5. Travelling ‘light’.

My trip to the airport went surprisingly smoothly using KL’s answer to the Uber app for calling a taxi. The taxi driver did not speak English, I did not speak his language. The airport is quite a distance from the city (an hour’s drive) but I never grow tired of seeing the sights and of other countries pass by the windows. At one point, we pulled in to a petrol station. The driver waved a little yellow card at me and looked expectantly. I went for a slightly helpless gesture and a ‘sorry’, of course, because I’m British and we like to apologise. He repeated the card wave and some words and finished with ‘OK?’. I replied this time with ‘OK’ and he hopped out the car and went into the garage. I was slightly concerned it was possible I’d just agreed to pay for petrol - or anything else for that matter - but he returned quite quickly and we were on our way. The fare was as expected so I don’t think I paid for any additions! I will forever be none the wiser on what the yellow card did since we didn’t actually get any petrol either.

The airport was the usual carnage of crowds, aimless wandering and people with trolleys piled higher than themselves with cardboard boxes that they then check in as their luggage for domestic flights. Having already checked in on-line on my handy app (another one!), I joined the ‘bad-drop’ queue, got to the front and realised I’d missed the ‘print your own luggage tags’ stage, which is different to bag drop. After a bit of aimless wandering myself, I located and printed bag tags and then went back to bag drop. I’ve got a 25kg weight limit and apparently my case weighed 25.8kg, which the automatic scales were not accepting and sent me to the service desk to pay for excess luggage. I’m unsure what the extra is as I really haven’t added anything to my case and if anything have used an amount of suncream etc. Nonetheless, off I went to find the service desk, which it turned out was one person working at the usual relaxed pace of the locals with a queue around a mile long of people with particularly mountainous piles of cardboard boxes on their trolleys.

At this point, I unpacked some of my case on to the floor around me and retrieved a couple of potentially heavier objects and stuffed them into a bag of dive gear and decided to try and carry that through as hand luggage. I went back to bag-drop, where my boarding pass immediately flagged as needing to go to service desk but the scales showed my bag was then 24kg. I went for further helpless gesturing to the flustered boy on helping duties, which in Asia seems to mean all the locals make him check their bags for them at the self service while they watch, and he reset the scale and checked my bag through no problem.

So then all I had was some seriously overweight and extensive hand luggage … a hugely full and extremely heavy (11kg+) rucksack, which has trainers and a cushion tied onto the outside of it, my additional bag of dive gear out my luggage and my handy bumbag (I know, cool) which is roughly the size of another rucksack strapped to my front. The combined hand luggage limit is 7kg. I’m easily double that - and with no option to put anything back into my too heavy main luggage and no wish to hand over any of my valuables or trust anyone with my extra clothes or pants I now add to my hand luggage in case of lost main luggage repeat disaster; I look a tiny bit like a packhorse. However, rather than let this show, I needed to behave as though my hand luggage was nothing more than the weight of a book and jumper. At the queue to go through to security. Where it seemed luggage was randomly being weighed if it looked large, I did my best to hide the crippling weight and aching shoulders caused by my bags and attempted to swan through the gates and float by. Luckily, it worked and I made it through to the gate. I actually have no objection to paying for extra luggage and wonder if next time, I ought to just take 2 pieces of hold luggage, hope they actually successfully travel with me (and not ever with Qantas again) and pay for the extra. Something to consider maybe - or given that everything else is automated, just hope that the excess luggage charges could be too so I could easily pay them and be on my way! Doing it the KL way might have meant I’d got my extra luggage through but would likely have missed my flight in the endless queue!

I would also like to take this opportunity to defend myself from what you’re not doubt assuming is some extreme overpacking but I would like to explain that it’s the dive gear … it’s so heavy! My fins, dive jacket and all the equipment I need in my main luggage take up at least half the space and weigh around 18kg. My hand luggage then has my underwater camera housing, mask and set of tubes and regulators, which weigh a good 6kg. That plus quite a few clothes and my pants - I’m not trusting the airlines with my pants anymore - and my valuables soon add up.

But I’m now on the plane. It’s was only recently here that masks stopped being mandatory and are now just encouraged - I find myself wishing everyone still had them on. There is a very different culture here in terms of personal hygiene, likelihood of disease spreading and general bodily noises. There is often quite a lot of coughing and weird huffing. None of it every includes hands in front of mouths and will often be done in extremely close proximity to others in a way that apparently isn’t rude or a concern. Faces are coughed into or sneezed at as a matter of course. The ladies, in their full toes to wrists to neck and often head coverings tend to be marginally quieter too. Just as god would want it obviously. They are also enviably adept at going to sleep with startling efficiency and remaining asleep for the entire duration of any flight. The men, however, are mostly gross. They cough, choke, snort with a deep throated hawk and gag with frequency and seemingly in a way that is obviously totally acceptable here. It makes me gag … the man next to me on the plane keeps doing it. My mum tells me off for sniffing occasionally - she should think herself lucky that she doesn’t live in Malaysia. She would not cope. I have adopted my teacher glare combined with  my ‘oh my goodness, you are making me feel physically sick with that disgusting noise’ glare but it is no avail. The man in the seat behind me is fully sleep - I know because he has the loudest snore known to man. Even take off and screaming baby near-by did nothing to drown him out. Ear plugs may be the only way forward.

******

I have arrived safely in Borneo - once we landed, they put stairs up to the plane then let us all get off and wander about, while people got off other planes and others got on them. Pretty sure I’ve could have hopped a flight to somewhere else and no one would have noticed or cared much. All very nice and secure. Eventually, a man arrived and blew a whistle a lot…still didn’t direct anyone or seem to know where he wanted us to go so really just added to the confusion.

Once I found my own way through another stamp in the passport line, even though I’m still in the same country, I managed to get a taxi. The driver jumped out and heaved my case into the boot then opened the door for me and in we got, then he looked in the mirror, got back out, made me get back out, put some newspaper on the seat and got me to sit on back on that. I decided not to take offence and just enjoy the ride!

When we flew in and then on the drive to the coast, I saw the extent of the palm plantations - they cover everything. I’m aware that palm oil is bad … but I don’t really know why. The Malaysians obviously rely on it as their main export too. I suspect it is because they are clearing massive swathes of rainforest, to plant palm trees and the loss of biodiversity and habitats that causes. On the up side though, I bloody love a palm tree and I think the plantations look really cool from the air!

I found my hotel, which has a significantly less impressive view than the last one but does have a little balcony, which is is exciting. I’ve just been for dinner at seafood place - I picked up because it had a lovely big picture of a pretty reef with fishes on … then after I’d sat down, I realised that was in fact the menu. Sad. I had squid and asked for broccoli but they didn’t have any. The lady offered me ‘you want veggies?’, which I said yes to and she asked ‘you want green, brown or white?’. I asked for green and got these shooty leaf things - they were quite delicious. No idea what they were!

So now I shall repack my bags again to get all of my dive gear out and ready for tomorrow. I’m to arrive at the scuba shop after breakfast at 7.30 …. I assume that’s their way of saying they won’t be giving me food not a suggestion of what time they feel I should wake up. I’ve also been told to arrive ‘swim ready’ … again. I assume that means with my dive gear ready and swimming costume under my clothes … or maybe I’m meant to just pitch up just wearing my bikini and good to go. I shall find out tomorrow!