southeast asia 06-07: November 2006

wreck diving

a guy we were diving with took these cool photos in coron where we were wreck diving. beth was too busy kicking up silt and holding on to her flashlight to be the photographer. there's 8 or so diveable japanese wrecks from ww2. the ships are mostly intact, so you get to swim through rooms, up and down staircases, out through explosion holes (technical name). amazing and very different from most of the diving we've done.

these are called nudibranches. nudi. ha. fancy underwater slugs.

haunted stairs, i think.

swim hole.

waiting for the typhoon

from the roof of our digs in coron.

our neighbors on stilts.

best waterfront property in town.

we survived our second typhoon and had to change our travel plans a bit, but got to hang our with some fun german guys and pass the time playing backgammon and singing 99 neuf balloons.

stinkin it up

he was chatting with a little kid on the other side of the fence until i interrupted.

mmm, sting ray soup.

i think there was an important lesson i was supposed to lean at one point about fish and loaves and some other stuff.

fish heads! stinkin it up. FISH HEADS! (try to imagine me singing, if you will)

the holidays

oh, the weather outside is frightful... humid, hot, sticky... (typhoon season, you know)

joren tried to lift a few decorations. he had tinsel coming all out of his pants.

lagoons, islands and rafts

some interesting lakes we snorkelled in. the top layer was fresh water, and below it, salt. very cool stuff. when you'd swim, the water behind you would "mix" and look cloudy. surrounded by limestone cliffs.

super james bond-y movie looking.

joren on his bamboo raft. he took me on a ride for only 20 pesos.

you swam through the hole to a secret universe, i mean lagoon.

boat captin

just one more mode of transportation. i'm an excellent driver.

joren being a back-seat captain. (taking beth's usual role).

this is a lee shout out if i've ever seen one. someone send the blog to lee and show him how to push the computer buttons. (ps. 50 pesos = $1) (pss. beth's favorite happy hour was in boracay from 2-8 pm)

rappelling down water falls

we went rappelling one day, down and back up a series of waterfalls. there was some climbing, hiking, sliding over rocks, swimming through pools and barely any sobbing. it was great fun, and hardly any drowning.

beth, in a nutshell.

joren lost his shirt in a waterfall incident. also, his pants. hence, the waist-up photo. he's currently fashioned some trousers out of a coconut shell and palm leaves. i see a rash in his future.

safety first, safety second

pre marital counseling... it's a bit too late for that, joren.

we tried to adopt 3 of these kids, but they came in a package of 4.

the overnight ferry we almost took... joren let us upgrade. we got a bed, but we also got a mouse, and maybe the hanta virus.

it's my policy. also shouting out curse words. that's a good policy, too.

dive. dive ,dive

in camiguin, we did an advanced diving course. joren's much better with a compass on land is all i'm going to say. we did some search and recovery exercises as well as some navigation (at night) which sounds as hard as it is. anyhow, that's our bavarian dive master, Diggy, on the left giving us a written exercise toshow how one's brain works slower from the nitrogen in your blood. i think imust have high levels on land, too.

joren's bubbles aren't all from his regularor.

hello from the bottom of the sea.

beer thirty for the seal-girl.

camiguin, come again?

h-o-t. it's hotter than you think climbing up to see jesus and the 47 stages of the cross. maybe it just seemed like 47.

camiguin was a volcanic island we spent a week on recently, did some rappelling, completed an advanced diving course and ate an interesting version of thanksgiving dinner with our bavarian dive master and his family. we also rented a motorbike one day to drive aound the island and see some waterfalls and do some hiking. i'm an excellent backseat rider, as well as driver.

this is a marker for the sunken cemetery (you can dive and snorkel around it) which slid off the mainland during an earthquake in the late 1800's. musta been sinners.