Facts and FAQs About Our Trip: South East Asia Edition!

We're home! We made it back home after the most amazing three month adventure! We are quite sad that it is over as we really enjoyed all the places we got to explore. We're very grateful to have had such a wonderful opportunity to travel the world again! We've started sorting through our pictures and will have some more posts of places we went, once we get settled back in at work again. But first, a short facts and faq post about our trip! If there's any questions you have that we didn't answer, feel free to comment or email us and we'll be happy to. Thanks for coming along for the ride with us! 

Where did we visit?

We visited 7 countries: Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Maldives, Cambodia and Hong Kong. 

We stayed in 22 places: Legazpi, Donsol, Banaue, Batad, Coron, El Nido, Sabang, Kota Kinabalu, Mt Kinabalu, Sandakan, Kinabatangan, Ubud, Amed, Labuan Bajo, Kanawa Island, Yogyakarta, Singapore, Male, Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, Siem Reap, Hong Kong.

What was your favourite place?
For our favourite place, we both really liked the Philippines. We were there for a month and saw everything from whale sharks to rice terraces to ship wrecks under the ocean. It was beautiful everywhere and the people were so happy and extremely nice. It was great, we'd highly recommend it as a place to visit sometime, and it has something for everyone!

We both agree that our favourite activity was the scuba diving. We took to it like ducks to water! We ended up doing quite alot, but I think we'd have been happy to do even more if we could have! We dove in 5 of the 7 countries we visited, and I think we both enjoyed the Maldives the most (it was strictly a diving visit), and Coron in the Philippines second best which was the first place we dove and where we got to see all the wrecks.

How long were we gone? 
We left Sunday March 30th, and returned home Thursday July 3rd. For a total of 96 days!

Where did we stay?
In total we had 95 nights:
69 nights in hotels or guesthouses
8 nights on boats
4 nights on island camps with Tao
1 nights in unheated dorms on Mt Kinabalu
3 nights in an AirBnb room
3 nights in a hut on Kanawa Island - 1 with cockroaches
2 nights in a shared hut in the jungle of Borneo
2 nights in a freezing cold bus
2 nights on planes crossing the Pacific Ocean
1 night in a traditional Ifugao hut in the Philippines

10 nights were spent sleeping outside with only a roof and a mosquito net
25 nights were spent with no air conditioning

How many currencies did we use? 
We used 8 currencies during our trip. Philippine Peso, Malaysian Ringgit, Indonesian Rupiah, Singapore Dollar, Maldivian Ruffiyaa, Cambodian Riel and US dollars were used in Cambodia also. The most fun one was the Indonesian Rupiah which has an exchange rate of about 10 000 to 1, so you get to carry millions with you!

Some other fun facts:

18 - Number of flights we took
8 - Unesco World Heritage Sites we visited
3 - Days stranded in Labjuan Bajo by the eruption of the Sangiang Api in Indonesia

35 - Number of days we spent at least an hour swimming in an ocean
69 - Number of Dives we did
61 hours - Number of hours we spent underwater scuba diving
10 - Shipwrecks we dove in and around
3 - Bodies of water we dove in - South China Sea, Indian Ocean, Gulf of Thailand

20 - Number of different islands we visited
8 hours -  How long we were stranded on a deserted island

32lbs - How much weight we lost in total on the trip!
21 lbs - How much heavier our bags got by the end of the trip

7 - Types of sharks we dove with!
4 - Number of Komodo Dragons we saw
2 - Number of whale sharks we got to swim with

17.5 hours - Time spent actually climbing and descending Mt. Kinabalu
8454 ft - How high we climbed at Mt. Kinabalu

3 - Number of holes in one Laura got at Angkor Wat Mini Putt! (Jerome won overall though)
14 - Number of paper and audiobooks we finished
115 - Cryptograms Laura solved on the trip

Scuba diving the Maldives

Jerome-- Sorry for the long delay in posting. I accidentally went snorkeling with our camera in my pocket and we're still tring to figure out if we can recover our pictures from Indonesia.  We'll post something about that later.

We had originally planned to visit Bangkok for about a week, but we decided to change our plans because of the coup, curfew and protests.  AirAsia also canceled our flight to Bangkok. And we also wanted to try to do some more diving.

We searched for last minute deals on a liveaboard and found a great one in the Maldives on a boat called the Maldives Aggressor.  Maldives is definitely farther afield then we were planning on going, but we also found cheap, direct flights from Singapore.

The Maldives Aggressor

The Maldives Aggressor is a 115ft diesel and sail powered yacht.  We had a completely full boat with 20 guests and a double contingent of crew (half the crew was being trained).  Guests came from all around the world - Australia, Germany, USA, Russia, Switzerland.

Selfie with our safety sausage

We did 21 dives over the 7 days, including 4 night dives.  Laura and I have now completed 67 dives (63 dives since we started our trip in April) and we've logged a total 56 hours and 42 minutes underwater!  We also did our Nitrox certification before we went, which allowed us to use tanks filled with 32% oxygen (rather than regular air which has 21% oxygen).  This lets us dive for a longer time at a deeper depth without having to worry about getting "the bends".

Maldives anemonefish in a magnificent sea anemone

Diving in the Maldives was fantastic!  One of the night dives we did at an underwater pinnacle had circling sharks, giant moray eels out of their holes, huge sting rays feeding, and a highly venomous stonefish camouflaged on the sea floor.  Another dive was with the huge, graceful manta rays. Another with a 6m - 8m whale shark.  During one of the night dives, Laura and I found an octopus out hunting.  Previously we'd only seen then hiding in little holes, but this one was swimming across the reef and camouflaging itself as it went.  Very cool to see.  Below are some pictures taken using our new underwater camera housing - if you want to see more check out our album.

Manta Ray and its accompanying remoras

Lion fish - beautiful, but poisonous

Snorkeling with a whale shark

Octopus

Stonefish

Eagle ray

Whitetip reef shark

Diving is surprisingly tiring, especially since we start the day at 6am.  Usual day went something like: wake up at 6am, eat something small, first dive, breakfast, second dive, lunch, third dive, snack, night dive, dinner, bedtime. Basically we just ate and dove all day long.  The chef on the boat was great - always preparing an amazing spread from the tiny little kitchen. My favorite was the Sri Lankan lunch which had some really nice and spicy curries.

Our first liveaboard was a great experience and we'd love to do another in the future.  Our trip is coming to an end - we're off to Cambodia tomorrow and then it's Hong Kong and back home in early July.  Time's really been flying by!

All the guests from our liveaboard

Uncle Tan's Wildlife Adventure at the Kinabatangan River

Laura -- With very sore legs after our big climb, we got on a bus to head to Sandakan, on the east side of Sabah. We spent a nice evening there enjoying good food by the water and a wonderful hot shower and very comfy bed at the hotel.

View from our hotel room in Sandakan

First thing next morning, we took a cab to Sepilok - about an hour away. We spent the morning at the Orangutan sanctuary there. We got there early to see the feeding. There was a big platform with lots of ropes leading into the trees. When we arrived there were about 10 small long tail macaques chilling on it, eating leaves and climbing around. They all knew to leave though as soon as the orangutans started slowly swinging their way over. A man came with a basket of vegetables and bananas, he spread some on the platform, and kept some in the basket to make sure all the orangutans would get some. Four orangutans came over the hour we watched, and it was funny to watch their personalities. One just sat and ate the veggies, one would take a handful of bananas and sort of hide to eat them, and one insisted on picking her own bananas from the basket, and wasn't happy unless she had a bunch in each hand, and occasionally each foot too! The last one just sat back and watched all this until the keeper left and then came to the platform to eat when the others left. It was pretty neat, we were watching all this from maybe 10m away!

After this we went on a short walk through the forest (our legs refused to go further once we got to a hill!) On the way back though Jerome somehow spotted a really cool stick insect on a leaf! He was very excited. And the rest of the walk took forever since he had to examine every leaf and stick!!

Stick insect

We then went just down the road to Uncle Tan's Ops base, where we checked in for our 3 day jungle adventure! We had a very tasty lunch, and relaxed a bit waiting for all the guests. At about 2:30 we got in a shuttle van for a two hour drive to the Kinabatangan River. We transferred to a small boat and rode down the river for 45 minutes to get to camp. On the way our boatman spotted two crocodiles, a small 1m long one and a medium 3m long one. We also saw quite a few long tail macaques in the trees.

At camp, we had a briefing, were assigned to huts, and we had a very tasty dinner with about 12 different dishes! Then at 9, after it was very dark, we got back in the boat for our night river expedition. The guide had a super strong flashlight he scanned the banks with. We saw amusing proboscis monkeys, more macqaques, sleeping kingfishers

The next morning we were up at 6 for another river cruise. This time we saw mostly birds: two types of hornbills, a sea eagle, kytes, a kingfisher as well as a small monitor lizard.

Two hornbills sitting at the top of the tree

After breakfast at camp, we went out again, for a jungle trek this time. Due to the time and heat, there weren't many animals, but Akin showed us all the jungle plants, telling us what was poison and what was medicinal. At some points we could hardly hear him over the cicadas! We saw funny red legged millipedes, long legged spiders and cotton bugs too.

Molted carapaces of cicadas

Caterpillar

After lunch it was extremely hot and humid, and everyone found a hammock or somewhere to rest and try and stay cool. At 5 it started pouring rain, just in time for our evening boat ride. We all got into our rain gear and rented rubber boots and on the boat. And boy were we glad. We saw tons of proboscis monkeys, silver leaf monkeys and a big group of flying fox bats flying overhead with a sunset background, as the rain finally ebbed.

As darkness set in, we landed on the river bank, and made our way precariously up the extremely muddy bank. Jerome got stuck and I almost fell helping him and the corner of our camera got a bit muddy, but was fine! The night trek through the jungle was very cool and a bit eerie. We spent about an hour following our guide who pointed out sleeping birds, jumping spiders, wolf spiders -one carrying a big egg sack, lantern bugs, a jungle crab and lastly a Bornean Blue Tarantula!!! Pretty crazy to see it just hanging out in a tree!

Sleeping butterfly

Jumping spider

Tractor millipede

Sleeping kingfisher

Lantern bug

Bad picture of the tarantula (on the right side of the tree)

Back at camp we had dinner and found a scorpion nest with a big one and several babies, a few metres from the dining hut. And joined in a birthday party for one of the guides.

Next morning we had one last river cruise. Saw more hornbills and sea eagles and I spotted a pretty big crocodile laying in the mud with his mouth open! Then made the return trip to Sandakan,where we had about 24 hours to get laundry done, get clean again, have a great night's sleep and eat some good food before catching a flight back to Kota Kinabalu where did some diving!