[Mulu, Malaysian Borneo] We have been prisoners in the jungle for what feels like weeks. Extraction is set for 15:20 (Zulu) tomorrow but in the mean while we are just trying to stay alive. I almost lost V to boredom yesterday – it’s the most vicious killer here.

Seriously. This is the first time on our journey that we have been stuck. Unable to move on. Restricted by a plane ticket. It’s not a great feeling and we could not have chosen a worse spot to end up marooned. We watched ‘Groundhog Day’ last night. Being here is something like that!

Yesterday it poured almost all day and with no adventure cave options we just lounged around in the dorm exhausting our podcasts, movies and books. In the afternoon a very friendly and pleasant English guy arrived. On checking in he had asked to do some adventure caving and had been put on a tour for the next day. Apparently there were still two spaces free – we went to sleep hopeful that we would get on the excursion in the morning. No such luck. We were told again that it was full and settled reluctantly for a canopy tour. The story with the adventure caves has ruined our time here and it’s all down to the staff’s complete disorganization and lack of interest.

What can we say about the canopy tour? Well it cost 4 slices of chocolate cake and ice-cream each and we spotted more ‘wildlife’ sitting on the hostel porch for 30 minutes than on the tour. Our guide did point out a few trees, not the names or any other information, just the fact that they were trees. Similarly a flower (singular), some birds and the odd skink. Mulu National Park is not impressing us – we would have been far happier with the cake.

James (our entertaining and talented English roommate) showed us some photos and told some stories about the diving in Sipidan. It looks unbelievable and we are really excited about getting there. We just need to go past the orange atangs and spend a few more days in the jungle (oh boy).

So our recommendations for anyone coming to Mulu National Park:
– Book tours and accommodation VERY early and keep checking in with them. Every afternoon the staff were in the hostel trying to fathom why there were not as many beds available as there should have been. The facilities are great (a lot has been spent) but the organization is a total disaster.
– Do the Pinnacles hike. At least it will get you away from the HQ for 3 days. It was unfortunately too expensive for us.
– Do the adventure caves and Deer cave. The rest is pretty dull.
– 3 nights is more than enough.

Malaysia… Truly disappointing (so far…)

[Pictures: oooo. Canopy ‘tour’. Ziplines are much better]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi

[Mulu, Malaysian Borneo] What a fantastic nights sleep. Now we’re ready to take on some serious caves. Today’s mission was the well trodden show caves in the area. After breakfast we headed out by boat to the ‘Wind’ and ‘Clearwater’ caves about 30 minutes north east of HQ. The sun was out but it was pleasantly cool on the river.

First up was the Wind cave. The trails are an impressive mixture of wood and steel walkways leading up the side of a mountain to the cave entrance. The caves are also very well arranged. Lighting controlled by motion sensors, well built walkways and perspex protection for some of the more delicate formations. Despite all that the cave was not very impressive. Very small a little variety of formations left us hoping for better at Clearwater cave.

After a brief rest we climbed the 200 steps up to the Clearwater cave entrance (a nice reminder that our legs are still sore from Kinabalu). Our guide pointed out some interesting rocks near the entrance that have ‘grown’ towards the sunlight (well the bacteria grows toward the light eventually leaving rock behind). The cave was smaller than expected but had some beautiful stalactites, stalagmites and columns. The endless and sometimes stretched paradolia got a little tiresome. Our guide indicated where the ‘adventure caving’ sections split off the marked trails and head along underground rivers for 6+ hours. Now that looks like fun!

Back at camp we had lunch and I promptly nodded off into a deep sleep. We are sleeping incredibly well here – the humidity and heat is something like ‘Durban fever’ I guess. V got us up and going in time for the afternoon expedition to the ‘Deer’ and ‘Langs’ caves. An hour long walk through the jungle (albeit on immaculate pressure cleaned raised walkways) got us to Langs cave. Our group consisted of a loud (that’s redundant) American couple and a local Malay couple. The Malay guy was interesting – seems he was on the crew of the first ‘Survivor’ and has worked with Nat Geo, Animal Planet etc. V and I just listened as we strolled along. A tree along the path provided some entertainment rattling when the leaves were tugged (well the excited ants and not witchcraft was resposible).

Near the entrance to Langs cave we came across some tiny worms that generate threads like spider webs to catch prey (straight out of Planet Earth) but otherwise it was another typical Mulu cave. Deer cave is well known in the area. It is more of a massive tunnel than a cave. Up to 200m wide and 150m high it’s home to an estimated 3 million bats plus an awful lot of guano. Our camera battery died as we entered the cave and I’ll blame the incredibly strong ammonia smell for letting me forget that the spare was in the daypack! We took a 1 km walk around the cavern. It was impressively vast. The bat colonies appear as massive black patches high up on the cave roof – just don’t look up with your mouth open. Back outside the cave we joined some more tourists at a viewing platform to wait for the bats’ daily exodus. Unfortunately the rain started and we only saw a few streams leave the cave. Apparently when they exit en mass it is a sight to see – maybe tomorrow.

We have to admit that the caves here aren’t what we expected. They may claim to be ‘the largest cave system in the world by volume’ and have ‘the largest chamber’ but they pale in comparison to the beauty of the caves outside Anshun, China. Malaysia has been pretty disappointing (and expensive) so far – we have struggled to get excited about the places. It could be that we are just tired but I suspect that we have become accustomed to having something amazing to do every day. It’s just not the case here. So we are actually getting bored and frustrated – having a fixed exit date is also not helping. The plan for tomorrow was to hit the adventure caves for some real hard-core fun and excitement but turns out they need to be booked weeks (or months) in advance and the next scheduled departure is after we leave. Seems crazy to have all these activities listed for the park but all the adventure caves are not available (not because they are popular, but due to shortage of guides) and the ‘Canopy Walk’ is being repaired. What a waste of time and money! Good thing we have some movies to watch for the next couple of days. Our hopes for Malaysia now rest solely on the diving at Sipidan. Roll on New Zealand and the freedom of the open road!

[Pictures: Some cool stalacmites in Wind Cave. Cool tree. Sim at the entrance to Deer cave just as the batteries went flat – Will upload V’s iPhone shots to the gallery soon]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi

[Mulu, Malaysian Borneo] Another flight today… We miss going overland, flying just feels like cheating. This time our destination is the National Park at Mulu which is deep in the jungle. Kota Kinabalu airport, besides being architecturally cool, must rank highly on ‘sleepinginairports.com’ – padded chairs without armrests, aircon not too cold, 24hr Mikkie D’s, the most awesome salt water aquarium at the fishmonger !?, immaculate loos and free WiFi. Pity we only got to spend an hour there. Our flight was with MasWings (another branch of Air Malaysia) on board a fair sized turbo-prop with a 20 minute stop at Miri. At every airport we had to go through immigration and collect more stamps even though we were just changing provinces.

From the air the runway at Mulu looks like a bald patch ripped from the jungle and nestled between gigantic limestone karsts. Somewhat like landing in the Amazon but at least the runway was tarred. After collecting our packs from the lone baggage handler we grabbed a shuttle to the park entrance and checked in. The place is very well presented (most looks brand new) and seems well run with a large variety of guided activities. We booked tours of the showcaves for tomorrow and headed to the hostel. Spacious with 17 odd beds scattered around the hall, it was full with travelers. We pushed two beds together – not PC in a dorm I’m sure, but we are the ranking ballies. The doors are open with no locks and the place is clean, but still expensive for what it is. We have got three full days here. Time to go sweat in the jungle again and see lots of bugs and trees.

[Pictures: Mulu Airport – pretty cool]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi

[KK, Malaysian Borneo] Kinabalu mountain lodge was a little warmer last night but to be honest we were so tired it really did not matter. After a quick breakfast we packed up and headed out with very sore legs and packs loaded with dirty, damp washing (probably heavier with all that water too).

The two friendly pooches from the hostel accompanied us along the road as far as their territory allowed before bolting for home. We only had to wait a few minutes before a ‘private taxi’ (fancy people carrier) pulled up to offer us a lift. He was asking RM20pp (£4) but we knew the minibuses were RM15 so we waved him on. He stopped just ahead of us, jumped out and renegotiated to our price – as long as we didn’t mention the price to the other passengers on board – excellent. The ride back to KK was quick and uneventful with a police checkpoint being the only excitement.

Back in KK the weather was great. Positively hot. I hung our soaking shoes out of the hostel window on some cord to dry and we headed out in search of a laundromat. Finding one was a little frustrating – as you would expect in a first world city not geared for backpackers. We found one that wanted 3 days to do washing! Fortunately there was another one round the corner that would have it ready by tomorrow. Anyway, with the chores and lunch (good and reasonable at a ‘Thai’ restaurant) out of the way we headed back to the hostel to plug into the net and let the pain drain from our legs. Watching V going up and down the stairs at the hostel would be more funny if I wasn’t also in agony 🙂

The hostel has reasonably speedy Internet access and I have figured out how to download torrents to my iPhone – so we’ll have plenty of entertainment while we are recovering. We don’t expect to leave the 2nd floor of the hostel tomorrow unless hunger pains outweigh the agony of descending the stairs.

[Pictures: Our escorts and back in the city – love this building]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi

[Kinabalu Park, Malaysian Borneo] Even with being exhausted we didn’t get much sleep – apparently some hikers only arrived at 10pm and people were up making a racket and getting ready from 1am. We joined the ‘supper’ queue at 2am and gobbled down some chow (the French toast was gone by the time we got there but I survived) in anticipation of the energy requirement for the morning (or whatever 2am is).

Freezing cold water on our faces, a red bull and a purple pill got us out the door before anyone else at 2:30. Our ‘guide’ continued his useless streak. He did not have a headlamp and did not contribute to the hike at all. In contrast, our Auzzie companion from last night had his guide pointing out flora and fauna all day.

The trail was pitch black. No moon or stars meant the first 700m of rocky steps was tricky to negotiate by the dim light of our little headlamps. We started out with full cold weather gear but within 15 minutes had stripped down, the stars came out for a bit and we were confident it was going to be an awesome morning. With 2km to go the trail starts to head up rock faces and you have to haul yourself up on the fixed ropes. Our improvised sock-gloves were soaking within seconds but the we were still feeling strong. It is an odd feeling climbing by headlamp. You have no idea if there is a huge drop just a few meters or a small slip away – thankfully it is easy to follow the fixed ropes – even on the flatter sections.

After flashing our passes at the last checkpoint we started the last leg up steep and smooth undulating rock faces. We kept a slow steady pace and were doing well until we came around the summit ridge and were pelted with rain and icy winds. The last half hour to the summit was horrid. Stumbling around in the dark on uneven ground obscured by raindrops racing across our headlamp beams. Our ‘guide’ hid in a gully while V and I scrambled for the summit (4:50am, 4095.2m, :gps:GPS::6.083333::116.55:gps:). We were ellated to have made it and impressed that we had met the challenge. But we were also a little disappointed. There were no views in the pitch dark and driving rain. Freezing conditions (and blue fingers) meant we could only snap a couple of shots before bolting back down. If we had tried to huddle in a gully and wait till sunrise, we would have been hypothermic.

Down was more difficult – slipping and stumbling occasionally on wet rock. Behind the summit ridge the conditions improved as we passed other groups heading up. By the time we got back down to the checkpoint we were able to make out some of the formations in the changing light. I was feeling annoyed at our guide – he knew our pace and could have recommended that we leave LR at 3:30 putting us on the summit at dawn (we still would not have seen a sunrise due to the cloud cover but at least we would have seen the summit).

By the time we got back to LR at 7am we had defrosted, dried out and were well aware that going down all those steps was going to hurt – A LOT! Breakfast was excellent and since we were one of the first groups back I got my French toast. We reckon that at least half of the people who hiked up yesterday chickened out of going all the way up – the weather didn’t help.

The Summit is only half way

After giving our legs a little rest we hit the trail around 9 aiming to be back at the gate by 13h00. Going down was less aerobic (obviously) but required far more concentration to prevent a tumble. It wasn’t long before it felt like our knees were turning to jelly. The weather held out until the last km when it started to drizzle and when we finally reached the gate it started to bucket down. The round trip took a total of 12.5 hours of walking. Quite an epic that was almost over.

After a bland lunch at the restaurant near park HQ we had the task of the 2km+ walk back to the hostel. It wasn’t going to be fun with the rain which was now torrential. We tried a taxi, but the price was ridiculous so we sucked it up and started off with aching legs. By the time we reached the hostel we were soaked through – good thing we have two days in KK to dry out and let our jelly legs set.

Overall it was great experience and I’m sure when we look back at it we will forget the dissapointmet at the summit and the pain of the descent remebering only the thrill of having made it.

[Pictures: Breakfast at 2am WT??’Glorious’ summit photo LOL. Down and Dead!]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi

[Kinabalu Park, Malaysian Borneo] Eish, the hostel was a bit of a disaster last night. We froze with the beach-towel blankets and didn’t get much sleep. After a hot shower and big breakfast we headed out to Kinabalu park. A brisk 2km+ walk got us to the gate where, after the peace and quiet of the past 12 hours, we were confronted by hoards of hikers from Auzzie school girls to locals of all ages. The weather was looking great – blue skies and the mountain peeped out from behind the clouds for a few minutes. We registered quickly and got cool personalized ID tags to identify our bodies if required, arranged a guide (mandatory) and grabbed a ride to Timpohon gate where the trail starts at 1866m.

After signing in we paused at the race results board inside the gate. There is an annual race from the gate to the summit and back. Last years winning time was 2:40:41 – it was going to take us two days! We set of with our ‘guide’ following. To be honest we barely saw him. Seems guides on Kinabalu are hit or miss. Ours was a miss. We did well at the beginning covering the first km in 20 minutes, the second in 30 minutes and the third (half way) in 35 minutes. The trail is excellent. A well built track with an insane number of stairs (cut into the rock, set in concrete or constructed with wood) winds it’s way up past civilized shelters and toilets at every km. There were a lot of people heading up for the day and we were near the front of the hoard as we negotiated the increasingly steep section up to the Layang-Layang shelter (2072m).

At Layang (just short of 4km) we stopped for our packed lunch which was provided as part of the fee. It was brilliant and well thought out – just what we needed and the cheeky squirrels around the shelter obviously agree. Up to the shelter the views had been mostly of dense rain forest. We had kept our heads down and plodded on up through the moss covered trees. Beyond Layang the path turned to a hard sand and large rocks and the trees shrank to shrubs and grasses somewhat reminiscent of the berg. The trail became incredibly steep with endless huge steps.

We were both feeling exhausted and watching the porters carrying huge loads of supplies past us wasn’t helping. The last 500m was crazy. It is so frustrating since you know that 500m on flat ground will take at the very most 7 minutes to walk but up here it takes 30! V is amazing (aka stubborn) in these situations. She starts counting steps. Usually 150 but down to 50 between rests when the going gets tough. She sticks to it with grim determination and will stop at 150 steps even if there is shade or a rest bench at 155 steps – got to love her for that.

After 4.5 hours (precisely the estimated average time for the hike) we hobbled into Laban Rata rest house (3273m) and checked in to our dorm room. We were one of the first groups to arrive. Quite chuffed at our performance – not too bad for us. Before having a chance to cool down we decided to hit the showers. We knew that there was a problem at LR and that there was no hot water or heating. It was insanely cold as the screams from the shower stalls indicated. The rest of the afternoon was spent taking photos, waiting for dinner and hanging around in the dining area. The rain started up but seemed to come in waves as hikers arrived at the door saturated to varying degrees.

Trying to stay awake we chatted to a pleasant Auzzie chap until at long last dinner was ready (around 17h00). It was excellent. Simple, good comfort food. We ate our fill and polished off mugs of tea before heading to bed around 19h00. Tomorrow we make our push for the summit – hey, it’s hard core for us 🙂

[Pictures: Stairs and more stairs. Laban Rata, the promised land]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi

[Kinabalu Park, Malaysian Borneo] So the start of our Mount Kinabalu epic today began with a long wait at the bus depot just down the street from the hostel. Same story as usual, our minibus driver was waiting for more passengers but he gave up after an hour – I don’t think the pouring rain was helping. As we set off I noticed the first ‘There, I fixed it’ (thereifixedit.failblog.org) moment of the day. The aging driver had ingeniously rigged a set of rods and axles from his seat through the van to the sliding door so that he could manually open and close it – very cool.

We headed out of town and up into the jungle. Not much to see through the heavy rain but the roads were good and the traffic light. Not long out of town we spotted another, but possibly not so brilliant, fix. Some workmen were on top of a building but their ladder was not long enough to reach from the ground. They had placed the ladder on top of a fully extended forklift to reach the roof. My but we are smart animals 🙂

Around 2 hours later V spotted the sign for our hostel on the side of the main road and the driver kindly deposited us at the intersection in the rain. We knew we would need to walk a bit to the hostel (Kinabalu Mountain Lodge) but it was longer than we had expected and definitely more than the 1km advertised.

The place looked tranquil and surrounded by pretty gardens. We were greeted by two labradorish puppies and a sign stating ‘Please remove and bring your shoes inside or our puppies will chew and hide them’ – we complied. The place was dead quiet. No one else there besides the three friendly staff members + two dogs and two cats. Nothing to do, no restaurants or shops nearby and the rain was making the place very chilly (no help being up at 1500m either). We had to dig into our hiking snack supplies while waiting for dinner and found entertainment in a leech that V had attracted. Instead of pulling it off she decided to see how big it would get if we just left it alone. We got bored after 10 minutes and scraped the little sucker off. Full and obviously satisfied (possibly drunk) it just lay there on the floor so V relocated it to the garden. Maybe we should get a pet leech one day.

We have stripped our gear to a minimum for the hike up to the hostel at Laban Rata tomorrow. Just our cold/wet weather gear and a change of undies. The next two days should be fun and challenging… if it stops raining!

[Pictures: Kinabalu Mountain lodge – hmm… Maybe this was a mistake]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi

[Kota Kinabalu, Malaysian Borneo] The name ‘Kota Kinabalu’ conjures up images of an amazingly picturesque Bornian city surrounded by mountains, jungles and blue seas. Well it isn’t. The city is dull. We decided to have a look around the city and take in the provincial museum, waterfront and local market with a stop at one of the many malls to get supplies for mount Kinabalu. It was thankfully overcast but still very humid as we set out on our walk. The 3km+ walk out to the museum was along very busy roads – I have no idea what all these people do for work in this little city but they seem to spend a lot of time driving.

The museum looks like it was built in the 80’s with the architecture inspired by the Atari logo. It is currently being renovated so a large portion was closed off. In our opinion even the reduced entry fee (RM 8) is too expensive for what you get. After that disappointment we took a few snaps of the funky looking mosque across the road and headed back towards the waterfront. More of a concrete fishing harbor than a waterfront we walked along it passing the local markets as it started to drizzle. There was a row of old pedal driven Singer sewing machines towards the end of the market manned by tailors hard at work.

We found an excellent little ‘Italian’ spot for lunch – carbing up for Kinabalu on pasta. We obligingly commented in their guest book. Nandos in KL did the same thing the other day and for our ‘address’ I put the blog address. How cool is Nandos Malaysia – they took the time to find the relevant post on our blog and leave a comment.

I reckon we walked around 10km. I don’t think it really counts as ‘training’ for the mountain. 10km on streets at sea level doesn’t compare to 18km round trip from 1500m to 4095m. Tomorrow we head up into the mountains. I only hope it stops raining.

[Pictures: The funky mosque]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi

[Kota Kinabalu, Malaysian Borneo] Today saw the end of a very, very long leg of our journey. 7 months of traveling over land and sea by boats, trains and buses has passed. I almost feel sad about it, having crossed from the UK to Kuala Lumpur without a flight (okay we cheated once from Lhasa to Kunming but only because we did not want to repeat the train ride). The original plan was to keep going south through Indonesia but this morning we grabbed a taxi to KLIA and boarded a plane for Kota Kinabalu. So no crossing the Equator on foot and I was looking forward to that. Maybe next time.

We have to admit that Asia Air was brilliant (besides incredibly cheap eg: KL to London one way £170 if booked 1 month in advance). We landed on time in KK just ahead of a brewing thunderstorm. The runway is very near the sea so from our viewpoint it looked like we were about to experience an emergency water landing. We found good (if expensive) accommodation at Kinabalu Backpackers Lodge near the ‘city centre’ and headed out to find food and our bearings. We are here for a full day tomorrow and will be gearing up (that means shopping) before heading out to mount Kinabalu. We make our summit attempt on the 9th but are both feeling so lazy at the moment, better rest up for the climb, I think we’ll have an afternoon nap 🙂

[Pictures: I’ll update the gallery very soon. Maybe even tonight]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi

[Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia] KL is too expensive! Today we had planned to either go on a forest canopy tour not far outside the city or catch the fireflies at Kuala Selangor (about 90 minutes away on the coast) but both options were just too much for us at this point. We ended up spending the day in and around the hostel. We’ve been plotting and planning the Borneo section of the trip – looks like we have ample (or too much) time and will probably throw in the a trip to the caves at Mulu. Other than that it was a chilled out day surfing the interwebs, sorting out a few chores (phew.. Reception found our washing) and catching up.

At lunch I went (V followed reluctantly) in search of a GPS point :gps:(GPS)::3.141592::101.697929:gps: nearby that would put me as close as possible to the northern latitude of Pi (N3.141592). See what happens when we have nothing to do 🙂

I walked up and down the street for half an hour but the buildings were not helping the accuracy of the reading. It would have been better in the middle of the road but motorists have no respect for scientific experiments. I know I walked over Pi a few times and eventually called it close enough. We took a stroll through the Chinese market and successfully haggled (we thought so anyway) the price on a pair of ‘Fakeleys’ for me to replace my broken sunnies. On the way back to the hostel we grabbed some bananas, a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jam – our first ‘normal’ lunch in 7 months! It was an awesome feast.

A completely relaxing and lazy day. More of the same tomorrow I suspect (hope).

[Pictures: Close enough 0.00001 ? And yes… the sign sums it up]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi

[Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia] Not much to do in this big city but shop and since we can’t really do that we decided to get on a city tour bus. V got stuck reading until 2am and I didn’t sleep that well (still nursing over 40 bed bug bites from that infested hole on love lane) so it was a groggy start to the day. The bus was impressive with audio commentary and free WiFi faster than our hotel. Starting with the best intentions we got off at an early stop, The Royal Palace – we should have done some research. It’s not very impressive from the fence and access is not allowed. The only thing to do is take photos of/with the guards at the gate. The system of monarchy is odd here – a democratic monarchy? Nine of the states here have sultans and every 5 years they take turns to be the king of the country.

Back on the bus for a short hop around the impressive central station (with cool looking monorail) and through the ‘Little India’ shopping district got us to the National Museum. The pre-historic and colonial sections were the most was interesting to us and as far as museums go it was compact. Near the entrance some guys were selling test drives on a Segway. Two laps around the museum for RM20 – it was tempting, maybe next time.

By the time we got back on the bus it was nearly lunch time so we decided to skip some sites (they looked boring anyway) and head straight for the highlight of the day – the Petronas towers. It took a while to get there and we opted to grab a bite in the monster mall attached to the towers before heading on up. Truly European (especially the prices). Yikes! We walked into a big disappointment in the towers. Turns out they only allow 900 people a day to go up and no more tickets were available. Totally gutted we tried to make the most of it by taking some pics from the fountains out front. It is an amazing sight to see all that stainless steel. A beautiful piece of engineering.

A circuit on the tour bus takes around 3 hours with no stops so we decided to get back on and ride it all the way around back to The towers to see it in the evening then jump on the last bus home. We used the short photo stops to snap shots of the sites along the route – Independence Square and the KL Comm Tower amongst others. Nothing really grabbed our attention enough to get off the bus and explore, especially when it started raining, and after fighting our way through traffic we got back to the towers around 7pm (4 hours later). Without WiFi on the bus we would have gone nuts but that wasn’t the only entertainment. The audio guide was not working so the ticket collector was doubling as a tour guide. His accent and ad-lib commentary were hilarious. The elongated ‘Terima Kasih’ (thank you) at the end of every announcement was classic.

We watched and photographed the towers as night fell and the floodlights warmed up changing the light from sunset oranges to halogen whites reflecting off the stainless steel. We were joined by a couple dozen other tourists around the fountains. It was beautiful to see.

The traffic around KLCC seemed gridlocked and after wasting 10 minutes waiting for a bus that had little chance of arriving we decided to hike it back to the hotel. It was a good call. We were moving much faster on foot than the traffic and thanks to our phones and GPS we didn’t have a problem finding our way home through the concrete maize of KL (even managed to stumble across a Dunkin Donuts on the ~3km walk). It was a long day confirming that big cities are still not our scene. Gimme mountains, caves, seas and rivers please.

[Pictures: Petronas day and night]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi

[Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia] Almost nothing noteworthy about today. We left the Cameron highlands today early this morning. The minivan was not full but was packing a few giggling and annoying girls who were getting pretty drunk last night. Seems we have found a way to stop the annoying giggles… Put them in a minivan and drive too fast on very windy roads for an hour. To be fair V also felt terrible after half an hour. It was a rough, but at least quiet, ride. Have to mention the freeway signs. In SA when there are roadworks there is normally (okay occasionally) a guy waving a flag around as a warning. In the UK it’s a flashing sign or something. In Malaysia it’s a mannequin dressed in hi-vis with a motorized arm waving a warning flag. Too cool 🙂

As we neared the city I was able to spot the Petronas towers. They look incredible but we’ll save them for tomorrow. We were deposited in China Town and set about the task of finding accommodation. So far in Malaysia we have not have a room with an external window (windows usually open onto an internal corridor) and today’s selection was no different. We settled on Monkee Inn. It’s really a hostel not an inn. Shared bathrooms and office type partition walls but it felt clean and acceptable. This seems to be the ‘budget’ standard in Malaysia.

When V finally woke up from her afternoon slumber we took a stroll down the street to find some dinner. Almost caved for a KFC but we found a Nandos !! just a little further down the road and could not resist the temptation. It was a bit of a splurge but we reckon we deserved it. I’m now well stuffed and ready for some sightseeing.

[Pictures: Nandos KL – we could hardly believe it – African tunes and all]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi