A few weeks ago, I went to the Komodo Islands national park in Indonesia. Did a liveaboard which was a cool and interesting experience. Whilst the area is known for the komodo dragons, the series of islands is also a fabulous snorkeling location. I spent more time island-hopping, snorkeling and on the water than on land.
Managed to tick off a bunch of wildlife and marinelife on my Komodo bingo card.
Sea turtles – tick.
Manta rays – tick
Lots and lots of fish – tick
Komodo dragons – tick.
The unexpected and real highlight of the trip was swimming with manta rays. I feel as though there’s a limited time to experience swimming with them, and I was super lucky.
I went out to Manta point on a one-day island-hopping tour and got one jump in where I could see them swimming along the bottom of the ocean.
When I did the 3D/2N liveaboard, we got to do 4 jumps at Manta point and got to see and swim with them on every single jump.
Here’s a few of my best takes on my GoPro up close and personal with a squadron of manta rays. (Yep, had to google the collective noun for manta rays!). Only downside was jellyfish and sea lice etc, and I did not go unscathed. But totally worth it!
Was super lucky with the timing and conditions – I guess it was manta be!
Crocodile. Yet to spot one here, but determined to see one (from afar, of course!) during my time here.
Pangolin. Rare. Yet to spot one….but hoping to encounter a pangolin in Singapore or at least somewhere in South East Asia.
Oriental pied hornbill. DONE
So far, I’ve managed to see most of the above in my random wanderings here, often when I least expect to see them.
One of my earlier encounters in Singapore was a really interesting looking bird, one that I had never heard of before. I had only learned about this bird through a work colleague and so whilst I had just learned about them when I moved here, I was able to identify it when I encountered one. They are such an interesting looking bird.
One weekday morning, I unexpectedly came across this bird perched on my apartment balcony. Such a rare sighting especially in a residential urban area.
Check out this Oriental pied hornbill that was on my balcony (at the time I lived on the fourth floor) near my laundry washing stand. It freaked me out to see such a large bird on my balcony, within a condo complex. I was able to catch a fleeting photo before it flew off. But it was super cool to see one so close. (This encounter was back in November 2021)
This is the one and only photo I got of it, although have seen them since in trees from afar. Their bills are so fascinating – it’s a like a doublebeak. Anyway this was a very cool bird spotting from the comfort of my then apartment.
I’ll continue to post more of my wildlife bingo encounters.
It’s been a while since I’ve written an ows race report! So here we go.
Since 2021 (post-covid era), I’ve been managing to keep up the tradition of at least one ows race a year. And now that I’m in Singapore, I’m trying to tick off swims throughout South East Asia – SEA swimming if you will 😉
I’ll kickstart my backlog of ows race reports with my first (attempted) ows race for this year, which (spoiler alert) was sadly a DNF. Since moving to Singapore, I’ve been partaking in the Oceanman swim series. This year, wanting to tick off a swim in Thailand I signed up for the 5km ows race Oceanman Krabi. But unfortunately things did not go as planned for this race, before even leaving Singapore!
Oceanman Krabi OWS race on 18 May 2024:
I had booked a daytime flight out of Singapore at 11:55am on the Saturday before the race, due to arrive at Krabi at 12:25pm, leaving enough time to attend the race briefing etc, with the swim to start on the Sunday morning. My departure flight was delayed to 3:45pm instead, and didn’t actually end up departing Singapore until 5:30pm. What a waste of a day, having to spend over 6 hours at Changi airport. Wish I had known earlier that the flight wasn’t going to leave until late in the afternoon, then I could have stayed at home! Le sigh.
Ultimately I didn’t arrive at the race hotel in Krabi until 7pm, leaving me less than 12 hours before I had to swim 5km. I didn’t have a chance to see the beach (and it was dark) or the race course, or even attend the race briefing. By the time I grabbed dinner, and checked in and settled into hotel and get gear ready for the next morning, I did manage to be asleep by 10pm. It had a been a long day of being stuck at the airport and travel to get there.
Fast forward to Sunday morning: I woke up at 5:20am to get ready for a 7am race start.
The swim started off ok, with the water temp being a little too warm for my liking, around 32 degrees celcius by my guesstimate. About a km from the shore, the swim then became a jellyfish soup. I literally saw hundreds, if not thousands of jellyfish. You had to actively try and dodge them. The amount of jellyfish was insane. I ended up getting stung soooo severely at around the 2km mark. With no rescue boat nearby, another stung swimmer and I made the decision to swim to one of the course boats we could see around a half km away, so we slowly swum up to it, in a lot of pain. Before we reached that boat, we got picked up on by one of the smaller boats instead and got taken to the bigger medical boat instead.
There were a few of us on the medical boat, where we got doused in vinegar. My face and arm in particular were stinging, on fire and red. I was in a lot of pain. Eventually they took us off the medical boat into another smaller boat which took us to the beach/shore so we could officially DNF. The stinging pain was real!
Back on land, my skin was very red and stinging!
My face and skin were red, everything hurt, and the constant stinging felt like I was fire, with no signs of fading. I grabbed my stuff and went back to my hotel room so I could stand under the shower, and get clean and the salt and vinegar combo off my skin. Post-shower, and over the next 12 hours, the jellyfish effect kicked in. Skin got red and patchy, and the lacerations started to come through. The stinging wouldn’t subside and continued until the next day. It was super uncomfortable and not fun.
Post-shower, my arm was feeling hot and battered, and continued to feel hot and throbby.
Opposite the hotel, there was thankfully a small pharmacy where I showed them my stings and they gave me some pills and cream to help with the burning pain and stinging. Vinegar, ice and meds were my best friends.
Over the course of the next 2 weeks, my jellyfish stings became itchy, inflamed, with dark lacerations to my arms and my cheek. I applied various creams to help soothe the itchiness, and to help with the skin repair. The lacerations have since faded, but geez, this was not a fun experience. I’ve swum in races before with jellyfish, but never in my entire swimming life had I been stung so bad as this. Incidentally, I got stung by a jellyfish on my lip (that wasn’t fun!) on a previous holiday (non-swim race related) in Phuket, so not my first time being stung in Thailand.
Warning: jellyfish sting photos ahead. Some of these photos were taken at various points up to 3 weeks after being stung. The stings went through phases: initial red patchy splotchiness, then the lacerations come though, then the lacerations appear as lines of lumps and got itchy and inflamed, then they appear as brown scars and lines which eventually fade. The scars and discloration for the most part have disappeared after weeks of applying creams to help soothe them and help with the fading. I was predominantly stung on my left underam, down the arm, and side chest area, left cheek/jaw, and slightly on my right arm (but nowhere near as bad as the left underarm). It was like I had hugged a soccer ball-sized jellyfish midswim under the water on my left side, hence my left arm and cheek being the main affected areas.
Post-race, many swimmers complained about the amount of jellyfish. Race organisers acknowledged that given the amount of jellyfish, this race for 2025 has been scheduled for March (instead of May when this took place).
What looked like an idyllic race venue, was marred by what lurked beneath the waters. This is a risk of open water swimming, but also unfortunate when Mother Nature prevails.
The following day after the race, I went for a stroll along the beach and the beachshore was littered with jellyfish, so not surprising I had gotten stung. The race really shouldn’t have been held in such conditions.
I was bummed about DNFing this race, only completing about 2.5km of the 5km course before pulling out.
My quest to complete an ows race in Thailand remains unfulfilled. Nonetheless I recently did a 5km ows race in Vietnam which was jellyfish-free, so swim race for this year is accomplished.
An Oceanman swim in Thailand still remains on the bucketlist for next year….maybe Phuket might be a better (jellyfish) option.
It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post. I shall just say that 2018 has been an EPIC year for me. And hopefully I’ll get around to writing about some various highlight at some point before the year end.
But for the past 8 months of the year, I was swimming. A lot. I achieved a bucketlist item of swimming Tsugaru Channel (that body of water between Honshu and Hokkaido) and one of the Oceans Seven swims. I swam it as part of an international 3-person relay with two friends (also expats in Tokyo). And for the record, I’ve been trying to do this swim for the past 2-3 years and was never chosen for a slot. But at the end of 2017, I was finally notified of a last-minute slot for 2018 (I think due to someone else cancelling).
It was quite the journey in terms of training and build-up and the actual swim itself. Will eventually write an epic swim report, but for now, I will leave you with the EPIC video documenting our channel swim which we did on 19-20 July 2018. The film was shot and edited by my amazingly talented friend (and crew support on the swim) Matt.
For your viewing pleasure: (and yes, we really did this!)
So many high teas which I have yet to blog about. This one dates back to May 2015. I was on a business trip to Hong Kong and managed to catch up with a friend over there and squeeze in a high tea.
There’s no shortage of high teas in Hong Kong, but I finally settled on the Mandarin Oriental Hotel as it was in a convenient location.
There’s nothing like a relaxing afternoon of tea and food.
Sadly, the afternoon tea wasn’t particularly amazing, but it sufficed.
Another opportunity to swim with wild dolphins, this time I got to go on as crew.
It’s pretty amazing to be able to swim with wild dolphins. It didn’t get off to a great start but in the end, we saw a lot. I got in one particular awesome jump.
At one point, we got so close to them, it was pretty incredible.
First open water swim race for the summer and the year was a 5k-er. The destination – idyllic. Water temp – too hot.
I had wanted to do an open water swim race in Okinawa for a while now – Japan’s answer to paradise. Ishigakijima did not disappoint. A really beautiful island for water lovers. Even managed to round a few friends to join not only the trip, but also the swim.
Headed down on the first flight on Thursday and spent Thursday and Friday sightseeing. Saturday May 30 was race day. It was a scorcher. In the mid-30 degrees, but felt closer to 40. And the water was like a bath. Ugh. Much too hot and uncomfortable for my liking.
The race was held at a beach off the ANA resort hotel.
The boys were gonna be fast. Was also going to test out my brand new Garmin in my first open water swim race for the year. My goal time was to do it comfortably under 2 hours, anything around 1hour 45 I would be happy with. The last 5km swim race I did back in November without training, took me just over 2 hours to do. But since then I’ve gotten back into the training.
Pleased to say I swam a time of 1 hour 40min which was on par with my expectations. Not overly fast but not bad for the first race of the season. Got to leave more fuel in the tank this year, as I have decided to do a 10km marathon open water swim.
I got first place in my age group for females, so not bad. Snared me a gold medal. It’s always nice to not go home empty handed. The boys also kicked arse. They took 2nd and 3rd place in the male age group with way faster times than me, both beating me by over 20 minutes.
As for the swim race itself – water was way too warm. Wetsuits definitely not required. It was also quite a shallow swim, as we swum over reefs. Got to see a few fish. Also a bit of a current, but all in all a decent swim. Course was a little tricky though with many overswimming the course. It was a 2.5km course, requiring 2 laps.
And much to my disappointment, something happened to my Garmin. Must have hit a button as a swum. Timing was pretty spot on, but it didn’t register the whole distance.
Another belated swim race report from last year.
Race date: July 2015
Venue: Niijima island
You might recall that I did this race back in 2011. Back then it was the longest distance open water swim race I had done before. Since then I’ve done a few 5km, an 8km and a 10km race. I’ve pretty much gotten to a point where I usually don’t like to enter in swim races less than 4km. Am trying to do more endurance swims, but I’m still pretty slow.
Last year, we got a small posse to come to Niijima island for the swim race again. In addition, a small group of Aussies from the Brighton Icebergs also came to Japan to do this swim and I got to meet up with some them.
The Niijima swim once again involved getting an early jetboat ride from Tokyo to the island. Perhaps too early for some.
Here is everyone passed out or perhaps they are just conserving their energy.
I like this particular race. It’s always well organised and entry fee includes refreshments and a free towel for every finisher.
The bananas this year even had messages of motivation which was a really cute touch.
I did the 4.5km distance and my time was super slow. 1 hour, 49minutes. The last time I did this swim, I did it 1hr, 36min. I was 13 minutes slower.
Last year was not a great swimming year for me. In 2014, I ramped up my training to do some endurance swim races so last year I significantly cut back on swimming. This year, I am trying to ramp up again with my eyes on a couple of marathon races.
I’ve signed up for 4.5km swim race again this year on Niijima island and I’m hoping to improve on last year’s time. But I feel I’m getting slower as I get older.
I have a massive backlog of blog posts. I didn’t snowboard much this past winter. Only managed to get out a few weekend. But here is a post from Winter 2015 (March last year) of a snowboarding trip to Hakuba.
Over the winter, whilst on a snowboarding trip to Nozawa Onsen, I spotted me an elusive kamoshika. A kamoshika is a Japanese goat-antelope animal usually found in the mountains. I was surprised to find this one near the streets of the village, right outside my favourite onsen at Nozawa, it was just amongst the bushes.
They are rather an unusual looking animal, and it was the first time I had ever seen one.
Memoirs of Aleisha 
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