Blogs from Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, Asia - page 3

After what feels like a week, I finally made it to my first hotel In Kuching - It's currently 30 degrees at 10pm!. Everything went without a hitch, it just took forever. So for now, I'm going to enjoy chilling out in my nice hotel and tomorrow the fun begins with a tour of the city... So my blog should hopefully become a little bit more interesting.... read more

KUCHING CITY OF CATS! A fond farewell to Ruth and I move to the dorm for £4 night with breakfast. (I can’t afford to come home!) For most of the time I am on my own. Time now to relax and chat to other travellers. I meet Anna from Melbourne who has worked for most of her life in Indonesia and Karen and John from Brisbane who are working on a food growing project in Kalimantan and in a library. Wifi here is unpredictable - but no worse than at home. In fact I can say that podcasts of the Archers download better in Borneo than in Perthshire! I am fascinated by old woven materials and beaded garments and items. Driven on by wanting to share my finds with my friend Val Aldridge I revisit the ... read more

A visit today to the Semenggoh Wildlife Center proved uneventful as the promised orangutans were no where to be seen. This center is a rehabilitation site for injured and abandoned orangutans and is a natural habitat. All was not lost as I did manage to get a photo of ants, squirrel and small lizard. HaHa Still we couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Today was number 40 of our cruise and we are feeling a bit tired of the ship’s excursions. They don’t always deliver what they promise and boarding a bus with 30 other people gets old real quick. Our fellow passengers are at different levels of mobility and some have great difficulty with stairs and walking which makes the stops all the more tedious. Although the ship warns about being able to do the activity, ... read more

Early in the morning we left Yogyakarta by train for Bandung the trip took about 9 hours passing the most beautiful country side, spectacular scenery of rice paddies and jungle and slowly merging into more civilised areas. I think civilised areas is a wrong description more western should I say. However upon arrival in Bandung we found the place quite conservative as there was a strong Muslim culture and the more we moved around the town, we didn't feel comfortable. When we walk around the towns usually we find the locals having coffee, beers, etc but none of that. In fact we could find nowhere that sold beer or any alcohol what so ever, after checking into a very tiny accommodation we tried to eat, also very unfriendly, maybe it's because we were tired we thought, ... read more

Landing 19 minutes early in the 'City of Cats', we walked off the plane and straight into a Marrybrown ckicken franchise. Eleanor's stomach was rumbling and we thought it could be fixed by a quick pitstop. In hindsight, we should have kept going because there was nothing 'fast' about this food outlet. Neither is Eleanor's eating technique - she wouldn't be winning any prizes on the eating contest circuit. Even Dean, renowned for his patience, decided to go and collect our bags. And this led to another humiliating immigration adventure at Dean's expense. Eleanor and I walked through Gate B, whilst unbeknown to us, Dean had entered through Gate A and had spent the better part of ten or fifteen minutes in immigration limbo. An officer greeted us, enquiring as to whether I was missing my ... read more