I had my last non-rice breakfast with Dad in the lobby of the Le Meridien Kota Kinablu. Mum was guiltily in the gym upstairs from the last few nights of seafood buffets. Munching on smoked salmon and camembert (its a $10 buffet included in the bill, jealous?) I told Dad how although sad I was to say goodbye to them, I was keen to start some new adventures and leave the good hotels and buffets, back to my $2 a night rooms and street-food. I think in some ways my parents were very cruel to me - its going to be harder to go back to poverty now!
Luckily I had a new-found passion to distract me. Scuba diving! I wanted to do a Open Water Course and we saw a very good deal on it, so as an 18th birthday pressie I got the whole course paid for, plus a cloth badge! It will make it a lot cheaper to do the more popular and better dive sites later in the year.
I waved goodbye to mum and dad at the centre (I think they were off to eat more seafood before catching their flight) and sat down to a day's worth of boring dvds and filling in the blanks. No diving on the first day - I had to learn all the details! Its a lot more complicated than one might think, especially if you cant afford a dive computer. I finished the final test in 5 minutes, though of course I got one wrong and had to stay at my normal 98%, the last marks always so elusive! The dvd style of teaching reminded me way too much of school. There is a hong kong girl and a young singapore banker doing the course with me, so at least I won't get lonely!
At night I checked into my new lodgings, a first for me in terms of price - 20 bucks a night to try and ease my transit back to pov backpacking. Its still a nice little place! I didn't have much to do that night bar try and get organised and of course sleep, so it didn't matter when the tail of the Burma cyclone hit us and the power cut out - damn it was raining hard! When I did fall asleep the power came back on.
