Sabah!

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Sorry guys, been a bit of a long time since the last blog! We have been writing in our diary everyday with old fashioned pens so never fear, you'll all be able to sit through hours and hours of our adventures when we get back.. just think.. 365 days worth of Sarah and Ben fun!! Bet you just can't wait!! hehe

So.. what have we been up to? Well as you can guess we are now in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah, a Malaysian state of Borneo. We arrived this morning (we had to get a flight from KL at 7.50 in the morning.. which is not fun considering the terminal is actually an hour and a quarter long bus ride from the city!) and had a look round town today. From what I can gather so far we could possibly be the only tourists here!! Unless they are all hiding somewhere, there are a lot of western restaurants and bars. We are here for a week, and in that time we have a lot of options to choose from, unfortunately all of them are pricey so we're gonna have to pick and choose. The main one is climbing Mount Kinabalu, which is the highest mo9untain in south east asia and apparently easy to climb (ha.. yeah right!). You climb it over two days, stay the night on the mountain and climb to the top for sunrise. It should be amazing, but Bens got a gammy foot so we'll have to hope that clears up in time!! Our other options are visiting an Orangutan Sanctuary, going diving (at Sidipan Island, apparently one of the worlds best diving places.. although verrryy expensive!), and doing various jungle treks and camps. Luckily we got some walking boots (at last) so we'll hopefully be able to do some trekking at some point.

I think we left you in Kota Bharu, so our next adventure was the jungle train. This is a train that goes right across the country through the jungle and passes by Taman Negara, a national park twice the size of Luxembourg! (Good lonely planet gem there:P). We were going to visit the park, but a mixture of lack of time, funds, infected feet etc meant we had to postpone or cancel. Apparently it's reallt touristy now and according to a few people all the large animals (ie elephants) have moved further south. The jungle train was an experience! We bought cheap tickets, expecting a crummy carriage with bench seats or something, but it was pretty luxurious - comfy seats and air con! We saw some amazing scenery, huge big outcrops of rock and lots and lots of jungle. 8 and a half hours later we arrived at Mentakab, a suburb or a larger town, where we caught a local bus to Kuala Lumpur.

We arrived in KL determined to make the most of being there and not being ill!! We've had our roughest times there, so were keen to see it in a new light, not involving any runny poo! We stayed in a nice place, in fact we tried to stay there before but were warned off by our taxi driver who banned us from staying in the area due to the Nepalese immigrants living there (I'm not sure what's wrong with them!) But this time we took public transport and threw all caution to the wind! Had a good day in KL, we visited the Batu caves, a Hindu shrine just outside the city. It's basically three caves in a huge outcrop of rock, the largest of which is reached by a long staircase (272 steps). It was pretty spectaular, the roof was 100m high and there were monkeys everwhere scaling near vertical cliff faces. One tipped over a bin and proceeded to drink from drinks cans and cartons he dragged out of it!!
We also went to central market, basically a shopping centre for tourists which I liked and Ben got bored!

We got up early to queue for tickets for the skybrige, the bridge between the twin Petronas Towers, and we did this at 5.30. First we got subjected to a film about Petronas and how they are saving the world (yeah by mining oil and gas..??), then we got to go up to the brige. Was pretty cool, good views, a huge rain cloud appeared on the horizon we got to see KL slowly being swallowed up by it.. it rains a lot! You can also go up the communications town in KL, the observation deck is higher but you have to pay.. we're really budgeting now!!

We managed to find a street with 3 vegetarian Indian restaurants in a row, Ben nearly wet himself! We went there both nights, I think thats discriminating against me for eating meat! The food was really really good though I'll give him that. (& we had a McDonalds breakfast at the airport this morning.. naughty!!!)

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