We knew we had to get to Miri in order to catch a bus to Kuching where we would be meeting Hannah's family. We'd literally been talking about this day pretty much from the day we first arrived in India so it was quite strange for it to be so close now. We had two choices to get there; get a boat for two hours to Brunei and then a bus to Miri for five hours or get a plane for 45 minutes. As it wasn't much more expensive and a million times more convenient we decided to fly. Unfortunately the flight was at about 9pm so we had a lot of waiting around at the airport. Even when we got to the airport we were early for check in. This meant that whilst browsing the shops I came across a newspaper showing details of a plane crash the previous day just outside Kota Kinabalu.... AND IT WAS A PLANE FROM THE AIRLINE WE WERE ABOUT TO FLY WITH WHICH CRASHED!!!! As a nervous flyer, this was NOT what I wanted to see. 
 
We eventually got through to the departure lounge. This was about the size of an actual lounge with no shops to buy food or water either. Luckily it looked like our flight was on time, although everyone else’s seemed to be delayed. Oh well, lucky us! That was until twenty minutes before we were due to leave when we were told it wouldn't be leaving till 11pm! Whhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!! That was two hours away and we'd already been there for hours already. We contacted the hotel we were due to stay at and they said they would be able to let us in if we phoned them when we arrived. All we could do was just try and sleep until it was time to go as we were pretty tired. 

Sleep? Ha! There was a row of massage chairs at the back of the departure lounge, the ones where you put money in and they start massaging. They looked the comfiest chairs in the room apart from the fact you can't sit in them unless you pay for a massage as otherwise a really loud alarm goes off on the chair. Every five minutes someone new would come in, look at the rubbish hard chairs and then look at the incredibly comfortable looking leather massage chairs and then take a seat, the alarms would go off, they would get up quickly looking embarrassed and move to the hard chairs. I'm not going to lie, this is exactly what Hannah and I did. This didn't stop it getting really annoying the whole time we were waiting. At one point a guy sat on one of the chairs, the alarm went off, NEEEE NAAAAW NEEEE NAAAW but he didn't realise it was him causing the alarm so just stayed where he was. Maybe he was deaf. Hannah couldn't take it after ten minutes and marched over to tell him it was him causing all the noise. With a huge smile he got up thinking Hannah wanted to sit in the chair (despite there being six empty ones next to him), hehehe! HUFF!!
 
Eventually we were let onto our little plane with propellers and everything.... GULP.... and 45 minutes later we were in Miri. 
 
When we got to our hotel, as we expected there was no one answering the phone to let us in and to make matters worse there was a huge rainstorm! We managed to get one of the other guests to open up the front door so we could at least get inside and after ringing various bells around the reception area were shown to our room! What a palarva but the hotel (well hostel really) was actually one of the nicest we'd stayed in.
 
We didn't do anything in Miri as it was incredibly wet and well there isn't much to do anyway. It was always going to be just a nights stop over so we could catch our bus to Kuching which is what we did the following evening.