We waited in the baking heat for at least an hour by the side of a dusty main road, before a bus finally turned up to take us the six hours to Kota Kinabalu aka KK. Although feeling like we'd entered Arctic conditions when boarding the bus, the six hour journey was fairly comfortable.Not far from KK is South East Asia's biggest mountain - the famous Mount Kinabalu. As we passed the recently 'shaken' mountain we hoped to catch a glimpse of the icon...

The minivan dropped me, Chris, and Beth outside 'Uncle Tan's B&B’, just a couple of kilometres from the main road. Having left the jungle with no running water, we arrived to find no electricity here. Which didn’t help the run down, dingy look and feel of the place. We had booked one night’s stay here, but did not have high expectations having read the reviews online. Included in the price of your stay is three meals, set at specific tim...

Amelia, Beth and I took an early afternoon flight from Kuala Lumpur and landed around mid-afternoon in Sandakan, Borneo. We'd read and heard that Sandakan isn't exactly a place you want to hang around in, but it was an unavoidable stop for us and the gateway to the 'Kinabatangan River' and 'Sepilok'.When we arrived in the former capital of British North Borneo we immediately concurred with the general consensus. It was an ugly city with a ...

The bus station in KL was the nicest, cleanest and biggest bus station we have ever been too. It was similar to an airport. The bus was just under two hours, dropping us at Malacca bus station outside of the main city. Thanks to Chris' PocketEarth app again, we knew which bus would take us into the centre, and along with a huge queue of other locals and tourists, we managed to squeeze our way onto the bus. Rucksacks on, we went hunting for accommodation. Tha...

Amelia, Beth and I made it to the capital just after midday. Luckily the bus we caught from the Cameron Highlands was able to drop us near Chinatown. Here we were able to walk to a nearby hostel called 'Step Inn'. The hostel was run by an unwelcoming, over 6ft tall Malay man, wearing 'guy-liner'. The building had a council flat feel, and the room next to the one we were shown to almost looked like a drug den. But despite all of this and its damp o...