Far East 2012

Today we found out another face of Labuan, much better than the city. We rented scooters from our hostel (for 7.5€ / 2 scooters) and drove around the island all day. The countryside of the island seems to be much more beatiful, people are nice and we even found some really good local food in a small restaurant, much better than ones we have got from the city restaurants.

The safe traveling rules wouldn't approve this either, though.. The scooters were 125cc so they were reasonably fast, top speed well over 100kmh, I don't have a motorbike license and haven't been driving any two-wheeled motorized thing for 10 years and traffic here in Malaysia is on left side. Getting used to the scooter and the left-side traffic didn't take long, though. That was fun. :)

There is a timelapse video available at http://youtu.be/1xRRRn1NGAs, taken with a GoPro camera attached to my scooter.

I'm pretty much fed up with Labuan, and I guess so is Timo. So, on Monday (that was the first day with decently priced flights) we are leaving to Kuala Lumpur, which as an international city should be decently nice and civilized.

There is nothing wrong with the hostel or the island itself. The hostel is one of the nicest in the world, and the island is a beatiful paradise. The problem is the culture. Maybe this place is showing the worst parts of Islam culture, maybe something else but.. It's far from civilized. Remember that I have been traveling in Middle East Islam countries and I have nothing against their culture, but it has some points that can become annoying when they go over certain limit in some areas.

Labuan is a taxfree zone, which sells cheap booze and cheap cigarettes. Nothing wrong with that, but obviously also prostitution goes under the same flag. There aren't basically a ONE single bar on the island that isn't openly a girl bar. In every bar there are 10-15 filippino girls which have been cheated to come into the country and had their passports taken away and a one older lady coming to ask from every visitor if they need a lady. That would be ok in one bar or something, but it is happening in every single bar of the island and it's considered totally normal in here. As travelers we would love to spend evenings having a beer or two with locals or fellow travelers, but in here that's basically impossible, at least "the locals" part.

Anyway, I have been to many bad places in the world, but Labuan is getting to my Top-3 list of the places not to go. Shame, because it also has a lot of great people (like our hostel owner, our diving teachers..) and great nature. Hopefully KL is better. From KL we continue probably to Thailand, maybe Koh Samui for some great diving.

Two more open water dives today (18 meters and 12 meters), and we have officially completed our PADI Open Water Diver course. :)

Diving was much more easier and fun today, after getting used to being underwater and to the gear. No more difficulties with equalizing pressure or anything else.

Today is St Patricks day, so in a couple of hours it's time to start celebrating it combined with a course completion celebration. We already scouted a local Irish pub yesterday and they have a special party today, so that's next in our program.

My nights in this hostel seem to be a bit cursed.. The night before I was sleeping right in front of air condition machine and it was blowing extremely cold air to my bed. Last night I got a thicker blanket and was happily crawling to my bed when it collapsed. Yes, I'm big, at least in Malaysian standards. The only reasonable and remaining sleeping place was a 150cm couch outside air conditioned area, so my night was slightly uncomfortable and sweaty... Well, now I have a decent bed and decent blanket, so let's see what happens this night...

First diving day over, practical lessons were not that difficult either. First we learnt the basic skills in shallow water, then did a bit deeper dives. Getting used to the scuba gear took a moment, but just after a while we were pretty comfortable with everything.

Diving is surprisingly tiring, we slept a couple of hours after coming back to the hostel and still felt slightly tired. Well, neither of us is such a sports fanatic back in Finland.. This vacation is going to do good to our physical shape, diving and walking every day like 10-20 kilometers. :)

Labuan Backpackers seems to be a great place to stay, just as recommended by Karlis. Most of the greatness is made by the owner himself, Uncle Jack. He actually lives in our dorm room, and seems to be a really relaxed and nice guy, age something like 40-50 and no idea of nationality. Have to ask him.. The only thing I'm slightly missing is warm shower, but in these weather conditions cold shower works just fine. Actually I also miss a decent network connection with speed more than 64Kbps, but that is the same everywhere around here..

Early morning ferry took us to Labuan in three hours, and finding the Labuan Backpackers hostel wasn't very difficult either. We were welcomed by Uncle Jack, the famous owner of the hostel, who still well remembered our Latvian friend Karlis. He stayed in the same hostel for a few months earlier and his recommendations helped us to select the same hostel also.

The ferry trip was slightly uncomfortable, as the air condition of the ferry was set to extremely cold level. I just don't get the people of the hot not so well developed countries.. If they have AC somewhere, they just have to make the place a refrigerator. Hot air outside felt extremely good after getting out of the ship.

We met our diving instructors after a few hours in the city and went through the theoretical part of the course in their classroom. Nothing too difficult, tomorrow we will be starting the real practical lessons.

We finally made up our mind about our future plans. Completing a PADI Open Water Diver course in Kota Kinabalu was slightly expensive, but way cheaper on a nearby island Labuan. A diving school on Labuan arranged us a course which starts tomorrow, so tomorrow morning we will leave Kota Kinabalu and take a ferry to Labuan where we will spend the next couple of days on a diving course.

Labuan should be a great diving site, so that will be cool. After Labuan we will most likely take a flight to Kuala Lumpur on Monday, but after that our plans are totally open. There is a chance that this trip will change radically from a far-east trip to a middle-east trip but that we should find out soon..

As there aren't much things to do in Kota Kinabalu, we headed out of the city to check out a nearby crocodile farm.

Getting there was a bit tricky, the farm was only 32km outside Kota Kinabalu but we had to walk to the edge of the city first to catch a bus to another smaller nearby city, Tuaren. In Tuaren we had to find another bus to the farm, which was a bit difficult task in the small city with no signs on the bus stops, or actually no signs on the buses either.. Well, thanks to the helpful locals we found the correct bus and the farm.

Not much to say about the farm.. A lot of crocodiles in big pools and some other animals also. There were not much more people besides us, just a couple of annoying kids with their parents. Near animal cages there was food available to feed the animals for 2RM charge (0.50€), so we took a chance to get some funny feeding videos and pictures. Check out the video of an otter desperately begging for fish. :)

Today we finally got rid of our lack of sleep caused by the long flights and slept long. Well, at least I did, Timo already slept better the night before.

Due to the slightly late waking up time we didn't do much anything today, just walked around the city taking a few photos. Kota Kinabalu is a compact city, it takes just like 15 minutes to walk to the other end of the city so it is easy to get to know.

Today was a bit slower day in Hong Kong, mostly due to sleeping really long. We woke up, visited Stanley Market a bit outside the downtown for some souvenirs (or actually just checking what we could bring home later, not really wanting to carry anything through the upcoming countries.).

After getting back to the city it was time to move to the airport for Malaysia. We were at the airport two hours before the scheduled departured time, but even that almost wasn't enough. Seems like the Asian efficiency does not exist at airports..

After some running exercises we managed to get to the gate in time, just to find out the plane was half an hour late. Eventually they got the plane ready, we took off and landed three hours later in Malaysia.

The weather is totally different in here, +27C and humid as in a greenhouse. Feels good after rainy and cold Hong Kong, not to mention Finnish climate.

After the nap (and Timo kicking me up like ten times) we headed down to the riverside to see a light show which is being performed every night in here. Due to some underestimation of the travel times we missed most of the show, but anyways walked along the riverside for a while and took pictures of nightly Hong Kong. Beatiful it is.

Later on we went to check out the night electronics markets of Mong Kok, buy one more extra battery for my Fuji X100 (it's eating one battery per day at least) and just walk around.

Later in the evening we visited a Korean restaurant, which was a first experience of that kind for me. They had open gas grills on every table and a raw meat buffet, where you went to get the meat to grill for yourself. Also, it was the first time for me to eat with sticks. Took a moment to realize how they work, but afterall it wasn't that difficult..

After eating we had a one beer in the Irish pub next door to our hostel and went back to the hostel, having a couple beers bought from the nearest 7-Eleven.