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:-)

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.

Today is the day

Finally I’m on my way to Moscow.

After 6 weeks of preparing I think I’m ready. I decided to get my own visas instead of letting the travel agency handle it which I regretted a lot as hour after hour passed by in buses on my way to and from embassies, surfing the internet for informations, going back after the things I forgot and so on. Finally on wednesday I received my passport with all my visas and I finished packing, unpacking and re-packing!

I prefer to travel light but that is close to impossible when you are going from minus 20 to plus 40 degrees, from maybe 5000 m above sea level to 40 m under, through 4 countries and 6 time zones.

I will meet Sia, my friend and travel companion, in Moscow later today where she is arriving from Egypt where she has just spent one month in Dahab, lucky her!

Our schedule:

3^rd of Nov arrive in Moscow

8^th of Nov depart Moscow at 23.25 on train # 10

12^th of Nov arrive in Irkutsk at 9.16

19^th of Nov depart Irkutsk at 05.43 on train # 6

20^th of Nov arrive in Ulan Bator at 07.30

25^th of Nov depart Ulan Bator at 08.05 on train # 4

26^th of Nov arrive in Beijing at 14.31

We have one week in Irkutsk where the plan is to go to Lake Baikal. I wanted to go on a dog sleigh but it seems that that area is the only place in Siberia where the temperature is above 0 degrees… So we will see what happens on the train and then make plans as we go…

In Ulan Bator we have 5 days and there I wanted to go to the Gobi desert but that is the only area on the way where the temperature reach 20 degrees below 0… So again we will decide what to do when we are actually there!

In Beijing we will do the tourist-tour with the Great Wall, the Forbidden city, the Peking duck, the Olympic city and so on. You know: Please follow my umbrella and on your right you have a very famous monument and blablabla… When we have seen enough of Beijing we go to Xi-an by bus, train or plane, we haven’t decided yet, depends on the price and time. In Xi-an we will see the Terracotta-soldiers and maybe climbed the Hua Shan (I think that was the name of the mountain there) and watch the sun rise. After that we might go to the Yangtze River and sail through the three gorges before they are flooded in 2009 when the big dam is finished. Then we might go to Guilin to go on another boat trip. The 10^th of Dec we fly to Borneo where we will end up in Semporna with the Scuba Junkies where I have arranged to do my dive master course.

Nice plan, right? Well, I’ll be back later hopefully with some great stories from the trip!

Next trip is planned: The Trans Siberian Railway through Russia, Mongolia and China. So strictly speaking it is the Trans Mongolian Railway!

Travellers: Me and my friend Sia

The schedule is: 8th of November departure from Moscow and after four days on the train we arrive in Irkutsk where we will spend seven days exploring Lake Baikal and the surroundings, going on a dog sledge trip if the weather is permitting and otherwise see what fortune will bring. After a week in Irkutsk we continue to Ulaanbataar, capital of Mongolia, where we will spend five days. I want to see the Gobi desert but otherwise again we let chance lead us. The 26th of November we will arrive in Beijing.

2 wonderful weeks in Dahab

2 great weeks in Dahab