Trip to Kota Kinabalu

Kaes, Dayna, Alio, and I all went to Kota Kinabalu this past weekend. The first full day we went up to Poring Springs. It has the largest waterfall (100m) in southeast Asia. We were not able to climb to the large waterfall due to bad weather, but were able to still see a very pretty waterfall and had a great time climbing through the rainforest. On Sunday we headed to the beach. The beautiful beach and mountains in the background sure made it a picturesque place. We will post pictures soon but here is one from the island we visited on Sunday.

Bintan, Indonesia

Since Kim and I were both working in Singapore last week we decided to spend the weekend in Bintan, Indonesia. It was a very nice, relaxing weekend.

Singapore

Kim and I both worked in Singapore last week. We stayed at The Fairmont hotel which was very nice.

Singapore Skyline

Updated House Pics

Here are some updated pictures of the house and our furniture. We received the 2nd sea shipment so we now have all of our stuff here.

Maldives Honeymoon

We spent the last 5 days in Maldives for our honeymoon.

The Maldives form a group of atolls in the Indian Ocean about seven hundred kilometers from south-west of Sri Lanka. The twenty-six atolls exist out of 1,192 islets, but only 200 are inhabited by people.

We stayed at the Full Moon Resort and did lots of scuba diving, laying out on the beach, and soaking up the incredible landscape. Here are a few pictures. (Click the picture to see the full size view)

From front door of water bunglow

Pretty flowers with Kim in the background

Triggerfish we saw when snorkelling off the back of our room

Full Moon Resort Entrance

Me and Kim on the beachPicture of the water bungalows where we stayed

Scuba Diving in Miri

Kim and I did our first dives together in Miri. We did 3 dives and saw a lot of beautiful fish, coral, and plants.

Back in Miri as Mr and Mrs de Jong

Kim and I have been back in Miri for a couple of weeks now. We got our new rental car yesterday - Nissan X-Trail. Its brand new, has less than 100 miles on it, and is very nice. Here is a picture.

Kim is taking scuba lessons this week and will be certified on Sunday. We're excited since we'll be able to dive whenever we travel.
We're crossing our fingers that our air shipment gets delivered on Friday this week. The shipment includes most of Kim's clothes, our wedding gifts, and scuba gear we bought in Houston. Hopefully it arrives so we can use the scuba gear for dives this weekend.
Kim and I will likely go to KL next week (for seperate meetings) and are trying to take a long 3 or 4 day weekend somewhere like Phuket or Langkawi. This wil be our first trip! There will be plenty of pictures if we go somewhere ;-)

Scuba Certified

I've been taking scuba lessons the last two weekends and will be certified after I take the written final exam this week. Diving is great here in Miri. I can walk out my front door and be diving over coral reefs in less than 1-1/2 hours. Now I just need to buy some scuba gear.

Me and Kim

I realized that some of you might not have met Kim yet. Here is a picture of us while we were vacationing in Jamaica last year. Three weeks from today we'll be married!

Miri Town

I took a few pictures of "downtown" Miri while driving. If you've been checking this blog periodically you might think that Miri is some paradise since I've really only posted the picturesque views of the area. I often refer to the long flight over as a time machine back to 10 years ago with dot matrix printers, no drive throughs, mopeds everywhere, fastest available internet connection being 1 mb dsl, bottled water and soft drinks only sold as singles in grocery stores, etc.