lifeswonders

Kuching is a pleasant city/town with tasty Laksa (for breakfast of course) for 4 Ringitt about $1.30 it has a chinese/ malay feel with a smattering of Indigenous cultures thrown in. I hesitated about visiting another Orang utan centre but I'm so glad I went because 'Ritchie' the dominant male showed up for a feed of bananas and sugar cane, those animals are awesome up close and personal a little too close at one stage when I decided to make a hasty retreat. I was wondering what to do next when I met up with 3 single women i.e women traveling by themselves, we went to the cultural village for the day and had a hoot visiting traditional longhouses and blowing darts. Some longhouses are as the names suggests ...long with 100 doors, one for each ... read more

The problem with not posting for so long is that you don't know where to start because so much happens in such a short space of time when you are traveling. After leaving Adrian in KL on the 16th Oct. I flew into KK (Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, Borneo) a bit daunting for the first night but I woke up with a renewed optimism in the morning. Went out to one of the Islands for a spot of snorkelling not bad but it was the weekend so lots of picnickers oh well the speedboat ride out was fantastic though the driver was try to put the wind up the tourists I think. Anyway caught the six hour bus ride to Sepilok where the Orangutang rehabilitation centre is, bit of a mission to organise travel here though, ... read more

Battambang is the second largest city in Cambodia after Phnom Penh, but it still only has around 140,000 people as 80% of the population lives in the rural areas. We road the ''bamboo train'' which is the obligatory tourist attraction, a bit hairy at times especially crossing a rickety bridge. I don't know how the thing stays on the tracks as you hurtle along at breakneck speeds, but it was fun. Our tuk tuk driver took us to a temple about an hour away that had 259 steep steps to climb in the midday sun. Sensibly we decided to have a coconut drink before the climb but it sat in my stomach and with all the exertion (obviously i haven't been working hard enough at the gym) i vomited it all up, about 200 steps ... read more

Fourth day, it hasn't stopped raining all day so we have decided not to visit temples today. Instead we went to an Artisans factory where people from the villages learn traditional carving, silk screen, painting etc.... read more

In the aftermath of typhoon Ketsana the floodwaters are subsiding but the main road of Siem Reap is for want of a better word ''stuffed'' that is stuffed with bloody great rocks to fill in the potholes, however this would be a mere blip on the radar of Cambodian heartache. Some distressing facts are that: 1) 539,000 tonnes of bombs were dropped on Cambodia during the Vietnam war. 2) An estimated 2 million Cambodians perished at the hands of Pol Pot's regime between 1975 and 1979 and 3) there were thousands of land mines laid, and that is only their recent history. (Information supplied by the travel guide bible Lonely Planet) But despite their horrific past they are truly, warm, charming and easygoing people. Of course most of the foreigners are here for the temple complex ... read more

The God (Gold) Coast (no pun intended) airport is becoming rather spiffy and cosmopolitan, it even has it's own prayer/multi-faith room. I wasn't sure if multi-faith was a new religion whereby you had two bob each-way on all the religions or the room where all religious people went to let God sort them out. While whiling away the time before boarding our airasia flight to KL, I heard that even Fuifui Moi Moi couldn't save his team from defeat by the Storm, you have just gotta love that name if only he played AFL Rex Hunt would have a field day. The plane had a screen on the back of each seat so switching it on to the map which shows the route, speed, and outside temperature as well as which way and how far to ... read more

Right we are ready, pack, unpack, pack again. OMG we will miss the NRL grand final!! better things to do like boarding a jet plane for LA.... whoops KL. Thought I better make sure the new camera works so here's a couple of pics. See you in 5 weeks - Denise ... read more