http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/quinnray/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from quinnray en-us Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:06:55 +0000 Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:06:55 +0000 After a few days travelling we ended up in Gili air island close to Lombok Indonesia. Here we settled for a couple of nights and sampled some of the fine cuisine. We heard of a liveaboard boat that heads east from Lombok for 3 nights catching some nice sights along on the way but most importantly Komodo and Rinca islands home to the legendary Komodo Dragon. A local travel agent showed us a http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Komodo/blog-266744.html Semporna is a smelly dirty town on the east coast of Borneo with absolutely nothing to offer. In fact many embassies advise against traveling to the region probably because it's so smelly.So why did we come.. We came on the recommendation of an expat yank we met in the Philippines who told us of an island 40mins east of here that has some very good diving.As he had been living traveling and div http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Malaysia/Sabah/Sipadan/blog-266740.html Another Filipino city didn't appeal to us so upon arrival at Cebu we headed straight to the pier and caught the Supercat to Ormoc.Security on the Supercat was Supertight with the checks you'd expect at an airport Passport Metal detector bag scan body frisk followed by sniffer dog inspection palm swabbing and photograph. The absence of retina scan and finger printing made the whole thing se http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Philippines/Donsol/blog-260839.html Palawan is a sparsely inhabited island in the SW Philippines.It's waters and much of the island are protected so it's home to some unique wildlife.This is why we came.We flew into the capital Peurto Princesa and after getting some local advice we boarded a bus north to a town called Roxas pronounced Rohas.The road was paved and the journey was surprisingly pleasant except for the fish soup pou http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Philippines/Palawan/El-Nido/blog-259988.html Manila welcomed us with a 20 min wait on the tarmac followed by an immigration hall full of people. Even Filipinos have to fill in an arrival card here. Trust nobody.. where have I heard that before. We joined the queue with 80 people in front of us. The airport felt like it hadn't been cleaned since the 70s making me glad I had checked us into the Four Seasons Manila. Eventually we got through http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Philippines/Manila/blog-256205.html I must admit any preconceptions I had of military personnel been dumb idiots were wrong. Our in flight entertainment for the 12 hour flight from London to Hong Kong was a proud member of her majesties armed forces.Our new soldier friend entertained us with interesting stories such as how rivalary between different sections of the army can often lead to fistups. The example he gave was when he met http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Hong-Kong/Kowloon/blog-253428.html