The next day our cultural activity was a visit to Sarawak Cultural Village, which can be best described as a life sized model village presenting the houses, people and crafts of the various ‘tribes’ within Borneo. Highlights included Rich learning how to use a blow pipe (demonstrated below - he was actually quite good at it), sampling home-made wine and watching the touristy dance show.

Our guide book suggested that the nearby beach of Damai was worth an afternoon’s visit, we had originally contemplated staying there but since the only accommodation was of the 5 star resort variety, we decided to condense our time there into a day trip. When we asked the staff at the cultural village how to get there they looked bemused and told us simply to walk through the Holiday Inn. After a nice lunch at the hotel we wandered down to the beach and enjoyed playing in the sea for a few hours, surprisingly the beach was almost deserted….
We later discovered (by reading a sign on our way out) that we’d actually been on a private beach meant for use by hotel guests only – oh well!

Saturday morning we caught the express boat to Sibu, we had originally intended to spend the day there, but upon arrival we saw little to entice us to stay and so caught the next bus to Bintalu. There was not much to attract tourists here either but it was getting late and we were both quite tired having spent the day traveling. We enjoyed some tasty Chinese cuisine and a nice cold beer at one of the hawker stalls but our quest for a bar failed. The only bars in the town were ‘local bars’ offering either (very bad) karaoke or lap dancers. We decided to call it a night.

Sunday morning we caught another bus and went to visit Niah national park which consists of 31 square kilometers of lowland forest and limestone massifs. The reason to visit Niah is for the caves. The ‘Great Cave’ – famous for having the world’s largest cave opening at 250m by 60m, and the ‘Painted Cave’ – the paintings here date back forty thousand years – the first evidence that people had lived in Southeast Asia that long ago.
















We stayed in a lodge at the national park before heading to Miri the next day. We got to Miri late in the afternoon and although it was nice to find good restaurants and bars, there was little to see. That evening we decided to go to Gunung Mulu National Park the next day - we were not sure how easy this was going to be given that you needed to fly to get there (twelve pound flight versus 10 hour expensive boat trip) and are advised to book accomodation a few days in advance. Well to my amazement we managed it - a phone call to the park and a visit to Air Asia's office and a couple of hours later we were in Mulu. Whatsmore we were able to book our return flight from Mulu direct to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah enabling us to bypass Brunei completely.

Mulu park was pretty cool but unlike the other national parks we'd visited you need to have a guide with you to go anywhere and whilst not too expensive for us they were pretty expensive by Malaysian standards which probably explains why the only people at the park were foreign tourists (Mulu was privately owned whereas the other parks were government run). Mulu is famous for two things the pinnacles and its show caves. The Pinnacles are 50m high shards of rock (caused by rain dissolving the limestone) which are supposedly as sharp as samurai swords. Unfortunately its a 3 day tough climb to see them and with our time constrained by flight availability we opted to visit the caves instead. There are four caves to see Deer Cave, Langs Cave, Clearwater Cave and Wind Cave. My favourite was Langs Cave which is the smallest and prettiest of them all containing wierd and wonderful rock formations or to be technically accurate - curtain stalactites and coral like helictites.
















Whilst all the Caves were impressive in their own right, Deer Cave is believed to contain the largest cave passage in the world. Inside the cave is 2km long and 174m high, and up above us were millions of bats - you could both smell and hear them!. We waited outside the cave at dusk and caught sight of the 'Bat Exodus', where millions of bats leave the cave together to hunt for food, the effect looks like a continuous swirling black ribbon in the sky.

We were having a rather pleasant time in the park, until one of the Australian tourists asked us what flight we were on, suggesting that our KK flight had been cancelled, he explained that the airline FAX - a subsiduary of Air Asia was in financial difficulty and was about to be rescued by Malaysia Airways, a consequence of which was that flights were being changed or cancelled across Borneo. We went to the park office to check and he was correct, the flights to KK had been cancelled indefinately, the advice given to them by the airline was simply to show up at the airport by 11am where you would be put onto a flight back to Miri from where they would look to put you on another flight to KK. So here's what actually happened.......

We arrived at Mulu airport and were put onto the 12.30 flight, they had scalled back the size of the planes also so we travelled on a small 18 seater twin-otter plane - a priceless experience which in the end cost us nothing.

When we arrived at Miri an hour later we were advised that there was no availability on the daily flight to KK for either today or tomorrow. The previous day they had transferred some people in the same boat to Sibu airport further south to catch the KK flight from there but since these poor people had missed the connection at Sibu they were reluctant to do this again and so offered us a full refund instead and advised that we book the flight from Miri with Malaysian airways. The first flight available was 9pm tonight - it was also twenty pounds cheaper than the FAX flight so although we'll have spent a day sitting around in coffee shops eating chocolate cake its given me a chance to update the weblog!. Hopefully we'll get to KK by 10pm tonight.

We're now in Kuching (pronounced 'ker-ching!') somewhere in Borneo. It's even hotter and more uncomfortable here than anywhere else we've been! That may have something to do with only being about 100 miles from the equator in mid may surrounded by thick tropical jungle. Anyway, it's lovely here - we've been doing the things you're supposed to do in Borneo - seeing wildlife, walking in the jungle and swimmining in the sea. Tomorrow we're off to see some local cultural stuff. I've also possibly set a new record for losing bodyweight through sweat - did I mention that it's really hot here?

Ker-ching! translates as something like "cat city". It's got a cat museum we haven't been to for obvious reasons and is so called as one of our illustrious colonial forebears asked what it was called and his local guide thought he was pointing to a cat and not the city... It's a clean pleasant place with lots of nice colonial architecture, and the majority of its citizens are Chinese so the food's excellent too with all the same night market action as on the peninsula.

On our first night in Ker-ching! we had a bit of a surprise when we completely randomly bumped into Jo and Philip from South Africa (Diplomatic Immunity Mr Riggs). We met them in Nepal on our trek.

We visited an Orang utan rehabilitation centre the other day. It's an area of rainforest that's been set aside to breed and treat orang utans prior to being released back into the wild. The 6.00am alarm to get there in time wasn't exactly welcome, but it was worth it to see the big orange fella's skinning and eating bananas in less than a second! They also move incredibly gracefully through the trees being the only tree dwelling great ape. The centre was pretty good - there were no barriers between us and the orangs and we were allowed within a few metres of them.

The last 2 days we've been in Bako National Park. This is an astoundingly beautiful and largely pristine piece of land on a peninsula just north of here, accessible only by speedboat (well maybe other kinds of boat too...). It's been protected for over 80 years, so the animals are pretty nonchalant about human activity. We saw bearded pigs, probiscus monkeys, vipers, mudskippers, loads of other less exciting stuff (maquaques yawn) and my favourite the 1.5 metre long monitor lizard.

The plant life was pretty stunning too, running the gamut of various types of jungle that I can't be bothered to list now. It was amazing to finally see real jungle, and only when you see it for real can you really understand how hard it must be to survive in it. The 95% humidity, the 35 degree heat, the density of the undergrowth, the cliffs and hills hidden within it, the clouds of mosquitos and all the plants covered with horrific spikes make it a deeply unpleasant place to be.

To escape this for a while we hiked to a beach in the park. It was easily one of the most beautiful beaches I'd ever seen, and the water was as warm as a bath - so warm we actually wished it had been a little colder. It was almost deserted but sadly time was pressing so we had a 30 minute swim and sweated back to the park HQ where our speedboat awaited.

I've also finally invested in a laptop - I bought it 2nd hand for an excellent price off Arfur Divali in Little India in Singapore - no money back no guarantee etc. Bets can be placed now as to how long it'll last... We used it to watch a pirate copy of "Hot Fuzz" the other night which was an excellent film and comes with my heartiest recommendation.

Farewell India and hello Singapore, the land of 24 hour shopping malls, escalators and great food – country number 17 on our trip!.

We took a sleeper train from Varanasi to New Delhi, and of course being our last Indian train it was naturally over 5 hours late meaning an entire night spent in a grotty train station listening for the announcement “For your kind attention” (telling us that each and every train was delayed) every couple of minutes and of course being eaten alive by mosquitoes. We arrived at Delhi the following evening and pleasantly appreciated the fact that it was much less hassely than when we arrived back in January. Maybe it was the 45 degree heat and high humidity or the fact that few foreigners visit India at this time of year – either way it was welcomed and gave us an opportunity to visit the sites we’d missed before such as the Red Fort, Jama Masjid and Chandi Chowk. Naturally Rich also made the most of the wide availability of good curries…….

We took a surprisingly comfortable Air India flight which took 6 hours to Singapore. The only drawback was the desire of the air stewardesses to constantly feed and water us, which meant another night with no sleep. Naturally when we arrived at Singapore we were shattered, but despite this you couldn’t help but notice that the two countries couldn’t be more different. In Singapore you cannot spit (hoorah!), eat or drink on any public transport, drop litter or smoke anywhere – hefty fines and in some instances prison sentences for committing such offences. The cows have been replaced for shiny cars, McDonalds sells Big Macs again and above all it’s really clean. There are however skyscrapers and shopping malls everywhere, in fact you could also walk around the entire city without venturing outside simply by walking through one mall to the next.

Singapore is famous for three things in my mind – Shopping, food and a Singapore Sling in Raffles Long Bar – naturally we did all three. The shopping was to be honest disappointing the electrical items are no cheaper than we can buy at home on the internet the only advantage here I think is the sheer amount of choice available to you, but having said that most of the shops are the same i.e. M&S, Gap, Topshop, Body Shop, River Island, Zara, Mango etc and its all been imported from the UK!.

The food on the other hand is fantastic and cheap (as long as you eat in the plentiful food halls and hawker markets and not in the restaurants!). We sampled “Eat all you can Sushi” for 6 pounds per head, Black Pepper Crab, Seafood and of course Singapore noodles. We also tried the Durian fruit which smells revolting. We also visited Raffles and had a Singapore Sling (which tastes like Calpol), sadly the entire hotel was completely refurbished about 10 years ago and in doing so the colonial charm has been replaced by 5 star modern luxuries, they did however provide you with monkey nuts and actively encourage you to throw them on the floor. Drinking is actually more expensive here that it is in the UK, we went to Clarkes Quay on Saturday night and the price of a pint of Tiger beer was about 5 pounds!. Singapore is of course full of lots of very poncy bars – great for people watching.

We visited Sentosa Island which is a completely artificial beach resort complete with imported sand and watched “Songs of the Sea” a laser, firework and water show which whilst aimed at children was good fun. We also went to China Town, the Esplanade, MacRitchie Reservoir and Little India but to be honest did little in the way of sightseeing as there isn’t that much to see.

We left Singapore on Wednesday and took a bus to Kuala Lumpur – the seats on the bus were big and spacious – there was even enough room for Rich’s legs!.

The journey to Kuala Lumpur took 7 hours and thankfully the bus dropped us off at China Town which is the backpacker and budget hotel district and also home of KL’s biggest counterfeit night market. We spent two nights in KL, to be honest it was a lot like Singapore in that there were skyscrapers and shopping malls everywhere but noticeably not as clean. Food is just as good and shops much cheaper (except electrical goods – the hunt for Rich’s new camera continues….) but otherwise there was little to see and do. A highlight to our trip was a visit to the Petronas Towers, built in 1998 and the tallest building in the world at 452m high (88 floors).

Conscious that we have little time left on this trip, we cut short our visit to KL and after a breakfast of dim sum headed by bus to Pulau Pinang, an island on the north east.

Today we are in Georgetown its still really hot here so visiting tourist sites is challenging to say the least and we seem to spend most of our time either showering or looking for an air conditioned mall/cafe etc. Georgetown is a pleasant colonial town and trading port which has many beautiful buildings dating back to the British occupation of 1786.

Next stop Sarawak, Borneo.....

We're back in India having made the deeply uncomfortable 24 hour bus and train journey from Kathmandu to Varanasi. I believe Grapes has already alluded to the Nepali fun sized tin box bus on truck chassis experience, but this one was at least air conditioned. We managed to get ourselves old skool 1st class train tickets for the Indian side of the journey - our very own compartment with natural aircon due to the lack of glass... This is of course a good thing as the daytime temperature here is 45 degrees and the nightime minimum is about 25!

Varanasi is a weird place. It's India's holiest city and people come from all over to take a dip in one of the worlds most polluted rivers. To quote the Lying Planet, the level of faecal bacteria in the water is 1.5 million per 100mL of water, when the safe bathing limit's around 500. And that's just the shit. When they're not swimming in it they've got funeral pyres in full view on the shore, but we've not had the experience of seeing a dead baby floating in the water...

We're staying in a really nice (air conditioned) room right by the river, and this morning got up at 4:30 for a dawn boat trip. The city seems fairly quiet and laid back compared to our expectations, maybe due to the time of the year, but the bathing ghats are still pretty busy in the morning. It's also rather nice to be eating proper curries again!

Anyway, as promised a little more about our trek.

We left Kathmandu at 7am for 3 bus trips which took us as far as a place called Bouleboule. This is a little way up from Besishahar, the traditional start for the Annapurna circuit but we didn't particularly fancy a 4 hour hike up a hot dusty road being overtaken by busses and jeeps so we took the easier option.

The weather started out pretty hot and humid for the first few days so I was soaked in sweat most of the time. Grapes was mostly OK as the condition of her agreeing to go on a trek was that I carried all the stuff so she only had a small day pack. Most of the first section was up and down through rice terraces - big mountain views were lacking but it was still exceptionally pretty.

As we climbed the valley narrowed into a series of spectacular gorges with the river thundering through, and the teperature dropped to comfortable (for walking). The scenery changed to pine trees and orchards as well as our first glimpses of snow capped peaks. We'd left the lowland Hindi culture behind and had entered the Tibetan influenced Buddhist areas of Nepal.

The higher we got the more the valley started to open out and the better the views became. This picture is of Annapurna II at about 7900m (if I remember right!). We were now in the rain shadow of the main Himalayan chain and the terrain was drier and the weather stayed clearer for longer.

This is us at about 3700m between Pisang and Braga. You can see my huuge backpack and Grapes diddy little handbag but she's still smiling, I've not been killed and it's worth it! Around here we start meeting more trekkers - as you get higher your stops become constrained by maximum daily altitude gain and we align ourselves with the stops listed in the Lying Planet.

This is Braga village with the monastary (gompa) in the background (the red building). We stayed in Braga for 2 nights at 3500m to help acclimatise the the altitude before the high pass. All the villages in the region have barely changed since the middle ages, with the possible exception of the overhead power cables (which have only been here for around 5 years). On our day off we attempted to walk to a nearby ice lake at 4500m. Walks like this help with acclimatising to the altitude. Grapes gave it up at 4300m, knackered. I made it to 4500, and had to turn back 10 minutes short of the lake too dizzy to attempt to cross a steep snow bank with a 1km drop down the side...

After Braga the weather got cold, and these happy little fellas started showing up. This is a yak, every village has a hotel called the Yak - some have several. On the course of our walk we also saw eagles, otters, vultures and weird hamster type things.

This is the view at the bottom of the Thorong La on the east side at around 4400m. The nearest settlement on the west side is at 3700m so you can see why most people cross it east to west. It's a barren area - only a few clumps of brown grass cling to life up here, and everything's expensive having been portered and mule trained up along the same path we've taken. To while away the time everyone huddles in the dining room as its the only heated room in the lodge playing cards and reading books.

This view is nearing the top of the pass at over 5km above sea level. We set off at 6:30am to give us enough time to summit by 10am before the wind and cloud build up. Near the top there is a never ending series of false summits, and at this altitude there is only 50% of the oxygen available at sea level. In spite of spending time acclimatising we manage to walk for about 1 minute before we need a 5 minute breather to recover! I've probably never felt so exhausted in my life...

Three and a half hours later we've made it! Look how flushed with success Grapes is! Doesn't she look delighted? Bet she can't wait to do that again! Also marvel at my day glo yellow fake North Face jacket - bought for 4 squids after my rain jacket got nicked by some pesky kids (probably). We're at 5416m which is 4 times higher than Ben Nevis and over 600m above Mont Blanc! There is a small cairn 50m higher so like a small child I dash up there just because I can. We also partake in Nepal's most expensive tea and super noodles. The tea cost about 60p and had to be carried 70 miles up there (along with the kerosene to boil it) by some porter and is still cheaper than Starbucks. Sadly the worst is still to come - a knee destroying 1700 metre descent to Muktinath where a cold shower awaits me (though not Grapes who uses the last of the lukewarm).

Down the other side this is the view over the medieval village of Jharkot. We're now geographically and culturally (if not politically) in Tibet. The landscape is dry, barren and windswept. The Star Wars feel of the place is enhanced by the 100cc motorcycle taxis that have started to use the new dirt road and wheeze their way up and down the valley carrying fat Indian pilgrims to the temple complex at Muktinath. Sadly (for us and the lodge owners) this new road is a feature of much of the trek down to Tatopani though it has yet to link to Nepal's road network.

We join the main river valley the other side of the pass at Kagbeni, 2800m above sea level. Here the river bed is 1km wide and a savage wind rushes up it every day after mid morning, sand blasting everything in its path. This is also the deepest valley in the world - further down the valley floor lies at 2500m while two 8000m peaks (Daulaghiri and Annapurna I) lie either side. (The mountain in the picture is Nilgiri)

A few days trek down the valley (passing through Marpha - the apple capital of Nepal!) we reach Tatopani. The food is pretty good down this side of the circuit and there are hot springs here so we decide to spend a rest day here. It helps that our friends we met on the circuit, Amanda and Chris are staying here too... After Tatopani the route climbs back up to cross a ridge at Poon Hill - the views back to the Annapurna range from here are stunning, as you can see...

After Poon Hill by some miracle I pursuade Grapes to carry on as far as the Annapurna Sanctuary before heading back down. It adds about 5 days onto our trek, but it's a truly amazing place. On the way up low cloud blocks the views but on arrival at Annapura Base Camp (4400m) we're treated to a clear sunset. The Sanctuary is a small valley high in the centre of the Annapurna massif. Once inside you are completely surrounded by mountains - most are over 7000m. It's a different world - glaciers, avalanches, moraines, ice lakes. We stay the night there and the views early in the morning are just as special, even though the temperature in our room was below zero.

This is Annapurna I (8070m) from A.B.C. This may also be the first time we've bothered to put a photo of Francois the Camel on the internet - it would have been fairly pointless to have lugged him 150 miles by foot otherwise...

On the way back down the valley to the trailhead it rained a lot. The weather is building towards the monsoon and every afternoon without fail we got treated to a large thunderstorm, usually with hailstones the size of 5p pieces. Grapes initially vowed never to do a trek again, but has since mellowed and admitted she actually enjoyed (most of) it. I shall be doing the Everest Base Camp trek at some stage - it's a bit tougher than the circuit (apparently) but you do get to see the world's highest mountain...

We rested up a few days in Pokhara, a city with nothing to do. At all. It's extremely pleasant with a beautiful Himalayan backdrop (when it's clear) and a nice lake. All we did was plan which nice cheap restaurant to eat in next. In one (Bistro Caroline funnily enough) I ate one of the finest steaks I may ever eat - it was barely warm, huge, tasted devine, melted in the mouth and came with fantastic peppercorn sauce and cost 3 quid! Bloody hell!

Once we'd got bored of eating we headed back to Kathmandu before hightailing it here a couple of days later. We're flying to Singapore on the 4th so Grapes can do some shopping and I can have a really expensive Singapore Sling in Raffles hotel. It should prove to be quite a contrast after the filth, stench and chaos of India...