Hello everyone. School came to a close a little late this year. After it ended I drove immediately to Tobermory to dive some wrecks with my dive club, the Superturtles, including the Niagara II. The water was cold - 41 degrees at depth on one dive, but it was fun. Thank goodness I had a wet suit that could deal with that kind of temperature. | ![]() |
Right
after my return from that weekend, we flew to
Singapore. We visited Deborah's brother Geoff and his kids Joseph and Kymberly, and Christie Maria ("Yaya").
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We visited the Singapore Zoo to have breakfast with an
orangutan.
We also saw the penguin and polar bear feeding (in glass
tanks), an
elephant
show and lots of well-kept animals in open enclosures,
not behind
bars. We went to a botanical garden and saw acres of orchids, and to a bird park where we watched shows by many different kinds of birds - hawks and eagles, parrots and macaws, and many others. |
We toured the city, saw Little India, Chinatown, etc, and ate all kinds of great foods in the hawker stalls. We took a "bumboat" ride on the river and photographed the Merlion. |
We made a scuba side trip to an island on the east coast of West Malaysia. It is called Pulau Dayang, which means "pregnant woman island" because that's what it looks like from the sea. We stayed in a rustic, primitive resort in cabins with bunk beds and meals served buffet style on the beach. The beach was lovely, with tan coloured sand as soft as icing sugar. I did six dives including a night dive. Deborah did four or five, and completed her open water certification, so she's now an official scuba diver.
After
that
we went to Bali, where we did two more dives at
Menjangan Island,
and toured lots of interesting places. We saw
Tanah Lot, a very dramatic
temple
site by the sea, where I got to pet one of the holy
snakes. Then we went to Kintamani to see the
volcano and
crater.
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Bali is a
great
vacation destination. Like Hawaii, but poorer
economically and
many
times richer culturally. The Hindu customs and
religion run very
deep. You might imagine
this flight of stairs lead to a home, but it actually
leads to a family shrine, a place where the family who
runs the
business
on this property leaves offerings of fruit, beautifully
bound flowers,
cigarettes and beverages every morning to ancestors and
spirits of
earth
and sky. There are shrines in every home, every business, every village, every stream and river...there are literally more shrines than houses in Bali. |
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From Bali we went to Jakarta and stayed at Kelly and David's house for a few days. This is Kelly with Deborah. David wasn't at home when we got the camera out. They took us out to a lovely dinner the first night, and on another day to a movie. |
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We
visited a complex of Hindu temples at
Prambanan.
Inside each temple is a statue of its deity - in this case Vishnu, if my memory is accurate. |
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One day we drove north, took a ride in a "long-tailed" speed boat in the Golden Triangle on the Mei Kong river to an island in Laos (more of a tourist trap than anything else, mind you), and stopped at the border of Myanmar (Burma). |
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