I'm not at work today

I was flying out of Medan international airport (relax, you can smoke inside. Past passport control, 1st floor on the right!) with airasia.com. Being a low cost airline if your bags weigh more than 15kgs you have to pay extra. My bag weighs 20kgs so I paid the extra when I booked the ticket online. Putting the bag on the scales at check in I was, at first, surprised to see the bag was in fact 21.3kg! Then I remembered the paintings and shirt (dad, the shirt is mine alright!) I had brought when I was at Lake Maninjau. The employee of the airline stated the obvious but I replied that it was only a kilo over, so did it really matter that much. Turns out it did! I replied sarcastically that maybe I should take a kilo out of the bag and put it in my carry on luggage. “Yes, that’s fine” was her reply. I am still trying to work out the logic of that!

The flight took less time then it takes to read the in-flight magazine and by the time I was checked into the hostel in Georgetown I had only missed the 1st 9 laps of the German gp. Sadly there were no seats left on the Monday ferry so instead I will be going on the Tuesday morning one instead.

On Monday I went to the post office (exciting I know) in order to lighten my bag by 1.3 kilos, then I went to the mall. During my 30 days in Sumatra the laundry (wo)man managed to lose two pairs of pants. The pants in question had travelled with me from England and two years on the road is a long time. However, as any man will know you only replace underwear when its long since started to fall apart (unless they are your “lucky pants”, then you will never part with them)

Midday on Tuesday I was back on the island of Langkawi and I quickly got back into the routine. This time, as a bonus I had cable tv in my chalet…sweet! The staff at both the red tomato garden café and Debbie’s place remembered my order as soon as I walked in. All I had to do was nod, sit down and await the arrival of the mug of coffee or the pint of Carlsberg, depending on which establishment I was in.

After a few days of relaxing and watching television (1st time in over 30 days) I splashed the cash and went diving on the Friday (17th). I dived the same two dive sites as before but as the viz was down to 4m in places it looked altogether different.

On the 1st dive, me and my dive buddy were slowly drifting with the current above the sandy bottom near the rocks a few metres away when I felt a sharp and intense pain in my left foot. Avoiding a sudden urge to spit out my reg in order to say “OW!” I looked around….just in time to see a trigger fish about to enjoy the sweet tasting meat of me for a second time. It opened its wide cavernous mouth, with blood dripping off its large razor edged teeth and went to clamp its grotesque jaws around my foot. At the precise moment my left leg lashed out, trailing crimson blood in the murky waters of the ocean like ruby coloured meteors burning across a twilight sky. My bleeding foot smacked into the trigger fish’s hide with a righteous force that spun it around several times, disorientated and confused the killer fish was in no condition to continue its ravenous attack. So with blood still flowing freely from the gaping wound in what was left of my foot I swam away to safety.

Okay…it didn’t happen quite like that!! I suppose a pinprick of blood was the most I split. But this is my 100th blog so I thought that for once I would exaggerate what happened a little. Unless you really want to read a blog about a short fat bald man lounging around drinking coffee and beer with the occasional scratching of body parts.

And yes, in the evening I had fish “n” chips….and then they ran out of Carlsberg….hello Tiger!