ANDY AND ANA, KINABALU TO KUCHING, MALAYSIAN BORNEO. 22nd - 27th JUNE 2014

We'd booked to stay outside the park at a place called J Residence. We'd not been able to stay on the mountain and climb it due to bit being fully booked until the end of July :( So second best for us was to stay near the park and head in over 2 days to walk the trails surrounding the mountain.

J Residence was ace, beautiful place with spectacular views and silence :) That afternoon we headed into the park to start ticking off some of the trails from the list. They were pretty easy to follow and trails were well sign posted, albeit slightly confusing! We spent a couple of hours trekking through the foothills of Mount Kinabalu in sunshine under the jungle canopy- bliss.

Trail number 1 ticked off the list

Explorer (Rob this backpack comes everywhere with me)

View from the national park across Borneo

Mount Kinabalu.  So near, yet so far

Well deserved ice cream post trek

Our balcony at J-Residence

Is that a bug in your crotch?  Oh yes it is!

The next day we'd decided to follow the longest trail available (Liwagu) and prepared for a full days walk. Up relatively early and headed to one of two restaurants to grab breakkie. We then took our full bellies back into the national park and started the loop of trails for the day. These took us up and down, around and across the Borneo mountain terrain, a great few hours exploring the natural wonder of our surroundings.

Ready for the long hike, explorer Rotton

Andy getting stuck into the trek, or tree...

River view

Still similing

Ah, Mount Kinabalu around lunchtime - not as good a view

Happy for a sit down

Sweaty selfie number 201

We may not have been able to climb the mountain but we saw this bug on route!

Borneo flora and fauna

Jungle limbo

We woz 'ere

Both of us :)

Next day we headed back on the bus into Kota Kinabalu to catch our onward flight down to the Southern end of Malaysian Borneo, Kuching.

Andy and his favourite tea 'tarik'

Our view from the bus stop back into the city

Bye bye Mount Kinabalu, we will be back to take this photo, but from the top!

At the airport we bumped into Steven and Hiroko again (we'd met them at our hostel in Sandakan). Chatted with them whilst our flight was delayed and they were also heading to Kuching. Our flight was delayed by an hour or so so we arrived in Kuching just before midnight. Off the plane and headed to the baggage carousel to claim our luggage... Or so we thought. By the time we got to the carousel there was only 1 bag going around- mine. Andys was nowhere to be seen... So we reported this to the guy at the 'lost luggage' and went through all the various scenarios of where his bag could be. We got to the point where we assumed that his bag hadn't made the flight and would be joining us in a few days. So we grabbed a cab as it was now 1am and headed across to our hotel (yes a hotel!) after a long discussion with the cabbie about the fare he wanted to charge.

Out of the cab and into the hotel 56, we checked in and Andy realised he'd not got his phone on him- it was in the cab.

Not a great start to our Kuching adventures! The hotel offered to take Andy back to the airport to find the driver whilst I jumped into bed and caught some live Wimbledon coverage! No luck with the phone as the airport was completely empty.

Next day we headed into Kuching and had a look around the town and riverside. I'd wanted to get my hair cut so we set off on a salon hunt. Didn't take long (asked a couple of local girls who worked in a perfume shop where to go) and I was trying to explain that I only wanted a couple of inches off and not a Demi Moore GI Jane. Luckily the lady who cut my hair could understand my plea and she got underway. The highlight of the event was finding Maggie Thatcher in amongst the cutting styles I could choose from, right next to Mariah Carey! Brilliant!

Kek lapis, layered cake that you could buy all over Kuching

Funnily enough no 'you going out this weekend' type conversation at this salon, conversation was more through the medium of my hands indicating a length to cut and that's it! 

But I took great delight in introducing this lady to my stylist, she didn't know who the old dear in the hair style book was... Now do I have a cool Asian, Maggie Thatcher or Mariah Carey cut - decisions, decisions

Ta-dah! Shiny hair for all of 5 minutes before we headed back out to the sweat box

Yes, a beard trim!

Beautiful Chinese temple in town

Some Kuching architecture

Banana fritters, we were told by other customers at the stall that these were the best in town!  We didn't see many others, but these were tasty

Very grand Mosque in town. I really enjoy seeing the mix of cultures/religions in Malaysia

Humm.. which way next?

Of course, it's cake o'clock!

The first pair of jeans I had tried on since December - they didn't fit... But I did buy a t-shirt, thanks Dotty P!

Cut done, Andy had an actual beard trim and we carried on with exploring. This also involved a pit stop in Dorothy Perkins ( for me) and a coffee and a cake- very Borneo. I'm unsure where that footage goes when David Attenborough is filming in town. 

The next day we'd decided to head to another Orangutan Sanctuary- Semenggogh. This was an hours bus ride out of town so we made our way there for the afternoon session. The centre was set in a vast woodland and housed some crocodiles and a small information hut. We were given a briefing and taken into the woodland to the feeding area. Unfortunately none of the orang-utans wanted to make an appearance so we didn't get to see any this time. Not great for us but fingers crossed it means that there is plenty of food in the wild for the animals to eat, the ranger had mentioned that there was more fruit this season so they'd not had as many sightings in the past few weeks.

No orangutan today, but we did see this squirrel, for orangutan photos see previous blog!

We missed the last bus so got a lift from a family who'd hired a van and guide for the day, bonus! Back to hotel 56 and we headed to the local shopping centre food court for dinner.

Up early and still no sign of Andy's bag. So we had breakfast and were catching a taxi into town to catch an early bus out to Bako National Park. We bumped into a Polish couple (Julia and Robert) at breakfast who had the same plan as us, so rather than catching a bus we got a cab out to the park and shared the costs. They were great company and were on their holidays from work. An hour taxi ride and 30 minute boat ride later and we'd touched down in Bako National Park.

Julia, Robert and a local on the crossing to Bako

And Andy, of course

Our boat driver deciding when and if he would pick us up at the end of the day

As soon as we'd arrived we saw a couple of Proboscis monkeys and lots of macaques. We'd arranged to catch the same boat back with Julia and Robert but headed off on different trails throughout the park. The terrain was really different to Kinabalu as the park is on the coast and has great views of the sea and plenty of wildlife. We spent a few hours traversing the trails and beaches before making our way back. We spied a cool lizard who when we first saw him was brown and blended into a tree and within 2 mins it had turned green and jumped into some leaves- nature is amazing!

Welcome party to greet us, more proboscis monkeys with their big noses

and long tails

These guys were all around the welcome area where they served food.

From Bako looking out towards the Borneo coastline across to Malaysia

You can't hid from Andy Attenborough Mr Crab!

These pitcher plants are still really cool to see

Of course, a sign asking someone not to do something - so they do it! Bloody foreigners ignoring signs 

Andy looking for crabs at the rock-pool, reminds me of that scene in Derek where they go to Broadstairs beach for the day (if you've not seen it, it's worth a watch)

Score, one little hermit crab found

Funky foliage

Lizard part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

part 5... he'd jumped off the brown perch as he now needed somewhere green to blend in to - pretty cool, huh?

Back in the boat with Julia and Robert and we made it ashore to catch the bus back into town. We'd jumped off the bus in town to run a few errands and made our way back to the hotel for our last night in Borneo. Again, still no bag! So Andy needed to start making some purchases, so we headed to the local shopping centre to start replenishing stocks before our short stop in Singapore the next day.

Very modern mall in Kuching where we saw the most orderly que throughout the whole of SE Asia and it was for a 'yo-sushi' style restaurant!

Up early (again) for our 8.30 flight to Singapore. Still no bag after checking at the airport and we boarded the plane to Singapore.  Bye bye Borneo, if Andy could've lost his bag anywhere in the world, he would've wanted you to have it ;)