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We've moved on from Asia to Scandinavia. Keep up with us at Jen & Peter Do Scandinavia.

Epilog (Epiblog?)

Our trip home was epic. Four days in the making and every single one of our five planes was delayed and/or canceled. The six hours we spent in the Butuan airport on Mindanao were worthwhile when President Arroyo made a surprise visit in her private jet and accompanying military helicopter. She was coming to inaugurate a new national park and we were there long enough to see her arrive and depart with all the fanfare. That put us in late in Manila and we finally arrived in China for our transit at 3 a.m. We were lucky enough to get to leave the Shanghai airport and checked into a "nearby" hotel where, almost immediately, my body picked up where it left off and I experienced respiratory and digestive malfunction and spent a tired miserable night cursing China. But the next morning, we were excited to reunite with my brother and his family (new nephew! favorite nephew!) and we all boarded our plane bound for Canada. Many hours later we were still on the tarmac and by the time we would have been over Alaska we were checking back into a Chinese hotel while our plane underwent overnight repairs. The airport hotel was pimped out Chinese style with a round bed and mirrors on the ceiling and I fell asleep worrying that the mirrored tiles would fall on my head and kill me before I could get back on a plane and head home. I slept restfully, however, and we left on time the next morning and sailed across the sea and then into Seattle and on to Spokane and the homecoming celebration was made even more joyous by the news that our best friends had just given birth to their second kid and we swung by the hospital to pay them a surprise visit. The new parents were at the same level of exhaustion as we were but it was as sweet a welcome home as we could have ever imagined. Spokane is cold but the air smells so fresh and clean I could cry. The lilacs are blooming and Peter's family sent us some coffee and champagne (and fresh-picked asparagus) in a welcome home package and I can honestly say it is good to be home.

The End

What is there to say when something like this comes to an end? Everything in the past few days has felt very final. Our last village disco was like prom night. I danced "one last dance" with every man on the island it seemed. Yesterday we went on one last motorbike ride through the island and stopped at the Flying Fox for one last German buffet, where the treasure hunter didn't remember us (been there like five times) and started, one last time, to tell us all about his gold panning championships and treasure hunting trips in the Florida Keys. Tonight it will be one last pool tournament and one last pina colada in the hut watching the sunset. The waves are dinky today, but we will try for one last surfing session. It's been an amazing three months...an amazing year really and we are of course changed but no so much that you won't recognize us when we return. We're not as tan as you might think and our surfing arms not as big as we'd hoped, but we have a new outlook on life and the world, we are on a new crusade about overpopulation and alternative energy, and we are unemployed blank slates returning to a life punctuated with more than one question mark. Please don't ask what we plan to do when we get home. All I know is that my brother is getting married and we have a lot of friends and family to catch up with in the coming weeks. If you need me, I'll be drinking an IPA next to a river, drying out and planning my next move.

Home, Sweet Semi-Permanent, Home

Well, we're down to our last week across the Pacific and we are back at Oceans 101 on Siargao Island. We were welcomed back with open arms. All the girls came running out as a screaming mob when we pulled up on our motorcycle cab and nearly ripped us off the bike with hugs. We had been gone just over a month and they all expressed their fears that we wouldn't come back at all. Not too much has changed. A few guests are still here that we know, the owner's wife is pregnant, and the kids have grown up a bit—the six year old's pool game is decidedly improved and the baby is walking. We missed a local surfing competition by a day and the closing ceremonies involved the "Miss Beach Babe Summer 2008" contest, which we attended the night we got back. All the local resorts (this word might be slightly deceiving—a resort here is usually a couple of palm huts and a short-order restaurant) sponsored a contestant who participated in the sarong round and the "summer wear" round, during which the girls paraded around in their skimpiest bikinis. And even though a rival resort's girl sprayed herself down with water and proceeded to hump the podium, the Oceans 101 girl won the crown, which probably had a lot to do with our girls' screaming and the "40% audience participation" points. She also won some plastic jewelry and an all expenses paid trip for two to Surigao City—the dirty and noisy ferry terminal we have decided is hands-down the worst city in the Philippines.

It felt good to unpack our backpacks and resume our relaxing routine, eating familiar breakfasts and surfing our favorite spots. I'm trying to be as lazy as possible because all the unknowns about the future are pressing down on me and threatening to undo three months of serenity I've had here in the Philippines. It will be sad to leave our odd home on Siargao Island, but we are, nevertheless, anxious to be home, where the bluebird sings to the lemonade springs (reading Stegner again), where the handouts grow on bushes and the cigarettes grow on trees. Lookout, Big Rock Candy Mountain, we're coming home.

Sagada: Where Pine Trees and Banana Trees Live Together in Perfect Harmony

Immediately after leaving the rain forests of Borneo, we headed north from Manila into the mountains. We were pleasantly surprised by and completely unprepared for how cool it would be in the Cordillera. Our bus wound up and up over six thousand feet on an unpaved bumpy road and after almost nine hours on the bus (including a two hour rest at a landslide) we arrived, slightly battered, in Sagada. The sight and smell of pine trees and the best cup of coffee we've had in all of Asia were refreshing to say the least. We spent almost a week in Sagada, hiking to hanging coffins and rice terraces and just enjoying the clean mountain air. Now we are in the hip college town of Baguio--ex-military R&R area--waiting to get on a plane this weekend back down to Mindanao. This part of the Philippines has been a really nice place to be at the end of our trip. It's so different from anything else we've seen and is making us anxious to get home. Suddenly pine forests seem like the most exotic things in the world.

Leaving Borneo

Well, it turns out that three weeks in Sabah is too much. It's not that it's not a great place to be, but it ended up being way more expensive than we planned. Besides Uncle Tan's, there's no other affordable way to get to wildlife. Malaysia knew it had some natural treasures on its hands and let in big eco-resorts to their national parks and ex-logging areas, so that the wilderness here is for high end travelers. I should have known that if my old company did trips here, we wouldn't be able to afford it. But it was two weeks very well spent. After the Kinabatangas River, we headed to the fishing village of Semporna, which is the setting off point for trips to Sipidan Island--Borneo's premier diving spot. While not too far of shore, Sipidan is not connected to the same continental plate as Borneo, and the 900 meter trench that separates it from its island neighbors is home to a lot of marine life. Unfortunately Peter was recovering from a head cold (after food poisoning and a cough) and only was able to make one short dive before he thought his head might explode. I went on two snorkels without him on Sipidan and saw a huge school of jacks like a glittering brick wall, six or seven green sea turtles, and my first shark--a white-tipped reef shark. It really was an amazing place. Now we're in Kota Kinabalu--the big city--where we celebrated Peter's birthday by enjoying a lot of air conditioning and splurging on a nice Japanese dinner. We're headed back to the Philippines tomorrow morning and will explore the Cordillera region of North Luzon before making our way back to Siargao Island to retrieve our stuff and catch a few last waves. We'll be back in the States in exactly three weeks, which is incredibly hard to imagine. Finally, I'd like to thank the President for his gracious stimulus package. I received mine yesterday, and it has officially financed our trip to Borneo. Consider the Malaysian economy sufficiently stimulated.

Images of Borneo

Here's some pictures of some of the amazing wildlife we saw in Borneo. The best sightings were enjoyed without a camera stuck to my face, so you'll have to take my word for it that watching orangutans build a nest for the night (swinging around, breaking huge branches, etc.) was incredible and best experienced in the moment. And all the great birds were fast flying blurs of iridescence. The gigantic reptiles, however, posed and sometimes smiled while we pulled up slowly in our boat. The insects were usually accommodating as well.