Dori, Khan, Marlin, Cora

I am very sorry, but I have bad news for you.

It is very likely that I won’t be able to take or post any more images about our current activities.

Our original plan was to either climb Mt. Kinabalu, visit the Mulu caves or do a real deep-jungle-track. Unfortunately all of these items were either already fully booked for the next weeks or overly overpriced.

This meant we had to change our plans for the more boring alternatives available. Our next best option was wild-water rafting. Didn’t work (no rain for the last several weeks). Horse riding at the beach. No chance (there’s a weight limit of 90kg). We even considered doing a city tour, but then thought: “Hey, if we tell them we were doing a city tour they’ll ask ‘how deep can one sink’”?

On the other hand we just thought: Meh! We don’t care how deep we sink, so we signed up for the probably most boring and toneless activity one could think of for his holidays: going to school.

Diving school. Doing a diver’s license at one of the least attractive diving sites known to mankind: the coral reefs of Borneo.

I hope you can understand our disappointment about that change of plans.

This change, by the way, came rather suddenly as we entered a diving school just for fun to see if they had any snorkeling / day trips available in short term.

“Well”, they said, “nothing outdoor for today, but if you like we could start a theory class right now, so that you can join tomorrow’s diving lessons”. It took us a hard five seconds to decide and by 2p.m we sat in a classroom studying diving theory the hardcore way (almost felt like learning for university exams on the last day). By 0:30am we finished our preparation and set the alarm to 6:30am.

I have to admit, I can’t remember the last time I ever slept this bad. This was probably due to the way the education system works:

First of all, for one or two hours, they scare the crap out of you by telling you all possible dangers, threats, causes of injury and death that can occur (they do however, only ‘tell’ it, while at the same time you see tranquilizing movies of beautiful maritime wildlife). Afterwards you have to sign a sheet stating you are aware of all the dangers and want to do it anyway, and if you should die or worse, it’s your and only your fault alone. The next couple of hours were then theory about the gear, basic do’s and don’ts and so on.

From this perspective you might understand that I spent half of the night asking myself what I’d do if I run out of air, if I should lose my mask, regulator (the thing you put in your mouth (which is the thing you put in your mouth in order to breathe, for the French readers)) or anything else.

At the peak of the night I was so mad that I really needed to stand up twice in order to get rid of the thoughts of drowning or panicking at several meters depth (just think of how much 18 meters really are) with lots of lots of lots of water above me and not a single chance to take just one simple breath of fresh air anytime I wanted to.

Let me tell you at this point that one of the first things they actually do in this training is to force you to completely put off the mask under water, put it on again after 60 seconds and clear it under water, they force you to put out your regulator, ‘throw’ it behind your back, hold your breath for several seconds until your are finally allowed trying to find it. But it gets even better. Kneeling at five meters depth your air supply will be switched off hard (closing the vent) and you have to keep on breathing until nothing more comes out of it (“so you know how it feels when you have problem”) and you eventually have to ask your buddy to ‘share air’. Swimming circles without mask, open eyes and uncovered nose at depth? Done. Breathing out of a ‘broken’ regulator? Done as well.

However, I haven’t talked about how the practical part of the training actually begins.

With a German spirit in mind you might think you start your training in a basin where you’ll be accustomed to all the gear step by step until you slowly head to deeper and deeper depths until you’ll eventually move to the open sea.

This is not the Malaysian way to do it.

The Malaysian way works like this: You get your gear, take a boat and halt about 100 meters from the coastline of the next island. If you look out of the boat you can see no ground (and I suspect the water depth was way more than 12 meters there). Then the engine stops and without hesitation our guides get their stuff out and tell us we should get in the gear, they’d “help us as necessary”.

I have to admit that at this point we really thought there must have been some sort of misunderstanding about the experience-level of our group. ‘Whatever’, we continued, ‘they will just show us how it works and then we’ll drive the last meters towards the shore or some other place, or they just drop the four other more experienced guys’ (at this point you might already guess how the story proceeds). What happens next is that we have to attach like 6 kilos of weights to our hips, put on about 10 kilos of additional equipment when suddenly our instructor says “Okay, I show you how to make entry into water from boat, afterwards, follow me. You [finger pointing at me] go first. We start training in the water.”.

My first thought was: “This is a joke!” That thought was immediately interrupted from the guide’s splash as he entered the water. Then the second instructor approached me, said “Ok, you go. Hold your mask like this – Ok, all fine – 3, 2, 1″ and off the boat I went.

The moment you are being rolled off a millions things try to cross your mind the same time, you feel the water submerging you, lose orientation for a second, tumble and turn, bubbles emerge and rise all around you, you take your first real, ‘involuntary’ breath out of the regulator and hear its hissing sound like in some sort of unreal and bizarre dream of a late night underwater documentary. And then, all out of a sudden, as the blue sky appears over your head again while you float gently besides the boat, it is the first time you realize: ‘Omg, it really does work’. Afterwards, of course, we swam to the shoreline where we started our real training.

So, you might wonder, did I enjoy it?

Give me a second to wipe some tears out of my eyes …

What I experienced today was probably one of the most extraordinary … one of … was … most remarkable … was …

… you simply cannot imagine what it feels like floating several meters below the surface, in blue, warm water, over coral reefs, hundreds of fish around you (we’ve even found little Nemos hiding in anemones and a swarm of curious barracudas passing by), sunken wreckage at the ground; and when you look upwards you see sparkling sunlight glittering in thousands of streaks shining above your head.

If you haven’t been diving there simply are no words to appropriately describe those impressions.

When you reach out your hand dozens of fish might curiously gather around it, the way you feel when you see how you slightly float up and down with every breath, and this marvelous moment when you eventually catch yourself at 12 meters depth recognizing that all your fears have simply dissolved into the endless sea leaving you with only an insatiable hunger for just one thing:

More.