Malaysia

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Exploring Kota Bharu

We remained horizontal (due to lack of choice), had some pastries and canned coffee for breakfast. The scenery outside was pretty gorgeous living up to the line’s nickname “The Jungle Railway”. There was dense jungle and in sparser areas I could recognise breadfruit, rubber and coconut trees. As we headed further north, we saw some […]

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Rail Adventure Begins: Kuching to Kota Bharu

Our rail adventure begins today for we fly from Kuching to Singapore, train to Johor Bahru and then the overnight train to near the Thai border on Malaysia’s east coast and overnight at Kota Bharu. We woke at 0600 and had a light breakfast at home before using a Grab (like Uber) service to the […]

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Sarawak Cultural Village

I went to the Sarawak Cultural Village about 26 years ago. It is a living museum of Sarawak’s tribal cultures. With Jo visiting, I thought it was good to go and show her what makes Sarawak special. The traditional dwellings were interesting for her and we tried the sago pancake, tumpik which turned out to […]

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Orang Utans at Semenggoh

With Jo still on New Zealand time, it made sense to go to the Semenggoh Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre early in the morning. We got there a little before 0900 and were hurried along by staff as the two animals were already hanging around. We observed them for a while before being led to another […]

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Siniawan Night Market

Today Jo arrived from New Zealand after a nightstop in Singapore. With an afternoon arrival, it made sense to pick her up at the airport and continue to the Siniawan Night Market not too far away. It was an interesting introduction to Borneo for her. Old buildings there are a rarity as the wooden structures […]

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Capsule nightstop

We landed in Kuala Lumpur International Airport about 30 minutes late around 2110. I made my way to KLIA2 by train to experience my first capsule hotel stay. Without luggage, I managed to make a reasonably speedy exit. I never expected that my initiation into the capsule hotel experience to be in KL! Necessitated by […]

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Orang utans

Even though we had all been to Semenggoh to see the orang utans, I thought it would be a nice outing combined with Siniawan Night Market (which my guests hadn’t been to). We left around 1330 and got to the park around 1430 for the 1500 feeding session. After a somewhat lengthy introduction and safety briefing, […]

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Worlds’ largest flower

The facebook page of Gunung Gading National Park indicated that there was a rafflesia in bloom. I decided that I’d take Paul and Steevie (my guests) there and suggested that my brother take his guests too. They are all in town for my mother’s 90th birthday. We set off around 1000 for the 1h50 drive […]

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Back to civilisation

We woke before 0700. None of us were hungry so we skipped the muesli which we had brought. Rosli took us back to the mainland Kuching at 0800. I had a few bites from the night. Some turned into huge hemi-spherical blisters. I never respond well to sandfly bites; my last exposure to them in […]

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Turtle nesting and release

  A relative had organised for us to visit one of two turtle hatcheries accessible to Kuching. We are going to Pulau Satang Besar, as opposed to Talang-Talang (which is expensive and available to those doing a 4 day volunteering). We set off at 0830, grabbed some breakfast before driving to Telaga Air to meet […]

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