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A nice way to start the day
Free foot massage machines at Singapore airport. A coffee, the New Yorker magazine and a foot massage...niceIf you are in the US, on Friday the 3rd of July, you were probably having a BBQ and enjoying a cool Miller High Life or a PBR while shooting off fireworks. If you are in the UK, unless you are as lucky as Debs and got to go to centre court at Wimbledon, you were probably watching Andy Murray battle it out on TV when you were supposed to be working. But if you were in Kuching, Malaysia, you spent the afternoon at poolside working on your tan. You had a beer or two, read a book, listened to the iPod and occasionally had a little swim.
In the evening, you had dinner in front of a big screen TV that was showing the tennis live and played a game or two of darts - which you won easily because it was Independence Day weekend and Americans never lose anything on the 3rd or 4th of July...sadly this didn't hold true on the 5th!!!
The heat in Borneo is stifling - it seems so much mre hot than Singapore - and thats saying something...but I was prepared as I had shaved off the beard for the trip. As
Big Nosed Monkey
This is the best one I got - and you can't see his nose at all :-( my tan is coming along, I was worried that if I didn't shave it when I did, the tan lines on my face would have made me far too embarrassed to try it again until next spring...so I tried it...its weird not having a beard and I'm pretty lazy so its pretty much back already - these may be the only non-bearded pictures of me you get to see for quite some time!!!
After 2 days of doing the resort thing, I organised myself and Colin to go to Bako National Park. I know that I have been going on in previous posts about the Oragutans but it turns out that the parks near Kota Kinabalu are much better for that sort of thing so instead I decided to go to Bako, which is one of the only places you can see the 'Big Nosed Monkey' - notably another place is the Bronx zoo in NYC. They are funny looking things and I definitely recommend a trip to see them if you are nearby. Our tour group consisted of the two of us plus a family of three from Singapore. They were good fun and if I'm honest the
Room w/ a view 1
Balcony in Kuching highlight of the trip was chatting with them rather than seeing the monkeys themselves...The tour guide tried to guess why these monkeys had evolved such big noses. His best theories were:
(1) that the male monkey with the biggest nose was the leader because all the lady monkeys wanted to have babies with big noses,
(2) that the monkeys did a lot of swimming and the big nose acted like a snorkel (he was serious when he said this!!)
(3) that the monkeys evolved their characteristic big nose and pot belly because they identified with the Dutch colonisers, who also apparently have big noses and large pot bellies!
I wish I had better pics of this nose but I was really missing the telphoto lens on this trip, which I've left behind in London...oh well...The park was also filled with long tailed macaques which are widely known as 'Naughty Monkeys' we were told all about how we might 'have problems' with them but that it was ok because the park had a rule which allowed you to defend your lunch from the monkeys. This was good to know - but luckily for us we weren't forced to violence...as we
Room w/ a view 2
Balcony in Kuching were leaving though, we did witness a woman's lunch (and nearly camera) get swiped off the table
while she was actually eating it!! Its obvious who's in charge in that place!
We had a few hours left to kill after the park, so ventured into the town of Kuching. I couldn't believe how many european (mainly German) tourists there were in this city since it seems to be 'famous' primarily for having large statues of cats all over it. God knows, but the river was rather pretty - especially at sunset.
And thus another weekend break has passed. Work is seriously picking up pace now and I've had my first tennis lesson on Monday night. This does deserve a mention for a few reasons:
(1) the class is outside in the insane heat of Singapore and yet nobody else seems to sweat at all - certainly nothing like me!
(2) the class has a dozen people in it and of them I am the ONLY boy...it is a seriously rough life, guys! ;-)
(3) I am much worse than most of the girls in the class and am so sore I can barely walk
Nevertheless, I
enjoyed it so today went out and bought a racket...I'll wait until I improve before buying an outfit - though I definitely got the award for 'least stylish student' :-)
So whats next? Well this weekend I'm staying in Singapore - It is my 1 month 'anniversary' out here in Singapore and will be good to have a relaxing w/e by the pool. The next trip is the following week from 16-20 July. I'll be heading to Shanghai for a sales conference where I get to do a couple of presentations with an all expenses paid weekend in China as a perk!
Yes I've said it before...it truly is a rough life.
I hope all is well with everyone.
I wish you would all come and visit!!
matt
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Bertram
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Nice!
Great update, Matt. I'm back in the states now so finally getting around to seeing what happened in life. ~ B