Another rainforest!!
Hi all, we're just leaving our third rainforest in 2 weeks, this time it is the national rainforest of penisular Malaysia, Taman Negara, which apparently is older than both the Congo and the Amazon rainforests.
We stayed in luxury here as a treat for Brian's birthday so had our own cabin overlooking the river and only one monkey tried to break in :) The package also included all you can eat breakfast and dinner buffets, the bags are stuffed with ahem leftovers as we have left the resort and will be living on bananas and rice for a few days to detox from the gluttony!!
Did a jungle trek, canopy walkway and a boat trip to go swim in some rapids on the local river, a natural jaccuzzi - lovely!!
This trip to the internet cafe is unplanned as we missed the bus to Jerantut where we are getting the train north. Now, I use the word 'we' there liberally as most people who know Brian probably know this is the first time in his life that he has ever missed a bus!!! And those who know me know its not my first time missing a bus :)
(post script - a few hours later, we waiting 5 hours for the nect bus and it left an hour early luckily with us on it so i think it was the bus's fault this morning, he he)
So our stint in Malaysia is almost up, heading to the islands in the south of Thailand for a few days. If the Perenthian islands are open we might pop there depends on the weather!!
Some final thoughts on Malaysia -
The people here are fab, really friendly, helpful and most speak English which is an added bonus.
However, the insects here are not! But learned a few curious bits of trivia.... A leech is male until it sucks blood, gets fat and sleeps for 5 months he then wakes up female, mmmm.... Brian is correcting me here saying that he turns female straight away I'm sticking to my version. A spider in a web is not poisonous because he has to catch his prey so no need to be scared of them, a spider lurking around a tree is another kettle of fish. And apparently mosquitos don't hang around sea water and if you ever are being chased by a heard of bees hop in a river they don't like water!!!! (our poor guides - they were showing me wild boar, otters, etc and i was asking about insects!!!)
Speaking of guides, our guide in Teman Negara, Roslan, was brill and works freelance and if you are ever here and need a guide we'll give you his number.
And ta da...... we have photos!!!!
Off to Thailand on the 11pm train.....
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Caves, Bat dung and Taipusam
Ok we've been missing in action the last few days so here's the update!
First of all, apologies on the photos front. I was uploading some there onto the PC and my camera battery just died so will have to wait a few more days unfortunately.
We visited a city called Kuching in Borneo where we were invited to both a Malaysian rugby match? and to the home of a Muslim family living in KL.
Unfortunately had to turn down both offers as time was limited. Eric, our host, took us to visit a Long House where one of the native tribes of Borneo still live!! We got to drink some "rice whiskey" with one of the local elders after eating dinner with him! Not bad stuff at all. God knows what was in the bottom of his bottle.
After our quick tour of Kuching we flew back to Miri and then onto Mulu National Park famous for its caves and bats. Our first days activities involved watching over 3 million bats exiting a cave all within 30 minutes, pretty cool if you are into bats!!
The next days we did a tour of the 4 show caves which includes the largest cave passage in the world. We also got to see a lot of bat sh1t. Gwano as the locals call it!!! Apperantly the deer love it out here!
On the third day we decided to try our hands at some adventure caving. This was the highlight of the trip to Mulu without a doubt. We spent two hours exploring Racer cave (named after the type of snake that calls it home!!), climbing over and squeezing through rock, and all in the near dark! This was great fun.
By the way Jeanette added considerably to her bite count in Mulu.
Arrived in Kuala Lumpur last night and had the pleasure of going out to the Batu caves this morning to watch the Hindu Taipusam ceremony unfold. Taipusan is a kind of pilgrimage for Hindu people from all over the world. They come to the Batu Caves, Kuala Lumpur on a yearly basis to celebrate their belief by offering up burdens to their gods (by carrying them up the 272 steps to the temple) and in doing so carrying out some pretty grotesque stuff to their bodies. I could go on about this but I think the pictures below say it all. Enjoy!
Heading north to Taman Negara national park tomorrow morning and after that onto the Thai islands hopefully.
Ok, talk soon,
Brian
First of all, apologies on the photos front. I was uploading some there onto the PC and my camera battery just died so will have to wait a few more days unfortunately.
We visited a city called Kuching in Borneo where we were invited to both a Malaysian rugby match? and to the home of a Muslim family living in KL.
Unfortunately had to turn down both offers as time was limited. Eric, our host, took us to visit a Long House where one of the native tribes of Borneo still live!! We got to drink some "rice whiskey" with one of the local elders after eating dinner with him! Not bad stuff at all. God knows what was in the bottom of his bottle.
After our quick tour of Kuching we flew back to Miri and then onto Mulu National Park famous for its caves and bats. Our first days activities involved watching over 3 million bats exiting a cave all within 30 minutes, pretty cool if you are into bats!!
The next days we did a tour of the 4 show caves which includes the largest cave passage in the world. We also got to see a lot of bat sh1t. Gwano as the locals call it!!! Apperantly the deer love it out here!
On the third day we decided to try our hands at some adventure caving. This was the highlight of the trip to Mulu without a doubt. We spent two hours exploring Racer cave (named after the type of snake that calls it home!!), climbing over and squeezing through rock, and all in the near dark! This was great fun.
By the way Jeanette added considerably to her bite count in Mulu.
Arrived in Kuala Lumpur last night and had the pleasure of going out to the Batu caves this morning to watch the Hindu Taipusam ceremony unfold. Taipusan is a kind of pilgrimage for Hindu people from all over the world. They come to the Batu Caves, Kuala Lumpur on a yearly basis to celebrate their belief by offering up burdens to their gods (by carrying them up the 272 steps to the temple) and in doing so carrying out some pretty grotesque stuff to their bodies. I could go on about this but I think the pictures below say it all. Enjoy!
Heading north to Taman Negara national park tomorrow morning and after that onto the Thai islands hopefully.
Ok, talk soon,
Brian
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The Jungle - orangutans and leeches!
we have survived!! 4 days in the jungle :)
after a lazy day in KK wandering around the markets and having a celebratory bbq at the guesthouse with the owner lucy and other guests on the 13th anniversary of the guesthouse we headed for the jungle. A few hours by bus past Mt. Kinabulu (largest mountain in these parts) and seemingly endless miles of palm tree plantations we arrived at our jungle home for 3 nights.
(River Kinabatangan)
Here we went for river cruises, night walks in the jungle and jungle walks and despite all my leech protection i got bitten by 2 of them, even brought one home on my leg without knowing it and he was very fat with my blood. So now along with the mozzies, there are leeches in Borneo with my boodtype and Brian still has to be bitten by either!!!!
(me running from leeches and Brian fighting them off)
on the boat trips saw loads of monkeys -
On the second day's dusk cruise we came across a pair of pygmy elephants feeding by the river and we sat in the boat beside them for 45mins and man they can eat, took no notice of us and kept on chomping those leaves.
We thought we'd gotten lucky until the dawn cruise the next morning (Brian's bad influence meant i was up at 5.45am 3 mornings in a row and i know many of you are gasping at the shock of that!!) we saw a croc lurking about, then some monkeys in the trees a while later including the protected Probiscis (or promiscous monkeys as i keep calling them, turns out they are not the only promiscious things out here, more on that later) and then we saw 2 wild Orangutans. They were on opposite sides of the River Kinabatangan so we were extremely lucky to see two. After this we headed to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre for the afternoon feed. (Brian had chicken curry and i had an omelette, he he) Seriously, about 12Orangutans arrived for lunch and were highly entertaining with their mucking about, two of them got a bit more frisky than the others if you know what I mean ;) some photos to prove it. hopefully we'll get them up soon. The 4th night in the jungle was in a plusher venue at a local resort to spoil ourselves. Didn't take any photos of that fancy place though!
Now we are in Kuching in Sarawack the other Borneon state of Malayasia. We toyed with the idea of climbing Mt Kinabulu tomorrow but as the rain meant you couldn't see 10m ahead we went to the airport and got the first flight out. The accommodation hasitly booked in departures is a really nice guesthouse where the owners picked us up from the airport and have arranged a day of activities for us tomorrow.
Promise we will put up photos soon. This post is written by me (jeanette) but Brian is right beside me he says hi :)
after a lazy day in KK wandering around the markets and having a celebratory bbq at the guesthouse with the owner lucy and other guests on the 13th anniversary of the guesthouse we headed for the jungle. A few hours by bus past Mt. Kinabulu (largest mountain in these parts) and seemingly endless miles of palm tree plantations we arrived at our jungle home for 3 nights.
(River Kinabatangan)
Here we went for river cruises, night walks in the jungle and jungle walks and despite all my leech protection i got bitten by 2 of them, even brought one home on my leg without knowing it and he was very fat with my blood. So now along with the mozzies, there are leeches in Borneo with my boodtype and Brian still has to be bitten by either!!!!
(me running from leeches and Brian fighting them off)
on the boat trips saw loads of monkeys -
On the second day's dusk cruise we came across a pair of pygmy elephants feeding by the river and we sat in the boat beside them for 45mins and man they can eat, took no notice of us and kept on chomping those leaves.
We thought we'd gotten lucky until the dawn cruise the next morning (Brian's bad influence meant i was up at 5.45am 3 mornings in a row and i know many of you are gasping at the shock of that!!) we saw a croc lurking about, then some monkeys in the trees a while later including the protected Probiscis (or promiscous monkeys as i keep calling them, turns out they are not the only promiscious things out here, more on that later) and then we saw 2 wild Orangutans. They were on opposite sides of the River Kinabatangan so we were extremely lucky to see two. After this we headed to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre for the afternoon feed. (Brian had chicken curry and i had an omelette, he he) Seriously, about 12Orangutans arrived for lunch and were highly entertaining with their mucking about, two of them got a bit more frisky than the others if you know what I mean ;) some photos to prove it. hopefully we'll get them up soon. The 4th night in the jungle was in a plusher venue at a local resort to spoil ourselves. Didn't take any photos of that fancy place though!
Now we are in Kuching in Sarawack the other Borneon state of Malayasia. We toyed with the idea of climbing Mt Kinabulu tomorrow but as the rain meant you couldn't see 10m ahead we went to the airport and got the first flight out. The accommodation hasitly booked in departures is a really nice guesthouse where the owners picked us up from the airport and have arranged a day of activities for us tomorrow.
Promise we will put up photos soon. This post is written by me (jeanette) but Brian is right beside me he says hi :)
Saturday, January 12, 2008
My turn :)
Happy New Year!!!! today we had chinese happy new year dinner (which is a bit confusing because thats a few weeks away yet!), we were in KL for Islamic New Year and I haven 't seen most of you since our new year so hope you all are in good form!
So far so good on the trip. The rain has finally stopped, not for long I think and I only have 6 (although they are huge) mosquito bites, oucharama, the mosqituos don't like Brian and haven't bitten him yet!! So I am trying all the remedies - inspect spray, vitamen B and gin and tonics - trying these remedies on myself and not Brian!!
I know this next paragraph will make those in lovely wet ireland seeth, we spent today on tropical islands, trekking through the jungle; saw a huge lizard there, then relaxing on the beach in the basking sun looking at all the other tropical islands till our speedboat picked us and Michelle from our hostel to go to the next island. Bliss!! Brian will upload photos soon to make ye even more jealous.
So far so good on the trip. The rain has finally stopped, not for long I think and I only have 6 (although they are huge) mosquito bites, oucharama, the mosqituos don't like Brian and haven't bitten him yet!! So I am trying all the remedies - inspect spray, vitamen B and gin and tonics - trying these remedies on myself and not Brian!!
I know this next paragraph will make those in lovely wet ireland seeth, we spent today on tropical islands, trekking through the jungle; saw a huge lizard there, then relaxing on the beach in the basking sun looking at all the other tropical islands till our speedboat picked us and Michelle from our hostel to go to the next island. Bliss!! Brian will upload photos soon to make ye even more jealous.
Yesterday, we went to a water village with Michelle and Kim, where wooden houses are built on stilts at the edge of the jungle on the water. The locals in the village we visited Penambawang, were lovely, we even played tabletennis in the floating community centre!!
All the locals are great here, Brian and Michelle both joined in on a tug of war on one of today's islands.
We're heading west of Kota Kinabulu tomorrow for jungle, mountain climbing (eekk!) and hopefully will spot some Orangatangs so probably won't be online to blog for a few days but take care and hope the rain stops soon and munster win!!!
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Arrived in Malaysia
Alright folks!Finally arrived on Tuesday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, via Bangkok.
We flew with airasia.com from Bangkok to KL. They're basically the Ryanair/Southwest Airlines of South East Asia. Fell asleep on the flight, when I woke up an air steward had changed into the full Manchester United strip!!! and was pushing the food trolley up and down the aisle flogging Man U caps, scarves and jerseys. Capitalism is alive and well in SE Asia. Watch out Michael O'Leary!
We spent two days around KL visitng the Petronas Towers
and Chinatown where we met some interesting characters:
Our Friend Li!!
The weather has been mixed. About 30 deg C during the day, with normally at least one big rain fall during the day. Its very humid! That has been the pattern so far.
Just arrived in Borneo today (Kota Kinabalu), Thursday 10th Jan. We are planning a couple of days on the beach relaxing, exploring the interior (jungles, orangutans, monkeys etc) and then an attempt at Mount Kinabalu hopefuly (4000m +).
Brian
Just arrived in Borneo today (Kota Kinabalu), Thursday 10th Jan. We are planning a couple of days on the beach relaxing, exploring the interior (jungles, orangutans, monkeys etc) and then an attempt at Mount Kinabalu hopefuly (4000m +).
Brian
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)