King's Close in Edinburgh - an exposition of the city's filthy, fascinating history and a peek at a seventeenth century close, a narrow, steeply-sloped street. This close and four others were evacuated and sealed off when the Royal Exchange was built over top in the 1800s.

We'd spent three nights before this in Glasgow at my best friend Piper's apartment. We got a very informative tour of Glasgow University from Piper's friend George and went to some pubs but otherwise spent the time laying low and planning and relaxing. It was fantastic to visit a city I was familiar with already and where there are few tourists. Glasgow is gritty, but genuine and fun. And Piper is there and I miss her!

After Glasgow, Piper came with us for a (successful!) surf lesson at Belhaven Beach in Dunbar, just south of Edinburgh. Then after a delicious Thai meal, she headed home and we checked into our Edinburgh hostel. Once we were settled, we spent a few hours wandering the layered labyrinth of the city: through the slender closes with their steep staircases and under the tall bridges that connect the sloped Royal Mile to the rest of the city.

The next morning we climbed Arthur's Seat, the small mountain right next to the old city, to get a good view of the Mile as it descends from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Palace, and then after a quick rest, we were down beneath streets, following a seventeenth-century figure and learning about Edinburgh.

We left the close in the falling dusk and stolled up the Royal Mile, skirting below the castle. We stop to admire the great building with its windows glowing, perched high atop its basalt seat.

That night we went out with a group from our hostel and ended up on an impromptu bar-hop through the Grassmarket with the hostel's owner at the helm: a Scotsman in a top hat; mutton-chopped, tartan-wearing, and wild.

I have a deep suspicion that the top hat was entirely in charge of the expedition. Kudos, top hat, on a fantastic evening!

This is what happens when the opportunistic backpacker grows up: you get a bit burnt out and then you end up running a hostel.

This is the back-up to my back-up life plan. I just need a quality top hat.

S.

Bolivian Beach Vacation

So La Paz didn't as such work out. As the bus drove into the city after the bumpiest ride in history (oh, Bolivia.) I started talking to a Californian woman, Cara, just  few years older than me, who convinced me to skip La Paz and head right out to Lake Titicaca. We booked a bus and wandered La Paz for a few hour before taking off.

The thing that struck me most about La Paz were the markets. Coming from Chile and its gung-ho mall culture, it was a big difference. I didn't see any malls in La Paz, although they may just be farther from the downtown core. Instead, everything you could ever want is in the streets, in outdoor vendors. This existed in Chile as well (usually right outside the mall...) but not with this sort of enthusiasm. And the food market was incredible... several long, winding streets covered in fresh fruits and vegetables. Gorgeous colours. So much bustle.

So we wandered the market and got out of town. We made it to Copacabana, a little beach town on the lake (Bolivia is landlocked, so this is as good a beach as they get) on Friday afternoon. We spent the whole weekend there, first wandering the town and then hiking through a nearby island.

Remains of a building on the Isla del Sol

Isla del Sol is the birthplace of the Inca religion and the site of a fairly large temple ruin. It was neat to walk through, to see the complexity of the building itself and the care that was clearly taken in the way it was laid out. Otherwise, the 4 hour hike across the island was nice, but uneventful. We went back to Copacabana and grabbed a bus out Sunday night.

Copacabana (no, not the one from the song, that's a beach in Rio) is a cute little town, but clearly has morphed into the super-tourist hub. Despite this focus on tourism, however, there really was no hostel culture developing.... we couldn't find any hostels with common areas to meet people and hang out, which is tragic. Thank goodness Cara and I had banded together... we got a hotel room and saved a little cash that way. The restaurants were great, but the nightlife fizzled at about midnight... so Halloween ended a little early for us. Ah well.

Trout restaurants on the beach

I tried the local lake trout, which was really good. Although my stomach is making odd gurgles now... I also ate a salad even though I know better. Uh oh.

I must say, finding people to hang out with for two or three days is making this trip infinitely easier for me. You get past the backpacker twenty questions (where are from, where are you going, how long is your trip etc. etc.) and have real conversations like you would at home with your friends. It makes the longing for home easier to handle. I've found a few people now that I have been able to make friends with through the trip, and it´s fantastic.

So now, Monday morning, I am in Cuzco, Peru at the Loki Hostel, which is supposed to be a pretty bumping place. I´m exhausted after an all-night bus, but I think with a nap I will have the energy to wander the city today and set myself up a Machu Picchu tour.

S.