23-02-2010 BINTULU - PULAU LANKAWI, life is easy

Exploring the markets and steaming hot city of Bintulu. Nice coconut Roti's and many sorts of fresh fruit to get rid off the stomach problems. Yesterday I saved a bird, today some birds attacked me, flying towards me and picking me on the head...why?! There are a lot of illegal private taxidrivers, after some negotiation we got a ride to the airport for just 22 Ringgit. First flight to Kuala Lumpur, I got a complete interview at Immigrations because they didn't trust my visit. 3 hours at Luala Lumpur ended up in eating, eating and more eating.

The flight to Pulau Langkawi was a little bit delayed, we arrived at Langkawi around 22:15. Surprise! Karien's parents waited at the airport and took us to their Resort at Langkawi. Those are really nice people. And they arranged some accomodation for us, perfect! AFter meeting some other groupmembers it was time for a good sleep on a normal bed this time :-)

22-02-2010 BRUNEI - MIRI - NIAH CAVES - BINTULU

08:00 New Express bus all for ourselves. This was good for bordercrossing, we spend just a few minutes at Immigration. The bsu left at 08:00 in the morning and took 2,5 hours. They don't drop you off in Miri Town Centre, we had to take a local bus. They send us to the wrong place, so again another local bus. Miri is a big city. After some time we arrived at the long distance busterminal, just in time for the bus to Niah that left at 12:30. Some weird guy they had to throw out of the bus. More sleeping, after 1,5 hour we arrived at the Niah junction. Here you have to discuss with the locals for hiring a private car to the Niah Caves National Park 15km away from here, it cost us 20 Ringgit (one way). ASt 15:00 at the Park Headquarters, it closes at 17:00 but you can come back from the caves after that time. The boardwalk through the jungle was 4km. The Great Cave was fucking huge! This is really different then all the others in South East Asia. A lot of birds and bats in the caves, and a lot of shit :-) And you will need a headlamp/torch because its really dark. At another tunnelcave we put our lamps out and this was cool; all the birds and bats flying around you and seeing absolutely nothing. The Painted Caves are a little bit further, but the paintings are almost gone. You can see some archeological sites and skeletons. There were some signs for dangers...well I found out why. I walked behind the lines and at some point I felt first on my bump and my head hit one of the rocks. The camera felt also on the rocks. Luckely no real damage :-) And watch out at the boardwalks to the Painted Caves, the are old, rotten and broken at many places. If you walk at the sides and if you're a little heavy, youy will defenitely fall down!

Getting back at 18:30. The local guy told us before that there would be enough cars to bring us back to the junction...NOT! The staffmembers told us that there would be no people anymore to bring us back 15km. But keep being positive :-) I found some Archeological students and started to chat with them, asking them to bring us somewhere. They did, just for free. Hitchhiking is easy! :-) Having serious stomachproblems again and just in time for the 2 hour Expressbus to Bintulu.

In Bintule everything is dead after 18:00. Almost everything closed and no local transport. So we were forced to take a Teksi for 20 Ringgit. The Bakun Inn Hotel was chill, and the Ban Kee Cafee had the best food in whole South East Asia! Damn, this was soooooo nice (Chicken Dry Chili, Rice and Spinach with Egg), so cheap!

21-02-2010 KOTA KINABALU - PULAU LABUAN - MUARA (BRUNEI) Happy Birthday!

04:30 in Kota Kinabalu, no sleep at the last nightbus. Loud music in the local bus. I'm getting old, I felt out off the bus...auw! So I'm 30 now, celebarting in with nuggets at KFC at 05:00 in the morning. Balloons, happy birthday hats and free Cokes. Rhis was the start of a very funny day... EVrerybody shouted 'Happy Birthday' all day long. We took 2 feriies (1 to Pulau Labaun and 1 to Muuara Port). The orange colored balloons on my backpack folowed us everywhere, even Immigrations left it on the bag and laughed about it. In Brunei alcohol is prohibited, so we got some Bacardi at the jetty pier for just 7 euro's. And some delicious Belgian chocolates.

The karaoke on the ferrie was horrible, dvd's of the earkilling Germans Modern Talking (they are still alive?!). We missed the bus at Port Muara so we had to get a car among the road, tai was very expensive. We found one local that took us 30km to BSB (the capitol of Brunei) for 10 dollars.

BSB was like a gohscity, Sunday and so quiet. Nobody on the streets. You can walk around this city in 1 hour. Only the mosque is kind of nice to see. And there we discoved that it's not accepted in Brunei when male and female are close together...they shouted at us, and our glittering Happy Birthday hats were not making them happy too. Such a rich country and still a lot of poorness when you see the people living at the water village.

We took a more luxury hotel this time, it's my birthday :-) and got drunk on the Bacardi whit the moviechannels. In the city was not much to do, only unlimited satay at the food stables. AFter this I got sick again for 2 days...

My 30th birthday ended with fireworks everywhere in the city. Just like NEw Years Eve in Holland. Everybody is shooting fireworks on the streets. I Still don't know why...

20-02-2010 KINABATANGAN RIVER CRUISE

Breakfast at The Fat Cat bakery was interesting, some staff members were having a big bitchfight. A lot of screaming and fighting inside whaha. Buying the Happy Birthday decorations for the big day tomorrow, becoming 30 years old! 12:30 pickup with a local guys' personal car. The ride took around 2 hours. Arriving in the ghosttown of Sukau. THey shops had no more drinks and ice creams, but they had a internetshop to book our last minute tickets to Langkawi, yes! Because I couldn't book tickets online, I'm having new creditcard problems UNBELIEVABLE !

The 2,5 hour rivercruise is nothing more then with 8 people in a small open boat through the jungle. The Sunset River Cruise showed us many Hornbills, Macaque monkeys, Kingfisher birds, some other tropical birds, the monkeys with the strange big nose and a nice sunset. Yes, this was much better then our rainforrest dicovery yesterday. The included dinner was not enough, if you have at least for Dutchies in your group... You will need more food. So the people behind us only had plain rice. They were also out of softdrinks, what a tourcompany whaha.

SOmebody should give us a lift to a junction 1 hour away from this town and there we should jump on a bus. We were sure that the bus would arrive at 23:00. They kept on telling us that the times had changed and we should be there at 21:00. So no more time to jump on the nightcruise. And guess what? We waited there for 2 hours in complete darkness in the middle of nowhere for the bus, that arrived at? 23:00 :-) Sitting at the back off the bus was jumpy, and so many people vomintting in the bus, jagh!

19-02-2010 SEPILOK, Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre

TIme to sleep for a while, mini bas to Sepilok for the Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre. Well, nobody told us this was closed from 11:00 till 14:00. Altough the people in Malaysia are very helpfull and friendly with everything. We walked to the Rainforrest Discovery Park, just 1,5km away. This was not that interesting. Birdwatching during mid day sucks, some smal birds and 4 Hornbills flying away. Some salamanders and watersnakes and that's it. The most 'exciting' thing was swinging in the canopy bridge over the water... Walking back was burning hot, but a big luxury 4WD stopped and asked us to go with them. They seemed okay so we took a ride to the rehabilitation centre. Watching a presentation about the urgent matters of extinction of the Orang Utans. Tickets for foreigners are 6 times more expensive then for Malaysians! We saw at least 6 of these so humanlike creatures (they are 96,4% human). The feedingtime was more picturetime. One of the Orang Utans was very curious and tried to get on the platform for the visitors, the park rangers scared her away everytime.

After a long local busride back (traffic jam) just more time to relax. Tastefull Cheesy Chicken Mayonnaise RIce dish from the street. We tried to get some cocktails at the rooftop of the NAK Hotel for a nice sunsetview. They were out of Mojito's! During the evening there is nothing much to do in Sandakan, early bedtime.

18-02-2010 PULAU MANTANANI, diving for Dugongs

Why not? STill feeling the musclepain of the big mountainclimb from the last days and we go diving/snorkling. AFter a long busride we arrived at the jettypier near Kota Bedul. Small speadboat for 20 people. It was windy and that's why the ocean was rough. The trip took almost 2 hours, jumping over big waves and shaking around. The scubatanks were lifting up sometimes and some petroltanks cracked and were leaking. Okay, 30 minutes of this is acceptable but not this. After a while we were wet till the bone and so happy to see the island in the distance.

Karien went on another boat for snorklers. There were only Chinese and Japanese people on this trip. The first dive at The Police Gate was nt that bad; many stingrays, huge batfish, anemonefish, tuna and more. But the visebillity sucked, just 5 metres. The BBQ was not a real BBQ and because of all the delays not much time on and around the islands/beaches. The second dive was shit. I had problems the first dive with some air leaking out of my tank. Now on e of the Japanese had the same, but serious trouble. We spend a lot of time solving this under water. The visibillity was ess then 3 metres and the only thing we saw were some nudibranches. SOme other divers got out of air quickly and the picture taking Japanese diver was not looking and constantly swimming against me.

The trip back was fast. We told the boatdriver to speed and he did. Wind from behing this time, jumping over the waves. Some time the waves were so high, they went over the boat and everybody got wet, cool! We loved it, it was just like a 1 hour rollercoaster ride.

We asked the shuttle to get our backpacks at the hotel and drop us at the busterminal in KK, there we got a local bus to the big busterminal outside KK for our bus to Sandakan. 19:00just in time. Everyting unprepared but easy. Not sick anymore and in the evening we filled ourselves with cakes, sweet sandwiches and cokes. Ariving at 01.00 in the night around Sandakan. Didn't knew where we were, so took a Teksi to the KFC (the hotel told us that they were next to KFC). But they didn't told us there was another KFC :-) After some walking around we found the cheap place that we reservated. TIme for relaxing!

17-02-2010 MOUNT KINABALU; day 2

We forgot our mobilephones and had no alarmclocks, so the neighbours woke us up at 01:30 in the night. 02:00 supper breakfast; eat eat eat and drink a lot of hot tea. At almost 03:00 we started the last 2,7km of the climb to the top, in complete darkness. It was a cool thing to see, this long line of people with headlamps walking on the mountain (around 130 climbers plus guides). We started as one of the last and arrived with the first 15 people at the highest top. The walk was amazing and not that hard. It hasn't rained last night so the rocks weren't slippery at all. I'm feeling more energy, but while sitting on the top I felt very sick again. Luckely it was freezing up there so that feeling was overtaking the sickness sometimes. Wearing 2 shirts, a vest and a rain/windjacket was not enough. And bring some gloves! We were there to fast so we had to wait and hour in the cold for the sunrise. This was again spectaculair, maybe a little too overcrowded with all those picturetaking climbers. We decided to get back fast. Scenery on the way back was soooo nice. This is one of the best activities of my trip! We enjoyed the cheap sweet pancakes to get some extra energy. I was dancing down the mountain at some points, but our guide told us after a while to use the rope because it was getting to steep and dangerous.

Just a short nap of 20 minutes and breakfast again, good. Walking down the last 6km was not that easy. It was hot and sunny the first few kilometres (clothes out again). And after a while we felt our knees and legs. The legs were already shaking after the first descent. After a few kilomtres we were in the clouds/mist again and the track was getting slippery. The people that were climbing up today didn't look really happy. And you see these guys walking up with drinks, cans and food to the resthouse, unbeleivable. At least 35kg there are carrying up everytime.

It took us 3,5 hours to get down the last 6km, not what we expected. The lunch was good, pasta, chocolatemuffins, curries atc. Arranging a minivan with some ather climbers, this trip took a little bit longer then the taxiride.

Yes, I'm finally feeling better. Now it's time for a 4 personmeal at Pizzahut :-) Maybe this was too enthousiastic for 2 persons... And everything went wrong with our order, who cares after this unforgettable climb.

16-02-2010 MOUNT KINABALU, dauy 1 start of the big climb

I told Karien before the minibussed leave at 07:00 but she heard 07:30. And 07:30 was not right. TAking the minibus of 08:00 was not good so what should we do? It seems that you can also jump into a 7 person Teksi (taxi) for just 16 RInggit (same price as the bus) and it brings you to the mountain headquarters in 1 hour instead of 3. We did, with a local family. And afters seeing the plastic bags again, oh yes! Vomitting children in the back of the taxi. Seeing the mountain from a distance was impressive, do we reaaly have to climb all the way to the top? This thing is huge!

At the headquarters we arranged our permits, lunchpackages and guide. BRing your own water, becaue the charge you 3 times more here. Add we think we're gonna loose our guide, this little mountaingoat (as I called him) was just half our size.

The first few kilometres were ok, hot and sweaty. I was only wearing shoes and pants after the first kilometre. We were walking in the clouds and only one time we saw the sun for a few seconds. The paths are wlkable. SOmetimes wooden steps and most of the time rocks. I was feelings very sick and at some point I was out of energy. Nobody to motivate me, so I did it myself. After 4km I lost Karien and the guide out of sight. Only on character I made it to the resthouse at 6km, reunited with the guide and Karien again. In spite of my bad sick condition, I made it with the first group of people that arrived at the basecamp. Fall asleep for a few hours. It was raining hard outside. When we woke up and walked outside there was this most incredible sunset ever! These cloudformations are amazing, and we were kilometres above it. Sooooo beautifull.

The good thing was, I was feeling hungry and there was all-you-can-eat. That's good about this trip, verytime you eat it is all-you-can-eat. I spoke with some other people and it seems that I'm already known as The Hot Stripping Climber (because I sweat so much and climb the mountain half naked). Oh, and be shure to be well prepared for a cold evening. They had powerproblems at the moment, so no heater in the resthouse. We went to bed at 20:00 with alot of clothes and blankets. We had to get up at 02:00 this night!

15-02-2010 KOTA KINABALU, National Park - Manukan Island

Changing hotel. Arranging tours and tickets took some time. The mountainclimbtrip is offered by several hotels and company's around 830 to 1500 Ringgit, we found the official shop and got it for 566 Ringgit (still a lot of money). Again to Little Italy, we loved the food there. Speedboat to Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park, Pulau Manukan , not in time for 3 island trip because it was so busy with Chinese Newyear. The island was crowded and when you buy the ticket at the jettycounter, don't think you're done with paying. You have to pay taxes, and more fees everytime. Snorkling around Manukan Island (sand and coral) was fun, lot's of tropical fish and stingrays. On the island you can see small lizards while you're enjoying the sun. Waiting for 1 hour for speedboat back. The sunrise is not that spectecular as they say.

Almost all shops closed because of Chinese Newyear, no activities, not really much to see/do in town. The only thing that reminds me of partying are all the cars with loud booming hardstyle music... damn, I miss these party's in Holland. Try to eat food on market, but not a good feeling yet, I'm feeling sicker again just before the big climb. And walking around in blood on the foodmarket was not the best idea with this feeling :-)

14-02-2010 JOHOR BAHRU - KOTA KINABALU, Chinese Newyear

Airportshuttle very early, feeling not too good. Some questions on the airport from Immigrations, because I didn't receive a Departure Card. But this was not a big problem. The flight to Kota Kinabalu took about 2,5 hours. Everything easy going, waited for the cheap City Transfer for just 1 Ringgit. Walked a long way in Kota Kinabalu (few kilometres) in the hot burning sun. Well, nothing arranged in advance with Chinese Newyear is not the smartest thing :-) But we found a place after a while, just in time cause I almost collapsed.

After some resting time for Little Italy. I'm finally feeling a little bit hungry so this tasty place with Italian pasta was perfect. Good meal.

CHinese Newyear today, again no huge parties or activities. A lot of people on the streets but that's it. Sometimes they shoot a big rocket in the air, but the big fireworks? SO we spend some time walking around town and tried to fall asleep with the live music downstairs. Oh yeah, even people in Idols sing better then these false singing cats :-)

13-02-2010 PULAU TIOMAN - MERSING - JOHOR BAHRU; unprepared travel

Ferry was more then one hour too late. We had to pay becuase we lost our bag with tickets... well, at the end of the day I found the tickets somewhere uhm. Stupid Vincent, I know... :-) Arranging the bus to Johor Bahru was fast. But no possibility to book airlinetickets online anymore for today, shit. Calling Air Asia didn't work, busy all the time. So just hope for the best.

Arriving at Larkin Busterminal (Johor Bahru) after a fast driving busride, damn these people think it's a Rally for buscoaches. Local bus to the airport, long trip and crowded hot bus. funny when you feel sicker and sicker. The tickets at the airport were all of a sudden much more expensive then a few hours ago. So decided to take the earliest flight the next day. Back to Johor City. The Airport shuttles go for double prices.

And what they say about accomodation in JB is true; dirty, smelly, hot and you may hope that you find something descent. Well, we stayed in cheap Hotel Hawai; temperatures like in Hawai, holes in the matrass, smelly, leaking everywhere, horny cats screaming all the time etc. At least they had an elevator.

Expected some activities because of Chinese Newyear. Nope. So we went to the Cineplex today. Just 10 Ringgit! And the cinema's are better then in Holland. And guess what, my bankproblems are finally solved, almost kissed the ATM when I received the money...

12-02-2010 PULAU TILOMAN, tropical white beaches, turtles, scharks and snorkling burka's

Reservation 1 day before, no way...arrange something spkntanuous like our Coral Island snorklingday. Started with 3 people and in half an our a full small speedboat. The adrenaline rushed trough my vanes with this cool speedboat adventure, rough sea, high waves and flying over these waves was wicked! Try to get a grip somewhere on the boat, but sometimes you almost fall out of the boat...no wonder why they gave us the life jacket.

The snorkling around Coral Island was beautifull; parrotfish, moonfish, barracuda's and a lot of standard fish (but many). The highluight was ofcourse the turtle. Second stop was Long Beach (on the small virgin island), beaches where you dream about. White sand, palmtrees, amazing rockformations and good views on the area around the island. Sana told me something about sounds from the bushes, well this was the lizard that walked around.

3rd stop on the other side of the island, with rough sea. The 2 girls from the group from Jemen surprised me, they even snorkel and swim with the complete Burka! Weird appeareance but respect :-) They became seasick so we had to turn back. But snorkling in the deeper waters is the best for spotting Reef Sharks, I saw 1 and was so enthousiastic. We dropped the 4 from Jemen at the jettypier and hopped on to the next island/area; Monkey Bay. Known for it's turtles and sharks, but didn't see them here.

Nice last day on Pulau Tioman, enjoying the tasteful Roti's.

11-02-2010 SALANG BEACH, TIOMAN, relax and do n othing all day

THis feels good, not coming out of bed and not a sweaty dirty room this time. More dissapointing was the view on the beach when I took a look on our terrace. It was low tide almost all day, so rocks and no chance for a normal entry in the water. So where are all the white sandy beaches where everybody's talking about? On the other side of the jetty pier there is a beach whit white sand (when the sun shines) and a nice refreshing swim. This is what we did, sunbading and swimming all day long.

Hong Kong Noodles, try this deep fried stuff, it's fantastic!

One small problem today, we forgot one of the bags with food and all our tickets (Marinepark, returntickets) yesterday on the boat. The boat was not coming today and the booking agency didn't want to help us.

10-02-2010 MERSING - TIOMAN ISLAND, unexpected waste of time

We were so happy, taking the nightbus from Kuala Lumpur to arrive in the early morning at Mersing (around 04:00). And then they tell us that because of the monsoon season there is only one ferry to TIoman Island today, at 15:00! So we bought some ferry tickets and received some mats to sleap on from the booking company. First tried to sleep on the floor in the shopping mall like all the others. But this was too hot and there were too many mosquitos. SO sleeping on the parkinglot, whahaa! Never done that before... But finally we found a good place to sleep, on the beach, we woke up with the sunset around 08:00. Cheap noodles, walking on the beach, playing Yatzee for a long time, walk around the dead town, get some food for on the ferry. And at 15:00 thinking we copuld get on the boat...not! A delay of 2 hours, for what?

At 19:00 after a bumpy speedboattrip we were there; Salang Beach at Tioman Island. Sunset when we arrived, found a cheap place at Ella's place at the North end of the beach, with a bungalow on the beach. Good life... with dinner in the sand

09-02-2010 KUALA LUMPUR - MERSING, hot hot hot!

7:30 alarmclock, shit. Just to the Twin Towers again to get in line for the free bridgewalk tickets. ANd we were not the only one... 1 hour and hundreds of people in front of us. I won the bet, so free fruitshakes for me today :-) The bridgewalk was not as spectecular as the KL Tower yesterday, with a crappy 3D movie at the start. Later that day we tried to find out the bussystem in KL, this was not easy. So walking to this huge park with lakes...sooooo boring! Nothing to do there and nobody there. Just got some bustickets after a quick decisision to go to Tioman Island tomorrow. And what I will remember from this day? It was sooo hot, never felt so hot before. And the guesthouse organised that som backpackers could play in a movie today and payed 200 Ringgit for it...but I was not white enough whahahaa. Movienight in our cozy guesthouse to kill the time.

ANd then it started, massive thunderstorm with tropical rain. ANd we had to walk a while to the busstation. Well, Karien looked like a weird animal with her red raincover over herself and her backpacks. I was just soaking wet.

08-02-2010 KUALA LUMPUR, Explore the city

Woke up late, there are no windows in our room so it stays very dark. Jumped on the metro (KLR) and wanted to climb the Twin Towers (Petronas Towers). This is closed oin monday... So shopping in the huge shoppingmall. Litres of these delicious Pink Passion Juice shakes (Passion fruit). Relaxing in the parlk of The Golden Triangle, climbing in trees and finding our way to the KL Tower. This was not that easy, we didn't knew you have to enter this Forrest area first to get to the KL Tower. But after a few steps through the party and entertainment district of Kuala Lumpur we found the entrance. You can't get to the observation deck without buying a complete package of activities. We choose Package A; observation deck was nice and I was reunited with my good old favorite hometown Rotterdam, the Euromast was in the KL Tower. The Formula 1 simulator was broken! Damn... Then we had this funny horseride, but the told us we were too heavy whahahaaa. The Animalforrest was not really interesting.

On our walk (yeah, Kuyala Lumpur is not that big, you can walk) back we had some time to relax on the grass of Medena Square. Visiting all the main attractions/buildings in this town. At the end of this day we were so tired. Falling asleep quite early ater some chats with more Dutch people in Chinatown.

07-02-2010 HCMC - KUALA LUMPUR, Goodbye Vietnam, hello Maylasia, hello sweet girlfriend!

Too much pain from inflammations, so soft breakfast. Jumped with all my bags on a Xe Om (scooter) and let's go to the international airport. Just when I was sitting on this dodgy scooter I recognised it, out of all 16 million scooters in Saigon I was sitting on the same one as last week! So my last small money of Vietnamese Dong I spent to this guy.

On the airport everything was easy. No waiting, checking in, just 20 kg and you don't have to pay Departure Tax anymore whenyou leave Vietnam. Immigration was 1 minute work. And the roads in Saigon were surprisingly empty at 07:30. So it took 20 minutes to get to the airport. When there is busy traffic you will need at least 30 minutes with a Xe Om (and a lot more with a taxi). Exchanging Vietnamse Dong for Maylasian Ringgit was not possible with th banks in Saigon and on the airport. Only US Dollars, but the exchange rate when you buy US Dollars is bad. Around 19.600 Dong for 1 US Dollar at the moment.

Arriving at Kuala Lumpur was easy too. I arrived first out of the plane, so filled in the wrong immigrationform, but the officer told me it was okay. In just 2 minutes I had my stamp and it didn't cost anything. So grab my backpack and just 30 minutes after landing I was reunited with Karien again. After a long hug it was time for something else I haven't seen for a long time; McDonalds! Oreo McFlurries yummie. The bustransfer is more then 70km for just 8 Ringgit. Finding a cheap hotel; Le Village is our place. Filled with couches and a real relaxing backpacker atmoshphere. The rooms were small and hot, shared dirty bathrooms and a stairway full with shoes. Weird but chilly place just a few minutes from Chinatown and the other main atractions.

Ending the day at The Reggea Bar, a perfect place for cocktails, spicy nuggets and meeting other backpackers.