Blogs from Labuan, Sabah, Malaysia, Asia

Sunday 29th April 2018 It is Sunday afternoon and we are relaxing after the best meal of our travels so far. Our splendid Sunday lunch, eaten at one of the top seafood restaurants along the east coast of Labuan (according to the locals who flock here from the town) was awesome. It cost £15 for both of us! It would have been really tops if it hadn’t been a “dry” restaurant as 99% of them are. We drank tall iced smoothies, pineapple for me and orange for John and started with a big bowl of very spicy soup full of chicken, tomatoes, lemon grass, ginger, chillies and more. It tasted very similar to Thai Tom Yam but with more tomato and it was hot! This was followed by a large dish of crispy fried prawns, gorgeous ... read more

After the week-long detour eastwards to check out the flora and fauna of the Sabahan heartlands, it was time to back-trek and resume my journey southwestwards along the northern coast of Borneo. And so it was a day-long bus ride for another quick overnighter back at KK, before a 3h ferry to the nearby island called Pulau Labuan, a transit point between Sabah and Brunei. Still part of Malaysia, and just off the state of Sabah, but Pulau Labuan doesn't actually belong to the state. Like the capital Kuala Lumpur, Labuan has the special status as a Federal Territory, diirectly governed by the central government. The reason for this, I'm not so sure, but I think it partially has to do with history, and partially with its position as an international offshore financial centre. In any ... read more

So hello from very near Brunei! This will be the 3rd country I visit in 3 weeks! So be warned this blog is likely to be a very long one! I spent a little bit longer in Kota Kinabalu than planned purely because Luke (who has flown out to join me) spent his first night of travelling wandering aimlessly rather jetlagged around Kula Lumpar alone because he missed his connecting flight whilst I sat alone in the very nice hotel i’d booked us into. It wasn’t really the reunion we had planned but 36 hours later than expected he finally showed up. Once he got over the jet lag we headed off exploring some nearby islands before continuing north to tackle Mount Kinabalu. This is the highest mountain between the Himalayas and Papua New Guinea, its ... read more

Pulau Labuan... read more

We left our hotel in Brunei at 9am and headed into town, where we caught the local bus to Muara. Once at the bus station, which was more like a small car park, we needed to decide whether to stay in Muara (as we had read that there were some good beaches there) or head to the ferry port and go straight to Pulua Labuan, both were a bus ride away. We were unsure as to which bus to catch to the beach so we approached what appeared from a distance to be a notice board. But on closer examination it turned out to be Brunei's most wanted board. There were about 12 men on it, all looking like rather naughty boys! So we decided to ask a couple of people how to get to the ... read more