Girl Sensible - Around The World

The day after the climb....... ouch

Hunger was the motivation to get up, luckily it was only 30ft across the road for Waffles :-)

There came a point during the day when walking on the flat was ok, up and particularly down steps was a huge problem. I will be more sympathetic to the elderly in future.

This was our last day in Borneo :-( and coincided with Hari Raya (the end of the muslim fasting)

We heard the govenor was having an open house at the local sports complex so we caught a taxi to join in the festival.
It was great, there was stalls with all types of food (all free). Being English we struggled to understand the lack of queuing! Even children were crushed in the rush!

We were somewhat a novelty for some people, I think I saw 2 other white people while we were there and a couple of girls wanted our picture (I really don't want to leave a country where pale and pasty skin is a good thing!)

We caught another beautiful sunset and our last night in Borneo was completed with a curry and cocktails with another couple of brit's :-)

We used the same hotel as a base in KK. This felt like being stalked....... the maids sat outside our room permanently and would make the room up before you had even checked out and take any money you left on the side assuming it was a tip before you even left it for them..... cheeky!

We made a dash away from them and headed off for a bit of shopping and no matter where a woman is in the world she will buy more shoes. When they are only £10 a pair it is pretty hard to resist. God knows where I was planning on wearing them or how I was planning to transport them, but to get out of my flip flops and trainers for 5 minutes was nice :-)

We checked out the ferry timetable so that we could go and visit one of the islands off KK the next day. The sunset down by the jetty was gorgeous :-)

We thought we would go to a local hawker place for breakfast for a change. We had had so many nice meals from these places and had eaten for less than a £1 between us in the evening markets that we thought we should give brekkie a go.
It was a chinese and I had had enough of rice and they had pictures of boiled eggs and toast so I thought I couldn't really go wrong with that......... yuck they were half boiled and served with honey toast. Even asking them to boil them for a bit longer they still came back raw. I really didn't want to offend them but I was going to gag if i ate them. Steve didn't fair so well with his fish noodle soup either!

Anyway our usual bakery was open so we picked up some raisin bread and some sugar coated garlic bread (oh yes there is sugar on everything!) and caught the boat over to one of the islands. Amazingly they were really nice. The water wasn't really clear enough so snorkel but it had a lovely beach and it was nice to chill out for a bit before our next trip.

We had to have an over night stopover on the way to Borneo. We arrived quite late so we headed straight for the hotel where I spent so much time earlier in the year. It was nice not to have the hastle of getting our bearings, easy travelling!

Picked up another load of cheap Dvd's ready for a few cosy nights in when I get home!

Twin towers at night was cool.

The flight to Redang was via Kuala Lumpur and so we had another stop over. The flight seemed to be full of diseased people. Everyone around us was hacking up or caughing, it was pretty disgusting but hilariously funny to us. Now I know why these people need signs in public places reminding them not to spit!

Anyhow, Redang was as gorgeous as I hoped. We stayed in a lovely resort with a seaview room.............

The food was interesting, not a great veggie selection.........had some healthy looking green beans, steve assuring me it was just cripsy onions that they had sprinkled ontop. Convinced that onions don't have eyes I spat it out..........seems dried fish heads are a favourite here.

3 days of sun, sea, sand, sex and cocktails :-) well one must rest with a mountain climb to come!

After a bit of a bad start in KK, illness, smelly hotel room etc we went to find out about the main event that we were there for, Mount Kinabalu. We were gutted to find out that it was fully booked until the 11th October unless we wanted to freeze our arses off in an unheated shack the next night. We therefore decided to use KK as a base and re do all of our plans. Eventually we booked ourselves on a trip to Sarawak to see Mulu national park.

We flew to Miri in Sarawak and then got a connection on a litle foker 50 to the national park. We flew over loads of rivers and not much other than rain forest. It was pretty stunning when we arrived :-)

We seemed to have a problem with our itinerary and Steve spent most of the next few hours wound up and on the phone disagreeing with out tour operator (never again did we or will we ever use one!)

In the afternoon we took a short boat trip and then walked 3k's to the Caves. Deer cave was massive, an incredible sight. All the bat were on the ceiling, squeeking away and the smell of bat shit was overwhelming!
After this one we went to Langs cave, full of stalagmites and stalagtites etc.

I was good feed for the mosquito's so I was pretty glad I took my anti malarial tablets but the million bat exodus at sunset was worth being eaten alive. Our guide seemed quite impressed at the footage that BBC film crew had managed to gain while filming this for David Attenborough. This was the closet that we managed to get:

We had an evening meal inclued in the trip at the hotel. There was a totally random show on by the locals during dinner, it was cringe worthy especially when they dragged Steve up and then came around everyones tables to shakes hands :-0

Up really early the next day (due to our tour operator booking the wrong flights for us) for our trip to clearwater cave. There was a hell of alot of steps to get to the caves and we were so early the lights weren't on. I washed my face in the water which is supposed to give me eternal youth so watch out girls!

A quick boat ride and we were off to the airport for a 11.25 flight back to KK after the obligatory stop at a longhouse to buy a souvenir (which lasted about 5 minutes!). It was short and sweet but we saw-)everything that we came for........... :-)