Monty Python's transsexual Loretta gives birth via breech birth

The last night with our friend Rudi on board.

We are moored in the beautiful Marina Sutera Harbour in Kota Kinabalu when I am woken up in the night by abdominal pain that makes me feel like I am Monty Python's transsexual Loretta and in the middle of a breech birth at Circus Maximus.

(If you don't know it, see youtube “Monty Python - Loretta”) ;)

Painkillers and a hot water bottle provide some relief, but I know what these breech birth pains mean: kidney stones!

Fortunately, we are no longer somewhere in the wilderness, but in a big city with excellent hospitals.

From saying goodbye to Rudi at the airport I am quickly taken to the hospital where I immediately end up on the operating table.

The stones are crushed with lasers, a splint is placed in the kidney to facilitate the removal of the debris, and I am supposed to return to the hospital after 10 days.

All we can do is stay in the marina the whole time and wait.

Long story short, I'm now as good as new, and my first major medical checkup in 18 years says everything is fine. Well done, Bühring!

Compliments to the Glenn Eagles Hospital and its modern facilities as well as super doctors… with super fees.

Finally we were able to leave the Marina water campsite.

Our visas have expired and we have to leave Malaysia for now anyway.

Visa run towards Brunei!

Of course, after we had cleared out, we took our time to enjoy the solitude of deserted islands again after the enforced Maria stay.

One of the islands is Tiga or Survivor Island.

We were here in 2020, before the pandemic, and a lot has changed. The resort we anchored in front of back then has become a lost place. Nature is now reclaiming what humans have tried to steal from it.

Instead of tourists, there are now monkeys romping around the resort, the pretty diving and shuttle boats are rotting away in the tropical climate and the tourist bungalows are slowly collapsing.

It seems this resort was too far away from all the hustle and bustle that tourists value so much in their "most precious weeks of the year" and Corona has finished it off.

For us, however, this solitude and peace are the absolute luxury in these crazy times!