Travels with Karin

Late Friday night Nephew was playing on Orange stage! They are my favourite Danish band and I missed their last performance here so I was so excited. I got up in front, right under the big screen, in front of the huge loudspeakers and okay close to the real stage. The concert kicked off and you could feel the rhytm in the entire body:-)! They played hit after hit with energy and enthusiasm, entertained and delivered the concert of the year. I’m still high!! And just to put me over the moon I managed to get the lead singers autograph and a picture of him and me today:-)! I’m so happyyyyyy…

9 minutes more! Sitting in the sun with a cold beer waiting for the Music to begin. Patti Smith opens with a kind of memorial service for the 9 young men who died here 10 years ago. Then non-stop music until sunday night where Prince closes the festival. People everywhere, half-naked drinking beers and ready to party:-)! I think it’s gonna be a great festival!!!
Let the music begin…

Had a wicked dive today. My diver didn’t want to do the last dive so I decided to go out on my own and look for some of the cool stuff that is hanging around.
So first I found two robust ghostpipefish. They are not very common and look like a leaf. Then I moved on to where the two harlequin ghostpipefish are hanging out and found them together with a very small dwarf lionfish, about 2 cm, and a spotface moray. Then I swam on to where they had found a Halemida ghostpipefish the day before. They are very rare so it is very cool that we have them on our house reef.

Got my pictures and swam on to see what else was down there and while I was looking for stick pipefish (didn’t find them, though) I saw a ray in the blue. First I thought it was a common bluespotted stingray but then I saw the tail that just went on and on and I knew it was an eagle ray. They are so beautiful and graceful. I put my camera on video mode and filmed him while he was just swimming around me.

I even got some pictures after before he took off again. Then by one of the buoylines there was a massive green turtle, about 1,5m from head to tail, and I got really close and he was just LOOKING at me like he was saying ” What are you doing here? This is my turf!” Swam on to a pile of tyres where there was another massive turtle, a juvenile emperor angelfish and some shrimps. On the way back to the jetty I came by a lionfish, two more robust ghostpipefish and a marbled snake eel.
I was down for 67 minutes and could have stayed an hour more but I had to get up because the boat was going back to Semporna.
But what an amazing dive:-)

Just returned from a veeery nice and relaxed trip to Simillan and Richelieu Rock. 6 nights, 5 days where we got up at 7, ate breakfast, went diving, had a second breakfast, talked, went diving, ate lunch, relaxed, went diving, had an afternoon snack, went nightdiving, ate dinner, talked and drank beers, went to bed and the next day the same tough program…

I can definitely recommend www.jonathan-cruiser.com if you are thinking about live-aboards from Phuket…

And check out my gallery, there are some very nice pictures …

It is tough to be enjoying life! I don’t have time to the more serious things as writing on my blog or stay in touch with friends and family…

But, here I am for a short notice!

I finished my dive master course in September and started working right after and it is great fun. Of course you meet all kinds of divers, some good some really bad. The bad ones are tough while it lasts but they make the best stories afterwards… Like when I have six divers going in six different directions at six different depths and ignoring all my requests and signals so all I do the entire dive is counting people to make sure I don’t loose any! Or when a diver suddenly signals me he is low on air after 15 minutes and we are at 20 meters so I have to take the entire group up immediately. Or when I find some really cool stuff and all the customers want to do is look at the Nemo fish…

Recently I have seen a lot of reeeally nice stuff at Mabul. Just to mention some of it: a lot of different kinds of shrimps, morays and lionfish. Hunting bluespotted stingrays, giant morays, a lot of frogfish, giant turtles, tiny baby lionfish, baby crocodilefish, snake eels, pipefish, big schools of jackfish, the cutest little yellow clown frogfish and so on and so on! At Sipadan i finally saw the barracuda tornado and it was amazing to see maybe thousand barracudas swimming around above my head. I also got bitten by a moray when I was getting a manicure by some cleaner shrimps. Oh and today I tried to retrieve half a sea urchin from a customers foot. I was unsuccesful so her foot looks like a pin cushion…

Above water we have fun too. Friday nights are getting kind of legendary. There is a local live band playing and they are really good. We are dancing all night then and sometimes we throw each other in the big dunk tanks where we wash our equipment and then we just lie in there 4 or 5 people drinking beer and laughing and all the locals are gathering around us to watch those craaazy foreigners. Or the police stops the party because people are getting naked. Or we go to karaoke and sing some worse than others but all having fun. Or we stay at mabul and play drinking games all night and goes skinny dipping…

Life as a dive master is definitely NOT boring or ordinary…,

… Just uploaded some photos from the underwater world! Some writing will follow soon…

Long time no write. Well, I fell ill with hepatitis, a long and pretty interesting story that will follow soon, but right now I’ll just confirm that I am alive and getting ready for my next trip which will be on the 19th of August. And to where? Sipadan, of course! I still have a dive master course to finish and some fantastic diving to do so I am going away for 9 months and plan to dive a lot around Sipadan, a little around Cairns and also a little vacation to Chuuk Island in the middle of the Pacific which should have some superb diving!

Sounds interesting? Well, then stay tuned on this site because more will follow.

It was a good plan. Better prepared than any other, ever. A lot of good diving waiting.

But…

Shortly after Karins arrival on Borneo symptoms of some kind of food-poisoning began to show. Or to come up…

They quickly developed into an interesting and highly colourful liver-disease.

Since Monday, January 7th Karin has been in a hospital in Kuala Lumpur, with some friendly doctors trying to find out which rare version of Hepatitis she has caught. Currently the vote is on “E”.

When she is released from hospital she is going home to Denmark for a couple of months (or 6) to recover.

And then back to continue the diving.

First I must say I’m really impressed with Beijing. Maybe it is a good time to visit, here in the early winter and with the Olympics coming up. One month ago, if you said China I would say little yellow men in ricshaws with a brownish set of clothes, probably with a little too short legs, chaotic traffic with donkey charts, bicycles and old cars honking non-stop, spitting chinese, stray dogs and cats everywhere and rats on a stick at every street kitchen.
Read more…

Ok here I am in Beijing. I was just supposed to stay for three days or so but I really like it here. Not at all as I thought. It is pretty clean, I haven’t had to run the gauntlet between spitting chinese and the traffic is well behaved. I like my hostel (Leo hostel) and the people there so I have been very reluctant to move on. Today I finally made a decision and bought a train ticket for Xi-an saturday evening. Tomorrow early I’m off for the Great Wall. More will follow soon I hope. Check the Gallery, I’m naming the pictures a little at a time…