Rain forest and making it to Malaysia

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.

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.

The train in Cairns station

Inside my car

Going over a bridge...drop off!

After that bridge looking at a waterfall

Me in the car

Bridal Veil Falls...apparently they don't know Oregon already has one of these....but this one has a larger drop (>1000 feet)

Barron's Falls

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.

Female Grey Kangaroo

Tazmanian Devil

Fine...the real Tazmanian Devil

A dingo ate my baby!  Apparently super smart and make great pets if you get them young enough to domesticate

Two male wallabys going at it

Fresh water croc...about 4 feet long?  Apparently cool to be around

Saltwater croc...big and long.  Not cool to be around

Young Koalas

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.

Barrons Falls from the sky rail

View out the side of the sky rail over the forest

looking out front as we were coming down

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