After some serious pressure being exerted on me to get the blog up to date (mostly from erica's immediate and extended family to be honest) i've taken it upon myself to bring the damned thing right up to date. prepare yourselves for three thrilling(ish) installments of erica and dave's travels...
After a cracking 10 days in sabah we jetted over to neighbouring sarawak for a few days to get a flavour of the place. we flew into the lively kuching and checked into a hostel that had been recommended to us. erica was horrified to notice the guitars leaning against the wall as we walked in and we braced ourselves for a few days of smelly hippies.
the first day was a well earned rest day afater mountain climbing, orangutan hunting (not really) and diving with man eating sharks. the evening started quietly enough until we were collared into having dinner in the hostel with aforementioned smelly hippies.
I was lured into eating some fried grubs (tasted like chicken) and a pungent fruit called durian was passed around. you wouldn't have thought it was possible to find a fruit that tasted like gone off mutton but the malaysians have somehow managed it. the evening reached an all time low when the guitars were brought out and they all started closing their eyes and singing. we quietly sloped off to bed.
the next day we headed over to bako national park to and get back in touch with nature. it's pretty remote and needed a 30 minute boat ride to get us to park hq. we did a couple of short walks that felt like three days hikes in 1000% humidity. it was worth it though and we got to see some of the native proboscis monkeys and a green pit viper, not to mention some nice big spiders on a dusk stroll we took.
the next day we ended our short stint in sarawak and headed over to kl. erica's cousin, jon, lives here in a reasonably (ie very) swanky apartment. our outdoor, waterfall style, shower was much appreciated after our time in the jungle.
we took in the sights (baku caves, kl tower, petronas towers) and had a couple of damned good meals out. bbq'd stingray is something i'll be looking out for back in bristol.
after sweating it out for a nearly three weeks now down in borneo and kl we retired north to the cameron highlands for some cooler air. it's a major tea producing area so we indulged in some local cha and took a few walks in the hills, albeit one of them turning into a bit of an off the track adventure after we picked a less than well maintained track. a red mark on a tree in the undergrowth every 50 yards or so is not the kind of hiking erica had in mind.
we visited some local tribes as well, the orang asli who are indiginous to malaysia (albeit having moved here from the old khmer emipre originally). they were even kind enought to let us get some blowpipe action in (shooting stuff with poison darts). i was all up for finding dinner but had to settle for an old flip flop nailed to the head man's hut instead. still got it right between the thong though.
by this time we were pretty much at xmas day so we headed over to a posh(ish) resort on the west coast near the island of pulau pangokor. we knew it had to be good when the first thing we saw was a sign banning the prviously mentioned durian fruits. only problem was it was miles from anywhere and the food turned out to be shite. merry f***ing xmas!
all done with our crappy xmas we headed south to melaka and whilst erica suffered with a mild delhi belly i took in the various colonial buildings from times gone by when everyone seemed to be fighting over this little nugget of a port.
final stop in se asia was singapore, a brief one day stop over. not much to say about the place to be honest. pretty dull and not too sad to leave. erica thought she could live there. will have to have a word about that.
oz and some rather good fireworks next...
