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Morning in Manado

Above:  Chinese temple in Manado. We were due to be picked up at 2pm for our boat ride to Bunaken.  That left time for a leisurely breakfast and a walk around town … there’s only really a Chinese temple to visit and that wasn’t quite worthwhile as it wasn’t as impressive as the ones in […]

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Flying to Sulawesi

Killing time Today we fly to Manado in the north-eastern arm of Sulawesi.  We had to checkout at 1000 as it was the required time for Tune Hotel. It wasn’t too much trouble to fill in the time till the 1550 departure: A leisurely breakfast at the patio of the hotel. Walked over to the […]

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Nightstop or Not

When I booked my tickets 7 months ago, the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Manado was an early morning one. And that would require us to fly from Kuching to Kuala Lumpur today (a day in advance) and overnight there beforehand. But a schedule change a few weeks after we made the booking shifted tomorrow’s […]

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Revenge of the Pharoah meets Linda Blair

It is 3am.  Kim is rather sick from both ends … it is like Revenge of the Pharoah meets Linda Blair from Exorcist, the movie. We went to the doctor just to satisfy ourselves that the dehydration isn’t too severe that it would affect his kidneys (which were recently impacted by another event). We don’t […]

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Like Canberra, Washington DC or Islamabad

Visiting Putra Jaya Today we visited the city of Putrajaya, conceived as the administrative centre for the government.  It is packed with many buildings housing various government departments, mostly in very stylish Islamic and modern style. The city is reachable by rail from both KL Sentral and the airport where were putting up. Having worked […]

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Shop till we drop

We ate a curry breakfast at the low-cost terminal of the airport (near our hotel) before heading to the city (KL Sentral) on the bus.  Shopping is great in KL; good choice at reasonable prices.  It is a legal requirement to display prices unlike in Thailand or Singapore where the opening price will differ depending […]

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The Big Smoke & Obituaries

Above:  Do you think this newspaper has had a few Obituary pranks? We left Semporna for KL this evening via Tawau airport.  It is sad this marks the end of our adventure and the reality of work awaits. We’ll miss Semporna somewhat but it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.  We like: the fact that it […]

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2009 Day 3: Kapalai & Mabul

Kim and I didn’t want to get going today.  After witnessing the best yesterday, it was hard to get motivated. Today we were bound for Kapalai and Mabul Islands.  We didn’t know much about these sites. We soon realised on our first dive at Sunken City (Kapalai) that the cloudy skies didn’t illuminate the water […]

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2009 Day 2: Sipadan

We boated out to Sipadan Island around 0800.  It was sunny and calm as we took the journey to the Sipadan area, about an hour away. Text continues after this gallery.     The Dive Master surprised me when he said that we were at Barracuda Point … where I had specially come to, but […]

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2009 Day 1: Sibuan

Today was the first of three days diving we had booked online with Sipadan Scuba.  We left Semporna about 0830 towards Sibuan Island on a narrow locally-built speedboard … it started off somewhat as a race between us and this 10 year old girl who was in sole charge of a motorised sampan carrying her […]

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