Borneo2

---

On our second week in Borneo we had planned to stay in another National Park in the Kuching area. However when we went to the Tourist Information we realised none of the other parks had restaurants which put us off. Instead we decided to stay in Kuching and do day trips to the attractions, as they were all quite close. Our first day trip took us to The Wind Cave, which was a 2hr bus ride from Kuching. We were very unprepared that day and forgot a torch so had to rent one from the little office, unfortunately it was running out of battery so wasn’t very bright. The closer we got to the cave the more it smelt, we could tell there was going to be a lot of bats! There were 3 cave routes for us to follow, all of which were pitch black. I don’t know what we were expecting but I thought there would be some natural light; I was mistaken. We walked around slowly, our torches only just lighting the way, all we could hear was the bats which was quite spooky. We also did a day trip to Buntal fishing village, although I’m not sure why the tourist info suggested it as there was hardly anything there. We only stayed for two hours, which we filled by collecting shells on the beach and eating in a local restaurant. The main day trip we did was to Kubah National Park, which is where we had previously planned to stay. It took around an hour to get there and the closer we got the worse the weather seemed. When we arrived we had to register at the office and the park ranger asked if we had coats as it was going to rain….a lot! Just as he said that the heavens opened and it started absolutely tipping it down! We decided we were just going to have to get wet and set off on the trail…within minutes we were soaked through. The first part of the trip was along a road and then it branched off into the jungle. After about 1km I felt an itch on my leg, I looked up my shorts but couldn’t see anything so carried on but the itch didn’t go. A few metres later I looked again and as I pulled my hand away spotted something….it was a leech! I shook my hand, flicked it, pulled it but it didn’t come off! Eventually Nick had to pick it off me and the one on the back of my leg that had crawled up my shorts!!! That’s when we noticed we all had them on us. After that we were constantly checking for leeches and kept finding them crawling up our legs and trying to get in our shoes! Obviously we didn’t spend long walking that day and even when we arrived at the waterfall, which was the best we’ve seen so far, we didn’t hang around. I was so glad we hadn’t stayed at Kubah after that walk as I don’t think I would’ve been able to go back into the jungle, I did not like those leeches!! We spent the rest of our week looking round the city and going on small trips but nothing that spectacular. On Friday we woke up early and caught our flight back to Peninsula Malaysia; we then spent the day in the train station waiting to catch the ‘Jungle Railway’ up to Kota Bharu in the North. Luckily we managed to book the last two bunks on the train so got a good nights sleep (the train journey was 15hrs). In the morning we woke up at 7am to look at the views from the train, it was so nice going up through the jungle and the views were spectacular. We are just about to get a taxi to the Perhentian Islands, which are meant to be the best islands in Malaysia.

Well taxi is here so best be off, hope you are all well back in the UK.

Love us both x

---