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This really happened: Mt. Bromo / Ijen tour company disaster

 This morning at 1am while in the process of departing for a time-sensitive tour to a nighttime-only natural phenomenon, our crappy tour bus driver tried to extort a bus load of westerners into paying him double entry fees for entry to the attraction, or he would not leave. We loaded the bus anyway and banded together in refusal. After wasting about 15 -20 minutes of our time, after only 3 hours of sleep, our anger and refusal to comply finally shamed him into departing without his fake fees. On the way up the volcano, our front driver’s side tire blew. The chauffeur had no flashlight, a bald spare and no…

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Under Da Sea! (VIDEO)

 We’ve been non-stop on the go lately, but today we had an eleven-hour bus ride, mostly with 3G service, go figure, which gave me time to finish editing the diving video I’ve been working on. We’re traveling with only an iPad for a computer so it’s been quite a mission to find the right apps…

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Other cool sea creatures on Mabul & Kapalai

 Jason loves his nudibranchs, but I’ve been struck by the general diversity of sea creatures I’ve never seen before, and the incredibly relaxed nature of the turtles here. We’ve seen mandarin gobies (the rainbow colored little guys), massive chilled out turtles, cute little box fish, frog fish of various colors and sizes (weird looking green…

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In love with nudis

 For the whole of my diving career I’ve been in love with a little animal called the nudibranch. They are a member of the Nudibranchia, a group of soft-bodied, marine gastropod mollusks without a shell in their adult stage. In short, their “lungs” are on the outside. Suddenly the name makes sense, right? They come…

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Bedbug alert!

 Welp, we found the bedbugs, and thankfully before they found us. We had a positively harrowing boat ride in waves and rainstorm out to Mabul today, and arrived at Mabul Backpackers, a semi longhouse style structure on stilts over the water on the island. For those who aren’t familiar with this area, it’s considered one…

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Monkey See, Monkey Do

 We’ve spent the past couple days riding around Kuching on our motorbike searching out the local wildlife. So far it’s been a success, and we’ve mostly seen a bunch of monkeys. Here are few of our favorites: Orangutans at Semenggoh Wildlife Centre. Here they are semi-wild and free to come and go as they like.…

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Into the jungle with the Iban people of Sarawak

 Following our cultural experience in KT, we hopped a plane for a quick overnight in Kuala Lumpur before catching a flight to Borneo the next morning. We stayed at a perfectly suited little guest house called Moon Eleven, about 1.5km from the LCCT (low-cost carrier terminal) bus stop / train station outside the KL airport.…

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