Blogs from Sarawak, Malaysia, Asia - page 51

Touching down on unchartered soil we had no idea what to expect. A fully functional terminal building greeted us off the plane with pristine passport controls and efficient entry systems, no jungle in sight as yet. A taxi took us to the centre of Kota Kinabulu or KK as the locals call it. Something felt strangely familiar, the airport highway turned into light industry parks, then residential suburbs with small parks, pavements and streets light about 100 yards apart finally this blended into a city centre where apartment blocks, shopping malls, restaurants and bars painted the landscape. This town could have been any town in England; they drive on the left, there are roundabouts and plenty of traffic lights directing the cars and a sense of organisation and development that we hadn't felt since leaving Manchester. ... read more

I will try to use a zipping tool and hope it doesnt affe3ct my original sizede snaps. LOve John & Dot... read more

If anyone from the group wants to email me a good photo of the longhouse for this bit it would be great as my camera died. Thur 25th Up and into 2 minibusses to drive most of the day to the river to get in even even thinner longboats. We stopped at a fruit market on the way and bought some weird and wonderful fruits and had a penut and butter pancake which were lovely. The river was fail flooded when we got there and we seemed to be sitting very close to the river. But we arrived uncapsised to a very tradition Iban long house. It is like 13 terrace houses all with one long wide corridor outside where they sit and weave and socialise with eachother. But all made of wood and half of ... read more

We had a fantastic trip today after an early (well 7.30) breakfast we were picked up from the hotel by our mini bus and driven for about 30 minutes to the Baku National park entrance. We put on our life jackets and got onto a small boat which took us on a 30 minute ride down a broad river estuary into the South China Sea and across to a lovely island where we trekked through the jungle (about a 3 mile return trip) in very hot steamy conditions and some quite steep paths to a lovely beach. We saw some notable wildlife including wild Proboscis Monkeys. We walked through some refreshing rain on the way back and had some local dishes and lots of water (to replace all that we had sweated off) for lunch. The ... read more

Richard and John managed to enjoy 9 holes of golf before we left for the airport yesterday; Dot and Jo walked the dog and enjoyed some refreshing rain. The sun was shining on the golf course! The one hour flight was good and the transport (mini bus) which Richard & Jo had arranged was waiting to take us the short ride to our hotel by the riverside in the city. We have lovely rooms on the 7th floor with beautiful views over the city and the river. We walked around the little streets and the market area and soaked up some of the atmosphere. We won’t bore you with the description of our meal (which of course was delicious) but we ate outside overlooking the river at a very nice local restaurant. We are about ... read more