Hey all,
Wanted to get caught up a bit and have a layover in Sydney
on the way to Malaysia to start. First,
I totally forgot to talk about checking off one of my bucket lists in life
during the dive trip. As I wander around
on my trips, I tend to think about things I want to write about and even sort
of write what I want to say in my head.
Of course, getting older, I then forget all the good bits when I am
typing, tired after a day running around and wanting to complete the entry to I
can get some sleep.
I have been to the southern hemisphere before when I was
checking out Buenos Aries and Rio (Carnival!!) with Marci (hi Marci!), but the
light pollution made looking at stars a bit of a problem. Being out on a boat in the middle of the
Barrier Reef was an excellent opportunity to finally see the Southern Cross! These are stars we just can’t see in the
northern hemisphere. I mentioned this
during the second night out during dinner and had a helpful group of 4 Aussies,
Doc and Cheri along with Daniel arguing which set of stars was actually
it. Cool thing is, like the north star,
the southern cross is due south in the sky.
We finally figured out which stars they were. It’s mainly 4 stars that form the shape of a
kite (or a cross if you cross them up)…in this case, it was lying on its
side. Pretty cool. Additionally, Orion was in the northern part
of the sky at the same time. So there’s
your GTJ trivia bit: Orion (and his belt) can be seen from both hemispheres.
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| Southern Cross...and what it kinda looked like that night |
I am in Mabul…or I should say on Mabul now, btw. It’s an island off Malaysia where the resort
is that I am diving Sipidan from. I will
be here for 5 days…or 6…whatever before heading to Thailand. Malaysia is a Muslim country, if you didn’t
know and I can hear the call to prayer going on right now.
Back to Cairns.
Saturday was my final full, non-travel day in Australia and I spent it
checking out the rain forest near Cairns.
It was a full day deal where you take a train up to Karanda, which is in
the middle of the rain forest, do a “ran forest experience”, and then ride the
sky rail back down. The railroad was
made back in the early 1900’s to help support the gold rush. Really cool trip with some steep drop offs as
well as killer views of waterfalls along the way. The rail cars were all fairly old, but the
locomotive was a diesel so it wasn’t as cool as it could have been had there
been a steam choo choo. One other thing
to note, since it is a rain forest is WAS raining buckets off and on all
day. Luckily the rain forest experience
was mostly under roofing.
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| The train in Cairns station |
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| Inside my car |
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| Going over a bridge...drop off! |
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| After that bridge looking at a waterfall |
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| Me in the car |
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| Bridal Veil Falls...apparently they don't know Oregon already has one of these....but this one has a larger drop (>1000 feet) |
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| Barron's Falls |
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| I guess they get a lot of Asians on this train...how to poop correctly |
I was totally expecting the rain forest experience to be
somewhat of a rip off waste of time up until I petted the kangaroo (soft) and
the wallaby (also soft). They also had a
tazmanian devil, fresh and salt water crocs and koalas out the ying yang. They also had old army ducks (vehicles that can
go on land and water) to take us around to show us the rain forest vegetation and
animals (what we could find). Those were
both pretty cool…and then we came to the “native experience” where we saw the
aboriginal dances and were shown how to digeridoo, throw spears and
boomerangs. Full props to the digeridoo
player…he was circular breathing and all kinds of goodness, but the dances all
sort of looked the same. Maybe they are
that way? I dunno…one of the “natives”
looked like a tan whitey so not sure how real that action was either. But overall thumbs up.
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| Female Grey Kangaroo |
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| Tazmanian Devil |
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| Fine...the real Tazmanian Devil |
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| A dingo ate my baby! Apparently super smart and make great pets if you get them young enough to domesticate |
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| Two male wallabys going at it |
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| Fresh water croc...about 4 feet long? Apparently cool to be around |
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| Saltwater croc...big and long. Not cool to be around |
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| Young Koalas |
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| Tree Fern...dinosaurs ate these...this rain forest is the oldest continuours one in the world (according to our guide) |
After that it was over to the sky rail to head back towards
Cairns. The sky rail is a 7km long
gondola ride over the top of the rain forest.
It was pretty darn cool! The neat
thing was the duck ride was pointing out all these plants that I then
recognized as I glided over the trees.
Just an overall cool experience.
Totally recommend it.
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| Barrons Falls from the sky rail |
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| View out the side of the sky rail over the forest |
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| looking out front as we were coming down |
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| This is a water skiing park where they have a cable circling the water above with tow ropes hanging down that people use to water ski on. Never seen this before and thought it was pretty cool. |
I stayed at the Reef Palms in Cairns and it was a relatively
nice place. It had a little kitchenette
with a fridge and overall was worth what I paid for it. The only reason I bring it up is that they do
free shuttles to the airport at 8, 9, and 10 in the AM. My flight was to leave at 2:30 in the
PM. But beggers/choosers so I got to the
airport EARLY. Luckily the Qantas lounge
in Cairns was nice. Unlike the US,
having business domestic tickets gets you into the lounge in Australia (and
Malaysia this morning). They even had a
sandwich press where I made a grilled ham and cheese.
I have to say the Sydney international lounge, which I got
to see again thanks to a 2 and a half hour layover, is still better. They even had gelato they were scooping for
people. They did have these little
multilayered cubes of something that went pink, black, green, white, black,
something, etc. I saw many people with
them on their plate so I grabbed on to try…licorice…black licorice…bleck! I did make a couple of jack and diet cokes
too.
I left Sydney around 9 headed to Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia
Airlines. Yeah…I thought the same thing,
but the business class seats were almost like pods, they did lay flat, and I
actually got 4 or 5 hours of sleep. If I
was any bigger, the setup would have been too small, but I worked it even if it
was a little tight.
Kuala Lumpur was almost 80 at 4:30 in the morning. The Aussies told me that I needed to go
through customs in KL and then recheck my bags to go to Tawau (also in
Malaysia). I stood at that turnstile for
50 minutes before luggage started to come out (GTJTTOTD: sit back and relax if
you are waiting for your luggage in KL baggage claim…it takes a long
time). Mine never showed up. I grabbed an airline rep who said “your
luggage has been sent on” looking at me like I was an idiot…and maybe I was. Anyway: Aussies were wrong.
One interesting tidbit: I was the only person in business
class on the KL to Tawau flight in a section that could seat 16. Anyone else ever had their own personal
flight attendant? No? It was pretty kewl.
After Tawau was an hour van ride to Semorna where I got on a
boat for a 45 minute ride out to Mabul where I am right now. The place seems pretty good…a typical dive
resort (supporting diving not a rat hole…although those two aren’t always
mutually exclusive). It’s maybe a 3 or 4
star at best, but really, the room is there for me to sleep and I am here for
the diving.
Speaking of, we had to do a checkout dive on the house reef
today. Usually, house reefs are just
okay because they are always being dived on and what not. This one was freaking awesome. Tons of small stuff…tons of big stuff…really,
except for sharks and turtles, I saw almost everything I saw on the GBR in this
one dive that I saw in that entire trip.
Tomorrow, I am diving Sipidan itsetlf which is supposed to be
incredible. More on that later.
Until then, our time, people’s time.
Love to all,
Jim
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