Cherating, Malaysia

Well it looks like the cybercafe stole my lost post from Tioman as I was sending it. Git!

Tioman was a great island to start diving: very chilled and friendly although to be honest the diving wasn't the bestest ever. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's certainly good fun but the vis was only 10m or so and I think I've been spoilt by Egyptian coral. Still and nontheless, a very enjoyable five days was spent there and some wonderful people met.

Left Tioman yesterday and moved up the coast to here, Cherating, a somewhat faded resort that has, apperently, seen it's heyday some four or five years ago. It's still a nice place to stopover on route up the coast. Although it's hard to find a bar with more than 4 people in on Saturday night, and that includes the cat. 'nuff said. Not got the USB cable for the camera with me at the moment so I can't upload any pictures yet, but patience, soon, soon!

Spent today desperately doing my homework for the Divemaster course... I'm behind schedule and it's a bit of a bugger. Got most of the DM coursebook done but still have an even bigger diving theory book to get through.

And in other news I appear to have picked up an outer ear infection which is giving me severe grief (just started in on the anti-biotic ear drops in the hope that clears it up) and aquired a Malaysian SIM. Email if you want the number!

Going to do some more homework after this followed by an early night (hopefully) as got a 7am start tomorrow to get up to Tenggol for a couple of days diving there.

Toodle pip!

Tioman

And somehow the software lost this entire post.
Damn

Briefly from Singapore

Flight arrived at about 8am yesterday and Nick and I checked straight into the tranist hotel at the airport as we didn't get much sleep on the flight. 4 hours sleep seems to have done the trick as we were fine yesterday. Our hostel, Bugis Backpackers, is somewhat spartan (or possibly monastic given the cell like nature of the rooms) and I inadvertently broke two of their rules in the first twelve hours. Still, it's a reasonably cheap place to rest ones head and it's got aircon which is pretty much essential given the humidity here.

Spent the past day and half wondering around the city seeing a few of the sights. I may upload some photo's at some point but probably not today. Went round China town, Little India, and Orchard Road shopping area amongst other places. Picked up some new specs on Orchard Road but I'm not 100% sold on them as the surface area is a bit smaller than my current glasses which'll take a bit of getting used to.

Singapore itself is a very clean city which a great mass transit system and quite a European feel to it. What with left hand drive, 90% + of signs in English and the architecture one could almost be in London which is really cutting down on my culture shock.

So, in summary, Singapore has been hot, humid and surprisngly easy.

Off to Tioman tomorrow, and the diving starts on Monday. Yay!

Zurich airport

As far as I got off the plane!

Zurich

Currently got an hours stopover, although we're not allowed off the plane :-(
Still, made a quick call to Helen (I'm feeling very guilty about now) and I'll see how much this costs.

I've edited this post to try and rotate the photo but it all went a bit titsup... such is life! Ended up mangling it so badly I've deleted it. Ah, the loss to humanity of a photo of Swiss ground crew loading airline meals onto a Singapore Air flight is incalcualbe. We can only hope the original is safe.

They don't mess about

The not so small print on the Singapore immigration card I was given at Manchester airport... hey, just because I've got long hair man! 
Planes a little delayed by thunder storms over switzerland, but its making up time now. Sitting here waiting to board now, and then its 'just' a 15 hour flight. Hardly seems real.

ETA: fixed the original title from mobile phone predictive text talk to the original English.

Bye bye Bill

Indonesian Tsunami

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5186844.stm

Another tsunami has hit Indonesia. Thank goodness it's nothing like the Boxing Day tsunami but the reuslt of the 7.2 earthquake were still bad enough to kill over a hundred people. My thoughts go out to those affected. On a purely personal level (and generally that's what it comes down to) I've had a couple of people get in touch with me to ask if this affects my plans, the answer to which is no. Indonesia is a big country and this has struck the south coast of Java, which I didn't plan to visit anyway. It's worth noting at this point that Java seems to be the epicentre of H5N1 infection of humans, which had kind of put me off anyway even though I hadn't planned on stroking any chickens anyway. Honest.

Still, on the subject of travel plans I'm glad I didn't stick with my original plan of flying to Turkey and then overlanding it to Egypt via Syria, The Lebanon and Jordan. In retropsect it looks like South East Asia was defintely the right choice even with my soft spot for the Middle East.

On the preperations front the packing process has not gone that well. Looks like the fins will be going in their own sperate bag. So much for my lessons learnt after Africa in which I resolved to only carry a 45l rucksack when travelling, although if you took away the dive gear that'd be easy. I'm hoping that it won't all be too much to lug about but we'll just have to see.

Last note is finishing work on Wednesday. With this being a major break away from work I had planned to finish at 12 and go down the pub for a going away drink with friends from work. Alas, I've now got an interview for the FT Tele team lead role at 2 on the Wednesday afternoon. This leaves three options: forget going for a drink, go and only have a non-alcoholic drink or go and just have "the one". Yeah, right, like that's going to happen. I might see if anyone fancies a drink after work instead but it's not likely to be the same.

In some ways this entry seems a bit selfish. A lot of people have died, far many more are wounded and/or homeless and I'm wittering about going for a drink. Such is the nature of man I guess: as William Hazlitt wrote “The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings”.

First pack

Not the best of photo's (first attempt at mobile blogging) and not the full amount of gear to boot. I'm either going to end up built like the proverbial brick outhouse carrying this around or I'm going to do me back in.

It's Saturday lunchtime and with five days to go while I've still got a few things to get and do, it's mostly done and dusted. I'm going to nip into town in half an hour to get the last bits and bobs and do the first pack... should be "fun". I'm also trying to get to grips with my first ever iPod which is educational. For some reason I figured I should put Abbey Road on as the first album but a quick search didn't turn it up so it's Magical Mystery Tour instead. May well be more apropos thinking about it! The solar charger I ordered for the iPod also turned up, a Solio and it turns out that with the correct fitting I can also use it to charge my mobile. Just a shame that there's only three working days to go.

Well, things to do, I'll post again when I start swearing over the packing.

First thoughts

Well, I'll kick off this blog with a few brief words of explanation...

I've set this up in order have somewhere to post thoughts and pictures from a forthcoming trip diving around Malaysia and Indonesia. The thinking runs that I can just upload the more interesting stuff here and those of you that are interested can check it out without me having to send multiple emails to people or do a cut'n'paste between bulletin boards. Not that I won't do those things anyway, but that's the way it goes.

The title, findingbill, was suggested by a friend a work, Emma. It's not about finding the real me in a deep, spiritual and meaningful context though. Nope, it's a play on Finding Nemo, and I went for it because it's a tad difficult to find a good and fresh name on a place like this. Hey ho.

Flights all booked for next thursday morning and pretty much all the preperations have been made. Still need to pick up some currency and travellers checks, get a quick eye check up and spare glasses and fill my new iPod (my first ever) with music. Oh, and get three days work in!