43. Last dive for a while

I left Ho Chi Minh City and caught a coach to Nah Trang. It was a coach unlike any I’d been on before because the aisle wasn’t lined with seats, but little plastic beds. I think these beds must have been designed for the Vietnamese physiology, because mine was a good few inches too short for me. It was a pretty fidgety, uncomfortable 10 hours.

When the coach eventually pulled in I unfolded myself from the bed and had a good stretch. As I got off the coach I was immediately pounced on by a gang of men who had various offers for rooms in hotels. Despite having scouted a place to stay beforehand I decided to haggle a little anyway and got a pretty great price from one of the guys. I hopped on his bike and we set off there instead of the one I'd picked out from the guidebook.

One of the first things I did in the town was to book a couple of dives in the area.
In the dive shop whilst I waited to go off on them a severely drunk Russian man stumbled in. He spoke in slurred English to the girl working there, demanding she phone the police. He claimed he had been swindled out of 20 dollars by the people working at the bar next door.
The unfortunate proprietor of the bar was actually outside the dive shop trying to reason with him through the door. For a few minutes the Russian man kept slurring his demands that the police be summoned, and I started to wonder if I could intervene. The girl in the shop stayed resolute, firmly telling him that they would do no such thing, and so he eventually lost interest and wandered off.

The dives that day were fun. The slight problem was that I had last been diving in Sipadan - and that is quite an experience to live up to. Indeed the Nah Trang waters felt relatively cold and fish free by comparison. That being said there were some stunning coral formations there, and I had a lot of fun - so was not disappointed at all.

42. A confession

If I’m honest after leaving Ho Chi Minh the remaining 3 or so weeks in Vietnam were not really the best. It’s nothing to do with the country, which was stunning and full of things to see and do, and I had a few amazing experiences.

I think one of the problems was that early on I had decided to stay in Vietnam for four weeks for no other reason that it was what my tourist Visa got me. I figured my severely depleted funds would just about suffice, but to be honest I should have cut it short. I didn’t consider doing that that though. I suppose I wanted to keep the dream alive for as long as possible. It was a mistake which contributed to a few problems:

• I was severely low on money, so was forced to spend (and therefore do) as little as possible, which was a problem given I had 4 weeks to fill.
• I found it much harder to meet people here. Largely due to my lack of money forcing me to not do as much - but also because I was not staying in more social “hostel” style accommodation.
• I was getting sad that it was the end of the road - and had some anxiety about returning to England and the “real world”. I think this was affecting my mood as well

As a result I spent a lot of time in Vietnam by myself feeling a poor, lonely and depressed that my travels were coming to an end.

That being said I was aware that this was still the opportunity of a lifetime - so made every effort to fight the negativity and make the most of the rest of my time in south east Asia.

41. Ho Chi Minh City

After landing in Ho Chi Minh City I headed to the area my trusty guide book suggested was good for low priced accommodation. Here, like in Phnom Penh, instead of roads there were rivers of scooters. I had to readjust to the knack of crossing the road, which was to step into the motorised maelstrom and keep walking trusting that nobody will hit you.

Once I found somewhere to stay I rang Mike, the guy who I’d saved the life of in Cambodia*. He was working in the city and had extended an invite to visit him in the new year.
We chatted for a while during which he told me a fitness boot camp was happening that night and invited me along. I thought: why not.

I hadn’t really done any exercise since Cambodia, so that night was a strange combination of being happy to catch up with Mike and almost dying of exhaustion.

The next day, rather sore, I decided to check out some cultural sights in the city. It didn’t take long to track down an enterprising bike owner with a custom tour offer.
I hopped on and we charged off into the blizzard of scooters, but almost as we’s set off we had to slow to pass a crowd in the road. There had been an accident. A scooter was on it’s side and people were gathered around a prone individual being given CPR. I couldn’t help but give my diver a pat on the back and urge him to be careful.

On the last night I met up with Mike again and a friend of his. It was a fun evening. We visited a few bars, ate some truly exceptional street food and watched a random fist fight that erupted between some Russians.

* Carried some distance from a sunbed to his guesthouse whilst unconscious

40. To Vietnam

The following day Cassie and I said our goodbyes. She was the last of my “long term” travelling companions. Travelling with her had been good fun, and it felt very sad to part ways.

The route to Vietnam began with a brief visit to Kuala Lumpur. It was a clean and modern city, but if I’m honest a little dull. I had one night in chinatown. There was just enough time to walk to the impressive Petronas towers and then the grand mosque, before heading back to the airport to catch my flight to Ho Chi Minh City.

I had a strange feeling of apprehension as I embarked on the last leg of my journey. It was a similar feeling to the one I had when I’d first got on the plane at Heathrow. I think the reason was that I was once again destined for a completely new place by myself. I’d not actually done that since leaving Ko Phangan in Thailand some months before. Even then it was only the next day that I bumped into Pat.

Really I’d been very lucky to have the company of some awesome and like minded traveller friends for all but a couple of weeks of the trip so far.

Still, whilst I was feeling some apprehension - I can’t deny that I was still excited to visit Vietnam

39. Monkeying Around

We’d seen an awful lot of wild proboscis monkeys thus far in Borneo - as they were almost a daily fixture at nature lodge cruises. But we’d not had enough of them, so took a short bus ride to a sanctuary dedicated to their protection: the sandakan proboscis monkey sanctuary.
Once there we were lead up some walkways to a tree lined clearing. That’s where we found them - relaxing in the trees; on logs and so on; even on the walkway as we passed.
We wandered around for a while, taking pics and saying “wow” a lot.

After a while we came across the alpha male of the group (we could tell he was the alpha as he had the biggest nose of all). He was sat on a handrail of our walkway a short distance ahead.
I got my phone out for a quick snap. As I did that he turned to look at me. Then he gave an almighty whoop, jumped down from the handrail and came thundering at me! I had a “rabbit in the headlights” moment and just stood there, wondering what was going to happen.

Just about got a pic of the alpha before he charged

Luckily must have just been interested in seeing off a rival male or something because he just charged straight past.

That evening we decided to have a farewell feast of pizza and beer, since Cassie and I would be parting ways. She was destined for the Kingdom of Brunei and I was headed to Vietnam.
Earlier in the day we had coincidentally bumped into a Belgian chap we’d met diving in Sipadan. He was also staying in our hotel so we invited him along to our shindig.

It was a good evening, marred slightly by this guy saying a lot of blatantly racist comments in an attempt to be funny. Turned out we’d forgotten how annoying he was so I decided to try and get so drunk I didn’t notice.
We eventually stumbled to bed.

Shortly after nodding off I was rudely awoken by a loud banging on our door. I groggily put something on and went to answer. I was confronted with our Belgian friend, now appearing to be both amused and irate. Apparently we’d wandered off from the bar and not bothered to pay our tab, leaving him to pay all of it! I apologised and gave him some money, feeling silly.

He left, muttering “Typical sneaky englishman”

38. Bird Cave

We left the reserve and continued up the coast. It would be a few nights till my flight to Vietnam so had planned one more stop in Borneo at a town called Sandakan.
On the way there we stopped at a huge cave where they harvest nests to make bird’s nest soup: A delicacy in many parts of east asia.

The van dropped me and Cassie off. It appeared that we were the only visitors there so got a guide to ourselves. He walked us to some raised walkways and into the cave. Once inside we could see workers clambering up enormous rickety ladders to the ceiling where the birds nests were. It was gloomy, lit only by a gap in the roof at the far end.

The smell was pretty dreadful - most likely caused by the huge piles of bird poo that lay beneath us. The piles seemed to have lives of their own. The brown black surfaces constantly moved and shifted, and as our eyes adjusted we realised it was because the piles were full of cockroaches. There were millions of them everywhere. On the ground, the walls, the walkway and the handrails. At one point I idly flicked one from a handrail into a poo pile. Cassie noticed and was horrified. She gave me a bit of a telling off. I tried to make the case that at least I wasn’t regularly making countless birds homeless, but somehow what I did was far worse.

We made it to Sandakan and booked a room in a mid range hotel. The town was quite pleasant, if a little run down looking. We had three days here. On the first day I decided to follow instructions for a walking tour of Sandakan that I found in a tourist leaflet.
I have to say the tour was a little underwhelming. It took me to a temple which was closed, a dirty clocktower in the middle of a roundabout and a chinese graveyard which, whilst expansive and probably more interesting than some of the other tour items, still was not anything to write home about.

The next day, after writing my mum a postcard about the Chinese graveyard, Cassie and I researched what was nearby and decided to book a ticket to an interesting looking proboscis monkey sanctuary that afternoon.

37. Kinabatangan Nature Lodge

It was getting late in the afternoon by the time we arrived at the Kinabatangan nature lodge. It was pretty a rustic place. It comprised of a series of wood cabins dotted amongst the jungle. Slippery wooden walkways sat over the leafy and muddy forest floor connecting the cabins.
We didn’t have much time to dump our stuff before needing to gather at the reception building for an evening river cruise.

There were around six of us. We headed down a gangplank to a small wooden motorboat. After clambering aboard, the boat chugged into life and set off down the river. It was a stunning trip. I was amazed at the range of animals we saw dotted around the jungles of Malaysian Borneo: orangutans; proboscis monkeys and hornbill birds to name a few.

Apparently the river cruises would be done every day - one at dawn and another at dusk. I was not at all sad to hear that.

It was a typical “ecotourist experience”. A term that I hadn’t heard of before now, and certainly had never actually done. On the other hand some of the fellow guests were quite the eco warriors, coming prepared with hiking boots, explorer hats and those sort of lightweight trousers that you can turn into shorts with a zip at the knee. I felt a very much like the odd one out essentially having lived the last 2 months as a beach bum.

The following night we took a nighttime jungle trek. We’d been told that there had been a lot of rain recently so the trails were waterlogged. We decided to rent wellingtons, since I guessed my trusty flip flops wouldn’t quite cut it. Unfortunately it seemed that every single pair I tried leaked pretty badly, so I just tried to pick the pair that seemed to let in the least amount of water.
We set off and my boots instantly filled with water, but I still enjoyed squelching my way round the jungle, and seeing the nocturnal wildlife our guide pointed out.

Later we got back to our room and I took a shower. I was shocked to find that an opportunistic leech had attached itself to my chest. Got knows how it managed to get in there.
I couldn’t remember the thing you are meant to do with them so I grabbed it’s body and sort of flicked it’s gob to make it let go. It seemed to work. I told Cassie, who was so horrified she immediately jumped back into the shower to double check that she was not carrying any unwanted passengers too.

On the last day one of the cruises took us to see a wild herd of elephants. As we approached we could just about see them moving through the trees, chomping on leaves and trumpeting quietly. It was quite stunning to see them in the wild.

The elephants were obviously a big draw because as we approached we saw a little gang of boats full of tourists straining to get snaps where the trees were less dense. One lady on a boat in front of us was so eager, in fact, that she got out of her seat and clambered up the small muddy river bank to get a better view. It was a short lived effort, because just before the top she slipped, and with a squawk toppled down the bank landing in the shallows with a splash. She was fished out, unharmed and embarrassed. I did wonder how many leeches she’d probably have to evict from her person later.

36. Trip to Kinabatangan

The time had come to move on from one of the world’s finest diving spots. It was bittersweet. Cassie Crosby was leaving at the same time we were. We had got to know each other quite well over our stay on Mabul Island. Around mid-afternoon we all caught the boat back to the mainland together. We had one evening in Semporna before heading on.

During dinner we discussed our plans. Cassie, who was on holiday for 2 weeks, would be stopping at a few places to do jungle treks and river cruises and that sort of thing in Sabah on her route up the coast and ending in the Kingdom of Brunei. It sounded fun, and she invited us to join along. It fit in quite nicely to my vague plans, which were to get to Vietnam at some point in a week or 2 as my last “stop” with what money I had left. Pat wasn’t interested though. He’d overspent a lot and wanted to go straight to Laos.

So Cassie and I agreed to be travel companions for a week. She sent off an email to the first place: a jungle lodge, so they could add me on to her booking.
The next morning dawned and we headed to the bus station. Cassie noticed there was no word from the lodge - so send a follow up email, just to be sure.

We bundled onto a coach heading north on a jungle lined highway. After an hour or so the bus got to the stop Pat needed for his connection. We shook hands as he hurried past but I felt the farewell lacked some of the ceremony it deserved. Cassie had some signal so rechecked her emails, but still there was no word from the lodge. With that she tried to call them, but it just rang out.
At this point I felt it was a very real possibility that I would be homeless in the jungle, and have to survive on largely forgotten Grylls and Mears knowledge.

After another couple of email free hours we disembarked at the stop where Cassie’s transfer was meant to pick us up. It was a strange, remote sort of place: A disconnected few buildings lining the jungle highway. We waited and enjoyed a reasonably priced buffet of quite tasty local cuisine.

After a bit of a wait a small minivan pulled up, and we hopped on board. They did not seem confused that I was there, so with my mind a little at ease they set off into the murky green jungle depths.

35. Sipadan Finale

I had a healthy buzz from the day’s dives, which called for celebration. That evening a lot of guests were drinking out on the decking / common area, including the divemaster who had joined us that day: Marie. Before long we grew a little footloose and decided to go wandering around the little island. We went to one bar that was a part of a different fancy “east Side” resort. It felt a little sedate and boring to us rough and ready west siders, so we soon left and headed to one of the nearby beaches. There we found some locals that Marie knew. We sat with them on the beach. One passed around a milk jug filled with liquor that apparently had been distilled by his kindly old grandma.

The night drew on and thanks to granny's special distillations I had gotten quite steaming - so decided to go back. Pat said he would stay on for a bit. So I took the key and stumbled off back to the homestay. The only problem was that my guidance system was on drunk mode, so I got very lost. I remember getting to one side of the island and finding myself in various resort beaches and getting shooed away by security men. After much walking, tracking, backtracking and getting thoroughly confused I came across the familiar slum that hid my home. I got in and Pat still wasn’t there. It was around 4 in the morning so I passed out, leaving the door open so Pat could get in.

I awoke with a throbbing head and a horrible taste in my dry mouth. Pat had gone already. It wasn’t long before more diving. I tentatively opened the door and crept out to find pretty much everyone from the previous night all up. Turns out that Pat got back before me and banged on our door for ages to no avail - since I had the key but wasn't there. He did succeed in waking up half the homestay. Johnny Keely from next door apparently let him crash in his room. I felt terrible.

We did 4 dives around Mabul that day: panglimara reef; Lobster wall and kapalai or “house reef” which was a purpose built area made up of the skeletons of houses that were slowly filling out with coral.
That night we did a night dive at paradise 2 which was a cool. One thing I like to do on night dives (since it’s pitch black) is look entirely away from the coral, rocks and all torch light for a while. All you feel is weightless. All you see is black. The only sensory input you get is the breath in your regulator. Somewhere deep down there is an involuntary twang somewhere between dread and vertigo, forcing me to look back. Both to reassure myself the world still existed, and also that I’ve not lost control of my buoyancy and am shooting up to the surface. Or worse: down into oblivion.

I wasn’t we got back and it was fine. Although not all that fine since it was the last day :(