Melaka and Kuching

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Melaka is a lovely little town about 1 hour south of KL but you should only visit on the weekend! Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday they have a fantastic night market, luckily we turned up on a Saturday so we got to enjoy the market twice and then watch on Monday as the town emptied of all tourists and visitors and became a bit of a ghost town. The town itself was very nice and very Dutch influenced with a little canal running through the centre and a square aptly named Dutch Square complete with windmill. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and our fan only room didn't do much to cool us down. One other little story from Melaka was Carly becoming friends with a rat! On her way to the shower which was in a separate building at the back of the guesthouse, she crossed the back garden and suddenly a rat jumped off a wall ran around the garden looking at her before hopping over the fence into next door. Our closest encounter to a rat so far (as far as we know)!

After a one night stop back in KL we were on a flight to Kuching on Malaysia Borneo. Off the typical backpacker trail we wanted to go see the Orangutans and this area is one of the few places in the world where you can. We stayed in a guest house right on the Kuching Waterfront and had a great view of the river until our a/c broke and we had to switch rooms 😞

So we asked our guesthouse the best way to get to the conservation park to see the orangutans. They said the only way apart from paying a lot for a taxi was to take a bus that ran only twice a day. OK that was fine we were happy to take the bus but then listened to the instructions on how to get the bus. 1: it only runs twice a day once in the morning and once in the afternoon and the same coming back, 2: there are no set times that the bus leaves - the driver will leave when he wants, in the morning it is sometime between 6 & 7, 3: the place to catch the bus is not really a station its just a street where the buses park up and there are no signs to show you where it is just head towards the big mosque and its one of the streets down there. Great! So the next morning we were up at half 5 walking round the streets of Kuching trying to find a bus near a big mosque. Luckily with a little help from a local man the bus was located and he left about 6:15 with only 5 people onboard and Carly and I being the only tourists.

The orangutan conservation park was well worth the hassle of the bus. Sometimes people see none at all or maybe just one or two, we got to see 9 or 10 including the alpha male and a couple that came within two metres of us. It was a great experience and well worth making the trip to Kuching for.

Apart from that the only other thing to say about Kuching and the area was that the food is fantastic especially the ice cream and the people are very friendly. A group of school children started talking to us on a trip across the river asking about our trip and how we liked Kuching and giving us tips on what to do, they all spoke excellent English much better than our attempt at Malay.

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