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Published: June 26th 2007
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We were met in Kuching by Wesley, one of the owners of a hostel we’d booked into via their website. He gave us a mini tour of the city on the way to the hostel, showing us some great restaurants and giving us local tips- very kind of him! At the hostel we signed in as guests numbers 7 and 8 in their register. The hostel was only 2 months old and we were the only guests!. Wesley gave us the keys, maps of the city (and he marked everything on them we could possibly need) told us he may not be there every day and if we wanted to check out, to just leave our money and keys. Bliss! Our own apartment, virtually! We didn’t have a kitchen but still, the privacy was lovely. Lottie, the girl who was with us, ended up moving to another hostel that had more guests (after all, she’d put up with us for over a week now) and so we really did have our own apartment. We got used to it this way and were a bit put out when the night before we left two other guests showed up.
Kuching is
the cat city (Kuching means cat in Malaysian) and boy, did they take their namesake seriously! There were cat statues, cat souvenirs, a cat museum and even cats on the lids of the manhole covers. It is also a pretty city and we quickly fell in love with it. The buildings were gorgeous and the people were so kind and helpful. We didn’t get shouted at anywhere, it was clean, the tourist infrastructure was great- they’re really trying hard to get Sarawak as well known as Sabah- and the food was really nice. Sarawak has a fascinating and unique history - basically it was given to a British adventurer, James Brooks by the Sultan of Brunei when he settled some unrest, and was ruled by the Brooks family, the ‘white Maharajahs’ until the Japanese occupation during the second world war. After the ceasefire it was ceded to the British Empire until independence. The Brooks family were responsible for most of the colonial buildings and for the fact that most of the older inhabitants have English as their first language.
Our first trip was the Semenggoh, the orang-utan sanctuary. At 1/10th the price of the sanctuaries in Sabah, we weren’t
expecting that much, but it was a fabulous experience. Alex came face to face with 120Kilos of prime primate - and was thoroughly intimidated. We were able to get within metres of the Orang-utans although they live ‘as in the wild’ and only come into feeding area when there is no fruit in their habitat. We saw about ten, babies, mothers and big males.
We took a trip to Bako national park the next day, which is a short bus and boat ride from the city. Here we encountered more proboscis monkeys, snakes and lizards, and did a very hot and sticky walk over to a remote beach where we took a welcome dip. We were very impressed by the park, and despite it being one of the most popular parks in the area, we hardly saw anyone all day.
One of the highlights was the food..we found an excellent restaurant which served great malay/indian food, and I think we ate there about three times. Another restaurant we enjoyed was called Junk - so called as the interior is like an old curio shop. The food was great here, Lise enjoyed a chocolate cheesecake and she was on a
high for days afterwards. This was improved even more by the fact that it was a gift, compliments of the chef, who also invited us into his after hours bar next door.
Our last day trip was on the river, kayaking. The paddling and scenery were great, although it took some coordination as we had a two person kayak. We only capsized once, there were some fast rapid bits which caught us by surprise. Disappointingly the dry bag we were given wasn’t that dry and Alex had a soggy mess when he took out his wallet at the end of the day. At the end of the day we were both exhausted, although we had been going downstream all day! It wasn’t till the next day that we realised that both our mobile phones had been stolen from the company’s van which had been parked unattended in a field during the day.
Sarawak is definitely on our list of ‘to revisit’ now and despite the fact we didn’t do any diving, I think we enjoyed it as much if not more than Sabah.
The next day we caught a flight to Johor Bahru, Malaysia (which was late
again, thanks air asia!) to get to Singapore and endured a hair raising taxi journey over the border. We both experienced a feeling of ‘coming home’ when we crossed over the causeway into Singapore, which was a surprise to both of us. We had a long checklist of things to buy, arrange and sort out in Singapore and we were able to achieve most of them. We were also lucky enough to enjoy the hospitality of Anna and Ewan who put us up in comfort - luxuries such as hot water, washing machines and cable tv were available 24/7 at Hotel Thonger! The only thing we didn’t manage to sort out which was the #1 reason for changing our flights and arranging extra time in Singapore - Al’s leaking underwater camera housing. Frustratingly in typical Singaporean style one company held the faulty case for 2 days before telling us they didn’t do anything and couldn’t without any parts from Canon- so we rushed to Canon on the last day to be told there aren’t spare parts in the country, they come from Japan and even if they got the parts they can’t repair the case. They would have been able
to prove that it was leaking, but we had managed to work that out for ourselves by taking the case diving and ending up with a wet camera.. at the last minute, the only solution was a new case.. which is out of stock in Singapore at present. So onward to Lembeh Indonesia, the diving destination famous for “Muck” diving- basically lots of weird and wonderful small critters hiding on a black sandy (Mucky) bottom, without Al’s underwater camera. C’est la vie!
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Jo R
non-member comment
hey honey
Lise - looks fab - v jealous. Email soon - much news for you. j xxxxxxxx