A Fond Farewell.

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We were unsure whether to write another blog or not... but decided that we should to let those who don't know, what we've been up to and just for future reference.

Firstly, we should have said sooner but we noticed when travelling into Indonesia from Malaysia, and even more so since we've come back again, just how friendly and helpful the Malay people are. They're genuine and actually want to help you out and just nice people in general; whereas our experience of Indonesia was that they were your friend if you had money that they could squeeze out of you, and could get quite intimidating if you weren't willing to cough it up.

We arrived in Kuching, or "The Cat" as it's translated, about a week ago now and headed straight for 'Jong's Crocodile Park & Farm', which involved another interesting bus ride with various types of crazy person taking an interest in us. On the walk up to the park we were greeted by around 10 barking rabid (we assume) dogs and knew that it would be an extraordinary 'farm'.
Hastily we made our way to the viewing area for the afternoon feeding. We have never seen so many crocodiles in one places. They must've had almost 1,000 of them and we actually thought some were fake purely because of the sheer numbers. We were wrong. The owner winched out a chicken carcass dangling from a rope over the murky waters were several toothy crocs were lurking. It was great seeing them leap up to grab it and a couple of them were absolutely huge.
Following this a little look around the rest of the bizarre zoo lead us to otters, peacocks, MORE crocodiles, snakes, terrapins, a strange goose and some rabbits thrown in with the birds.
There was also a rather disturbing exhibition which showed skeletons of the largest crocs to eat a man which included some rather gorey photos of young children being pulled out of slain beasts. Gruesome. They don't seem to have much censorship over here for kids we've noticed.

After hitching a lift back with 3 nice guys from Singapore which saved us an hour and a half and a couple of quid, we were lucky in that it was the last day of the annual 'Mooncake Festival' - named because a few stalls sell this jelly/cake hybrid - and it was literally outside our door!

It was incredible! The street filled with people and there were various types of dance and music from different cultures on display (we even joined in a little ourselves!) including another chinese dragon show and some tattood natives playing instruments we hadn't seen before.
There were vibrant colours everywhere and stalls set up selling various goods and games you could play. I even had a streetside haircut for 20p! (not the best, but you can hardly complain at that price!). We like Kuching. It is quite similar to Georgetown, Penang in a way so it makes sense that we took a liking to it straight away.

The following day we took a trip to a traditional longhouse and after having our morning welcome shot of rice wine, 'Arak', we had a tour around the communal dwellings of headhunters from centuries ago (descendants of whom still live there!) where everything was mostly made of bamboo. This was interesting even if a little staged - we wandered to the end and found a tarmac path leading to a nice new car and some guys carrying tv's around.

Next stop was Semenggoh Wildlife Centre where we were able to have another look at some Orangutans - these ones were slightly more wild than those of Sepilok and we had to be alert for Durians being used as ammunition against us. It was great to see the kings of the jungle rolling around and playing with each other in a more natural way.

Our next activity at Kuching was a trip to Bako National Park a few couple of days later. We went with our new from Janet from Holland who was staying with us at Mr.D's B&B (really great place to stay by the way), and we went on a couple of Jungle Treks - probably the most authentic seeming wilderness trek we've done to date. There were huge boulders in amongst the greenery of the jungle that you had to get around and we suddenly emerged on a beach with some good views of misty mountains on the horizon. Spotting a few more wild Proboscis monkeys was a highlight, as well as some interesting crabs in the mangroves and even a bearded wild boar, who was a big fella.
We arrived back in town in time for the final few races of the Sarawak International Regatta where dragon boats with up to 30 people in each would race over a kilometer just a 2 minute walk from where we were staying. Crowds of local came to watch the event and this was only the first day! They also had a Wakeboarding World Cup taking place the following day, but our flight to KL was the same morning so didn't catch that one.

The 16th was Malaysia day which meant that a lot of places were closed as it's a public holiday which didn't help us too much, but there were some fireworks at night, despite the rain. It's just coming into monsoon season over here so we've been caught in rainstorms a few times in the last week.

The last few days we've just been waiting out the rain really, met up with Janet a few times, who's year long trip took her to KL a day after us, for dinner and drinks at our old favourite - the Reggae Bar just down the road from Ribbon Stayyz, where we're crashing again. Oh and we did try and go up the Petronas Towers yesterday, but as our recent luck would have it, building works started on them the day before and they aren't open for visitors again until December. We've made our way to Petaling Market just round the corner a few times to check out there wares under the roof shelter and watched a few films to keep out of the rain.

It's strange being back in the place we started. It seems like such a long time ago but at the same time, it doesn't. Remembering back to when we found it hard to find something to eat we could stomach and even hard to make our way from A to B whereas now we can do it with ease. We've gone from just starting out all fresh faced and not knowing what to expect, to gaining a wealth of experience about life over here and having some incredible times that will remain with us for life. All this while meeting some interesting people from different walks of life, and sharing some of the experiences with friends from back home. The past 2 months have been absolutely breathtaking and I think we can both say that we hope we can go on a similar trip in the future (if our long 'to do when we return list' has anything to say about it.) Only managing to lose, break, or get stolen 2 phones, 1 ipod, 2 pairs of sunglasses, 2 pairs of flipflops, a few items of clothing, and of course, 1 external hard drive.

Later today we start our long journey back home and we can't wait to see everyone!! Thanks for following us and I hope we haven't made you too jealous along the way! So until next time,

Bye Bye!

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