Our third morning at the Hutton Lodge began with us packing up our belongings and stashing them in the staff room at the hotel. Our mission for the day was to wheel south toward a much discussed snake temple.

It was, rumor told, filled with pit vipers that had come to the temple of their own accord (tired of the monotony of life in the jungle perhaps), where they were promptly sedated by a Chinese monk by the name of Chor Soo Kong, using a special blend of incense rumored to turn the deadly poisonous vipers into docile wall ornaments.  We pictured a darkened room billowing with clouds of fragrant and intoxicating smoke.  On the cold, clay ground, we envisioned gigantic pit vipers, their bodies arching and slowly writhing as if entranced by the burning herbs.  Get too close, we thought, and they may spit poison into our eyes and strike with vicious fury.  Sounded like the kind of place that might make a good waypoint, so off we went, wheeling hard southward.

We made our way down the coast, where we were soon able to leave the highway, and ride on a delightful wooded side-path, which snaked in between the highway and the straits of Malacca.

Our ride took us past a number of strange settlements and construction projects. When the hunger hit, we found ourselves outside a rather posh looking mall in a suburban district, and made our way inside to find sustenance.

We wandered the mall, looking for food, and spending quite a bit of time in a dried snacks shop, where I had the great misfortune of sampling a salted prune that rang throughout my mouth with a most vile flavor that refused dilution no matter how much water I drank.

An overpriced, but thankfully large meal of chicken and rice, and a cup of Joe at the local Old Town White Coffee shop later, we were back on the cycles with renewed energy on our mission for the snake temple.

We stopped at a large Chinese temple, which proved not to contain any snakes. Rather, we found an old man inside who directed us in half-words of English toward the water. He assured us that our destination was “na fa.” And though we were almost certain that we had completely failed in communicating anything to him about the snake temple, we decided it would not hurt to follow his vehement gesticulations in the direction of the sea.

We were glad we did, since, though there was no snake temple to be found, there was a large fishing dock, where men unloaded piles of glistening fish and a fellow was operating a strange garbage transport vehicle, which emitted plumes of blue smoke as it grunted up 45 degree inclines.

Back on the road, we decided to dart into the interior of the island, away from the sea in search of the temple.

Again and again, we would stop to buy water from a merchant of some kind, or at the very least, sweet soda served in a plastic bag.  It was quite hot, and we were sweating hard.  He or she would direct us very clearly toward somewhere in the midst of this vast industrial park. But each time, we were unsuccessful. We did enjoy a fine tour of the airport, and the local Penang free trade zone, but alas, no snakes.

We were enjoying a can of “100 Plus”, the local energy drink, when in desperation we asked a local Tamil truck driver who was refueling and purchasing snack food at a local convenience store one last time for directions. His response was so ridiculously hard to interpret, and spiced so heavily with head wobbling and the phrases “so simple” and “no anyway place” (which we took to mean one-way road) that we were torn between bursting into laughter and dutifully heeding his directions. So we decided to simply do both, and, low and behold, we found ourselves arriving at the elusive place.  We gave silent thanks to the Tamil driver and his wonderfully peculiar way of communication, and in we went.  We braced ourselves for the dozens of snakes writhing entranced on the clay floor, and the holy men who would have the no-doubt thankless task of sedating them.

I’ll be honest, the snake temple is nothing to write home about.  It seems as though the architects of this experience had read neither One Thousand and One (Arabian) Nights (كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة‎), nor had they considered consulting the temple’s design with children raised on Chuck Jones cartoons.

But there were some very drugged snakes inside, and plenty of incense, though not the billows we had expected. AsiaWheeling after all is about the journey, not the waypoints themselves.

So let it suffice to say: we were quite underwhelmed with the whole experience, and will dispense with all mention of the snake temple from here forth.  Back on the road, we wheeled hard back toward the city; traffic was thickening, and we were eager to get home before dark.

Famished from the day’s wheel, we made our way to another emergent-style Penang restaurant.  Scott had a powerful lust for fried oysters.  Coupled with egg, they made for a delicious appetizer.

Followed by banana leaf rice (pulut inti)…

and a healthy dose of chicken.

Now there would be just enough time to say our goodbyes to the friends we had made at the Hutton Lodge, take a few minuets to work furiously on correspondence before piling, cycles and all, into a taxi cab and heading for the bus depot.  The office was a hardscrabble collection of transport brokers, one with large tattoos on her arm that meant “nothing”.

We spent that night in an anti-anxiety medication induced half sleep, propped up on loudly patterned seats in a squeaking and yawing overnight bus to Malacca.

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Our second day in Penang began with the same breakfast of toast and banana bread at the Hutton Lodge. Our plan for the day was to wheel north to a beach area called Batu Ferringhi. After crossing our hearts and swearing to make no puns or allusions to Star Trek, we brought the speed TRs downstairs and unfolded them for the wheel.

We made our way northward past towering hotel after sky-scraping condominium, discussing the best way to design an algorithm to separate signal from noise in the wavering of our compass reading, which at times became quite violent on the bumpy roads. Soon we found ourselves in a region that called itself Miami. We took a short side wheel here to explore more of the sparklingly posh housing developments. The sea to our side was becoming cleaner and bluer the farther we traveled from the busy port in Georgetown, and soon we were looking out at white sand beach on one side, and think jungle punctuated by expensive housing developments on our left. Both Scott and I could not help drawing parallels between this wheel and a popular wheel in San Francisco and Marin County known as Paradise Loop. Both sported good smooth roads, gentle elevation changes, cliff-side views of the sea, and generally expensive real estate. We had, in fact, enjoyed a very similar wheel during the planning phase for this trip. I know, dear reader, it was a mere three months ago, but now it feels like many ages have passed. The extremes of experience, indeed.

Back in Penang, Malaysia we were nearing Batu Ferringhi, and not long after we passed the Hard Rock Hotel Penang, we decided to stop for refreshment on the beach.

We sipped from very cold and slightly fermented young coconuts. It was our suspicion that the coconuts had sat for some time in the fridge, but the yeasty flavor was nice, and the meat had a tang that we quite enjoyed. If this was not a local delicacy, we would petition for its installation as one.

We drank and ate these, allowing the sweat to evaporate from our bodies and clothes, and watched 40-50 year old European tourists take horse back rides on the beach, or try their hand at para-sailing. When the coconuts were done, and at least five Avril Lavigne Songs had played on the Malaysian pop station at the restaurant, we decided it was time to climb back on the cycles.

We kept riding north, right through and out of Batu Ferringhi, into the more rural northern parts of the isle of Penang. Traffic thinned and jungle and beach began to dominate our view from the road. Soon we found ourselves at the entrance to a new, more rural settlement. This one seemed much less dominated by tourism, justifying its existence as a fishing community, and a kind of commuter’s suburb of the more touristy Batu Ferengi. The hunger was beginning to clench around us, and we called a Rausch into the township.

We rode around for quite some time before selecting a shop. None of them looked clean, so we needed to survey the area to find the one that was most popular. Our hypothesis was that if we were unable establish an estimate of cleanliness from the exterior of the business, perhaps the presence of as many un-diseased patrons as we could spot would point us in the right direction. And, dear reader, this it did.

We ended up parking the cycles outside a joint by the name of the Cafe Ibriham. It was a buffet style restaurant, where we were given a large plate with a dollop of white rice, and set loose upon a table piled high with large metal trays, filled with various dishes, just swimming in their own succulent juices, and regrettably covered with flies.

But it was a choice between full on starved lunacy, and this food. And to be honest, the smells coming from the buffet were intoxicating. So we put our faith in the doxycycline and dove in. The food proved absolutely delicious, exhibiting such diversity of spicing and texture.

My plate for example contained some curried fried chicken, a roasted fish, a pile of squid gravy, some cinnamony red sauce full of tiny fish, a paprika-filled fried egg, and a little pile of very American tasting homefries.

Delightful. Truly delightful.

As the blood sugar surged back into our systems, we took to the streets, wheeling hard and fast back toward Georgetown.

Back in town, we called a waypoint to sip a milk shake, and then took back to the streets. Cursed by the unbelievable number of one way streets in Penang, we found ourselves again and again siphoned onto the same streets. We were searching for the coffee place we had seen on the previous evening’s wheel. Finally, we were able to make our way back into Little India, where we were forced in desperation to just ride against traffic, until we found the place.

Sure enough it was vacuum pot coffee, and at 10 ringgit a cup, the owner was quite happy to explain the entire process to us at length.

Afterward, we wheeled down the streets to a music store selling Tamil super hits.  We indulged in a Rajnikanth mp3 CD with 27 films worth of music.   Below, the video from one of our favorite tracks:

That evening we made our way to a local mall food court that was set up in the local emergent restaurant style.  Tables in the food court were flanked on either side by stands selling individual and specialized delicacies.  Some vendors had appeared for the evening, and others had begun their Chinese New Year vacation early.  There we were able to try a number of local delicacies, such as Ais Kecang, a red bean and ice cream medley for dessert.

With our stomachs filled and blood sugar once again on the rise, we decided to indulge in a night wheel through the surrounding and very Chinese neighborhood. We called a waypoint when we heard some commotion, and found a little carnival tucked into a pedestrian mall. It appeared to be in celebration of the fast approaching Chinese New Year, and we were enthralled by the strange carnival games and terrifying deathtrap rides, which constituted the operation.

Once again, thrilled at our good fortune, with full bellies and smiles on our faces, we wheeled back through the night to the Hutton Lodge.

The Hutton Lodge was in a place called Georgetown, named after Britain’s King George III, and breakfast at the Hutton Lodge was quite nice, and as a nod to the British, served in the courtyard. We munched on buttered toast and a kind of banana lemon poppy cake, while washing it down with cup after cup of lackluster instant coffee, lightened with nonfat powdered milk.

Feeling quite refreshed and refueled, we took to the streets.

The first waypoint was Citibank, where we were not surprised to find that CitiGold status here too would not allow us to change currency, only withdraw funds. The Citigold lounge with free coffee, filtered water, and plenty of Chinese fellows chilling out was almost enough to make us forget all about it.

We stopped at a beef bone noodle joint for lunch and were invited into the back kitchen for a lesson on local coffee preparation. The Penang style, we found, was to take raw beans and fry them in butter until they were very dark brown.

The coffee was then made by boiling these buttered beans in water and filtering them through a kind of sock.

The resultant brew was creamy and oily black.  The coffee was truly some of the best we’ve had on all of AsiaWheeling, up there with Cafe Grumpy in New York City, Pointage in Tokyo, and Pablo’s in Denver.

The fellow also took a moment to explain to us another local delicacy, which was a kind of sweet nutmeg drink, served hot or iced.

Back on the cycles, we worked our way toward the looming forested mountains that back the city of Georgetown. They seemed to be collectively called “Penang Hill,” but to this Iowa boy they seemed to be much more like a bunch of small steep mountains.

At the base, we selected one of the many small snaking roads that worked its way up into the hills. We climbed for a while, eventually finding ourselves at a kind of park. Turning off the main road, we noodled into the park, where we spent about as much time riding as we did portaging the cycles over stairs and other obstacles.

One quite steep descent and a bone rattling ride over some frighteningly large bits of gravel later, we were back on the road, wheeling toward the city center, calling waypoints from time to time to explore some of the stranger and more beautiful pieces of Penang’s modern architecture.

A short waypoint was called to investigate a Protestant cemetery that felt like something out of a Washington Irving tale rather than a feature of this Malaysian island.

Back on the cycles, we decided to indulge in a wheel through Penang’s “Little India,” enjoying the music as we traveled.

There we made special note to revisit a very interesting looking coffee joint, advertising a kind of siphon coffee. My suspicion was that this was a variation of vacuum pot coffee, but it would be interesting to see how it was implemented in a retail setting.

At the advice of a local Tamil magazine vendor, who was also able to provide us, to our great joy, with an issue of The Economist, AsiaWheeling’s favorite publication, we tore on toward a local giant shopping center called “Pacific.” The Tamil fellow had explained to us, through his very large mustache that we would find the largest selection of chips and snack-food there. This was true, but we found ourselves almost unable to enter the establishment due to the blisteringly loud broadcast of its theme song, “Pacific, Pacific… something in Malay, something in Tamil, dedicated to your customer value!”

We barely escaped with our sanity and a load of local chips, the most delightful of which displayed a small child struggling as though immersed in some kind of viscous fluid. The chip itself was a fish-flavored curl of fried lentil flour. Highly, highly, recommended are these Murku Ikan.

That evening we dined at a local Indian restaurant. This was the first re-introduction of authentic Indian cuisine for AsiaWheeling since our time in that strange and wondrous land during the pilot study. We instantly became very excited about our upcoming travels in India, and delightedly dug into our dosas, tandoori chicken, paneer naan, and vegetable biryani, knowing there was plenty more where that came from.

Exhausted and happy, we settled into our room at the Hutton Lodge, and quickly drifted to sleep.

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Our goodbyes to David had to be made through the fog that accompanies undersleeping. It was 5:00 am again, and the Rucksack Inn was still filled with the same six – eight zombie-like Internet users that had been there when I had retired for bed some four hours ago.

As David climbed into his cab to Changi airport, and we climbed into ours to the train station connecting Singapore with Malaysia (mysteriously not connected to the subway system…), we bid farewell to the strange and wondrous chapter of the trip that David had ushered in, with a phraseology that David and I had used in college: “Goodbye forever,” I told him, knowing full well that I would see him in the next year or two. “Yeah, goodbye forever,” David replied.

And then we were off. Our cab driver was extremely polite and efficient, sporting a cab full of flat screen monitors advertising Chinese New Year’s gifts to us. We lugged our shiny new bikes into the crumbling white colonial behemoth that was the entryway to Malaysia, and I sat on the steps playing Mama Rock Me, watching the sun rise on Singaporean Tamil men unloading goods from lorries, and  machines scrubbing the street with rotating brushes.  Inside the railway station, we took stock of our surroundings and confirmed the tickets.

Scott dozed in the giant waiting room, and in no time we were working our way through a system of inspections, detections, and checkpoints, making our way to the train.

The train itself was old, but comfortable, with plenty of space to store the bikes.  The lack of a window near our seats, played a supportive role in our sleeping through the majority of the 14-hour ride.

At one point, we were awakened by a loud, but unintelligible transmission coming from the overhead speakers. All transmissions on the train were ushered in and out by a rising and falling set of tones, which must have at one point or another been quite similar to those used on the metro systems of Hong Kong and London. However, due to some malfunction in the innards of this behemoth of a machine, the train’s announcements were subjected to a kind of radical Doppler shift, creating disconcerting parabolas of tone that were quite effective at rousing both one’s attention and the hair on the back of one’s neck.

From what we could tell, this transmission was commanding us to exit the train and go through customs, which we did, exiting Singapore, and receiving a number of stamps on our Malaysian entry cards. Eight hours later, when we next awoke from our slumbers, we were deep in Malaysia. It seems somehow, we had missed the official entry into Malaysia, and had made our way into the country without getting a stamp. We said a short prayer to the gods of immigration and customs, in hopes that this would not cause us trouble down the road, and fell back asleep, rocked by the rails, snaking our way through the Malaysian jungle toward Butterworth.

Butterworth was the end of the line, and the sun had already set when we packed up our things and climbed off the train. We followed our fellow passengers toward the ferry to Penang Island. So far, peninsular Malaysia felt very comfortable. The presence of moderate amounts of rubbish and less well maintained structures was comforting after the sterile polished exterior of Singapore. We were quite surprised to meet a school teacher from North Carolina, traveling with her two young children. It was one of our first clues that Malaysia would prove very safe and manageable. Most everyone we had yet encountered spoke very good English, and even public signage was almost always translated.

We were able to purchase tickets on the Penang ferry for about USD 0.35 and spent the ride over to the island gawking at the very developed, well lit island on which we were to spend the next three days and down at the brownish sea, which was quite visibly crowded with large white jellyfish, pushed aside by the hulking ferry. On the other side of the water, we mounted the cycles, and rode into the city. Penang was well lit, and festooned with red lanterns and banners in preparation for the upcoming Chinese New Year. As we had seen in Singapore, most everyone here appeared to be of either Han Chinese or Tamil descent. The sharp cheek-boned islander ethnicity  we had seen so much of in Indonesia, Borneo, and even on the train ride to Butterworth seemed absent here. Perhaps this is what our Malaysian Bureau Chief, Smita Sharma, had meant when she described these as Chinese straights towns?

Thanks to the ease of communication in Penang, we were easily able to find our way to the Hutton Lodge, an establishment that had been recommended to us by our most esteemed Malaysian Bureau. As would prove the rule, the recommendation was stellar, and the Hutton Lodge welcomed us with a clean room, a nice view of the courtyard, friendly staff, and promises of free breakfast with infinite coffee.

We dumped our belongings on the beds and quickly unfolded the speed TRs to head back out into the fray in search of food. Since we had slept all the way through the train ride, we were operating on just a few biscuits in the stomach, and even without having wheeled that day, we were starving. Luckily, as Smita had outlined for us, Penang was a food lover’s destination, sporting a new style of restaurant, which AsiaWheeling had not  yet experienced. It was a kind of emergent restaurant, where the many cooks establish small kitchen stalls around a central seating area. Patrons are then issued a table in the seating area by some central authority and invited to peruse the surrounding stalls, from which the many cooks quite vocally tout their wares. Diners select foods that look appealing, order, and the food is brought to the table.

We feasted that night on fried chicken wings, a local fried noodle dish by the name of Char Koay Teow, and some strange medicinal soups from a Chinese vendor. With the exception of the soups, which were just a little too medicinal for our liking, the meal was delightful, and we climbed back on the bikes, ready to get a little shuteye after our long day of sleeping on the train.

Our last morning in Borneo began at once again in darkness. It’s true our room was windowless, but at 4:45 am, it was also dark outside, so we had cheated ourselves out of nothing. We rolled around in the dark as the theme to SIM city 2000 sounded out through the depth and blackness of our room at the Sipadan Inn in Semporna, Sabah, Malaysia.  Over the course of our time in Borneo, David Miller had proven a truly capital member of the expedition, improving our experience immeasurably. He had, subsequently been promoted, and his responsibilities expanded to Chairman of the AsiaWheeling Risk-Management Desk within the Bureau of Health and Safety.

In one of his first announcements in that new official capacity, David classified that morning’s cab ride to the airport as by far the most dangerous thing we engaged in in Borneo, though we had been breathing like cyborg fish underwater, boating in dubious and leaky craft, and wandering the hardscrabble city at all hours of the night. For you see, dear reader, in our estimate, Borneo is not so dangerous a place, that is unless the man driving your cab is three-quarters asleep.

He was a small man, and drove an unmetered (and therefore, I believe, technically illegal) cab. He had been summoned for us by the front desk at the Sipadan Inn, and at 5:10 sharp, he made quite the arrival, pulling his small Proton hatchback around and backing into the spot right in front of the lobby door. The moment he engaged the reverse gear, some apparatus inside his car began to broadcast a custom sound effect perhaps best approximated by the noise made by X-wing and TIE fighters as they zip through that curious reverberate vacuum of Star Wars space.

After he had successfully docked, we managed to squeeze ourselves into the car, which has been modified significantly from its factory fresh state to include custom wheels, glitter-filled paint, a miniature steering wheel, and a thumping sound system.

The style of customization might be familiar to fans of films such as  The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift . This style was no stranger in Semporna. In fact, it seemed, quite popular among the local youth as a pastime, with many engaging in a sport I first encountered during my youth in the town of Grinnell, Iowa, known there by the self explanatory name, “Scoop the Loop.”

Meanwhile, loaded in this fellow’s street racing Proton hatchback, we were tearing down the empty roads of Sabah, as the sun began to rise over the endless fields of oil palms. The soundtrack was incredible. Song after thumping song, we enjoyed a tasteful survey of the early 2007 electro-rock and synth pop as featured on the music blog FluoKids and even a nod to the tunes pumped by our friends at LoveLife.

It reminded us of our recent favorite song “Century” by Tiesto and Calvin Harris, introduced to us by the prolific and brilliant Rex Pechler.

[audio:http://asiawheeling.com/music/TiestoCalvinHarrisCentury.mp3]

His good taste in music was almost enough for us to forgive the fact that every few minutes, the fellow would viciously shake his head from side to side, blink dramatically, and yoga breathe in an attempt to regain lucidity. I eyed him carefully, and planned what I would do were he to actually conk out at the wheel: First I would need to grab the wheel and stabilize the car. Once I had gained control, I would, while holding the wheel with my left arm, execute a kind of combo move with my right, elbowing the sleeping driver back to consciousness and grabbing the emergency break slowing the car to a stop on the side of the road.

Luckily, gradually raising the volume on the stereo,seemed to do have the same basic effect, as our man’s struggles for consciousness seemed to turn in his favor, and soon we were safely arrived at the sleepy gray Tawau airport, checking in for our flight. The place was just as ghostly as we remembered it with most of the shop fronts empty. We sat in the waiting room and I played Amy Winehouse tunes on my ukulele while we waited for them to open up security.

The coffee served scalded the mouth, but with enough practice, we were able to cool it by sipping vigorously.

Exiting Malaysia was a piece of cake, studded with big smiles, and very gentle security inspections. Three tiny chicken foccacia sandwiches later, we landed, quite hungry, in Singapore.

Unfortunately, the gods would not smile food upon us until we had exited the airport, which proved massively difficult. After many wrong turns, one attempt to exit through the wrong immigration desk, two wrong airport trains, and one long conversation about overpriced cakes, we arrived at the MRT station.

The man at the desk directed us toward the machines that promptly refused to regurgitate tickets. Though the man was skeptical, we finally convinced him to leave his post and come investigate the machine. One look at the thing and he muttered in a dark Singaporean accent, “Man vs. Machine? Machine will always win.” And with that he dove into the innards of the beast, removing trays, interacting with panels, and finally, producing for us the much needed tickets.

After a very long train ride, much lamenting over our having not simply taken a cab, and  a walk through a labyrinthine underground shopping center, we finally feasted at a local Chinese restaurant, digging into a few plates of dumplings, steaming bowls of spicy noodles with duck and crab, and stir-fried greens. Our waitress was quite a gem, and indulged in some schtick with us about AsiaWheeling and our shared affinity for a particular Chinese vegetable (包菜), before putting a rush on our order.

David and I had just enough time to stroll the city for about an hour, while Scott napped, showered, and drank a RedBull shot. We got the chance to try a very interesting Singaporean style of ice cream, from a street stall. The ice cream itself, was cut in vast chunks from a foil wrapped log and wrapped with a slice of cheap white bread. The combo was quite tasty, and David indulged me by sampling the Durian flavored ice cream which was tasty but maintained a certain flavor of old gym bag that I found endearing and David found at the very least interesting.

Back at the Rucksack Inn, we had only a few moments to freshen up before we had to climb back on the MRT for our much-anticipated meeting with our newest AsiaWheeling partners, Speed Matrix, at the My Bike Shop in a part of town called Clementi.

Speed Matrix was throwing an event to celebrate the launch of its new folding Kayak series in conjunction with announcing its new relationship with AsiaWheeling. Members of the local folding bicycle community were to be there, and your humble correspondents were to be interviewed by some chaps from a local cycling magazine by the name of To Go Parts. All that aside, we were going to get our Speed TRs back, returned to us, no doubt, nipping at the bit for the rest of our riding in Malaysia and on into India. Needless to say, we were thrilled.

We arrived at My Bike Shop where our Speed TRs were waiting for us, gleaming and looking better than ever before. The wheels had been trued, transmission re-tuned, and a quick spin around the block promised superior wheeling ahead.

Thrilled at our good fortune, we spent the next couple hours sipping ristrettos, and hobnobbing with Singapore’s finest folding bike heads, many of whom proved to also play prominent roles in the international business community.

The hunger was just beginning to hit when Tan began closing down shop, and we retired to a nearby cafe by the name of “Leaf” for a scrumptious meal of Indian-Chinese-Malay fusion food, served on large banana leaves.

After dinner, we bid farewell to our new friends and were just about to hail a taxi, when the owner of Leaf came over to us and invited us to sit down for a drink with him as well.

Such a warm welcome had endeared us to Singapore quite strongly and we were none too thrilled to wake up the next morning once again at quarter to five, bid farewell to not only this city but our dear Mr. David Miller, and catch a train to Butterworth. But, as you have no doubt already gathered, dear reader, AsiaWheeling is not a sport for the weak of heart, or those prone to lingering. New, untold wonders lay before us, and somewhere inside us was the rekindled awe of the road ahead.

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So once again we awoke at Scuba Junkie in a different room. Of course, there was no room for us again that night, but we were fed up with all this switching of rooms, all these false positives, and decided perhaps it would be better to just stay the night at another hotel. That would be a challenge for the evening, so we slumped our belongings underneath the stairs once again and headed out to meet with Hassan. We found his weathered face grinning and beckoning to us from the across the street, where we followed him to a local Chinese restaurant.

He had placed three orders of fried rice for us. According to the menu at the restaurant the cost of these rice dishes was about 9% of what we had paid him for the island lunch, and you, dear reader, had better believe that we were keeping track. We sat down with him and drank sweet creamy coffee while David attempted to engage him about his life’s story. It was here that we first me with one of Hassan’s communication issues. He answered most requests in very quick and bursts of murmur, with either “yes” or “no” and followed, if we were lucky, by a one-to-five-word qualifying phrase.

Do people live on this island we’re going to?

“Yes”

About how many people live there?

“Not Many”

David was able to glean that Hassan had entered the Borneo boat tour industry in the mid 1980s just as this place was becoming a tourist destination. He had learning English from his guests; it seemed he catered largely to Italians, though why we could not be sure, or how exactly he used the word “Italy”.  Maybe this was his word for Europe? He certainly did not speak any Italian.

He told the shop in Malay, to put his coffee on our tab. Asked us to pay the bill, and then asked us to pay him in advance for the day’s adventures, reportedly so that he could purchase fuel for his boat. This we did, and with some mounting worry about the value we would receive in exchange for them, handed over our hard-earned Ringgit.  At least we knew we had a sumptuous feast of barbecued fish waiting for us on the island.

We walked with Hassan to the dock, and he signaled to a man, who was puttering offshore in his wooden boat. Hassan’s driver rammed his way into the cluster of boats that all struggled to use the tiny strip of wooden dock, until he made it close enough that we could hop on. Then, with a grin, Hassan, carrying all the money we’d just given him, disappeared into the crowd. His man turned the engine back on and backed away from the dock out into the murky and trash-filled water.

We certainly outnumbered them, and had grown quite strong over the last few months of daily wheeling. So long as he did not carry a deadly weapon, there was every chance that team AsiaWheeling would prevail in a physical struggle. So with this, we released our fates into this stranger’s hands, and to the great chagrin of all passers by in this overcrowded fishing port, we began to apply sunscreen.

Eventually Hassan returned with what David estimated to be four to eight times the amount of fuel required for the day’s journey. And we helped to steady the boat, as Hassan loaded some 50 gallons of petrol on board and then we were off.

The water quickly turned from oily gray to deep blue, and the fresh sea air invigorated us. We soared over the water, the wooden hull of our boat slamming violently against the surf, stopping only to remove the occasional plastic bag from the rotors, but mostly just soaring.We all began to relax, and grin as we sped by communities sprung up on stilts over shallow sections of water, and glorious islands, sporting just a few palm trees and a single hut.

Soon we made our way into a protected area of very shallow water between two larger islands. Here it was so shallow that Hassan climbed forward to the bow of the boat, where he sat, peering into the sea, and directing his driver as to avoid large outcrops of coral and rock.

We crawled through this section, and with the engine only quietly chugging, we were able to easily hear the sounds of life coming from the islands. Large flocks of birds, and millions of chirping insects sang in the distance. Steep cliffs and thick jungle backed tangled mangrove swamps, which came down to meet the sea. We saw little sign of habitation inland, but off shore, we saw a small villages on stilts, connected by walkways made of wooden planking.

Then we were through the opening between the two islands, and flying over the chop again. Straight ahead was Mantabuan, and, dear reader, it was a paradise, a small white sand island sprinkled with coconut palms, surrounded by a large shallow reef. We powered our way through a section of churning current, where water from the protected interior of the shallows poured out into the sea, and then Hassan’s man ran the wooden boat aground, under the shade of a gnarled mangrove.

Hassan began to remove his pants, and shoes, then slipped into a pair of nylon track pants. “Town Pant,” he explained gesturing to the thick blue corduroy trousers he has just shed. “Island Pant,” he proudly referred to his black track pants.

“First we must visit the police,” Hassan explained. So we followed him up the beach. “No need for shoes on this island,” Hassan added. He was wearing a pair of dark blue wool socks, which were encrusted now with sand. He noticed me eying them and grinned. “No need for shoes!” he reiterated. Out of pure laziness, I left my shoes on, but Scott and David dutifully removed theirs, but instantly were forced to turn back by the razor-sharp grass that sliced into their bare feet. Hassan waited patiently while they tended to their wounds and re-applied footwear.

The police, it turned out, were not on the island today. Good news, Hassan explained, because the island was a marine park. And with the police gone, we would be able to fish. We were uncomfortable about fishing in the Marine Park, but Hassan assured us that he would be happy to do so himself, or to simply buy fish from the locals. We decided we would be happy with the fish lunch and looked forward to drinking from the abundance of coconuts that Hassan also had assured us would be available. “We must go talk to the army now,” Hassan reported, and we continued to follow him around the island. Soon, we were staring at a net of razor wire, behind which there was a Malaysian infantryman in full camo, crouched in a little concrete hut piled with sand bags and peering out over the water. A large mounted machine gun sat by his side.

“Salaam aleikum,” Hassan announced, but the soldier did not stir. He cleared his throat and crunched his way off the grass and onto the gravel walk which lead to what we could now see was a very large military base snuggled into the island foliage. The soldier lazily turned around. Hassan and the man began to talk in Malay. Soon a number of other soldiers appeared, and we entered the base. Most had large smiles on their faces, and Hassan began to mime a signature at them, at which the smiles became larger, and the group of soldiers began to laugh and shake their heads.

Scott, David and I decided now would be as good a time as any to introduce ourselves, so we shook hands around the circle. The soldiers spoke reasonably good English and were happy to chat. It turns out they were posted on this island in direct response to the occurrence of a dive boat being been kidnapped in 2001 by Philippine pirates of the Sulu Seas. So, in essence, they were here to protect us. The base was substantial, with a few buildings, some trucks, a couple of machine guns, plenty of razor wire, satellite Internet, playstation and X-box gaming consoles, a badminton net, and plenty of bizarre hand crafts which spoke volumes about the boredom of the soldiers.  We commended a wind-driven pinwheel that had been fashioned to look like an airplane with a rotating propeller.  “Maybe if you spend three months here,” they chuckled, “you can make something better!”

We spent the rest of that afternoon snorkeling in the surrounding reef, which was rich with life, and sported some very strange currents and temperature changes. We swam into the current, though jets of bathwater, and dove down a meter or two into frigid water to investigate schools of brightly colored fish gathered around coral and sponge.

We were returning to the beach when a large military boat arrived, filled with the next crop of 20 soldiers that would be spending three months on the island protecting visiting tourists.

The men struggled to beach the boat on an outcrop of coral as we watched from the water, hoping that our presence would not cause too much embarrassment among the new soldiers. They, however, appeared just as chagrined about the affair as we were, and flashed bright white smiles once they had finally run aground enough to throw down an anchor made from a piece of corral slathered in concrete.

We came back to the beach quite hungry, and Hassan greeted us with the $1 dollar rice dishes that he had bought.

“What about the local fish lunch?” we asked eagerly.  Of course, we thought, this must also be at the top of his mind.  “Maybe 2:00 pm, when fishermen back. Right now no fish.”   Hassan hailed a fisherman in a dugout canoe by shouting “Come I give you money” across the water after we continued to inquire.

The man had caught two  beautiful fish that morning, but according to Hassan was asking outrageous prices citing the fact the fish were still alive.  And of course, Hassan noted that this would be something well above the threshold for the included lunch, and that his footing the bill was totally out of the question.

Defeated and suspicious, we dug into the rice, which was, to Hassan’s marginal credit, not bad. We then embarked on a tour of the island, which turned out to be easily circumnavigated, and only about twice as large as a baseball diamond. We then settled into the shade of the mangroves for a nap.

David awoke to Hassan’s voice, “I am feel very sick.” He then cracked open one of the bottles of water that we had brought with us, and drank deeply. “Do you want some clams?” A strange request, but “yes” David replied, we wanted some clams. Hassan then wandered away for a while, returning with a bowl of freshly harvested and opened raw clams.

He removed a rusty box cutter from somewhere in his island pant, and sliced open a nearby lemon. He rinsed the clams with some more of our water and then squeezed both halves of the lemon on top. We ate the clams with some ambiguous sweetbreads that Hassan had also produced from the island pants. They were quite good, but were also an indicator to begin worrying whether or not the island fish lunch would occur.

We asked Hassan if there was any fish, and he paused for a moment. “No.” he replied. “Coconuts, then perhaps?” He paused again in what was quickly becoming his signature delivery, “No.” “Why is this?” David asked. “The men have been fishing all day and they are too tired to gather any coconuts” Fair enough. “But what did they catch?” “No,” was the only reply.

Somewhat frustrated, we wandered over to the small village, where we found the locals to be cooking vast pots of fish.Hassan appeared after some time, and began haggling with a local woman over a number of small dried squid. All over the island, we had seen squid and octopus, drying in the sun, covered with flies.

Hassan finally tired of his bargaining and selected a single squid, for which we witnessed no payment change hands, and began to busy himself making a small fire with scraps and coconut husks. He than grabbed a large wok-like bowl, and placed the squid inside.

Tiring of waiting for the wok to heat up, he removed the thing and finally, just threw the squid into the fire. The squid was not quite dry enough to fully ignite, and in frustration the fire extinguished itself.

Hassan grabbed the squid, burning his fingers a bit, and then announced “We go back to the boat now to relax.” We nibbled some bits of the squid with Hassan as we wandered back to the boat, but still uncomfortable about the lack of fish lunch we soon made our way back into the village.

We spoke for a while with the military fellow, who explained to us that the town there was actually just one family – a single fisherman with many wives, and even more children. They attributed his great manliness to the consumption of a local brew made from some type of rigid sea life boiled in water.We refused the opportunity to try some, but did secretly speculate about whether or not some of the local military were not also to blame for the proliferation of children on Mantabuan. The military, it seemed, took pity on us, and though they were no more able than Hassan to produce a fish lunch (it would by this time have been more of a fish dinner),  a few of them wandered off into the jungle to find us a couple of oldish coconuts that had fallen from the trees.

After Hassan had chopped them with visible experience, we enjoyed them thoroughly, trying to squeeze every last bit of joy out of our 100 Ringgit lunch.

We gladly accepted these, and drank deeply. The meat, however, proved almost too brittle to eat, and we soon grew sore in the jaw, and ready to head home.

As we pounded our way back across the waves, a kind of strange satisfaction overcame us. It was no doubt one of the strangest days AsiaWheeling had yet experience, but fascinating in the extreme. Who was this man Hassan who had just charged us for an extravagant fish lunch, and pulled a bait and switch supplying some tiny portions of fried rice, and an old burned squid? What was this polygamous military base paradise on which we had spent the day? Was this really the doom of those tourists who dared to travel without bicycles? Regardless, it was an important data-point in our study of the extremes of experience, and as the sun set over the stilted shelters of the Sea Gypsies and we pounded our way through the surf, AsiaWheeling adjourned for the day content in our ability to get lost even without a bicycle.

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The day began with English breakfast at Scuba Junkie followed by a ride out to Pulau Mabul.  Lionfish, scorpionfish, frogfish, coronets, and all of the Finding Nemo crew call this island home.  Off the coast of the island lies a dive site fashioned from an old offshore oil rig.

David and Scott began gearing up for the dives, which would mark the last underwater skill building portions of the open water certification.

Running through the next maneuvers on land, they prepared to take a giant stride off the jetty into the water below.

And before too long, they were in the water giving the “OK” sign.

Having taken a break from SCUBA, I took up exploring the reef by snorkel, which also designated me as the morning’s cameraman, given that the maximum depth of the waterproof camera was less than what the SCUBA team would descend.

The coral reef was magical.

A diverse ecosystem lay below the sea’s surface, with a shallow reef that eased slowly into the sandy depths.

Mabul’s Reef, specifically “Froggie’s Lair,” proved to be a prime location for snorkeling and diving, as Scott and David can attest to.  Beware of those puffer fish though.  They look cute but you can’t get too close.

These photographs are, of course, mere approximations of the beauty, given the difficulty of achieving true color in undersea light amidst particulate.  We hope, dear reader, that you may venture to Borneo and witness it with your very own eyes.  The island itself was co-inhabited by a particularly interesting population of dive resort-goers and local villagers.  We searched for a coconut on shore, but neither of the communities were able to manifest one at any price.

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Our stroll around Semporna with David McKenna Miller was successful in a number of ways.  First, we were able to procure functional activated SIM cards with the help of two enterprising Chinese shopkeepers.

Among these successes, was the discovery of a delightful point-and-eat restaurant (which we were finding to be a common genre so far on the trip).

It brought us strolling past Semporna’s Mosque…

And the accompanying souq selling fried bananas…

Coffee…

Cassava…

Refreshing beverages…

and, of course, chilies and fish.

But no souq would be complete without a recharge station for lead-acid battery backups.

At the small port, construction raged above the ubiquitous piles of waste found in this city.

Also fascinating was an exploration of a sprawling neighborhood that consisted solely of houses and walkways on stilts (this too we were finding to be surprisingly common), and a fascinating conversation about anthropology, ecology, waste disposal, and AsiaWheeling’s mission.

Of particular interest, was a section of the stilted neighborhood that had recently suffered a fire. Underneath it, the mudflats that underlay the entire development sprawled forth. And as we peered down into the muck, we could see thousands and thousands of crabs, making a living for themselves in the black goo. Many parts of this neighborhood sported large landfills that mingled with the sea, underneath the houses. Even in the watery landfills, we could see critters making do in the rubbish. We also spotted giant monitor lizards, making homes for themselves in the more unsavory corners of the city.

In many ways, these sights brought the idea of a fundamental conflict between human expansion and the development and the health of other species. In such a lush and bio-diverse region, it seemed, at least some species were finding a way to coexist, perhaps even thrive off the presence of humans. Please don’t infer from this, dear reader, that AsiaWheeling is condoning the use of the ocean as a landfill, merely that we  have found it to be more complicated and interesting philosophically that expected.

A thirst in need of quenching brought us to the local supermarket.

There we found products to consume of curious origin and unfortunate destiny into the very waste stream  we scorned in discussion.

Another relevant occurrence on what we might call that day’s wheel (albeit a wheel completely devoid of rolling) was our encounter of a curious fellow by the name of Hassan. We were strolling near a large stilted complex, containing among other things a variety of restaurants, an aquarium, which was really just a bunch of fish in nets, visible below us, in the crystal clear water, and a hotel called The Dragon Inn. Put off by the previous day’s gerrymandering with our room, we had been interested in investigating other accommodation. It was no sooner that we had found the Dragon Inn to be full and without WiFi, that Hassan maneuvered into our life.

He was a thin and weathered man, driving a puttering wooden longboat, in a pair of blue and black velvet pants. Inside the longboat was another very tan man, who from the fact that Hassan referred to him as “Italy”, we would assume to be Italian. Hassan somewhat expertly slid his boat into a nook among the stilts and unloaded his passenger. When questioned, the Italian proved to be a man of few words, seemingly quite exhausted from his day in the sun, and remarked only that “for me, this island is the perfect paradise.” Somewhat haggardly, he  made his way back toward his room.

We then began to talk more with Hassan, discovered that he was a boatman (his card proudly proclaimed his 20 years of service), and that he had just taken Italy for a ride out to a place called Mantabuan, where he had spent the day snorkeling in the surrounding coral, and devouring a locally prepared fish lunch. We were intrigued, and decided to keep the man’s card.

Breaking for a quick refreshment, we debated the course of action for the following days.

That evening it was unanimously decided that for the remainder of AsiaWheeling, I would indulge in snorkeling as opposed to SCUBA diving. After the ghastly occurrences of the previous day, I was relieved, and once again excited to engage the underwater world, albeit with much more frequent re-visits to the surface.

Finishing the evening with some delicious soy sauce fried fish, we settled in for an evening of rest before heading to Pulau Mabul the next morning.

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The sun rose on Semporna in the same way that Lady Madonna must have looked at the children’s stockings needed mending, and the Sim City 2000 theme rang out from my cell phone, propelling us downstairs for the SCUBA Junkie English breakfast, included as a bonus feature with the accommodations. On the way down, however, we were sorry to be informed that there would be no vacancy for that night, and that we would need to unload all our belongings from the room, trusting them to a ruddy corner underneath the stairs. This was somewhat stressful, and we decided we might well mitigate the situation by eating first.

The coffee was free, hot, and strong. Good would be a stretch, but sometimes plentiful will do here on AsiaWheeling. The breakfast consisted of a mismanaged flow of fired eggs, which appeared at irregular intervals gleaming greasily in a bent aluminum pan. Next to that pan were two similar pans, containing room-temperature, cloyingly sweet baked beans, and slightly less than room temperature recently un-canned chicken franks.

The toast was hot and fresh though, as long as one was able to battle through the crowds of zombie-like 25-year-old Australian and Dutch people, freshly pried from bed and distantly working to resuscitate themselves for the day’s diving, and actually secure a slice. We did so quite effectively, probably because of our training in Jakarta traffic. We were soon quite full of this mediocre slop, our moods lifting due to the introduction of caffeine, and back in the room packing our things.

Once we had packed our stuff up completely, Scuba Junkie informed us that they had misspoken, and that indeed they would have a room for us that night. We rejoiced and asked whether it would be the same room we had just had. “No, no, sir. Please leave your things here and we will show you the room when you return.”

Scott and I silently thought to ourselves, for not the first or last time, that had we been unlucky enough to have chosen to take Malarone during this trip, this type situation would have distorted and inflated into a gut-clenching, terrifying ordeal. Thank goodness  for the doxycycline, which allowed us to simply agree and make our way to the boat to Sibuan.

Aboard, David sprang into action, outlining the skills that we would be learning. Among those important for today’s dives were buoyancy control, recovery of the regulator (the device that delivers air to the diver), breathing from a malfunctioning regulator, out-of-air drills, underwater removal and clearing of the mask, and swimming while breathing through the regulator without use of the mask at all.

The sun was shining something more like Lucy in the sky with diamonds by the time we reached a small island by the name of Sibuan.  Sibuan, we later learned, meant “sunburn” in the local dialect. The island was aptly named, because except for a few coconut trees, it was almost completely devoid of shade. It was, on the other hand, a paradise of clear blue water, vibrant reefs, and it sported a little village inhabited by a local ethnic minority which for lack of a better word, I will humbly refer to (as the locals do) with the term “Sea Gypsies.”

The Sea Gypsies are mostly of Philippine descent but often hold no passport whatsoever. They have established communities on the many small islands that dot the Celebes and Sulu seas, and make their living fishing, farming seaweed, and occasionally trafficking untaxed imported cigarettes and booze smuggled in by pirates from the Philippines.

The Sibuan Sea Gypsy settlement was small, and the women covered their exposed skin with sand, which clung to them creating a kind of gritty sun protection and perhaps even played the roll of a kind of make-up (by all means, dear reader, please let us know more about this use of sand in the comments).

It is now that I must pause the tale to recount a relevant experience that took place before AsiaWheeling was even a glimmer in Scott’s and my eyes. It took place in a cold and dark, but wondrous place by the name of Bates College in the land of Maine. I was kneeling at the bottom of a swimming pool in this place, surrounded on all sides, and for some feet overhead by cool blue chlorinated water. I was breathing from a regulator, and peering through a mask at a much younger David Miller. He had a large red beard at the time, in which he buried his regulator. We knelt together at the bottom of this pool, staring at each other, sucking in dry mechanized squirts of air, and exhaling plumes of bubbles, which quickly departed for the surface.

David signaled “OK” and I responded. He raised his hand, gesturing to me in the way one gestures to the musical guest after he or she has been introduced. I took another deep breath from the device in my mouth, and reached up to remove my mask. As water poured in, I felt in enter my nose, forcing its way up to where contact with the softer membranes of the interior began to produce pain. I began to panic, and snorted little squirts of water into my nose, and eventually into my lungs where they made me cough. By now, all alarms in my system were firing, millions of years of evolution chastised me for breathing water, my eyes burst open in the stinging chlorine, and I could see David, a blurry ghost before me. My breath through the regulator was painful and punctuated by squirts of water into my unprotected nose. With a final shaking inhale, I replaced the mask, clearing it of water in one savage snort, then commenced a furious fit of sucking and coughing into the regulator, attempting to clear my lungs of that from which I could not breathe life.

David signaled a worried looking thumbs up (the signal for surfacing), and I responded with something unintelligible, jetting to the surface, and pulling myself to the pool side. There I lay, coughing and exhausted, and under the grip of a splitting headache, brought on by the great stress of the experience I had just had below.

Five years later, at Sibuan Island, off the coast of Malaysian Borneo, I was diving again for the first time since that ill fated day, and I had just reached that very skill that had reduced me to a pain-stricken weakling on the side of a pool somewhere in Maine. I was  making progress, though. I had been able, with some difficulty, to clear a partially and even a fully flooded mask, even taken small sips of air through the regulator with a filled mask, though under significant duress. Now it was time to remove the mask. I had attempted to do so earlier in the day, and found myself unable to, each time rising to the surface, pale and shaking, struggling to control my breath and the shake in my voice.

It was now or never, it seemed, as Scott had completed his demonstration of the skill some time ago. I needed to keep the mask off for 30 seconds of breathing, followed by another 30 of mask-less swimming in order to move forward. Shaking and nervous, I plunged into the sea, allowed by self to sink to the bottom and knelt there, awaiting courage.

Scott and David looked at me, with matching tufts of blond hair waving patiently in the sea. We stared at each other and blew bubbles. And then, harnessing the most mild uptick in confidence, I reached up and first fully flooded then removed my mask. The water began to work its way into my nose, and as I sucked bits of air through the regulator, the water level in my nose would rise up to the edge of the tipping point, sending huge surges of fight-or-flight chemistry into my body. My hands were violently shaking now, and my ability to control when I drew a breath was tenuous and demanded all the focus I could muster.

I sat there, allowing the sea and the bubbles of my own breath to crawl along my face, eyes mashed shut, and praying that time would elapse with all haste toward the point at which David would tap my forehead to indicate the experience would be over. It seemed like ages. I waited at the threshold of my own self control. I coughed into the regulator, and somehow snorted and drank down a gulp of seawater though my nose. My heart hammered in my chest, and blood rushed in my ears. Then, finally, I felt a touch on my forehead.

I smashed the mask back onto my face and cleared it with a painfully intense burst of air which was something like a cough, which escaped in equal parts through the nose and mouth. I opened my eyes to see David, staring at me with two big thumbs up, miming an underwater round of applause. He signaled to me to ask if I was okay. I signaled yes, but something was wrong. My heart was beating even harder than before, and my head was beginning to hurt, beginning to hurt really bad. I felt weak. I signaled to David and Scott that something was wrong, calling a return to the surface.

As soon as my head broke the surface, I felt like someone had driven an ice pick into my brain. I had not experienced a true migraine since I was in high school, but that was certainly what was happening now, and a bad one at that. David tried to calm me down, but all I could to was struggle toward shore. “I need to lie down, I need to get to the beach,” I clamored.

On the beach, I pulled myself onto the sand, and began to roll around, searching for a position that might cause some relief from the pain. Scott and David were clearly both alarmed. And though I told them to keep going, they called an end to even their portion of the dive.

I spent the next couple of hours sprawled on a number of surfaces, from time to time struggling to my feet and wandering to a new location on Sibuan, the sunburn island, searching for relief. The ice pick burned white in my skull, and the pain was making me dizzy and nauseous. Eventually, I spotted what looked like a woodshed, covered by a slanting roof, and protected from the sun by a great patched piece of advertising tarpaulin. I stood up once again, against the pain and nausea and made my way toward the shelter. In the woodshed, I was finally able to find some relief in sleeping for a moment, but quickly awoke to David’s voice.

“You can’t just wander off without telling anyone.” He was right and I apologized. The boat with the other SCUBA divers had returned and they were having lunch on the beach. I told David to go eat, and began to search again for departure from reality when I noticed I was not alone. It seems that the children from the sea gypsy village had discovered this strange writhing white guy tangled in a half undone wetsuit in their woodshed. They did not say a word, but gathered around me in a kind way. Looking at me curiously, and smiling warmly whenever I made eye contact with one of them.

I struggled to make some small talk but the effort pushed me over the edge, and I sprang from the shed, barely able to make my way to some sandy underbrush before I became quite violently sick. I hobbled weakly back to the shed, savoring that bitter relief that accompanies such events, and rejoined the kids.

My condition improved steadily as the day wore on, but for obvious reasons my SCUBA tutelage was put on immediate suspension. I wandered the coast of the island, and chatted with a French couple that was snorkeling there, while Scott and David initiated the final dive for that day.

Back in Semporna, the mood was contemplative as we mulled over what to do. It was finally decided that the following day would be a break from SCUBA, giving us some time to plan next steps.We feasted that evening on crab, which we selected from a tank of large specimens at a local Chinese eatery, and returned to Scuba Junkie to find that we were invited to return to the very same room that we had been asked to vacate that very morning.

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Our flight was not too early, but further and diligent study of the toast and coffee at the Rucksack Inn resulted in a somewhat hurried departure from the establishment, necessitating a cab ride to the airport.

The cab driver explained local construction projects to us in curt snippets as we drove, most interestingly a large building that looked something like triplet towers with an aircraft carrier/surfboard mashed on top. The structure was gaudy and huge, and was going to cost at least 6 billion dollars to erect (and probably much more).  It was a casino.

Still humming with architectural discourse, David, Scott, and I arrived at the AirAsia counter. Once again, we found ourselves in a situation in which AirAsia demonstrated its poor communication skills.

In this instance, our check-in clerk solemnly explained to us that the presence of a local air show would delay our flight for at least one hour. Had we taken his advice at face value, however, and gone to the swimming pool (yes, dear reader, there is a swimming pool in the Singapore Airport), we would have completely missed our flight to Borneo. Luckily, we decided to check in at the gate, where they informed us that our flight was indeed on time. This communique unfortunately also proved false, when the flight was actually some 25 minutes late, though there was no talk of an airshow.

As usual, we got off the airplane starving, and discussing whether or not the food that was served on board was real or just a miscommunication as well.

The Tawau airport was petite, not air conditioned, moderately grungy, and mostly empty.

Malaysian immigration and customs was a breeze, and after some large smiles and plenty of vehement stamping, we were soon standing outside the sleepy Tawau airport, discussing cab fares with the local touts, and struggling with some head-scarved women in an attempt to purchase Malay SIM cards.

My suspicion was that something was malfunctioning with the digital registration system, which explained the blushing faces, school girl laughter, and marked inability to produce working SIM cards for us. After some 20 minutes of struggling against this blushing, giggling, silk enshrouded brick wall, David had identified the cheapest cab option and grown tired of waiting, so we took off empty handed.

The drive to Semporna was gorgeous and interesting, as we raced along in a white Proton van through endless sprawling monocultures of oil palms, dotted with garbage dumps, mangrove swamps, smoke-belching cooking oil refineries, and crystal blue ocean views.

In the car, David quickly began to prove his logistical mettle (though it was never in doubt) by interviewing our fellow passengers and beginning to build a framework for operating in the Semporna’s SCUBA scene. We were to be asking something rather complex and irregular of the local dive operators. Namely, to allow David to train Scott and me with their equipment and boats, but with little or no additional involvement on their part. By the time we arrived in the crumbling and hardscrabble town of Semporna, we had already identified our first choice to be an operation by the name of Scuba Junkie. They were quickly growing, and focused on a western backpacker clientele. We had also booked a room at the attached hostel, which would diminish in price by 50% in the event that we chose to dive with them.

We paid the van driver, deposited our belongings in the clean and refreshingly windowed room of the Scuba Junkie hostel, and decisively dealt with our starving problem at the hotel pub. David continued to chat with the locals, gaining more information, and once satisfied with the caliber of the place, and armed with the name of the owner, we strolled across the street to begin negotiations.. The owner of Scuba Junkie was a thin, shirtless, well tanned German. After some explanation of the project and our specific needs, he adjourned to his office to consult his business partners on the correct course of action.

When he returned, the terms seamed reasonable: we would be able to dive more or less on our own schedule, using their equipment, and would pay for the price of a normal dive. It was certainly not going to be cheap, but also not prohibitively expensive. With the specter of darkness and exhaustion looming, and the prospect of being able to begin the diving portion of AsiaWheeling first thing the next morning, we pulled the trigger, and surrendered our passports to Scuba Junkie.

David found this practice of surrendering the passports somewhat unsettling. Not from the standpoint of losing the things, but from the standpoint that if we were to have some disagreement down the road with Scuba Junkie, we might find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, unable to leave the country. Here, dear reader, we had our first inklings that David’s capacity on the AsiaWheeling team would prove much more all encompassing than simply that which he could do underwater. His experience with risk management, emergency management, and field medicine suggested we had better reconsider the role he currently played on the advisory board.  In short, a promotion was in order.

But that was an agenda item for another day. We needed to size our SCUBA equipment, and get back to the room. David had a couple of lectures planned for that night, and Scott and I were eager to lay into some of the theory behind SCUBA diving.

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