Scuba!

The beginning of my month long break led Greg, Dan, and I to Sabah, Malaysia (Borneo). The motivation for this journey was primarily focused on scuba diving. Five days later: I'm now a certified PADI diver and did 7 dives in one of the best dive sites in the world (namely Sipadan Island, but also dove off of some other amazing islands: Sibuan, Mabul).

Really, it was magical. I saw countless tropical fish of all shapes, colors, and sizes, morey eels, a blue-spotted ribbontail sting ray, dozens of sea turtles, and a number of reef sharks! (but don't worry, they don't attack humans). The visibility was terrific and diving along the coral reefs was simply incredible. A couple of the diving highlights were:

1) diving into a channel with walls of reef to both the left and right, allowing the current to guide me down the channel with countless fish and turtles while gazing down a couple of meters at sleeping reef sharks along the bottom.

2) entering into a large cave, an abyss of darkness... and exiting into the most surreal vibrant blue, an image that will never be forgotten. Shortly after exiting the cave, a school of hundreds of jackfish circled around our group of 5 divers creating the feeling of being in the center of a tornado, but a tornado of fish.

There's simply no way my words can do justice to any of this. So here's a better, yet still feeble attempt to portray my experiences...

Diving off of Siduan Island.

Local kids at Siduan Island.

Boys will be boys...

A few photographs from my last dive of the trip...

The entrance to the cave... no joke.

Appreciating the view as I near the exit to the cave... one of the most amazing images I've ever seen in my life.

Coral

One of the dozens of turtles that I got to know...