I'm back at my beloved Hazdy's backpacker hotel in Kuala Lumpur -- Paradiso Inn.
I woke up this morning around 8am, pretty late because I didn't have any dives planned. You have to wait 18 hours from your last dive before you can fly in a plane (to prevent decompression sickness), so I wasn't ALLOWED to dive. Both Melanie and Martin weren't diving either, so it kind of worked out. Melanie and I had planned to get together for breakfast, but I think she slept in later so I wandered about town for a few hours on my own. I walked to the center of town where they have the big town market, and took some interesting, somewhat scary pictures of produce, all sorts of creatures from the sea (even some beautiful reef fish and sting ray) and eventually got swarmed by little boys who begged me to take pictures of them so they can see themselves on my digital camera. Fun stuff.
Martin was at the dive shop studying for his Emergency First Response and Rescue Diver course. He's taking this all very seriously, and already finished the first book and is almost done with the second one. All the dive masters are volunteering to act as the "panicked diver" who flails about while the Rescue trainee tries to successfully help them to safety. I really was tempted to stay and do the course.
Melanie and I had some iced coffee and roti with curry for breakfast, and walked around town to look for postcards. She is continuing on her tour south in Sabah, going to the Danum National Park for some jungle trekking. She got on a tiny minivan for her 2.5 hour journey, but the crazy thing is that the bus leaves "when it gets full." I opted for a taxi again for this reason, even though it costs me 80 RM instead of 30. Melanie and I exchanged our goodbyes and I went back through town for the last time, to wait for my taxi with Martin.
The rest was relatively uneventful. I had a Mercedes Benz minibus pick me up (just as big as Melanie's, but only carrying me) and caught the Air Asia flight to KL. Air Asia has open seating like Southwest Airlines, and I somehow had the good luck of sitting in front of the loudest Indian girl with the most annoying voice. She kept screaming at the top of her lungs (that's how she talks) for the 2.5 hour flight. On my bus ride from the airport to KL Sentral, I met up with 4 Aussies who wound up all going to the hotel that one of them had booked (the other 3 were looking for a place). Pretty tough to do at 11:30pm. I called Hazdy from the airport to find out that though he had emailed that all rooms were booked for the evening, he was able to squeeze me in a room with a Canadian girl whose friend was delayed and won't be arriving tonight. Hazdy comes through for me again! He even found a place for me to go salsa dancing, but I am so tired I won't be making it tonight.
I will be leaving at 7am to go right back to the airport and make my long trek home. I want to stay longer, but I know as soon as I see my mom at O'Hare, I'll be happy to be home. I'll just be really cold! Plus, Vince and I will be watching Quantum of Solace in the evening (right, Vince?), which I've been looking forward to my entire trip.
I'm signing off now... it's 12:44am on Sun Nov 16th in Kuala Lumpur.
asami
