Tipping Point

I stayed on Panglao Island, just off Bohol from Monday to Thursday. Tuesday I spent diving around Baclisag island. On the dive boat it was me, a japanese guy and the filipino dive crew, which was quite intimidating at first, but after the first dive we all chatted about where we had dived before, and we had a good time. The actual diving I found better than at Apo Island, as well as the usual stuff we saw large schools of Barracuda and Jacks. They were mesmerising to watch, and I could have hovered there for ever watching them, a bit like staring at fire.

A guy offered to take me to a good spot on the island for sunset on his scooter, so we drove out there, saw a few sites on Panglao Island and then watched the non existent sun go down. The sky was beautiful though so the guy didnt understand why I wasn't annoyed, I got some good photos, very different from the usual sunset.

Tuesday I got ripped off a little, getting someone to take me on a tour around Bohol. I got up at 4am to drive to the chocolate hills in time for sunrise, I was the only one up at the viewing point and it was an amazing experience. We then drove onto the Tarsier centre to see the small monkey like creatures, but everything else there was to see my guide wanted more money for, and I was really tired so decided to head back and just sit on the beach in the afternoon.

I got up early on Thursday morning to go dolphin watching, expecting to get on a boat at 6am, although the guys who had organised it for me had messed up and I got more and more annoyed with them trying to sort a boat for me that I just walked off. Someone else stepped in and offered me my own private boat for 1000 pesos (just over 10 pounds) and so I spent an hour and a half watching dolphins in the wild. It was awe inspiring, and it felt like the experience was all mine because the other boats had disappeared so it was only me and my guides out on the water. I felt like the luckiest person alive to be doing that.

After breakfast I took a ferry to Cebu, and spent the afternoon in an enormous shopping mall. I got a bit overexcited, miscounted the money I had left and after buying a few items left myself very short to get to Manila... The next day I had to stop the cab after the meter reached 172 pesos (the airport taxis are more expensive than the usual ones), which confused the driver immensely who thought I was trying to bargain with him. I think he finally understood when I emptied my wallet into his hand! I had a couple of kms to walk to the nearest Western Union, which wasn't too bad. Taxis were stopping asking if I needed a ride and when I said I had no money they thought I was joking and started laughing, I was like 'no, really!'. (I'm not sure I mentioned this before but had my cards stolen in Thailand and my replacement Mastercard doesnt work anywhere, so I'm relying on western union money transfers)

So I arrived in Kota Kinabalu last night and have found my way to Borneo Backpackers. I met an american girl who I had dinner with and we got bought beers by the locals, so spent a relaxed evening after a manic day. Not really sure what I've done today, just been getting more western union money, walking around the markets and shopping malls. In the fish market I saw a shark which had its fins removed for shark fin soup, which was quite upsetting (they just throw the rest of the shark away).

We've booked our climb up Mt. Kinabalu for tomorrow, which has cost 690 ringit, (around 110 pounds), which is quite expensive, but the local travel agencies have created a monopoly on climbing the mountain, booking all but a small percentage of the accommodation in advance so you are forced to book through them with their extortionate profit margins. I think it is the same for Mulu where I intend to go later, so it could get quite costly, but these are once in a lifetime experiences so they're worth it.

Read through my blog and realised I had written nothing about Sipadan! Sipadan is an island off the coast of Borneo which for you geology/ geography geeks out there is not situated on the continental shelf so therefore rises 650m above the ocean floor.

It is one of the top dive sites in the world and although I have hardly done enough diving to make that judgement myself, it is awesome. We dropped in at South Point practically on top of turtles, which pop their head up above sea level quite frequently. The fish that you can see infrequently at other places are in abundance, swimming in schools right in front of your face, and there are sharks. Not just the odd shark that you might spot elsewhere but everywhere you look! I managed to swim within half a metre of one to take a photo, and at the end of a dive hovered directly above an enormous turtle (bigger than me) until it got annoyed with me taking photos and swam off.

The second dive was at Barracuda point which is world renowned, similar diving but more of a current. You swim along the wall and then head up a channel which has quite a current.

The third dive was White Tip, and we very lucky to see around 20m below us a school of juvenile grey sharks.

The island itself is beautiful and has been conserved well. Tourists are no longer allowed to stay on it and you are only allowed on a small fraction of the island. The army have a small base on it due to kidnappings by Muslim extremists in the past, it is quite disconcerting to see machine guns pointed out at you when you step onto the island!

I got up at 5.45 this morning to get a ferry at 7 only to find out they weren't doing a ferry at 7 today! So now I have many hours to kill until the 1.30 boat...zzzzzz. Those of you who know me will appreciate how difficult it is for me to get up that early!

I've stayed 1 night in Dumaguete, 2 nights on Apo Island and then another night just South of Dumaguete. I spent a day in the town until Charly arrived sitting on the water front promenade reading and getting harassed by men trying to sell me 'pearl' earrings (the fact that I told them my ears weren't pierced didnt stop them!) and also getting children coming up to me begging. Two schoolkids in uniform saying "Geev me your munee or food!" obviously didnt get anything. I feel slightly guilty not giving anything to others, they would have been happy with 5p no doubt, but I didnt want to be harassed for the rest of the day.

Apo Island was fantastic, we stayed at Liberty's which is a quirky building with electricity only at certain times, and the shower was a bucket, which of course is not the most useful after diving! The island is not really touristy, I think mainly it is a fishing village as you would expect. It had a great community feel to it and we were made to feel very welcome, everyone said hello and all the children wanted me to take their photo! The weather wasn't fantastic while we were there but we had two amazing sunsets, and our room a prime view of them from the balcony so we were extremely happy.

The diving was good, the coral was in excellent condition, and we saw an enormous school of Jacks which was pretty incredible. The Dive Masters were by no means marine biologists and we would have probably seen or spotted a lot more had we had someone who knew what they were looking for. Still, we saw an octopus, black banded sea snakes, more turtles and a cool electric-blue coloured eel that lived in a hole (at some point I need to learn proper names).

The place we stayed in last night was a complete rip-off, the same price as the really nice place I stayed in on my first night here, but dirty, smelly, no hot water and a resident frog. Although I made friends with the owners doberman 'spike'! Yesterday I got my first experiences of riding in a Jeepney and the Tricycles, all an order of magniture cheaper than a cab and much more adventurous! Everyone says hello when we drive past, although Charly laughed when I said I felt like the Queen waving from our trycycle. Apparantly the similarity is linked only my name, and the Queen would not ever wear my shorts, or no doubt my now very dirty favourite light shirt which I wear almost all the time due to it being the most comfortable thing to wear in this humidity!

As well as the photos below I have put some photos up on my facebook page, Click Here

I'm currently in an internet cafe in dumaguete on negros in the philippines, which is a geek cafe with smelly noisy boys playing crap computer games. it smells. im token whitey in town and getting ripped off as only a blonde haired white girl can (yes thats right my hair is getting blonder by the second).

on the other hand the filipinos are horrendously friendly and helpful, yesterday i got off a bus in the middle of nowhere in manila, and seeing my struggle to haggle for a taxi, one guy told me he would find one for me, he ran barefooted into the middle of the road in the rain to hail one, and then shouted at another guy for not holding his umbrella over me!

very different from borneo where the muslim malaysians did not appreciate western girls, even though i had knees and shoulders covered. we got stared at, and tutted at, and worst of all, horror of horrors, we got called 'amerikanos'.

im trying to get to a random island tomorrow (apo island) but there is no consistent answer as to when the boat leaves and where from, and like every other asian they wont say no, so conversations go something along the lines of 'does the boat go from dumaguete pier?' 'yes' 'does the boat go in the morning?' 'yes' 'are you just agreeing with everything i say?' 'yes'

so im trying my best to work it out on the internet...

Spent 6 night in Koh Phi Phi in the end, stayed in a hostel run by a Germany lady who I had interesting chats with concerning the tsunami and so forth, but that I will save for a later post because my opinion on that is quite long!

I did my Open Water PADI course on Phi Phi which consisted of a confined dive where I practised skills such as taking off my mask etc underwater (something that I thought would be difficult but was fine), and then I had 4 dives in 2 days out in the open ocean. I saw TONNES! The coral reef there is well protected, I saw clownfish, seahorses, a turtle, an octopus, etc etc etc.

I met quite a few people over in Phi Phi, one of them who happens to be good friends with one of my good friends from uni - it's a small world! I met an american guy called Rob who shared my passion for photography, and on my last day in Phi Phi, which I didn't spend diving, we went off on a mini-trek of the island taking loads of photos. It was nice not to feel like I was annoying people by snapping away!

Friday I spent mainly in a plane flying to Borneo. I flew from Krabi to Kuala Lumpur, then onto Tawau in Sabah, Borneo. The departure lounge at KL has a shop selling chocolate from all over the world! I was in heaven! At one point it appeared I would be the only westerner on the plane, so there I was, a lone female westerner munching on some food which seemed ridiculous to them in such a hot country, I got some funny looks! Fortunately 2 brits and an aussie also got my flight, I didn't chat to them on it but after I met Charly at Tawau airport we all ended up sharing a lift to Semporna which is where my dive school is based.

It turns out that these people are professional underwater photographers, and the guy (I think his name is Adam) worked for Associated Press as a news photographer. I mentioned that my grandad used to work as a freelance photographer in Wales, and when I mentioned his name he said he had heard of him, which made my day!

I've had two days diving here so far, the dives havent been as good as Phi Phi yet, but the islands we have dived off are beautiful! Tomorrow we are diving off Sipadan which is legendary for sharks, turtles and barracuda, so I'm very much looking forward to it. And by the end of tomorrow I will be an advanced open water diver!

On Wednesday I'm off to the Philippines, which I'm hoping will be a little less intimidating than being a woman in a Muslim country. Even though we have made sure to cover knees and shoulders we still get unwanted attention from men, nothing bad so far just unpleasant glares, honking horns and 'Mees yu awlreddy' as a nice chat up line. It's definitely nice to be in a group in an area, which apart from the visitors to the few local dive schools, is not a tourist resort.

currently sitting in an internet cafe in koh phi phi just before i head off to bed. the main town here is a bit like a themepark for backpackers with bars, restaurants, shops and tourist shops, and very noisy at night with lots of drunk students, not really my scene, id rather have a bit of peace and quiet to enjoy the beauty, and it is beautiful here. i would upload some photos but this archaic computer has no usb port1

the journey over here was long because i did it all in one go, consequently i spent most of tםday sleeping. got up in the afternoon to book my diving course, which starts tomorrow, and lie on the beach for a couple of hours

the dive course lasts 3 days, then i hope to do some kind of kayak tour on the 10th before i fly off to borneo on the 11th.

i'll keep you updated1