Gareth:
Dear Alice,
I am sorry I haven't wroten a blog in ages, it's just sometimes I find some other things interesting like that peanut...
Alice:
Can you come back and finish this please. Don't eat that peanut.
Gareth:
I'm not sure it was a peanut now. It had the texture of a peanut, but the taste of cheese. A bit like that cheesenut butter sandwich I ate once. Do you remember that Alice? It was probably the most defining moment in our relationship? Oh, you don't.
I can tell you've been at my hair again cause I looked at myself in the mirror and it's all swept over to the side. Can you really look at yourself in the mirror? Cause what you get is a reverse image. What someone should invent is the backward mirror. So you can really look at yourself in the mirror. I would probably call it the rorrim. Then our evening would sound more like this "Honey, I'm just going to look at myself in the rorrim to see what you have done to my hair. Oh... You have swept it over to the otherside today."
Alice tells me I should be writing about what we have done, so people don't click away from the page. I have to keep the "audience" interested. However, as I'm the only one reading this at the moment what I find interesting is the little things. Like the fact that I discovered I can physically hide a pen in my beard. You can't see it when it is in there. Only I know it's there. I keep it in there in case someone asks me for a pen. Then I will reveal my secret and watch their amazement. However, no one who has read this can ask me for pen, as your amazement will be hollow, and hollow amazement does nothing for me. It's kind of like watching someone pull a coin from behind your ear. When I was younger I fell for it's magical charm, and would often spend many a night pulling at my ears trying to find the source of this wealth. Now I know it's just a trick and it was just people finding spare change that the bees left as a tip when dinning at the restaurant of waxy goodness. Although, ever since I forced bee's to dine in my ears to get more money out of them, they stopped leaving tips and I got stung. That reminds me, Alice got stung by a jelly fish today. She's O.K. though. Lets have a look in Alice's diary. This is her exact words "I got stung by a jelly fish, but toughed it out."
Enough about today though, lets go back in time to a date called Monday 22nd Feb.
We didn't have to check out of the Furama hotel in Singapore until 12:00, which was nice as it meant we could stay there until we had to go to the airport...
Alice:
Gareth decided to copy and paste the diary entry into the blog, which would not be that entertaining. So here is the shortened version by me.
When we did get to check out of the hotel they tried to charge us for a kitkat from the mini bar which we definitely didn't eat so I kicked up a bit of a fuss (an understated British fuss you understand) and they gave us a 'credit note' for the Kitkat instead. Feathers ruffled we got onto the shuttle bus and confidently informed the driver we were flying with Air Asia so he took us to the terminal Air Asia fly from.
After a minute or two of scanning the screens in confusion in search of our flight we realised that we were in fact flying with Tiger Airways this time. We asked the woman at information how to get to the correct terminal and set off in a slight panic to catch a sky train followed by a shuttle bus and check in for our flight. I say 'we' were in a slight panic but Gareth doesn't know what it is to panic about anything, he has an innate stress avoidment technique which amounts to a total denial that anything urgent is happening, i'm sure his family members will know what i'm talking about.
By the time it was time to board we were both obviously cool and collected again because a member of the cabin crew chose us to sit in the big seats at the front of the plane and be the one's to operate the emergency door should the plane crash. He also requested that if we noticed any of the cabin crew lying about incapacitated could we throw them out too.
The flight to Kuching was only 1hr15 and the decent was over miles and miles of forest and water ways which was intimidating and exciting all at the same time. We had a coffee in the terminal while we waited for the shuttle bus. The journey on the shuttle bus was a little more erratic than i'd have liked, we spent a lot of the journey almost in the car in front's boot, the driver obviously thought she should've been driving a little faster. Then at one point while we were waiting at traffic lights he started doing something else and took his foot off the brake so we started rolling into the car infront, luckily he noticed just in time . We were staying at the Tune hotel which is a hotel chain run by Air Asia and claims to be "5 star sleeping at a 1 star price". It was definitely a 1 star price at about £10 a night including the add ons you have to pay extra for like air conditioning, wifi and towels. The room was ok too, new and clean and comfortable.
After settling in we walked down the new paved waterfront along the river which is really pretty and ended up in a small restaurant called The Junk which we discovered afterwards was the number one rated restaurant in Kuching on trip advisor. It was really nice, lit by candles and red chinese lanterns but serving Italian style food with an asian twist and they served huge portions.
Tuesday 23rd Feb
We spent the morning composing a blog but with it still unfinished decided to go out for lunch. We wandered to a shopping mall we'd seen on our walk about last night in search of a food court but found that it was brand new and the food court wasn't really developed yet. Most of the shops were empty but we did find a cafe we ended up going back to a few times called Wan Chai. It was really nicely done in green and black with water walls and had a balcony that over looked the city with fans to keep it cool but not as cool as inside which was air conditioned. They gave us a paper menu and a pencil and we ticked off what we wanted. The food was really nice and there was lots of choice and best of all for lunch and a drink we payed about a quid each.
Wan Chai
Gareth next to the famous cat statue, Kuching means Cat in Malaysian
Taking a stroll along the waterfront after dinner
Wednesday 24th Feb
We headed to tourist information this morning to book accommodation in the Bako National Park. We always leave things to the last minute because we never know what we're going to do next so we had to pay for a more expensive room for the first night then a cheaper hostel room for the next two nights as we wanted to set off the following day.
Headed to china town for lunch followed by a steamed bun and then a trip to the Sarawak museum which was really interesting, lots of stuff on Borneo's wildlife and information on the various tribes that exist in Sarawak with a full scale model of a traditional Iban long house that you can walk round.
After that we set out to do our laundry which we thought would be relatively simple but the first laundry we went to said they couldn't do it till tomorrow then the second (and last one on the list) said the same only it charged less. We still had to pay for the express service so we could pick the laundry up before we had to get the bus in the morning which cost 54RM (£10) which is pretty steep for 1 load of laundry. We were feeling pretty despondent so went to cheer ourselves up with large chocolate mint mochas.
For dinner we went to the Top Spot food court which is said to be the best in Kuching and is located on the top of a multi story car park. It specialises in an awesome array of sea food and I had lobster for the first time while Gareth ordered black pepper crab and we had wild fern fried in butter and garlic with it which was delicious. Then we went in search of our second steamed bun of the day, bit addicted.
Thursday 25th Feb
After picking up the laundry on the second attempt we trudged down to the bus stop with our bags only to discover we'd just missed the bus (they seem to have a habit of departing early in Malaysia) so we got a minibus for the 30min journey to the jetty. We paid our park entry fee then boarded the little boat that was to take us out to Bako park head quarters. The ride was a very fast one down the river and out to sea then round the peninsula to the park. We arrived too early to check in but could leave our bags and go and have lunch a the cafe.
Bit lost trying to find the bus stop
Boat ride over to Park HQ
Resident Gekko
This is Gareth's favourite picture of a wee-ing Macaque
Quite glad we didn't chose to camp
Funny mudskippers
After a little rest we set off on the other walking trail that advertises Proboscis sightings and saw two on the beach but they just melted away into the trees. It was starting to get dark by the time we set off back to camp and we saw bats flying through the forest towards us, they'd get really close then dodge and miss us, I was in my element.
We had dinner then went to bed exhausted, it's hard walking in the heat and humidity.
Friday 26th February
Woke up about 8.30am after an only o.k. nights sleep (pillows actually had mould on them!) but soon realised why we were here when we found a bearded pig snuffling around right outside our door. Spent about half an hour photographing that then went for breakfast. We had to move our stuff out of the chalet because the next two nights would be spent in the cheaper hostel room but we couldn't get into that room until 2 so we left our packs at reception and set off on the trail called Tanjung Pandan Kecil which winds through the jungle, across a plateau and down to a remote beach.
Beardy pig
The first bit was quite a steep climb up through the rainforest in 30 degree heat and 90% humidity with not even a stir of a breeze and by the time we got to the top we were shattered and both looked like we'd had a bucket of water thrown over us. We saw other small groups of people who looked the same as us but were being led by sprightly Malaysian guides in thick clothes who seemed to think it was pretty chilly.
Once we left the rainforest an set off over the plateau we felt a bit more of a breeze from the sea and cooled off a bit, saw lots of dragonflies and once we'd reached the start of the decent there was an amazing view over the beach. We had our lunch in the shade on the beach and saw a white tailed sea eagle flying above us then set off back to camp.
Gareth's pics of pitcher plants, think he's a closet botanist
We checked into our hostel room which, for half the price, didn't differ much from the chalet except there was no extra furniture apart from the beds. We then went to get a drink and on the way to the canteen so a pit viper in a bush then later on at about 5 we saw silver langur monkeys behind one of the chalets, another larger pit viper and another bearded pig. So we decided to stay put in the camp the next day.
Once it got dark we signed up for the night walk through the rain-forest which was amazing, we saw phosphorescent fungi, a massive scorpion which our guide shined a UV light on and it went bright green, frogs, geckos and loads of other great insects. It was a full moon so our guide made us turn our torches off and walk back in the moonlight.
Saturday 27th February
We got up at 6.45am so we could see the proboscis monkeys, we didn't have to look for them for long because they were feeding in the trees about 100m away from our room. They only come to the edge of the forest early in the morning and late in the afternoon to feed. Spent about an hour with the proboscis then had breakfast and went back to take more photos of the Wagler's pit viper that was sitting digesting something in the bush next to one of the hostels.
We spent a relaxing day under the fan in the room or cafe taking walks every now and again to spot wildlife, we saw a huge monitor lizard and a very rare kingfisher that darted by us and flew out into the mangroves. The highlight for me though was when we heard that there were some silver langur monkeys at the end of the beach, we went and followed them until they got used to us and came down to the bottom branches of the trees to feed, one even came right down to the beach and didn't seem bothered by our presence at all.
Sunday 28th February
Today was our last day in Bako, a couple we had met offered to share their boat back with us so we sat on the jetty chatting to them and waiting for it to arrive. The tide doesn't come in properly until about 1 so when the boat arrived we walked down the beach and paddled out to it for the ride back. There was a local bus waiting at the terminal when we arrived and we jumped on it just in time to avoid a tropical down pour.
The bus ride back to Kuching only took about an hour but the hard part was carrying our bags back to the hotel in the heat! We were both pretty frazzled by the time we arrived back at Tune and headed straight out for some lovely Hainanese chicken rice and iced coffee at our favourite Wan Chai.
Monday 1st March
This is a direct copy from my diary from this day which i'm now laughing about because it was a bit pathetic: "Set off at 12.00 to go to the cultural village but it was tipping it down and we couldn't find the bus stop so we gave up and went to KFC"
Seems you can't spend every day being an intrepid explorer!
Tuesday 2nd March
Did a bit better today, up at sparrow's fart and went across town to catch the bus out to the Semmenggoh Orangutan sanctuary. We bought some breakfast from a stall near the bus station when the bus dropped us off walked the 1.5km up hill to the sanctuary. Unfortunately we didn't see any Orangs but that's actually a good sign of successful rehabilitation. It's spring here so all the trees are in fruit and there's plenty of food in the forest for the Orangs so they don't come to the feeding station. We weren't too disppointed as we'd been warned that this was the case and it only cost 3RM entry and we did see a cool lizard.
We walked back down to the bus through the botanic gardens which were really pretty. When he'd dropped us off the driver had said he only made one return journey and that was at 10.30, we were the first back and said there were more people behind us but the 4th couple on weren't as vigilant and said they thought that was it so the bus driver set off back at 10.20 (See, Malaysian buses like to leave early). We didn't realise in time to say anything but one of the couples from the bus ride in wasn't on the bus so they got left behind, Gareth was very happy about this.
This was to be our last day in Sarawak as tomorrow we are heading up to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah to do some Scuba diving.
Blog off.
