After making the difficult but inevitable decision to leave beautiful Toba, I continued northwards on a 4h ride to the hill-side town of Berastagi. Like many hill-side towns that I've visited the past year, this one was also established by former colonial rulers looking to escape from the searing heat of the lowlands. In this case, it was the Dutch of course. And as far as hill-side towns go, Berastagi doesn't seem to be that different from the rest, especially with regards to its pleasant, temperate climate. A small town essentially centred along just two main streets, Berastagi nevertheless packs some kind of buzz from a busting local Karo population, as well as Medan-Chinese weekenders, whose presence becomes increasingly apparent as we venture closer to the regional capital. The uniquely-accented Hokkien (a Chinese dialect) very similar ... read more

Just two nights at serene Maninjau, and it was time to move on again, I am on a schedule after all. You might ask, a schedule for what? Since I don't have any concrete, immediate life plans anyway. And that would be a good question, for another day, but I digress. In any case, I do have a visit to the much larger, and more famous Lake Toba penned in imminently, and so I took the 1.5h bus ride up the 44 hairpins again, and back to the highland city of Bukittingi from whence I came. Lying some 900m in altitude, Bukittingi boasts of agreeable temperate weather all year round, and to some extent reminded my of another highland city Baguio in Luzon, North Philippines, where I was a couple of months ago. Except Bukittingi's quite ... read more

Flying out from KL's massive warehouse-like LCCT (Low Cost Carrier Terminal), it was just a short 1h ride to Padang, the largest city on the western coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which is itself the world's sixth largest island. Despite it's proximity to my home country of Singapore (which is probably just an hour or two's boat ride from the closest point of the massive island), this was in fact my first time here. Apart from the occasional earthquakes that ravage the island, and the separatist violence that used to plague the northernmost city of Acheh, the island itself does not seem to generate much global news, and my arrival here would have filled me with more hesitation and anxiety, had I not already spent a month in the neighbouring (and more populous) Indonesian ... read more

Welcome to Cat City! Meow! And so on to Kuching, the capital of the state of Sarawak, and also my final destination for this leg of my Southeast Asian adventure, before I head back home to Singapore for a few weeks' break. But not before a boat ride back from Kapit back to Sibu, and then onward again for another 4.5h. Did I already mention it's called Kuching, because it's named after the Malay word for "cat"? Though some would dispute the name's origin. Whatever the case, Kuching itself is I think fairly described as a medium-large city, with sufficient attractions of its own (museums galore) to amuse any traveller for at least a few days. But the jewels in its crown really are the nearby National Parks and reserves, which showcase the Borneon flora and ... read more

After the Niah caves, it was a 5h journey southwestwards across a good chunk of the state, towards Sibu, the confluence of the Batang Rejang (Malaysia's longest river) and other major distributaries, and also the second largest city of the state. It was from here that I intended to head upriver to one of the riverside towns lying deeper within Malaysian Borneo, from where perhaps I could pay a visit to a traditional longhouse. I'd read in Wikitravel that Sibu was a bit of a sketchy town, home to shady characters connected to the timber barons of the area. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Having already been to both Miri and Labuan, places with notable nightlife, and finding both places in fact much less seedy than their reputations suggested, I thought this aspect of ... read more