Previously on "Two Up and Overloaded" -
Marisa: We finally completed our tip-to-tip journey across the northern coast of Borneo. But our adventures in East Malaysia were far from over, because we were about to take one more dip in the mysterious and magical Sulu Sea to a very unusual part of the ocean where coral and underwater sea life has thrived. An old World War II bomb site from the Japanese occupation of Malaysia. And we were about to dive into the crater itself.
Intro: Hey everyone! Nice to have you here. We are Tim, and Marisa Notier. I ride in the front. And I’m in the rear. We travel the world and we pack too much gear. Oh, all the places we’ll go! Through rain and through sleet and through mud and through snow. Oh, all the things we’ll see! We’ve been to a country or two. Or three! Oh, all the fun we’ve had! To have you along, would make us real glad. So give us a like, and hit subscribe to join us along our epic ride.
[This episode is dedicated to those who support us here on YouTube.]
[Southeast Asia Journey - Day 125]
Tim: We woke up that morning to another beautiful sunrise. It's just, uh, they don't ever end.
[Kudat - Malaysia]
Marisa: Good morning. It’s so beautiful.
It truly is so beautiful there. And you know what made the sunrise even better?
Tim: Donuts!
Marisa: Donuts!
Tim: Homemade Malaysian donuts.
Marisa: Man, they're so good.
Tim: Absolutely delicious. And they had the little cake things.
Marisa: Yeah, those little coconut kind of layer cakes?
Tim: Mhm. And then tempeh? Some kind of tempeh treat. Was that a coconut tempeh treat?
Marisa: Yeah, I'm not sure what it was, but all of it was delicious.
Tim: Very delicious. Absolutely the best way to start your day is with coconut and sugar and fried bread.
Marisa: Yes.
Hey everyone. We're about to go snorkeling once again. The owner here, he's such a nice gentleman. He said, "Hey, I'll take you out to a little lagoon area that's just offshore where you can see some coral. So we're not taking a boat, we're going to apparently walk/swim over there and see what we can see.
Tim: What we can see!
Marisa: Yeah, I'm super excited.
Tim: Marisa went under the water, Marisa went under the water, Marisa went under the water... To see what she could see! In the China Sea. In the Sulu Sea…
The happiest grumpy cat ever! Yes, look at this guy! Look at this guy. Yeah, will you give an accidental kiss? Yeah buddy, I got one.
Marisa: We could walk right from the guest house where we were staying out into the ocean, and there was a very special place where coral and tropical fish thrived. It was an actual World War II bomb crater that they dropped the bomb, it created this crater in the ocean, and that's where all of this sea life had taken root. And we could walk there right from the guest house.
Tim: We could swim there.
Marisa: We could swim there, you're right, this was not walking.
Tim: We swam. The walking distance was like 15 feet, and the remainder was swimming.
Marisa: Now for the flippers.
Tim: Flippity, flappity, flippity, flap...
Marisa: You sit on the little wall and then put the flippers on. So that's what I'm going to do.
Thank goodness for those flippers though, because otherwise, it's slow going swimming that far.
Tim: Yeah, flippers on land, not very useful. Very trip hazard-y. They call them flat tires when you're in your sandals and it gets stuck on the ground, and you almost break an ankle.
Marisa: Oh gosh!
Tim: But yeah, flippers under the sea... Useful. Check. You learn stuff here, guys.
Marisa: The battle for Borneo was a successful campaign by Japanese Imperial forces in 1941 to 1942, fighting for control of the island of Borneo. At the time, Borneo was divided between the Dutch East Indies and the British protectorates and Crown colonies. The British Brooke family ruled Sarawak for almost a century, while the Dutch had Kalimantan, the southern half of the island. But with its rich petroleum and perfect location on the main sea route through the Indochina Seas, Borneo was a prime target for Japan.
And so, on December 13th, 1941, the Japanese invasion began, and the battles for Borneo lasted until the surrender of the Allied troops on April 1st, 1942. Though the Japanese Occupation of Borneo was brief, only lasting until 1945, they left a huge impression on the island, including bombed-out portions of the oceanfront, such as this crater that we were swimming into.
Tim: They surely did leave an impression.
Marisa: Oh! Geez...
Tim: That joke's going to bomb.
Marisa: It was so beautiful in there.
Tim: Yeah, we were swimming, and I don't know if anybody watched the reboot of The Live Action Little Mermaid, but the light comes through the water and then splits into different shafts of light. And there's Marisa like a little mermaid herself.
Marisa: Aww.
Tim: And there was Nemo!
Marisa: Yes! We actually saw Nemo. That was my first time ever...
Tim: We found him.
Marisa: We did!
Tim: My body is really ultra buoyant. I don't know if it's like all the milk I drank or something as a kid. But I can swim down like five feet, fighting the anti-gravity, if you will. Yeah. And then as soon as I'm like, "Oh, there's Nemo." I just start, I'm like a buoy, just back up.
Marisa: You know what? I'm the exact same way though! I take a deep breath and I try as hard as I can to go under, and then I just go up.
Tim: It's crazy.
Marisa: Right up to the surface.
Tim: Like, gravity either pulls me to the surface of the ocean in either direction, like at terminal velocity. The self-made floaties that I have all over my body restricted me from getting down all the way to the bottom.
Marisa: It is remarkable though how this place of destruction has become a haven for life now. Because the water temperatures of the Sulu Sea provide favorable conditions for the growth of aquatic life. It boasts one of the world's most productive and diverse ecosystems. The Sulu Sea lies in the northern portion of the Coral Triangle, a region popularly called the center of the world's marine biodiversity. This includes 2,000 species of fish, around 400 kinds of marine algae, 33 kinds of mangroves, 16 types of seagrass, and 400 species of corals.
Tim: And one white whale, beluga-ing around near the surface, just half in, half out. The blowhole malfunctioning because of...
Marisa: Your beard.
Tim: My beard.
Marisa: Coming back, we were exhausted because we had to swim all that distance back to the guest house. Woo!
Yeah, that was absolutely unbelievable. Like, oh my goodness. Woo.
Wow, that snorkeling experience was so amazing. I don't know when my Klingon head is going to go away. But um, it's worth it. Yeah. We have a very, very, very long journey today of an hour ride, a full hour. I know, it's going to be tough. And the reason why we're not going that far is because there are no hotels between the next town and our final destination, which is Sandakan. And so we didn't want to push it. We're going to take the full hour today to go to that town, then it'll only be like a 5 hour and 20 minute ride. We're going to relax a little bit now and then head off.
Tim: We had a very short day that day.
Marisa: Yeah, of riding the motorcycle. One full hour we were going.
Tim: But before we left, we had our last meal with Udey and we had more crab.
Marisa: Again, it was so good! The seafood that they cook there is amazing.
I didn't expect lunch. That was so nice.
Tim: This part of the world was leaving a really lasting impression on us. And so we kind of have breaking news.
Marisa: Breaking news!
Tim: We are thinking, and we have started the steps to achieve this goal of starting a tour going around Borneo on motorcycles led by these two… some would say amazing, some others would say babbling, people!
Marisa: It’s a motorcycle tour around this region of East Malaysia on the island of Borneo, and we are hoping to take you to places just like this where you can be eating this incredible seafood if that's something that you're into and you can be going to the tip of Borneo and riding through the jungle paths and seeing all the incredible things that we have seen such as Mount Kinabalu, Mahua Waterfalls, and some really incredible stuff to come.
Tim: No spoilers though. But yes, it's been absolutely incredible and we are really excited. It is just in the birthing stage, if you will. We are a galaxy yet to be formed but all the gases are colliding. And this amazing spectacle will happen. And the magic of all this insanity and beauty, we're aiming for a price tag under $3,000 USD, we're looking at around 7 to 9 days.
There's a whole lot of things still yet to be concrete, but we'd love to hear feedback from you. We'd love to hear if you're interested and we are aiming for like November and December of this year. Yes. But if any of this sparks interest to you and you're still riding along with us throughout these next episodes and you start seeing things that are just incredible, please do shoot us an email at
2upandoverloaded@gmail.com.
Marisa: That's the number 2
Tim: - 2upandoverloaded@gmail.com -
And we'd love to hear from you. We'd love to start organizing our first maiden voyage tour, if you will. And yes, we are very, very excited to share this part of the world with a few of you and it would be fantastic.
Marisa: So one thing we've been doing to combat this hot weather is when we ride, we wet our little neck buff things. Tim wears it around his neck, I wear mine over my head. Then, with the air vents of the motorcycle helmet, I can feel that breeze and feels like cold water running over my scalp. It's amazing.
Tim: Uh, are you okay in there?
Marisa: I'm okay! Just talking myself in the bathroom.
Tim: So we said our goodbyes to our new friends that we had met, Udey and Mark, our Scottish friend and lovely host. Great company, had the time of our lives, but then we had to get back on the motorcycle for an enduring one hour journey south-ish.
Tim: All right. Thank you guys!
Marisa: Thank you!
Tim: All right.
Marisa: Bye!
Tim: Look at the big bikes! Hey! Nice! You guys riding from Kuching or where
you riding from?
Motorcyclist: KK (Kota Kinabalu).
Tim: Oh, nice, nice!
Marisa: Wow! It's a motorcycle gathering.
Motorcyclist: Hello.
Marisa: Hello, heyyy! Hey, thank you! Malaysia's amazing! Bye!
We were headed to the town of Langkon, which is a tiny town. I wouldn't call it a village, but it's a small, small town.
Tim: It's got a little shopping area and a hotel.
Marisa: Yes. Which is just what we like, and it had a very beautiful, awesome, and well-priced hotel there.
Tim: Thank you.
Marisa: There was a view out of the window. This is true. The hotel had great air conditioning, which is just what we needed, and we were able to have a wonderful rest that evening.
Tim: Yeah, I went out at night, there was a bunch of birds on a line. But they were all facing one direction. Yeah, isn't that weird? Insane, but I have no idea why. There was not like 99 birds facing that way and one bird, the rebel, facing the other. No, they all got in line.
Marisa: And it was like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of birds.
Tim: An insane amount, an absolutely insane amount.
Tim: Next time - As we continue to ride our motorcycle further along our loop of Sabah, we realize that having a functioning motorcycle is extremely important to completing our goal. We hit a bump and then the bike just stopped.
But all that will be in the next episode.
Marisa: So thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you liked it. If you did, please give us a big thumbs up and hit the subscribe button below.
Tim: Ding ding!
Marisa: And if you are into Patreon and would like to support us here on our channel for as little as $1 a month, you can get exclusive little clips, you can get our videos early and ad-free, and you can get a postcard sent to you.
Tim: You get a postcard. And if you have signed up in the past or present and you do want a postcard, just make sure that in the field in the notes you put your address, because it's very important for receiving postcards.
We are not too far away from having a hundred of you kind and generous folks out there being Patreons, anywhere from the dollar and up. And this is kind of like our little NPR pledge drive, you know. So support us, you don't get a tote bag, but you do get a postcard. This episode and this journey and this adventure that we are on is definitely brought to you by viewers like you.
So thanks a million to everybody out there, and we hope you're enjoying the ride along with us.
Marisa: We'll be seeing you next time.
Tim: Stay safe everybody.
Marisa: Bye!
Tim: Peace.
Marisa: Because we're going to be dropping more details on everything about this tour to come in the following episodes.
Tim: This is true. We just wanted to get it off of our chest, if you will, that we are loving this part of the world and we are formally inviting you guys to join us. And we're, we're very excited to see what can come of this.
