Saturday evening ended quite scary. I had dinner in one of the typical restaurants which are completely open towards the street. As it was raining I decided to sit inside. All of a sudden parts of the ceiling collapsed and big concrete blocks fell down. I was sitting maybe 3 metres away. Fortunately nobody was injured because it happened in one of the corners without tables. It was a terrible noise and all the people were staring with a face of disbelief. Nobody left the restaurant, the people discussed what happened and finally continued eating. I tried to finish my prawn soup faster, burned my tongue and left as soon as possible.
I completely changed my plans in Kota Kinabalu. As I commented in my previous entry, on Sunday I went diving (nice!!). On Monday I was too lazy to go somewhere else and besides I didn’t really know what else could be interesting around KK. Going to the Mt. Kinabalu National Park finally didn’t convince me, I thought it could become really boring there without climbing the mountain. On the other hand side, staying in KK is terribly boring because there is nothing to do. I went back to the diving centre because I knew they were also offering other activities than diving. As nothing really convinced me neither I finally decided to do my Advanced Open Water Diver course. Now I can say that it was definitely the right decision. The dive sites here are not spectacular but very nice and this is perfect for a course. I mean if you go to a world-famous diving site like Sipadan you don’t really want to “waste” your time doing exercises instead of fun dives. When I did my Open Water Diver on Perhentian Islands I was almost a little impatient because I wanted to see turtles and sharks and would have preferred to skip all the exercises. I know that they are necessary but you know what I mean!
The deep dive to 30 metres was actually a bit disappointing because the visibility was almost zero. Furthermore the water was freezing cold down there. My dive instructor told me that the temperature was 23°C which in Germany would be a warm temperature for an outdoor swimming pool but compared to the 29°C above it felt cold. The other dives were really nice although visibility could have been better.
In my mind I am already somewhere else, planning my last two weeks in Japan. This afternoon I will fly back to Kuala Lumpur and on Saturday to Osaka. I am really excited and to be honest, I have a certain respect. It feels like beginning a completely new trip because I imagine it to be so different from what I have seen until now. I tried to prepare as good as possible, booking a hostel for the first two days, downloading the train timetable for the ride from the airport to the city, etc. The guesthouse already sent me some additional and very useful information, so I think I should be able to make it. Unfortunately my plane arrives very late. I hate arrivals at night in a new city because it makes travel and orientation even more difficult (not to mention the fatigue).
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