Writing this sitting on my bed in Kuching, Malaysia Borneo and it's raining. Again. After having had near perfect weather in Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, it's rained a heck of a lot since we arrived in Borneo. But it is the rainy season so what should we expect eh?
We left the Cameron Highlands feeling refreshed from the cool air and boarded the most luxurious bus ever for the 4 hour journey to Kuala Lumpur (commonly referred to as KL) - wished we'd had that bus for some of our longer journeys!
We stomped through the crazy heat and humidity to find ourselves a room and got a cheap, windowless room slap bang in the middle of Chinatown for all of £10 a night including our very own bathroom (which has now become the height of luxury - KL was the last place we stayed with our own facilities - we're hardcore travellers now grrrr). We spent 3 days in KL exploring as much as we could whilst melting in the heat and consuming copious amounts of ice tea and juice. We did all the touristy things - went up to the skybridge between the Petronas Towers, visited the top of the KL tower. Good views to be had from both, but you're only allowed 10 mins up on the skybridge after spending 20 mins in a queue and watching a Petronas promotional video (with no mention whatsoever about researching renewable fuel sources - evil oil companies gah).
We were in KL a couple of days before Chinese New Year which while we were in the city was really interesting to see everyone buying all their supplies and the streets filled with lanterns and dragon dancers, but then we stupidly had to get a long distance bus on New Year's Eve. Mistake. We managed to get tickets and only had to wait an hour but the bus station was soooooo busy and noone was telling anyone actually where to get the bus. When we finally found our bus, loads of people with tickets for later buses were trying to get on and we were lucky to make it through the crowds in time. And then we sat in traffic on the motorway with everyone else escaping the city for NY. Argh. Anyway... we made it to Melaka - 2 hours down the coast from KL. Spent NY there which was cool to see all the stalls, fireworks and decorations. We had a bit of a nightmare leaving Melaka, which Chris wrote about in his blog (http://www.rootfest.com/) so I won't reiterate.
We then spent 3 days walking the streets of sunny Singapore. We again did all the touristy things and spent a heck of a lot of time in shopping malls as they are everywhere in Singapore. I don't think that an island the size of Sinagpore has quite the need for so many malls with basically the same shops in, but we're glad as they are all air-conditioned which is very welcome in the midday heat! We were blown away with how expensive Singapore was after spending 3 months in cheapo countries - we thought Malaysia would be a bridge between Thailand and Singapore, but it's almost as cheap as Thailand. So, we found ourselves paying £50 a night for a room with shared bathroom and bunkbeds! But they had the most comfortable pillows and mattresses we've had for aaaaaaaaaaaages so it was kinda worth it. And the hostel was about 30 secs from the MRT (tube) which was really handy - London really has some lessons to learn from Singapore when it comes to public transport....
We spent a day on Sentosa Island - Singapore's beach area complete with imported white sand! It was quite strange to jump on a monorail in a shopping mall and arrive at the beach - kind of sums up Singapore! One of the islands off the coast is supposedly the southernmost point of continental asia - not sure how they justify that when Singapore is an island and this point is an island too but hey ho we visited it anyway...
From Singapore, we jumped on an Air Asia flight to Kuching in Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo (very confusing - Borneo is the island of which Malaysia has the top half (minus Brunei) and Sarawak is the western part of the Malaysian bit). We spent 2 nights in Kuching and did a bit of wandering and a bit of relaxing and rain avoiding - there's not loads to do in the city and we're a bit city-ed out at the moment. So we escaped the city for 2 nights and visited Bako National Park - just north of Kuching on a promontory in the South China Sea. The journey there involved us trekking across the city to find the non-labelled bus stop in the rain, an hours spine crunching local bus journey in the skankiest bus ever, and then a 1/2 hour boat journey through crocodile infested waters (not kidding) and very rough sea to be dropped off on the beach near the park HQ. We were quite knackered from all of that, and it was raining so we did a cheeky walk down the beach that afternoon kitted out completely inappropriately (waterproofs and humidity = bad bad idea and ridiculous sweatage). We did see a load of macaques and also a group of proboscis monkeys which are pretty rare and a couple of pit vipers took up residence for a day near our chalet! We did a longer walk yesterday to a waterfall and even wearing less clothes we sweated a ridiculous amount and were completely shattered after 5 hours walking.
We're now back in Kuching for a couple more nights while we decide where to go next!
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