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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