Photo: Mount Kinabalu panorama

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you unexpectedly get all the things you were wishing for? Well that happened to me here in Malaysia last week.

As I write this I am at the Universiti of Teknologi MARA in Shah Alam, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. I am here in my capacity as an External Examiner for the tourism degree program. An External Examiner is a concept from the British system of higher education and is technically someone who is brought to the university each year to review the final examination papers to ensure rigor. These days, however, the position involves consultation on a wide range of curricular matters.

This is my second visit to UiTM and I basically set aside two weeks so I would have plenty of time to attend to the duties of the position. Before I got here they told me that I would be going to visit the tourism programs at their branch campuses in Kuching (in Sarawak on Borneo) and to Melaka. I have been to both of these cities before and have no objection to a return visit as they are both interesting (though not new).

However, after I got here they told me that I would instead be going to Kota Kinabalu (in Sabah on Borneo) with the Dean of the Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management. Cool! I have never been there before and have wanted to go there for a long time — and especially after hearing the Sabah Tourism Director talk about it at a conference last year.

There were two things that I wanted to do in Sabah: visit Mount Kinabalu, at over 13,500 it is the highest peak in Southeast Asia, and go scuba diving (and hopefully see sea turtles). At first, however, the plan was to only go there for two nights (Wednesday to Friday), as there was another event back at the Shah Alam campus on Saturday that they wanted me to attend. But then they found that the Saturday event was cancelled due to a Muslim holiday, so I was allowed to stay until Sunday in Sabah. Thursday there was spent all day at the university. I was scheduled for more talks at the university on Friday, but we pretty much covered it all, so Friday and Saturday were wide open for doing the two things that I most wanted to do there – the mountains and scuba!