Equator

My birthday was spent at a campsite in Kampala, and after an early departure from there, we stopped on the equator for breakfast. This was coming north to south – we'd already crossed it once in Kenya , but they make more of a thing about it here. Either side of the road are large white rings, with the line running at a slight angle across the road; I marked the occasion by standing in the northern hemisphere and pissing into the southern.

There is a well known, and enduring myth that water drains in a clockwise direction in the northern hemisphere, and a counter-clockwise direction in the south; in reality the Coriolis force, which in principle would cause such an effect, is far too weak, but this does not stop some physics textbooks stating it as fact (the authors are either too stupid or too lazy to actually do the maths). Also some entrepreneurial guys on the equator, are ready with conical shaped water containers to 'demonstrate' the effect.














Now it's time for me to put on my geek hat (OK I never really take it off). The Coriolis force is a so called pseudo or fictitious force, which simply means that it arises (along with the better known centrifugal force) when one transforms Newton's laws from an inertial frame (i.e. non-accelerating) into a rotating frame, such as the Earth. It is a 'real' force from the point of view of an observer in the rotating frame, and on the Earth it produces real effects, such as the prevailing winds and ocean currents, and is also an important factor in long range gunnery calculations. Formally it produces an acceleration on an object that is perpendicular to both the angular velocity of the frame and the velocity of the object relative to the frame, with a magnitude that is proportional to twice the angular velocity of the frame; the speed of the object relative to the frame; and the sine of the angle between the angular velocity and the object's velocity.

Possibly the simplest example to give is that of two people on opposite sides of a counter-clockwise spinning merry-go-round, trying to throw a ball to each other. If they throw the ball straight at each other, the ball with always veer to the left of the catcher. From the point-of-view of an observer standing in the park, the ball has simply travelled in a straight line and missed the catcher. However on the merry-go-round, the angular velocity is vertical, the ball's (initial) velocity is horizontal towards the centre, so if the merry-go-round rotates once every, T, seconds and the ball is thrown with a speed, v, it will have an acceleration to the right of 4πv/T - putting in some plausible numbers of T = 3 seconds, and v = 20m/s, then the acceleration will be approximately 80m/s2, which is quite large at more that 8 times acceleration due to gravity.

Now back to draining bowls of water; at the north (or south) pole the geometry is simplest and the effect largest. The Earth's angular velocity is vertically upwards, and water molecules will travel towards the centre of the bowl, so the set-up is similar to the merry-go-round. Again putting in some numbers, we have T = 1 day, and we assume v = 0.1m/s, this gives an acceleration of
1.45×10-5m/s, or about one seven-hundredth that of acceleration due to gravity. To put it another way, by the time the molecule has travelled 30cm, it will have acquired a velocity to the right of 3.8 metres per day – some glaciers move faster that this. The point is that the Coriolis force, when applied to a bowl of water, is far too small to affect its direction of drainage – other factors such and the shape of the bowl; the way the water is poured in; and the way the plug is removed will have a far great effect.














But there's more: On the equator, the surface of the water is parallel to the Earth's axis, so there will be no Coriolis forces acting in a way to spin the water. A few metres either side of the equator, the geometry means that the Coriolis forces will be less that a millionth of their (already weak) strength at the poles. So ironically, the worst place in the world to 'demonstrate' this effect is near the equator. Now the reason I go on about this, is that many people, on seeing the 'demonstration' believe it in the face of long established scientific knowledge, and if people are so easily convinced by a little slight-of-hand, peppered with some pseudo science, then they'll believe in crystal healing, homoeopathy, and, most worrying of all, that the MMR vaccine causes autism. One person on our truck even said “we can believe it if we want, perhaps science is wrong”. Sigh.

Melbourne

I will start this entry with a short rant: Having come from a superb hostel in Apollo Bay, the Cooee on St Kilda felt like an open prison for backpackers. Everywhere there are signs saying that stealing is a crime – if you actually need to be told this, then something is very wrong. There's no crockery or cutlery in the kitchen, but for a $10 deposit the surly staff on reception will hand you a cup, bowl, plate, knife, folk and spoon. Meanwhile, outside the hostel, crack-whores plied their trade (it made me homesick for Whitechapel). I could go on, but you get the picture.














For our first evening out, we met up with our friend Jade (who we met in Borneo), in Fitzroy. Now Melbourners like to boast about their tram system, but going from St Kilda in the south to Fitzroy in the north, took over an hour – a similar journey on the much derided London Underground would take 15 minutes.

Fitzroy is basically Shoreditch transported to the southern hemisphere. Our meeting pub, Bimbo's Bar, was a dark affair, with the obligatory lack of a name sign, old comfy leather sofas, and a music selection that could have been ripped straight off my iPod. On Monday's they do $5 pizza. Yummm.




















The next day, after getting medicals for our Madagascar expedition, we wandered around the city taking in Melbourne's famed cafe culture, before flopping down on the water's edge in front of Federation Square to watch the boat crews train.














Not wanting to cook with the other inmates at our hostel, we ventured into the heart of St Kildas for some well earned posh food. We somehow found ourselves in what is supposedly Melbourne's best Italian restaurant for Kirsten's belated birthday dinner.

Sipadan

Since Air Malaysia cancelled our direct flight from Manila to Kota Kinabalu, we had to go via Kuala Lumpur – the equivalent of going from London to Madrid via Athens. We overnighted in a functional hostel before taking the early flight across Sabah (north east Borneo) to Tawau. There was too much cloud cover to see the jungle from the plane, but when we descended into Tawau, we could see the rain forest was completely replaced by neat rows of Palm Oil plantations as far as the horizon (and presumably beyond). Also the hour long drive to Semporna (for the boat to Mabul) was entirely through plantation. Environmental groups are concerned about the destruction of wildlife habitation and loss of biodiversity, but Malaysia is the world's largest exporter of Palm Oil, so there are huge economic interests.















The oceanic island of Sipadan, sitting on top of a 600m limestone stack, is generally regarded as one of the world's top dive sites. After three days without diving, we were chomping on the regulator to get back in the water.

Sipadan itself no longer has any resorts on it, and the island is controlled by the Malaysian navy, complete with green speed boats and automatic weapons. I imagine the heavy military presences is party to do with the kidnap of 21 staff and guests from a Sipadan resort, by a Filipino islamist group in 2000. We stayed at Borneo Divers on nearby Mabul – a good midrange option. Other options include a converted oil rig which is parked about 200m off shore in front of Borneo Divers, and huts on stilts out from the beach. Given the limited permits for Sipadan (120 daily), our place managed to get enough for everyone to dive Sipadan everyday.















The diving schedule was 2 dives in the morning around Sipadan, then a afternoon dive somewhere around Mabul or Kapalai. After registering on Sipadan we started our first dive. As soon a we hit the water there was a turtle swimming round us. The turtles round here are quite used to divers, so don't swim off if you get too near, but rather just get on with their own thing (which is mainly sleeping). The sheer amount of marine life is staggering – on the second dive there was nowhere to look that you couldn't see turtles.





























So this brings me on to my first rant: We had 11 divers in the group (the dive master, camera man, and 9 guests), but normally people space themselves out, so it doesn't feel too crowded. Not this time – between inexperienced divers not being able to control their buoyancy (or their fins), and plain selfish ones who'd cut you up to get a shot, or swim in front of everyone else's shot for their own me-in-front-of-shark/turtle shot, the whole thing was rather stressful (I felt more relax in the pitch black inside a wreck in Coron). The worst offender I will call the Russian.















The boat group changed a bit for the second day, but still had the Russia, who insisted on completely ignoring the dive master and swimming off in random directions. When with the group, he assaulted several turtles – tried to pull one off a rock, knocked on the back of another's shell, and finally kicked one in the face – I've never seen someone getting so many underwater bollockings (and completely ignore them).















The second day was relatively cold, and the driving rain on the boat back to Mabul made the 20 minute journey seem like a hour. This didn't do anything to improve Kirsten's stinking cold so unfortunately she had to bow out of the afternoon dive – a muck dive beneath Seaventures' oil rig. Muck dives are so called because you look for critters that live around the relatively low visibility sandy bottom. My fish identification is pretty awful, but I think there was a crocodile fish, a stonefish, a Lionfish, a couple of Moray Eels, and a tiny sea horse (although I'm not convinced about this last one, frankly it could have been anything). I also did a sunset dive, and finally saw Mandarin fish. I think the problem is that I've been looking for something, well fish sized, when in fact they are about 1cm long.















Day three was back to warm sunny weather and a small group (including the Russian). This gave excellent light for photography, and the sea life was very cooperative with six turtles sitting below the boat on the second dive and the school of thousands of barracuda showing up bang on time at the end of the first dive.

We hired a camera for the second a third day; an ancient 3 megapixle Canon, but given the plethora of marine life, you'd have to be an imbecile to not come back with good photos. Anyway, I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Final Thoughts

The Philippines seems to get missed off many people's South East Asia itinerary, possibly because it's considered sleazy and somewhat dangerous. On the sleazy front, the stereotype is largely true, and in Manila especially, you can't swing a cat without hitting a sweaty, overweight, middle-aged white bloke, with his young Filipino girlfriend on his arm. Mindanao in the south east of the archipelago has some political violence, and tourists are warned off the region. However, the rest of the country is perfectly safe.

The Makati area of Manila is where the higher end hotels are, along with the humongous Green Belt mall, with its two cinemas, and masses of shops, bars and restaurants - a sanitised, air-conditioned, city-within-a-city. It's where the expats and the monied locals hang out. Having been to other parts of Manila, you see why.

Pretty much everyone we came across spoke fairly good English, and the TV channels are either in English or a mix of English and Tagalog (Filipino), often in the same sentence. Because of this, travel is easy, if not always comfortable – the roads in the areas we visited (Cordillera and Palawan) seem to be in a permanent state of “under construction”. Airfares are cheap, but almost all flights are in and out of Manila (so you may need two flights to get from A to B), and check baggage has a pitiful allowance of 10kg, meaning we had to hand over an extra 15 quid for each flight. Getting a boat is notoriously unreliable, partly because of their insistence on using outriggers, which sink in a light breeze.

All this means you need to not try and fit too much in, and keep a loose schedule. The Ifugao Rice Terraces were well worth the torturous bus journey; and the wreck diving in Coron is amongst the best in the world. We missed out Boracay, which is a pity, but I'll certainly want to dive Coron again, so we can pop in then (plus, it's not far to Palau...)

A short rant about guide books

We used the Lonely Planet for Eastern Europe. It's a weighty tome, as you'd expect from something covering 20 countries. And here lies the problem – it lacks detail. For Vilnius it lists only four bars, even though there are more than ten times that amount.

LP also seems badly out of date, and you get the feeling that they just slap a new cover on every two years, without bothering to do more than a superficial update of the contents; many bars and restaurants either don't exist (closed down?) or are in the wrong place on the map.
In Warsaw we picked a copy of InYourPocket (www.inyourpocket.com) – handy city guides in A5 magazine format, that quite literally fit in your pocket. Apparently these guides now cover all the major eastern European cities, and the Warsaw and Vilnius ones at least were very good, giving dozens of witty, accurate and up-to-date bar and restaurant reviews. They are also far less up-their-own-arse than LP, giving full reviews of all Vilnius' strip clubs, rather than make the snooty assumption that these places are just for saddos. Finally (and most importantly) they are cheap (they were given out free at Castle Inn, and cost €1.5 at Vilnius Tourist Information).

Kirsten's Flashpacker Reviews

New to WhiteCloudTravel.blogspot - Kirsten's Flashpacker Reviews!

In case you are planning to visit any of the places that we have been to, I have added some short reviews of the places we stayed at the end of each blog entry. Hope you find these useful.