Kota Kinabalu + Kuching, Malaysia

After snorkeling in Haiti, I "resolved" to try to squeeze scuba into an upcoming trip and I was able to make it happen in Malaysia. I read somewhere online that Kota Kinabalu ("KK") wasn't the most amazing diving in Malysia, but had a good reputation for beginner diving. KK is on the same island as a research symposium that I attended in August, so I checked with a few diving schools there for availability, then enrolled in and completed the PADI eLearning  Open Water Diver course before I flew to Malaysia, so I could get the theoretical stuff out of the way and spend my time there in the water and not in a classroom. The eLearning took a bit longer than expected and contributed to some time-stress in preparing for three weeks away from home. The eLearning was very thorough and made me think about physics/engineering stuff I had not thought about since undergrad. There is so much going on with fluids and pressures. When one dives, in addition to the tank of air that people associate with scubaers, one also wears a vest that is connected to the air tank and a belt with weights. You add air to the vest when you want to float (when you get to the surface, you inflate it all the way and you can float) and release it when you want to sink, but it gets more complicated - as you go deeper, the pressure of the water on the vest compresses the air further, so it provides less buoyancy, so you also have to add air as you go deeper.  So maintaining  a constant position under water was somewhat difficult to get the hang of - to make things even more complicated, the amount of air in your lungs also affects your position, so breathing can also be used to manage where you are.

Weight belt. I usually started with 3kg, but
sometimes the instructor had to add more.
(as I lost weight from compressed air)

Flippers, air-vest (real name: buoyancy control
device -BCD), tank, and regulator.

The instruction from Sucba Junkie KK was great! The lessons were fun and safety was always clear. I only forgot to breathe once... One of the exercises involves swimming without a mask and with contacts in that meant my eyes were closed. It was such a strange sensation, I freaked out for a few seconds, but quickly remembered that not breathing was very dangerous, inhaled and continued the guided blind swim. After two days, I completed all the exercises and despite low visibility, saw lots of cool animals on the dives: a lionfish, some clownfish (Nemo), some itty-biddy crabs... I don't have my log book with me right now, so I cannot give you a full list. On the last dive of the course, we saw an enchanting sea turtle. She was hanging out around the corner of some coral and then after a minute or so, gracefully swam by our group. I think my favorite are the nudibranchs, which I can only describe as fierce (in the fashion sense) sea slugs:

Google Image Search for nudibrach. Such variety! 

After the course, I paid for an extra day of "fun diving" to get some more practice - I initially left this gap day in the the schedule in case weather prevented me from doing the course in two days or so I had the opportunity to try out some of the other action sports in the area (white water rafting, trekking...).

On the dive boat off the coast of an national park island rain forest. 

I had planned to work in the evenings after diving (my presentation was not finished), but I pretty much fell asleep straight away. The first night I was asleep before I even took a shower. Luckily I woke up just in time to grab some food from a nearby convenience store before it closed. 

I did not see much of KK, although I don't know how much there is to see. I think it is like a port,, but touristically/culturally it is more of a gateway to Mt Kinabalu (on the Sabah state flag below) and rain forest activities. I was able to go through the fish market and sample a range of sweets from the night market.

Sabah Flag

Direction and distance to nearest public toilet on the main drag in KK.

Local dish: Bakso or meatballs. Super tasty and I love how nicely everything was arranged in the bowl

Coconut coated, green ball with some sort of fruit filling. Not the best.

Pancake with peanuts - nice!

Cupcake made with Sprite.

The next morning I worked from the hostel, since the airport bus stopped across the street and the wifi was pretty good. At the airport I searching in vain for stamps to mail some postcards that I had written (If you want one from an upcoming trip, email/message/carrier pigeon me your address!!!), but had to settle for some ice cream style dessert instead.

Yam flavored coconut milk "soft desert." Different from then Yam Ice cream G-ma and I made once, but quite yummy.

I flew AirAsia, a Malaysian low-cost airline, sort of similar to easyJet, to Kuching. The basic ticket would have been less than $25, but since I needed to check a bag I opted for their PremiumFlex ticket, which was still under fifty, but included a meal, seat reservation (with more leg room), separate check-in counter, and the freedom to change the ticket until two hours before the flight, if needed.

My meal choice was Vegetarian Chicken with Fried Ginger Rice, which I selected mostly because I wanted to see what vegetarian chicken was. turns out it is like a sheet of soy rolled into the shape of a chicken breast. It was actually really good.

Upon arrival in Kuching, I checked into my fancy hotel. My room looked like it had been decorated by Aunt Beth and there was a yoga mat and weights in the closet. I checked out the gym and pool situation, to gauge if they were worth using. The gym had some nice equipment, but I never made it back - no surprise. I wouldn't meet any conference folks until the next say so I went to the riverfront to get some food. I had bakso again, as the Sarawak Laksa (what Anthony Bourdain eats when he is in town) was finished for the day, accompanied by this Air Bandung lychee:

Rose syrup and fruit with (condensed?) milk

I saw several stands that make these fancy juice+fruit cocktails, which I assume exist in place of bars, since as a predominately Muslim country, there are few bars. I saw even saw them putting canned, possibly creamed, corn into one of the drinks!

Now we get to the real reason I came to Malaysia: a Service Research Research Symposium,, where I presented on sanitation services in low-income countries. I received some good feedback about different theoretical lenses I could use to examine my extensive data set and was able to see what other researchers are up to.

The conference concluded with a cultural dinner with dances and songs from all of the tribes in Sarawak. All of the Malaysians at my table were very helpful with explaining the Chinese style food - there were eight courses (because 8 is lucky), one of which was fish head soup!

Finally able to track down some Laksa Sarawak, albeit at the breakfast buffet of my five star hotel.

"preloved clothing from the USA" in the mall that was attached to my hotel

Singapore, Singapore (long layover on the way to Malaysia)

I flew Singapore Airlines to Malaysia and had a nine hour layover in Singapore. In addition to having extensive comfort and shopping options in the airport, they have different city bus tours that you can take for free, if you have a long enough layover. After the twelve hour flight, which arrived at 6 AM, I signed up for the tour at a desk directly outside of my gate, grabbed a doughnut and a coffee, and met up with other tour-goers about an hour late to go through customs and get on the bus.

I happened to be there on the extra day off that most people were granted because it was the celebration of Singapore's 50th anniversary. Nevertheless, the tour guide was cheerful and  full of good facts about how Singapore is a wonderful multi-cultural place to visit or live ("Please come back and stay for longer than the bus tour").

Part of the skyline from the highway into the city.

The tour had two stops, but I would split it into three parts. The drive to the city, when we learned about the history of Singapore, the high proportion of public housing (85%), the dense public transit system, and where to get a good meal "very cheap". Almost every balcony of all of the high apartment buildings that we passed was sporting a Singaporean flag.

After passing by some colonial buildings and the Formula 1 track, we stopped near the financial district to look at the Merlion - a creature that has the body of a fish and the head of a lion. It symbolizes the city's origins as a fishing village and the roots of its name, which comes from "lion city" (someone probably got confused with a tiger, according to the tour guide).

Of course I joined in with the selfie-frenzy, with pretty poor results.  

On the way to the next stop w passed some buildings that evidenced the diversity in the city: 

"We even have the Jews!" - tour-guide

Not the best shot of a Hindu temple, but check out the color and detail + the national symbols celebrating the birthday.

 The next stop was near a big mosque, in an area full of adorable cafes like these, which were mostly closed:  

Has a nutella sea salt tart

Even a Swedish one 

Rich and Good Cake Shop. This building style is called a shophouse
because there is a shop on the bottom floor that people live above. 

Beancurd City! Actually not in that exact area, but we
passed it on the way and I love the name, colors, and mascot.

Recreation opportunities for all ages:

Fun exercise options for seniors!

 And reminders of the birthday everywhere: 

I didn't really have may expectations about the city, but was so surprised at how many massive buildings there were. The tour did a great job of selling the city as a livable/workable space, although I do not think it would be that interesting as a vacation destination.

Haiti

I was in Haiti in April to help run an innovation workshop for a sanitation NGO and look at their operations in two Haitian cities. To learn more you will just have to wait for my dissertation to come out in a few years.

Post-its and ideas galore!

Poop-compost with an ocean view.
To get to this site, we drove through the city dump - basically a DREAM COME TRUE!
(not the way the dump worked, but seeing it first hand)

They are doing some experiments to determine what sort of benefits
come from using their soil additive. 

After all that intense learning and research, there was time for a day at the beach. A thirty minute moto ride from the city where I was staying + another 20 on a boat landed my friends and I on a picturesque beach. As we approached the shore, several fishermen paddled up in kayaks with their catch, which we could then have cooked on the beach. My friends had been there before several times and knew one of the cooks, so they had him negotiate with the fishermen for us. There was time for relaxing on the shore, volleyball, and  snorkeling. I saw coral and so many fish! I had sort of given up on finding a time to go scuba diving, but now I am resolved to make it happen.

Type of boat that took us the last stretch.

Yum :)

My list of sea-life that I saw. I will try to match up the descriptions to images later.
(My google search for "fish that look like pickles" yielded no useful results.)

The beach itself was kind of strange. For the past few years, Haiti has been added as a stop on one of the big cruise lines (rumor has it that they just tell passengers that they are going to Hispaniola Island). Basically the passengers have to stay in an enclosed area with a water slide, zip-line, jet skis and inflatables, but can pay extra to be taken to the nice beach where we hung out. They let non-cruise people go there on days when there is no cruise ship.

You an see the the huge water slide in the cruise stop area.

With a productive workshop, interesting field visits, and a surreal beach experience under my belt, I flew back to the US for some quality family time.

Window seat!

Boracay, Philippines

Since I was "in the neighborhood" at a conference in Vietnam, I decided to check out a well known beach ultimate tournament in the Philippines. It was pretty sweet. I picked up with a university team from Australia, which was going by the name Sharkbait for the tournament. The name comes from Finding Nemo, so there were lots of great movie references as cheers. There were also two Filipinos and a Canadian on the team. This was my first tournament back after having a bone bruise on my kneecap in August. I had only even been to two practices, but everything felt great! 

Lookin' good! Not that my eyes were open in any of the photos.

I met up with my team two nights before the tournament began for a strategy session.
We discussed tactics for 4vs4 beach - cutting patterns are illustrated above. 

Some of the team went snorkeling the next day - I spent it reading and getting a massage on the beach.

No the worst place to have a throw.

 The tournament has some teams at a high level, the home team was using it to train for the World Championships of Beach Ultimate, which are coming up next month, but there were still plenty of quirky elements that can be expected of beach ulty:

• Pulls had to be overhand throws  
• You could drop the pull as long as you were attempting a trick catch
• An endzone-to-endzone score counts as two points



Teammate coming down will a (poorly considered) 2 point huck of mine.
Photo from Diego Zuluaga via facebook (check out the whole series starting here)

• Instead of flipping, one player from each team stands together in an endzone and simultaneously throws a disc, aiming to be the closest to the other endzone line, without going completely over (I was really good at this. The fields were pretty much exactly as long as my hammer.)

Doing a throw-off against Hong Kong. Awkward posture. Photo credit: Bella

The tournament is known for its nightlife, which did not disappoint.
Photo credit: Ali

My team, along with future tournament winners, Bangerang!, are serenading me with Sweet Caroline.

These boys killed it on the drums on the slow march/dance parade on the way to the party on the last night.
It was a part of a Ati-Athihan Festival simulation that was put on for tournament goers. 

Ati-Atihan revelers. Photo: Ali

So much sun! Photo: Bella

So I over paid for this dope hat to stem the sunburn.
Although, the real star of this photo are the mango shakes!
Photo: Bella

Fun playing, fun people great food! All in all we won two games, both against the same team. One of my teammates made the mythical squad from our bracket (like the dream team) and I won a pair of flip-flops and a carved Boracay Dragons rock thingy for having the most Ds of the women in the B bracket - I felt so tall compared to most of the Filipino women . 

Wouldn't have worn the glasses, if I had known I'd be going up on stage. Photo: Diego Zuluaga via facebook

My leaving the island breakfast. A fantastic pancake with peanut butter, mango jam, and clotted cream.
I could only eat half of it.

Obligatory infrastructure photo :)

I don't actully know what islands those are.

I flew back to Zürich via Singapore. I had grand shopping plans for my layover, but was in the wrong terminal. I was really close to buying a a cell phone that looked like a mini calculator like 2x3 square inches and just a centimeter thick.

I was able to visit Mickey's Swiss chalet in the Singapore airport (the roof looked like a poptart!)

I landed to snow in Switzerland - not the sun and sand to which I had quickly grown accustomed.