Week 41: Return to Sabah - monkeys and coral

 

Attaboys to the government of Malaysia - they're not afraid to schedule a few holidays. Eighteen, to be exact. Which means there's two three-day weekends each in May, June, and July. Magnificent. Tack on a vacation day and it's the perfect situation for a long weekend to go diving and explore.

Jo was anxious to get back in the water since it had been since February for her. And by anxious I mean in every sense of the word...excited. But also nervous. Throw in a head cold and the decision to dive or not was a gametime decision. Adding to the complication was my idea that we could just walk to the jetty to get to the boat...not that far, but far enough in high heat/humidity to suck some of the life out of poor Jo in her already sniffly state. No points awarded to Erik for sensitivity for that.

However, as you can tell from the picture, it all turned out ok. Water was clear and crazy warm at times (90 degrees at the surface!). Creatures were interesting and plentiful. This might be my favorite shot from the trip - there were feather stars on the reef, but this was the first time I'd seen one swimming

The variety and colors of the coral were really amazing - was glad to see them looking healthy

Handsome lionfish

The little purple guy is a nudibranch

So many fish

Beyond fantastic diving, he island of Borneo has a lot to offer. Including the rare and funny looking proboscis monkey. Apparently there's about 5000 of these left in the world, and they're found exclusively in riverside mangroves. We hopped in a van to go ~2hrs into the jungle to hop on a boat tour to see them. The good news is got to watch them jump from tree to tree and do fun monkey things. The other news is that we didn't really get a great picture of them close enough to be really worth posting here. But here's this anyway

If we had something better than an Iphone camera to zoom in, it would have looked more like this

Apparently the larger the nose the more desirable the male. Which I'll be reminding Joanna when I'm 75 and starting to resemble Dobby from harry potter fame. In the meantime here we are on the river 

Also observed but without photographic evidence was a crocodile on the river - too far under the mangrove to enable a convincing shot. As supporting argument I offer the our guide's narration to Joanna on the topic

There were some points along the trip where we half expected to hear a banjo in the distance. Or at least the Malaysian equivalent

Finally, we returned to the base camp area for dinner and then headed out on the boats again to see thousands of the tiniest fireflies ever all flashing in sequence in the mangrove trees. It was pretty special. Low light + slowly moving boat did not lend itself to a decent picture. Which seems to be the the theme of the river excursion. 

Last, but certainly not least, I wrapped up the Father's day weekend with Jo filled with appreciation for the chance to talk with both Z and A and my own dad, grateful for the relationships in my life that mean the most to me. Plus a righteous father's day brunch with this view. Life is good.

Week 39: Houseguests, Homecoming, and Holiday

 

There's not a lot of Jo-sized doorways in the world. But there's probably a better chance of finding one in southeast Asia than a in a lot of other places. We found this after dinner in Georgetown this last weekend - still in celebration mode of her triumphant return after 5 looong weeks in the US. What was originally planned as a two weeker stretched further when Abbi (back in the US too) landed her first professional job in Boston. My two favorite girls then set off on a cross-country excursion to deliver the new grad, her stuff, and her car to her new place. She'll be working for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, presiding over their zebrafish population who are doing their part to help cure melanoma. We're super happy for her - she's been interested in living in Boston for some time, so its a bit of a dream come true to work in her field of study in the place she had her eye on. 

When I checked in with her this week it seems like things are off to a good start

While Jo was gone, some Wilbur besties came to visit - Jason and Olivia Kelly. Olivia heads out on her church mission in a couple of weeks, felt lucky that she'd share her last hurrah with the Wilburs in Penang. Or in the this case, me. 

This shot was taken within their first hour of landing in Penang. After 40+ hours of travel to get here. You might be able to tell this by the look on Jason's face. Pursuant to the goal of time zone adjustment, I kept them moving so they didn't bonk - first stop was some street food. This kept us busy for a while, since this was Livy's first time eating with chopsticks.

It was awesome having them here - we hit the orangutang island sanctuary

And of course hung out in Georgetown and feasted on the good stuff that Penang has to offer

Much love to Livy as she heads out to serve the people of Alberta!

Also - if you're thinking about coming to visit - we'd love to have you - we've got spare bedrooms and have great proximity to lots of fun places. Plus these interesting plants to observe - such as this thing, that's about the size of my fist, and turns into a weird coconut sized thing of unknown name

or our local starfruit tree

or the kumquats we grow on our balcony

As a citrus fruit of choice, I'm not sure kumquat tops anyone's list. It has been, however, pretty much a low maintenance success story for us so far.

Come for the plants, stay for the festivals...they're abundant, including a holiday today (the king's birthday) as well as a week ago - Wesak (the day the the Buddha died). With two Buddhist temples just across the street from our place, we had a great view of the festivities

love this little guy

Also love the team effort to get the float down the street

Here's the view from our apartment window

We're in a transition period where the monsoon season is moving from one side of the peninsula to the other...the result has been some consistent thunderstorms and interesting weather...to wrap this thing up, I think I'll include a few recent sunsets / sunrises. Because those never get old.

OK. Maybe two more things that made me laugh. This is posted at our local park. Among forbidden activities is saying goodnight to your 1950's prom date

Also, somewhere there's an unemployment line with a director of marketing who approved the naming of this delicacy