SE Asia

Back to socialism

/ ckoukkos / 1 Comment

Oh, how I missed those golden stars on red badges fastened to army-green uniforms! It’s been quite a few months since my adventures in socialist China, the single country of the dozens I’ve visited that I never ever intend to visit again, at least not on my own dime. So here I am, in another notoriously rude, ruthlessly money-grubbing socialist Asian country with an infamously high rate of theft (not violent theft – mugging and so on – but simple stuff like purse-snatching, stealing your wallet and camera while you’re asleep on the bus, and so on).

Hello Saigon! Or…Ho Chi Minh City, as it’s now called. (An aside: I understand the need to name stuff after national heroes. In fact, on the flight here I just thinking about the absurd number of American airports named for recent American presidents: Reagan International and JFK and (for god’s sake!) Bush International. But no Jefferson, no Lincoln, no Roosevelt (Teddy or Frankie). It’s like the sports stadium-naming virus has spread.)

As I was saying, I get it. But name a soccer (erm) football stadium after him. The airport. A highway. But to name a city after him – especially with a name that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, like Washington, combined with needed clarity lent by the word “City” at the end…it’s a mess. Ho Chi Minh City. Jeezis. No wonder people write HCMC, and still call it Saigon. This city clearly needs a brand manager.

Speaking of airports, the HCMC airport (code: SGN) is shiny and new and covered with advertising billboards that all say “Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City. For advertising, please call…” Like any sensible airport, there are duty-free shops in the international arrivals hall…but they were all closed at 6 pm when I landed. They’re trying with this whole capitalism thing, but they don’t quite have it right.

I grabbed my bag and went in search of the bus into the city, but evidently the buses stop running at 6 pm as well. Not wanting to shell out the cash for a taxi into the city, I walked up to the first white person I saw, a late-30s-ish guy, and asked if he wanted to share. His name is Martin, a native Londoner now working as an investment banker in (you guessed it) Hong Kong. He was on his way to meet his British-born Chinese wife, who was in HCMC for business, at the Sofitel (“we’ve got slightly different budgets,” I laughed).

As it turned out, he wasn’t as boring as a Hong Kong investment banker should be. He’s a former TV journalist, he’s got the first book of a series of teenage detective novels at various agents in New York and elsewhere, and he’s funny as hell. It was the most fun I’ve had in a cab since Pat Guiney, with whom I was in a drunken and oddly vicious argument on the way home from the Stoned Crow, called me a c**t. (He apologized the next day, after PC reminded him of the incident.)

After I dropped Martin in the flush part of town, I instructed our oddly belligerent taxi driver to take me to Bui Vien, the Khao San Road of Saigon. (Saigon, dammit!) It took about 5 minutes to find a $6 dorm bed in the Remember Inn, a friendly place in a side alley, attached to a BBQ joint. The dorm is situated on the first floor, which is like the 13th floor from the film “Being John Malkovich,” or maybe a scene from Alice in Wonderland, in that I have to stoop through the door and carry on stooping as I walk through half the 20ftx20ft room to my bed. By the door the ceiling is about 5.5 feet from the floor, then rises to about 6 feet off the floor – which means I can stand on the side of my room where the bed is, but I can’t have sunglasses on my head because they scrape the ceiling. There are 5 beds in the room, each about 8-12 inches from each other. Thank god there’s only one other tenant – a Korean college student who sleeps all day and picks at his nails a lot.

On my first full day in the city, I was charmed into agreeing to a tour of the city aboard a cyclo – basically a seat on wheels in front of a bike, in this case pedaled by a 50ish Vietnamese man named Nzhia (“Nia”). He had been driving a cyclo for 18 years, he said, since job prospects for those who are not communist party members are scarce. Not that he’s a physicist or engineer or something: he’s a rice farmer who learned English from American GIs during the war, and continues to study at his home, a village about 12 km from Saigon. He tells horrible war stories of violence, including how he got nicked above the right eye by a stray bullet, with an incongruous twinkle in his eye and smile on his face.

He also told me more modern horror stories – of how the top 7 generals just received 7 brand-new Rolls Royces, in a sign of communist corruption; how those who want to go to church can’t, for fear of the ubiquitous midnight knock on the door; of how the communists are stealing valuable forests from the poor and selling the timber off to the Chinese; etc.

But a lot of this is spiel that he clearly has been refining for 18 years. His tour is a series of epigrams that he repeats throughout the day. Describing corruption: “Small officer, small money. Big officer, big money.” Pointing out what the different goods sold on the street we just turned onto: “Different street, different thing.” On free speech in modern Vietnam: “People have mouths for eating, not mouths for speaking.” He showed me the hotel where Bill Clinton stayed when he visited after leaving office (the New World Hotel). He showed me the three different hotels where the officers, journalists and GIs stayed during the war (“then at night the lieutenant would go to a bar and shoot the soldier in the foot. ‘That girl mine. This girl yours!’ Ha ha.”

The tour was nice and all – actually, I recommend it – but the best part was crossing the street. In Saigon, as Nzhia said, “there are 8 million people and 8 million motorbikes.” And as we would make a turn or cross an intersection, at least 4 million of those bikes would be tearing down the road at us, full speed, as we gently pedaled across. I couldn’t look – for the first 30 minutes or so I was certain we would die, but then I figured, he’s been doing this for 18 years and isn’t dead. So go with it.

So yes, I like Saigon. It’s not terribly cosmopolitan, the only good food I can find (luckily!) is the cheap food-stall stuff, Saigon brand beer gives me an instant hangover headache – before I’ve even finished the bottle, and all westerners are constantly harassed to buy trinkets (“you buy something!” demand the pre-adolescent girls who wave cheap hand fans in your face as you try to drink your morning coffee). But I like it.

Enemy territory and the no-fly list

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I’m in Ubud, Bali – deep in enemy territory.

On the surface it’s pleasant enough – rice fields, jungle, good eats, friendly Balinese. But it’s also the scene of the final, most sickening section of my nemesis: Eat Pray Love. And evidently, according to the Lonely Planet, since the publication of “that damned book” hordes of “women of a certain age” have been flocking here, hanging around in the local cafes, opening their chakras at the dozens of yoga classes on offer, picking through (from what I’ve seen so far) shockingly awful Balinese “art,” seeking the services of various “healers,” and generally hoping to meet their own rich, sexy Brazilian who will fuck them silly for a month and then marry them. Jeezis.

Ironically, as I write this I’m waiting for Miro, a rather cute German guy I met yesterday, to pick me up. We’re going to yoga together this morning at the Intuitive Flow yoga studio, situated on a hill overlooking rice paddies. I wanted to do some yoga anyway – all those days of sitting around doing nothing with Mike have taken their toll – but Miro says that this particular class is taught by a Balinese shaman. So of course I have to go. It’s research!

Adding to my EPL reenactment, Miro is currently studying cranio sacrotherapy – a new-agey, sort of energy-based healing technique that sounds like reiki to me. Ominously, he couldn’t really explain exactly what it is and how it works. I’m going to Google it later. In any event, I’m all set to have a mystical couple of days in his company.

But let’s go back to last week, when I was hundreds of kilometers to the east, diving Komodo aboard the Jaya. I had heard about the trip because my friend and ex-SJ mate Jeremy works as “cruise director” and primary dive guide on every second Jaya trip, which all leave from Gili T. So on June 21, at sunset, one Dutch and three Swiss women, an American guy, a young Russian couple, a totally New Yo-wak couple in their late 50’s, and I settled onto the deck of the Jaya, carefully guiding spoonfuls of vegetable soup into our mouths. The sea that first night was rough – we were all staggering around like, well, drunken sailors.

Despite the rough seas, that night and every night of the trip all of us slept on pleather mattresses on the covered deck. The cabins were hot, stuffy, cramped, noisy (mine was right next to the engine room) and smelly from exhaust fumes. Truly horrible. But sleeping on deck was as amazing as it sounds: moonlight reflected on open-sea waves, the sky painted with stars after moonfall, salty air (and occasional spray), and then waking up to the sun peering over the horizon.

I won’t talk much about the diving, since most of you don’t dive. I’ll just say that while it was indeed beautiful – the variety of healthy coral, the giant schools of fish – I was expecting more. I wanted to see something I hadn’t seen before (other than a pygmy seahorse, which I fully expected to and did see plenty of thanks to Jeremy’s pygmy obsession). I think Mabul/Sipadan has spoiled me. (To be fair, the current wasn’t as ripping as it should have been, given that the trip happened during a full moon. And no current means not as many sharks, not as much action. But still. No mantas for me either time we did the manta dive, on which the last trip saw *30* (though I did see one from afar at another dive site), no hunting sharks, no dolphins (OK, I wasn’t really expecting that), and not even many insane, rip-you-off-the-reef-or-plunge-you-to-100-meters currents that Komodo is famous for.) Heh heh. So much for not talking about diving.

Eff all that. Let’s go back to the deck of the Jaya. It’s the end of day 5 – the day I saw a manta at Batu Balong. After watching the boat boys, Harry and Dunker, wakeboard behind the dinghy at sunset, we ate a dinner of rice, veggies and fish. Ryan the American plugs his iPod into travel speakers, because the Swiss girls want to hear Tom Petty. We’ve all had a few arak-and-Sprites, or other intoxicants of choice. We’re moored for the night in the calm bay of some sparsely inhabited island in the Flores Sea, off the north coast of the Indonesian archipelago. In the moonlight I watch a half-dozen wild goats pick their way down a steep rocky slope to the cover of some scrub pines near the beach.

Where else would I ever want to be?

A few mornings earlier we visited Rinca, an island near Komodo where ironically it’s easier to see more Komodo dragons than on Komodo itself. And we did see plenty of these split-tongued reptilian creatures as they warmed themselves in the morning sun. Komodo dragons are dangerous. They will hunt animals many times their own 1/5-2 meter size, including wild buffalo. They are hunt-and-ambush predators with poisonous bites. The venom slowly kills the prey over a few days, during which the dragon follows the dying creature until it succumbs. The dragons then eat every part of the animal except the skull, including all other bones.

Our protection from these beasts were two adolescent boys from the park service carrying long sticks with a forked end, presumably to hold back a dragon should it attack one of us. And despite their age they took their job quite seriously, reprimanding us when we strayed from the path or got too close to a dragon in pursuit of the perfect picture.

Other land-based adventures included a Big Night Out pizza night in Labuan Bajo, the main town on the island of Flores; a visit to a lake with one of the simplest ecosystems on the planet, consisting of one species of fish which eats the one species of snail which eats the one kind of algae which lives off the decomposing bodies of dead fish and snails; and an impromptu visit to a more-remote village on another island.

The last was my favorite, as I somehow became the group guinea pig. During our 30-minute visit I was compelled to chew betel nut in various forms, sprinkle my tongue with some sort of white powder that I feared was cocaine but ended up tasting like baking powder, and stick a giant wad of chewing tobacco under my top lip. I was also asked if I wanted to buy a chicken. The woman who had offered me all these treats then invited me to sit next to her, laughed at my big butt and slapped my hips in delight, stole my sunglasses, and insisted on having her picture taken with me…while the village grandma stuck her hand into my shorts pocket to try to get at my mobile phone. Good times.

At the end of the trip, as Gili T came into view, we all said how weird it would be to come “back to reality.” Which got me thinking about levels of reality. We had just spent 8 days stuck with the same people on a not-giant boat, doing the same thing every day. It was like reality tv. The so-called reality we returned to was Gili T, a tropical party island with OK diving, no cars or motorbikes, and plenty of people willing to sell you weed or “fucking fresh magic mushrooms that will send you to the moon.” Not exactly mundane reality. The next day I would be going to Bali – a larger island with more people leading normal lives, but still connoting a holiday paradise. And then I booked my ticket to New York, for so long my reality but where the contours of a real life never solidified for me.

Not that I want to go, but can someone please tell me where reality is, and how to get there?

——————-

Oh – didn’t I mention that I’m coming to New York? Heh heh. For those who have not yet heard, I arrive in NYC on the evening of Sept 25, a day before my bro’s birthday. Never fear, fans of therangelife – I’m just coming for a visit, to meet my new niece or nephew (any day now!) and Sydney’s new brother, to drink martinis with the Guineys and wine with the grrrlz, to watch some effing Red Sox baseball with the Sue’s and their spouses…and to witness my eclipse-watching buddy and NASA astronaut Al Drew as he hurtles into space aboard the second-to-last Space Shuttle mission. Wow!

I’ll stay in the US for about two months. Then either to Central Asia (unless the region devolves into sectarian wars) or Central/South America. TBD.

In the meantime, on Monday I fly from Bali to Bangkok, where I’ll stay long enough to secure a visa to Vietnam. Then it’s Vietnam/Laos/maybe Cambodia for about three months. Then back to Bangkok to catch my flight on Kuwait Airways (should be interesting) to New York via Kuwait City and London. (I was thinking today that I booked a one-way ticket on Kuwait Airways. TSA no-fly watch list, here I come!)

Bali to Gili T

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Greetings from Gili Trawangan, aka Gili T. As I predicted in my last post, it took almost a month and a half to post again. Ridiculous.

If the name Gili T sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve been here before – two years ago, I did my Rescue Diver course and spent the last two weeks of my first trip around SE Asia here. It’s one of three small islands between the larger islands of Bali and Lombok, in Indonesia. I’m here because Adam, Sarah and Jeremy, all ex-SJ, work here. So Mike and I came to visit.

As for how I got here: I left Malaysia as planned on June 6. The last month or so of my time at SJ, I felt detached from everything – I didn’t really want to dive, I didn’t feel much like socializing, and I spent a good portion of my time in bed reading. Textbook leaving anxiety.

I arrived in Kuta, Bali around 9 pm. I took a taxi to a guest house that Kris & Steve, an American SJ couple, had recommended from their last stay in Bali. The place was OK, but there were two things wrong.

First, singles like me are charged less for the same room as a couple. So guest houses reserve their particularly awful rooms for singles. My room was up three sweaty flights. The ceiling fan caromed back and forth, making screeching noises and threatening to decapitate me in my sleep. The toilet flushed, but just once – the bowl wouldn’t fill again.

Second, I was in Kuta. It is the place in Bali that attracts the gap-year kids, the Aussie party-for-a-weekend crowd, the wannabe hippies and surfers. The lanes off the main roads look like a made-in-China warehouse dumped all its plastic and textiles on a stretch of beach, where the locals erected rough wooden shacks around a pile and called it a shop. And Kuta isn’t even the cheap haven it once was: my room was $10/night. Just two years ago, a similar room would have been $6. Ugh.

So in an inspired fit, fueled by the need for some beauty and peace, I moved north to Legian/Seminyak, the slightly more expensive part of the coast that attracts a slightly (and not-so-slightly) older crowd, with a bit more cash. Mike was arriving that night, the 8th, and I was meant to meet him for dinner in the area, anyway. He was staying at the Blue Ocean bungalows. They had room, I had learned from Thailand that Mike has good taste in holiday bungalows, so I took a taxi straight there.

How foolish I had been for wasting time in Kuta! My room at the Blue Ocean, for $20, had a desk, chair, huge double bed, silent ceiling fan, funky outdoor hot-water bathroom (with a bath!), a *giant* garden in back with a table and benches, a kitchenette with fridge, and a small front balcony with two chairs and tons of privacy thanks to giant tropical bushes. I leaped into bed for a nap, showered, and met Mike for a fantastic dinner at Zanzibar, his favorite eatery, about a 30-second walk away.

We spent two (or three?) lovely, lazy days at the Blue Ocean. We drank Bintang and gin and tonic and wine. We played gin (rummy), backgammon, pool and bowling. I kicked his ass at all of it…except maybe the drinking.

On the third morning, I was in the shower at 6:15 am, trying to wash away the terrible hangover from our “quiet night” the night before, during which we consumed large amounts of beer and an ill-advised G&T nightcap around 3 am. Knock knock knock “Hello?” It was our minibus driver, at least 30 minutes early, who wanted to help me with my bags. I dressed and packed quickly and knocked at Mike’s door. “We not leaving until 9 am, my lovely,” he called out in his drunken stupor. “That’s the boat from Padangbai,” I replied. “Our taxi is here right now.”

And what a journey it was. Neither of us remembers it particularly clearly. Mike chatted nonstop with an English couple in the van with us. We at a truly awful breakfast in Padangbai. I bought Mike a ridiculous fan hat.

Finally we arrived in the Gilis. We spent about 10 minutes looking for a decent place – too hot, too hungover – but lucked out at the d’Gilian bungalows. I’ve got a fan room for $16, Mike’s got a/c for $20. The place consists of four large rooms with amazing private bath (mine’s outdoors), comfy beds, tiled floors. It’s run by a friendly, hospitable and giggly family. They’re constantly bringing us free strong Lombok coffee – so strong that Mike adds sugar – and nicely arranged plates of fresh pineapple. We’re constantly adding beer, water, coke/diet and juice to our breathtakingly long bar bill. They love us, we love them.

We’ve been here about 10 days; so far there have been two days during which Mike and I didn’t leave the compound at all – we ordered lunch and dinner delivery (salads, pizzas, pasta). Since we don’t have a backgammon board, we spend our days playing another card game, Shithead, at which Mike is kicking my ass. Adam, Sarah and Jeremy mostly work during the day, but if they’re not working they stop by. A characteristic holiday with Mike: do nothing, and love it.

But that’s all going to change today, when I’m going on an 8-day liveaboard dive trip to Komodo, land of the Komodo Dragon and some of the best diving in the world. Due to its relative isolation, Komodo liveaboards tend to be quite expensive. But my friends work on the boat, so they can get me a giant discount, one that I can’t pass up.

I get back from the trip on the 29th. I’ll go back to Bali for a few days, and then either to Vietnam/Laos or to Nepal…in other words, I’ll finally be traveling again, rather than working and going on holiday. I’ll update once I know my plans for sure.

Life as a dive bum

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I’m horrible. Terrible. Lis is going to KILL me.

I can’t believe it’s been a month and a half since I last posted. To be sure, I can blame it a bit on the two-week internet blackout here in Mabul. But that’s just lazy.

I could also blame it on the fact that I have no quiet place to write, which is a bit more of a real issue. My room is a mattress on the floor and a few shelves to put my clothes – certainly no writing desk. There are lovely tables in the resort restaurant and bar, but there are also always people passing through – customers who want to ask random questions, fellow divemasters who don’t get the hint – LEAVE ME ALONE – if I sit here with headphones on. And then there are the people who just come sit down across from me and start chatting away as if I’m NOT clearly trying to write. I swear, as I started writing this paragraph, my customer from today, who did not stop talking ALL DAY, sat across from me and tried to engage me in conversation. I blew him off, so now he’s having a loud conversation with his wife. What’s a girl supposed to do?

Excuses, excuses. I spend my days off recovering from Tanduay hangovers and watching episodes of Mad Men. Or I sit in Mike’s hammock reading one of the thousand books that the Grrrlz sent me in their fantastic care package. Or I go on fun dives with my underwater camera, searching for frogfish or sea moths or delicate ghostpipefishes. In short, diving and drinking. Not a bad life, but also not a particularly productive one.

All that’s about to end, though. Sort of. On June 6 I’ll leave Scuba Junkie and Malaysia on an Air Asia flight to Bali, Indonesia. I say “sort of” because I’ll meet up with Adam and Sarah and Mike and a few other friends from Scuba Junkie to…um…drink and dive. Heh heh.

The plan is to spend some time with my friends, but also to find a nice quiet place with a desk and catch up on writing. The story proposals I’ve sent out recently have met with continued silence, so I’m going to have to pay them a bit more attention. We’ll see how it goes.

It’s just about dinner time here, so things are getting crowded and distracting. There’s plenty more to say about what’s been going on with me, so I will post again soon. Within the next month and a half. Ha.

Sliding into home

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I finally have a day off and some time and attention and energy to write about my trip to Thailand.

It starts with a sleep-deprived stream-of-consciousness from KL airport, which I find funny and random. Enjoy!

Feb 23

Back in KL airport again.

I’m sucking on grape Mentos in the unenthusiastically air conditioned food court, where the the enticing food posters (“Asian fusion!”) have nothing to do with the workaday, ready-to-eat fare on offer. I’m lazy and bloated on cheap, spicy food-court food.

Outside, idling airport buses spew exhaust in elephantine bursts. The chunky, turned-over earth around the landscaped flowers look like chicken rendang.

I’m achey from the early-morning taxi ride to the airport and the window seat that got me here from Borneo. My mind is cottony from last night’s beers and a short, listless sleep. “satu lagi!” calls my brain. Though I don’t know what it wants “one more” of.

I’ve got four hours to kill before my flight to Bangkok. Thank gawd for spider solitaire.

I’ve got the Olympics on my mind. I haven’t watched a second of coverage. “Single-minded focus,” I can hear Bob Costas’ voice intone. “Overcome adversity.”

Abruptly I’m transported back to primary school, during one of our periodic choral performances for our parents. “Give me a smile, with everything on it,” sings my consciousness, “And I’ll pass it on!”

Too little sleep, too much caffeine and sugar.

today

“We’re going home tomorrow,” I said to Mike about 10 days ago. We were sitting on my balcony in the Marina bungalows on Koh Lanta, Thailand. I rocked in my hammock and he squirmed on the less-comfy wooden chair chair as we played the last fierce games of our 240-game backgammon tournament.

I gasped. I had just referred to Semporna, Malaysia, as “home.”

A slip of the tongue. But indeed, I’m back “home” in Semporna.

Thailand was what I had hoped for. I spent the first few days in Bangkok hanging out with PC and Tat, Tat’s mom Angelika, and her cousin Joana. Our first day we took a longboat ride up the Chao Phraya River, taking in the hot, sticky filth of the polluted river and stopping for hours at a market. Tat, her cousin and mom shopped like crazy for tschotchy presents while PC and I sweated and chatted.

At lunch he and I had a rather intense 10-minute conversation about American politics. I haven’t had such a conversation in ages, and it felt good.

One night PC and I went to see a Muay Thai tournament – Thai kickboxing. We were accompanied by Shiva, Angelika’s Brazilian-embassy driver and a former Muay Thai competitor.

We whitefolk paid 1500 baht each for the farang (foreigner) tickets. Shiva paid 400 baht and had to talk his way into the near-empty farang section, explaining that he was our guide. Entry to the sections was strictly controlled by the same cagelike turnstiles you find at unmanned entries and exits to the subway. The sinister architecture continued in the stadium itself. Above us in the rafters, separated by floor-to ceiling metal fencing that called to mind the worst European football matches, sat the poorer locals. Ringside, below and separated from us by a concrete wall, sat lumpy white farang in khaki shorts and collared shirts, clutching ticket stubs arranged by their hotel concierges.

We sat in between, on wide concrete platform stairs that constituted the cheap farang seats. To our left, in the next section over, sat a huge crowd of betting locals – the expensive local seats. This crowd consisted mostly of middle-aged men with thick bulges of baht in their front pockets.

Before each fight the competitors entered the ring – always over the top rope, never between. They each wore a shiny, almost lamé cape, a ribboned crown, and a lei. Their shorts were short, satin and either blue or red. Together in the middle of the ring they performed a pre-fight ritual that seemed half-dancing and half-stretching. Eventually they retired to their corners, their trainers removed their cape, crown and lei, and the fight began. Each round was accompanied by a small band in the corner of the stadium, who beat drums, rang bells and rattled chimes in ritualistic beats.

Each fight lasts five three-minute rounds. The first two rounds are relatively slow, as the competitors try to discern each others’ weaknesses and score a few easy points. Likewise, the crowd is fairly silent during the early rounds, as they individually calculate odds and plan betting strategies.

The third round is the fulcrum, both numerically and practically. At bell-ring the hands of the betting crowd shoot up and start making elaborate gestures and signs, communicating odds, bet amounts and agreements using a language as complex and amusing to watch as that on an old stock-trading floor. If one competitor is clearly stronger than the other the betting is frenzied as the crowd tries to find a way to make *some* money off the fight. If it’s a close match, the fight becomes frenzied, as each competitor tries to gain the upper hand.

The fourth round is a more-intense version of the third, when the betting, cheering and fighting reaches its height. Underdogs might start to fight back, prompting their formerly silent fans to start cheering support – tentatively at first but taking on brashness with each connection of fist or foot. Panicked bettors begin desperately flailing at each other, trying to hedge their bets. Each blow is met with an appreciative roar from one section or another of the crowd.

The tone of the match is solidified during the final round. If it’s a blowout, the weaker fighter spends 90 seconds desperately trying to score points. If he’s unsuccessful, a sign from his trainer tells him to stop fighting and the competitors dance around each other in a mock spar for the last 90 seconds. It’s like running out the clock in the final seconds of an American football or basketball game.

But if the match is close, the final round is fierce yet careful to the closing bell, at which point both competitors raise their arms in mock-confident victory and are welcomed as champions in their respective corners. It’s only once the referee tallies the points from the three judges that a winner is festooned with a flower wreath and fistfuls of bills are peeled off and traded in the stands.

I loved it – The fluorescent-lit atmosphere, the elaborate ritual, the familiar rush of excitement from watching any sport.

I even liked it better than our entertainment the following night: the Calypso Cabaret, a ladyboy show featuring glitz, new tits and old packages bulging from polyester briefs.

The next day I flew south to meet Mike in Krabi. His flight landed before mine, so he bought two beers, set up the backgammon board on the floor of the arrivals hall, and waited. Alas, my flight was delayed two hours, so by the time I arrived the beers (plus a few more) were in his belly and the backgammon board tucked back into his luggage.

Never mind – we jumped into a taxi van for the two-hour ride to Lanta.

When we arrived we partook in the local intoxicants, went for a pork-laden dinner, and retired to my balcony with a few beers to play backgammon late into the night. That set the basic daily pattern for the next few weeks: wake up, get silly, go for breakfast, get silly, play backgammon, get silly, go for lunch, get silly, play backgammon, get silly, watch the sunset, go for drinks/dinner, get silly, play backgammon.

I could write more about Lanta, but I’m not feeling it at the moment. Suffice it to say that I gained about 10 pounds in bacon, cheese and sloth and left happy…and a winner (by just 2 games!) of the backgammon tourney.

repetition, boredom and paranoia

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Greetings from Semporna, where I’m counting down the days (5) until I fly to Thailand for my visa run. My first stop will be Bangkok to be a tourist with PC and Tat. We’ll occupy ourselves visiting temples, watching kickboxing, drinking beer and whiskey, and singing karaoke. But I’ll be happy just to see their faces and get a big hug or two from PC…who, by the way, gives the best hugs ever. Try it sometime.

Next I’ll fly down to Koh Lanta to meet up with Mikey. We’ll sit in hammocks, play backgammon, eat pork and cheese until we’re sick, drink red wine, go on the odd dive, read books, and probably drink too much on more than a few occasions.

But until then, it’s diving diving diving.

At least once a week someone asks me how long I’ve been here (4 months!) and if I get sick of diving the same sites all the time. Don’t I get bored? The answer is no, for two reasons.

First, though on occasion there are not-great dives, my “annoying optimism,” as one customer jokingly put it, tells me there’s always the *chance* that something phenomenal will turn up. The fun is in the looking. I’m not a museum guide, after all, trundling bored schoolkids through rooms of the same paintings and sculptures every day. Fish move, they try to hide, they act unpredictably, and there are so *many* of them…whose names and habits I’m still learning.

Second, there are the customers. They are even more unpredictable than the fish. At times they are entertaining, assholes, awed, impatient, indifferent, fascinated. They ask the oddest questions, tell great stories, confess being nervous, thank you profusely, shrug you off. You never know what you’re going to get.

It’s exhausting, trying to keep people you’ve just met happy. That’s why long-term customers (a week or more) are a comfort, even if they’re mediocre divers. At least you know what to expect from them.

For the past two weeks or so we’ve had a customer called Alex – an opinionated, hilarious, stubborn-yet-agreeable German dive instructor. He could go on for hours about what makes a good DM, where to find the best diving in Egypt, what equipment is overrated, and on and on. Between dives we’d sit on the front of the boat, sunning ourselves to warm up and dry off and listening to his harangues and monologues. A blast to have on the boat every day. I’m sad he’s gone.

Also in the past month we had a couple from…Holland I think? They came a few weeks ago – he’s an experienced diver and she needed a refresh course (which I conducted). They stayed about a week, went traveling in Borneo, and then changed their plans to come back to dive some more. But in all the time I spent with them, I never heard them say anything truly positive about the diving.

“How were your dives today?” I’d ask, seeing them on the jetty and wanting to be solicitous. He would always be the one to answer. “Well, it was OK. Not great,” he’d frown. “The coral is not so nice, and the visibility is awful.” In all they spent about *two weeks* diving here.

I used to take the negative comments personally. I was paranoid that my inexperience showed, that I would be called out as a fraud. But the thing is, I’m good at this. Not the best, for sure. But pretty damned good, and getting better every day.

Semporna snoozing

/ ckoukkos / 1 Comment

I’ve been back from Mabul for two weeks. It’s a testament to my laziness that I’ve only now found the will and energy to post anything. But after getting a couple of not-so-subtle hints from dear Lis (“post to your blog!”), here we go….

Life on Mabul was like a vacation: short hours and a resort atmosphere. The staff rooms line a long shared balcony, where we’d sit and sip beer in the afternoons before dinner. After dinner we’d move up to the bar for music and drinks, or else Mike and I would sit on the balcony outside his room and play backgammon late into the night. Good times.

Most of the SJ staff is coupled off, so my first week in Mabul was The Week of Couples. It was nice, but a bit dull: No matter how hard they try, people in couples just don’t have the same carefree vibe as single people. I say that hoping that some day a miracle will occur and I, too, shall lose that carefree vibe.

About a week into my stay Mike, one of my DM instructors and my closest friend here, and Paul, an entertaining Scotsman nicknamed “Pooey,” rotated out to Mabul and late-night raucousness ensued. We drank plenty of Tanduay and Coke, shared silly but honest conversations, and occasionally sang or (in Pooey’s case) climbed down drainpipes to keep ourselves occupied.

On Mabul island there’s a village populated mostly with Filipino legal and illegal immigrants. Unlike the sea gypsies who live on surrounding islands, they live in fairly solid wooden houses on stilts, either along the beach or over the water. A maze of precarious, rotting wooden walkways connect the houses. The walkways and beach serve as a playground for countless throngs of half- or fully naked children who appear to have run, shrieking and laughing, out of a Gauguin painting.

But alas, the time came for me to leave this minor paradise and return to the dank, noisy wonderfulness of Semporna. The best thing about being back, other than the internet, is band night at our bar. It’s nice to see a wider variety of faces, and to dance up a sweat Van Halen and the Black Eyed Peas.

As a matter of fact, it’s an extra-special band night tonight – one of our instructors is leaving on Monday, and another instructor (Sara) is celebrating her birthday. We plan to give out adult diapers at the door (Sara turns 30) and supply markers, scissors, etc. so that people can customize them. Should be interesting.

With that I’ve got to run. I promise to post more soon – I’ve been a lazy bum but I’ll change my ways.

A new year

/ ckoukkos / 3 Comments

Happy New Year!

I spent New Year’s Eve at the Scuba Junkie party, dancing up a sweat, drinking pints of Tanduay and Coke and placing bets on who would hook up with whom. The night ended around 4 am, when Paul, another DM, kicked down the door to my room because Rob, my roommate, lost the keys. (We found them the next morning, sitting right on the floor behind the bar, where we had been looking for them. Ahhh, Tanduay sight.) Good times.

On New Year’s day Rob and I woke up simultaneously at 12:30. Seriously – we sat up in our respective beds at exactly the same moment. Weird. After a roti breakfast I went to the dive shop, where most of the staff was taking a bit of the hair of the dog, floating in a dunk tank filled with ice and wearing dark sunglasses. We sang Auld Lang Syne and discussed car crashes, crushes, and other hangover topics.

Today I had another day off, which I spent a bit more productively. I booked tickets for my visa run to Thailand in late February. I’ll spend a bit more time in the country than the 20 minutes I took last time I did a visa run: First to Bangkok to see PC and Tatiana (yay!) and then down to Koh Lanta for a two-week “holiday” with Mike, another Scuba Junkie. Mike and a few other SJ staff used to work at Lanta Divers, so I’m certain we’ll have a great time. He promises great food, great diving and beach parties. Life’s hard.

After booking my tickets I went for a wander around Semporna. I realize I haven’t really absorbed the place yet; I’ve been so focused on my DMT and work that I never looked up, looked around. An aberration. New Year’s Resolution (the only one I’ll make): Start noticing things again, dammit!

But Semporna will have to wait. In a few days (the 6th or 7th) I’m being transferred to our resort on Mabul island for two weeks. There’s no cars, a later wake time, no 45-minute morning “commute,” better food, palm trees and white sand. And, alas, no internet. So if you want to talk before the end of January, speak up!

I wish you all a new year full of delight and delightful surprises. For the first time in a long, long time I feel truly optimistic about the year to come…despite the fact that editors are still ignoring me. Bastards.

A momentous decision

/ ckoukkos / 2 Comments

Today I decided to commit to working as a DM at Scuba Junkie for 6 months – until June.

I resisted the idea at first – I’m meant to be traveling, not unpacking my bags. How can I write a blog called “the range life” if I’m not in motion?

But such thinking is rigid and silly. Time to live life, and take the opportunities that present themselves. If I have found a place where I’m happy, where I can learn more about diving and about myself, what’s the point in rushing off? I always said this wander around the world would be free of rules, would conform to a plan only in the roughest sense.

There are practical considerations as well, of course. First and most importantly, by committing to 6 months part of my “pay” will now include 4 cases of beer per month. An insane amount of beer. I’ll also build up a good number of guided dives, which will give me both experience and CV-filler that’ll make it easier to get a job elsewhere later.

Finally, by settling down for a while – not planning and traveling and seeing stuff – I can continue to work on the backlog of writing I built up since I landed in St Petersburg more than 8 months ago.

(Editors, please respond to my story ideas! They’re sitting in your Inbox.)

So, what is it I’ve been doing?

Let’s start with a quick explanation of how the PADI system works. Divers-to-be must first take an Open Water diving course and become PADI-certified to dive. It’s only then that I can guide them – since I’m *not* an instructor (that requires more training), I can’t teach anyone to dive.

Each day I’m assigned to a boat going to one of the islands in the Celebes Sea: Mabul, Kapalai, Sipadan, Sibuan, Mataking, Mantabuan, Siamil, etc. There are usually 2-3 divemasters assigned to each boat, and no more than 4 customers per DM.

Once we get to our assigned island we choose which dive sites to go to – we do three dives per day, and each island has many dive sites. We take into consideration the experience level of the customers, whether they’ve dived the sites before, the conditions (current, weather, and so on), and also where we’ll see cool stuff.

Next I give a dive briefing to my group of divers. I describe the site, go through the hand signals we’ll use to communicate under water, establish how I want to run the dive, remind them of safety procedures, answer any questions, and tell them what kinds of marine life we’ll see.

Dive, rest, repeat * 2.

After the third dive we head back to Semporna, where the DMs offload the boat, rinse and put away all the gear, take a quick shower, and meet our customers at the bar to log the dives. I give them the stats from the dive (time in, dive time, maximum depth, etc.) and then list all the creatures we found – from white tip sharks to teeny whip-coral shrimp.

After that it’s back to the dive shop to set up the boats for the following day. Then a quick dinner, a beer or three, and off to bed.

Long, intense, wonderful days.

All I want for Christmas

/ ckoukkos

A few people have asked for a mailing address for me. Now that I’m back, settled in at SJ, here it is…

CK
c/o Scuba Junkie
Block B, Lot 36
Semporna Sea Front
91308 Semporna
Sabah, Malaysia
tel: +60 (89) 785372

What I’d love to get for Christmas:
– to read Griffin and Justin a bedtime story
– to drink lunchtime martinis with the Guineys
– to attend Sue & Chris’s annual Xmas party
– to spend Sunday watching 12 football games with those who kicked my ass in Fantasy Football
– to drink red wine and gossip with the grrrlz
– to go to Les Halles, sip a Bombay Sapphire martini, eat the endive salad followed by grilled scallops with asparagus, accompanied by any bottle of French red, ending with an espresso.

See what ya’ll can do.