I'm trying a few things out to see what is going to work better i.e. this, emails or a blog. Let me know what you think.
After lots of prayers and crossed fingers about my flight after Katie and Warrie had such a nightmare with their flights because of the weather, I got off without a hitch. 6 hours to Dubai, a 20 minute stop over and then 7 hours to Brunei in Borneo. Brunei is beautiful, 75% of Brunei is untouched rainforest. A bit of a shock to the system after minus 5 degrees the day before to walk into late twenty something degrees in Borneo and i'm sure pretty much 100% humidity ... well it feels like it anyway. You know that closeness of the air when you got out an airconditioned car in Kariba, the kind that makes it hard to breathe and you break out in an instant sweat. It's pretty much the same here. My tour guide says it gets into the 30s and 40s here so this wasn't even the hottest. Thank goodness for airconditioning. I went on a tour of the city with my Malayan tour guide and was lucky enough to be the only person on the tour. It's an amazing country - no income tax, ten pounds a year road tax, what am I doing living in England :-) The Sultan of Brunei looks after his people very well and is very highly spoken of. The city is surprisingly small and very clean and very eerily there are no pedestrians as they can all afford their own transport.
After the city tour I booked myself in for a river tour that takes you up the Brunei River into the mangroves and rainforest. There was just me and a couple of American guys who were coming to the end of their 7 week trip round Asia. It was nice to meet new people and I have to say I love American's. They're so warm and friendly and have such a cool sense of humour ... generally speaking of course. We went up river in our river boat, past the thousands of houses in the water villages that still exist. We were lucky enough to have a couple of sightings of the endangered Proboscis monkeys. Such funny looking things. We also saw Macaques and the eagle eyed tour guide spotted a mangrove snake high up in the trees. We left just as the sun was setting so I have some beautiful pictures of the river and the villages.
Back to the airport and had to brave the disgusting toilets and despite being desperate for a shower, could only get as far as washing my hair ... I'm trying very hard not to think of what has soaked into the bottom of my jeans and my walking boots after wading in ... so disgusting.
I've got another three hours here before my flight at 1.40am and then 6 hours and i'll be in Perth. I can't wait. I'll fill you all in when I can and load my pictures as soon as I can get to another computer.
