Mat: After Mt Kinabalu Trace and I had 7 days before we had to fly out to Bangkok to meet up with Nicki. So we decided to book a flight back to KK from the Mulu National Park in Sarawak, and head there overland via Brunei and Miri (in Sarawak). After catching the ferry from KK and a bus, we spent a night and the next morning in the capital city of Brunei. We then shared a private car to Miri with a very friendly Malay woman from KL who was visiting her baker boyfriend in Bandar. Once in Miri we headed to a great backpackers called the Highlands, which is run by a Kiwi pilot living in Sarawak. Once there we tried to figure out the logistics of getting to Mulu. I started talking with ... read more

Trace: While Mat was busy getting the blood drained out of him by jungle leaches, I decided to instead head on a shorter trip (3 day tramp) in Mulu National Park to see the limestone pinnacles, massive caves, and 3 million bats! I ended up joining a guided trek with several other NZérs. Luckily for me, they were super friendly and one of them had a digital camera (Tim has kindly emailed me his shots!), as Mat had our camera with him for his trip to Bario. The limestone caves at Mulu are magnificent, one has the largest cave entrance in the world. Didn't get up close and personal with any bats unfortunately, but did really enjoy watching the endless twisting ribbon of them flying out from the cave entrance just on sunset (see pic). The ... read more

Trace: After our time at Uncle Tan's we travelled south to the coastal town of Semporna, then over to Mabul Island where we stayed at "Uncle Chang's" diving lodge in the middle of a fishing village for four nights. We used this as a base to do some diving at Sipadan, an island famous for it's fantastic diving. I had the best six dives of my life here, Mat and I dived with huge turtles (about 1.5m in shell length), sharks (leopard and white tipped reef sharks), loads of coral and squillions of fish including bump-head parrot fish, unicorn fish etc etc. Absolutely fantastic. We also had Mat's 30th last night - a big party with a live local band ... pictures will follow shortly. The people from Sabah have all been so friendly, welcoming and ... read more

Mat: We are in Kuta Kinabalu. Its muggy. Muggy muggy. As you would expect it to be in the tropics. Probably exaggerated for us because the last couple of weeks in New Plymouth and Wellington were so cold, wet and windy. Our plans at the moment are to book the hut halfway up Mt Kinabalu for the 29th, so we can hit the top on the 30th for my 30th. We are waiting for Air Asia to open so we can check out the flights to Sandakan. They only cost $30 or something which means we do not need to take the bus (8 - 12 hours depending on stops according to our hostel host). We are over sitting in one spot for long periods after the flights and hanging about from New Plymouth - Auckland ... read more

We are in Vang Vieng again, after about 1000kms of riding up and back from Xam Nua in the north east of Laos on roads that consist of 25km corner, after 25km corner, after 25km corner, after 25km corner. Its like the Parapara road north of Wanganui gone wrong. Tomorrow we ride south to Vientiane, then catch the night train down to Bangkok, then the night bus/boat to Koh Tao to meet Trace on the 6th (yeah!). During our trip I have had three punctures. THREE PUNCTURES!!!! and one mechanical failure. Jeremy has had.... nothing go wrong.... mechanically, although he did land on his face (helmeted) after using a little too much front brake in the wet, but the roads are so devoid of grip that he just slid on the wet tar and suffered little ... read more