Sleep deprivation is a form of torture used to extract information and confessions, right? Well in the past few weeks I have 'slept' at the Rainforest Lodge in Kota Kinabulu above a nightclub on a Saturday night as a live band kicked out the tunes until 2 am. Then I moved onto Sepilok where I stayed in the Jungle Resort and Labuk B&b, in dorms- need I say more? The next 2 nights were on Uncle Tan's Jungle Safari, if anyone thinks that the Borneo jungle at night would be a quiet place they would be mistaken, creatures, probably those cheeky [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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For a third world country , some things about Cambodia are surprisingly high- tech. For instance when you buy your ticket for Angkor your photo is taken by a little camera perched to the outside of the ticket booth, then within a minute your face is printed on the temple pass, amazing really. Also the internet service is as fast as at home and where we are staying it is free!! We had a fantastic trip to Battambang by boat. Up at 5:30 am and arrived at 1:00pm. I think it's about 140km. An unforgettable journey up the Sangker river, passing [View Full Entry]

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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. [View Full Entry]

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Up at 5am this morning to watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat, along with maybe 3oo other people, some were even hiring chairs for the event. But in this light it is beautiful. Amongst the hordes were bus loads of Chinese, and a bunch of Americans performing yoga poses towards Angkor (very Byron Bayish) Shaz, Kim and Roma, if you read this I can just see us now doing down dog and warrior pose here!! We travelled by tuk tuk with our driver finding more and more temples for us to visit, until finally Adrian said "the best view of a [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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. [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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