Blogs from Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, Asia - page 5

Salia and I made our way to Singapore airport where to head for Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. On the train platform I almost got fined for taking a swig from my water bottle, but luckily just got a warning. Very strict rules in Singapore! We arrived in Kuching at 13.15. Having no place booked to stay, I opened my lonely planet guide and picked the cheapest and best sounding accommodation there was. Most of the the places were all in the same area anyway so we could check out a few if needed. But I chose Nomad Borneo B&B. it was a dorm with 2 bunk beds so not too crowded and there was only one other person in there. We took a stroll into town to find some lunch as both of us were very hungry, ... read more

This morning we had planned to go to Bako National Park, but Elysia's eye was causing her more trouble so we decided to go to the hospital instead (fun fun). It was still extremely painful, sensitive to light and blurry. We just wanted to make sure that we knew what was going on and that there was no permanent damage being done to the eye. This time Elysia told the doctor what kind of medications that she wanted (she wanted dexamethasone to help clear up the inflammation), because it wasn't going away. At this point we were thinking that all the doctors were probably wrong and that it was likely a viral and not bacterial infection in her eye. But we were desperate to get her eye better so that she could see more of the ... read more

Such the cat lover, it was only natural that I visit the city named after a cat - Kuching, which in the Malay language means... cat. Cats actually had nothing to do with my return to Kuching. It was where I was going to start my third trip to Borneo (first 2 in 2006) after leaving Sumatra and stops in Kuala Lumpur, Pulau Tioman, and Singapore. I'm currently in Miri, close to Brunei, from where I'll fly tomorrow to the Kelabit Highlands close to the Indonesian border. I'm going to try for Gunung Murut, the highest peak in Sarawak which I skipped last time around. Warning: blog contains an unnecessarily high number of unedited orangutan photos and not many other pictures. $US ≈ 3.2 Malaysian ringgit (RM) ≈ 1.27 Singapore dollars (S$) Kuching In 2006 there ... read more

My flight left Kuala Lumpar on time and landed in Kuching several hours later. I grabbed a taxi and headed to my accomodation, Singgahsana Lodge, but I was too early to get into my room. It was barely 10.00am and as check-in time was 1.00pm, I had a few hours to kill. So, I left my suitcase in their care and headed out into the streets again. Once the capital of the White Rajahs of Sarawak, and now with a population of 600,000, Kuching is small enough to explore on foot. The name of the city, Kuching, is thought to derive from the Malay word kucing, meaning cat. There are certainly plenty of cat statues in the streets and cat themed tourist junk in the shops to support this theory. I walked the promenade along the ... read more

Many of our fondest memories of our travel life seem to revolve around boat trips. Whether sailing on a felucca around Elephantine Island on the Nile, launching small, candlelit offerings while watching the Arti festival near Varanasi on the Ganges River, rounding a corner and watching hundreds of wintering egrets take flight from the dense green foliage on the banks of a tributary of the Amazon In Peru or arriving at the hidden Mayan ruins at Yaxchilan after a short ride up the Usumacinta River on the border between Mexico and Guatemala. We often remember walking along a hand-crafted dock after our boat crossed the Mekong south of Saigon and finding a jungle restaurant that serves the best fish I’ve ever tasted in my life. It seems that our best trips have been close to or ... read more