Tuesday 15th May 2018 On Saturday we left Sibu on the 11.30 a.m. ferry bound for Kuching. It was a gloriously sunny morning, not too humid and the ferry left on time. It was so nice to be on a boat where one could stand on deck to enjoy the passing scenery as we made our way downriver, rather than being confined to quarters inside a cabin full of passengers. O! and what an interesting and varied journey it was! Shipyards, coal yards, timber yards, old rusting hulks of barges abandoned mid-stream or beside small islands (one had trees growing through it) juxtaposed with lush verdant rainforest, wooden longhouses on Penan and Iban tribal settlements and rickety jetties with longboats tied to them, all higgledy-piggledy, providing splashes of colour bobbing on the coffee-coloured surface of the ... read more

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Our flight from Miri to Sibu on Tuesday was on time and we found a really nice little new boutique budget hotel right in the centre of town. The food here is wonderful. It seems that it gets better with every kilometre south that we travel. In both Sabah and Brunei, the food is good, it is mostly halal Malay cuisine, not particularly spicy, whereas in Sarawak, it is far more exotic, spicy and varied. We ate the best Indian ever, the night before we left Miri and our first night here in Sibu we feasted on very spicy Chinese BBQ spare ribs, chicken in plum sauce and fried rice. Tonight, we had crispy duck followed by mango, durian and coconut rolls. Delicious! The town is very busy because it is polling ... read more

Friday 4th May 2018 We left Brunei on Wednesday 2nd May to travel by bus in to Sarawak. It was just a local daily scheduled bus but quite comfortable and the border crossing was easy, no hassle at all: there are still a couple of empty pages in our passports, despite the eager rubber stamping that takes place at each border crossing! We arrived at the terminal bus station in Miri, an oil town, close to the border, at about 4.30 p.m. A taxi in to town and a nice reasonably priced hotel and a very cheap Chinese meal rounded of this travelling day nicely. Miri is Sarawak’s second city, after Kuching, and there isn’t a great deal of interest to the traveller, since it has all been rebuilt since WW2 when it was bombed so ... read more

Sunday 29th April 2018 It is Sunday afternoon and we are relaxing after the best meal of our travels so far. Our splendid Sunday lunch, eaten at one of the top seafood restaurants along the east coast of Labuan (according to the locals who flock here from the town) was awesome. It cost £15 for both of us! It would have been really tops if it hadn’t been a “dry” restaurant as 99% of them are. We drank tall iced smoothies, pineapple for me and orange for John and started with a big bowl of very spicy soup full of chicken, tomatoes, lemon grass, ginger, chillies and more. It tasted very similar to Thai Tom Yam but with more tomato and it was hot! This was followed by a large dish of crispy fried prawns, gorgeous ... read more

Monday 23rd April 2018 On Monday morning we said a sad “Farewell· to the Nature Lodge and crossed the Sungai Kinabatangan to pick up a minibus to take us to Sepilok. It was a bumpy journey! Our driver said locals call the trip a free body massage! However, the diggers are moving in to make the road a new duel carriageway to accommodate the palm oil trade. We are so glad it isn’t harvest time, when lorries would be back and forth taking the palm fruits off to be processed. More rainforest destruction! We arrived at Sepilok B & B at 11 a.m. after a two and a half hour journey and we were able to check in straight away. We have a nice little bungalow just a half hour walk from the Orang-utan Conservation Centre. ... read more