The amazing around-the-world burger project: Borneo, Malaysia.
I was rolling with two burgers in Borneo last night. Unfortunately, a “hip injury” kept me from enjoying the roll fully. In fact, I had to stop half ways to go and heal my injury. Here are the verdicts:
First one had trained for the street. A so called “street-burger”. It was all about defending rape chokes, bearhugs and wrist grabs, but in reality it never got much sparring done. This showed off under pressure, where it was greatly confused on what to do when I mounted it and went for the submission.
It didn’t have a belt, since it only “trained for the street”, but I graded it a white belt three stripes anyway.
First burger was bringing his friend to the gym that night. It was a richer kid, showing off a little bit. In reality though, it only had a few fancy moves to show off (such as “the apple slice”) and was lacking fundamentals. I felt like it would be a good idea if the two friends where following each other in training, so I graded it to a white belt three stripes as well.
No more Borneo, lots more toilet visits.
Had my last training here in Borneo today. There was a good group of people and I think I managed to give them some stuff they can use in their game. After the class, I rolled for about 15 minutes with Albert, the owner of the gym. He is a very good blue belt and we had a great technical sparring session. It was really nice to roll again, although I had to stop early since I was out of energy and also had to go to the toilet for the 40th time today. I am seriously getting tired of this, I hope it will be better for tomorrow. I had some Chinese medicine against diarrhea called “Chi-Kit”. The name alone should be enough to cure anything!
Getting up early and going to Singapore for three days. Will meet up with some of my friends from the gym back home and is really looking forward to that.
I also had some Malaysian burgers today and will post a review soon ;)
Location:Jalan Abell,Kuching,Malaysia
Borneo jungle trip
I am only here in Borneo for two days, so I was a little busy seeing stuff. It would be too easy to just sleep and train, so I am happy that I got to do something today.
From early morning, we went on a kayak trip through the jungle. It was beautiful, quiet and the weather was perfect. It has been raining for the past few days here, so there was a nice stream which meant we didn’t really had to do much apart from steering for three hours. It was like the jungle took us for a nice, guided tour and we could just lean back and enjoy the ride. Very cool experience.
Still not 100% recovered from the food poisoning. Feel a bit dizzy when I walk around but it is getting better. We are training again in a few hours and then going to find Malaysia’s best burger!
Location:Jalan Mathie,Kuching,Malaysia
Tough day at the office
Today has been a really tough day. I was in bed until 16:00 when Albert picked me up and we went to the gym. I felt really dizzy, nauseous and had a headache, but there was no way I would skip teaching the class.
The gym here is absolutely beautiful. Clean, well designed and with big windows all around, providing fresh air and a tropical view.
My brain worked really slow. I was catching my breath each time I had just demonstrated a technique. I managed to roll a single round with one of the white belts and had to stop after that. No energy in my body whatsoever.
I weighed myself and was three kilos under weight. This was after I just drank three liters, so guess I must have lost around 5-6 liters of liquid during the night. No wonder I feel dehydrated.
I bought some water, salts and stuff and went back to the hotel room. Earlier, I had bought a chicken sandwich that I didn’t manage to eat. As I took a bite of it in the hotel room, I realized that it had the same sauce on as the chicken wings I had thrown up and tasted all night. I almost panicked and thought I would have to throw up again, but lots of water and chewing gum saved me. Don’t think I’ll be eating that anyways ;)
Now it is time to get some sleep. Tomorrows schedule is jungle trip and more training.
Food poisoning did not come as a surprise…
But it still wasn’t very nice to shit and throw up all night long :-/
I was prepared for this to happen. Everyone told me that I would definitely get food poisoning in India or Turkey, so maybe I was getting a little confident when I passed through these countries with no problems what so ever. I even ate all the local food in all the local restaurants I could find.
Yesterday, I arrived here in Kuching, Borneo. Albert picked me up from the airport and we went straight to a nice little street market to eat. I had some delicious local food and was ready for bed. Woke up a few hours later and felt seriously bad. Traveling alone is great for meeting people, but not so great when you are sick and could need some help getting water, etc. Twelve hours, and not much sleep, later now and I feel a bit better. Had been looking forward to sparring and physical workout tonight, but my guess is that I will be completely exhausted in a very short time.
Time to relax and drink water for a few hours, then teaching tonight and tomorrow jungle trip!
On my way to Borneo
It was three nice and relaxing days in Perhentian Kecil. No electricity, hot water or mobile signal. Internet was only open from 7-9 pm every night.
I spent most of the days relaxing on the beach and in the hammock. There were lots of waves due to the earthquake in Japan, so I spent some time bodyboarding as well. Good fun!
I met a group of Brits on the way to the island and ended up hanging out with them for my entire stay there. Once again I was experiencing a new culture, this time the authentic British one of drinking beer and getting sunburned on the beach. More about the island experiences will go in the book :)
Now I am in Kuala Lumpur airport waiting for my flight to Kuching. I shared a (1984 totally trashed and 60 km per hour) taxi from the boat to the airport with an American guy. He wasn’t flying till the afternoon and my own flight was three hours delayed, so we ended up hanging out all morning around the airport. He had a really cool guitar, I got to play a little on. As we were sitting in the airport playing guitar, loads of malaysians came by to check it out. It was a fiberglass, super light one and they all wanted to try it. Many of them actually were really good! One of them must have been some kind of superstar, he travelled with a band, played like a pro and looked like an Asian Bon Jovi lol They invited us to their concert in Kuala Lumpur, but unfortunately, I am not in the city tonight :-/
I can’t help thinking about how many cool experiences like this the world around me posses. Twice in three days, I ask strangers to share a taxi and out of the blue, my day completely changes direction and new friends are made. I guess that anyone around me can either become my new best friend or someone I never get to know.
