Hello everybody!

So after Pontianak we crossed the boarder over to Kuching, which is in Sarawak (the Malaysian part of Borneo). Our plan was just to hang about for around 3 days and then get a flight outta there, but we ended up staying for a week, enjoying the relaxed city and chilling out.

Kuching is a really calm city, right on the river. We crossed the river for a Ringit and tasted the Laksa at the food hall. Laksa is delicious, a coconut based noodle soup, with prawns, chicken, fried egg, corriander and fresh lime on top! A little spicy and so good!

We also visited the local museums, including the live museum they call the "Cultural village". This was a little cheesy with staged performances and huge crowds of tourists, but it served its purpose and we felt like we learnt a little about the different tribes that made and still make Malaysian Borneo. We had a turn at using a blowpipe, and i was much closer to hitting the target than Jon Boy!! ha ha! Not competitive at all!! We also visited the different types of longhouse, these were purposely built demonstrations of how they once were. People still live in the longhouses today, in the more rural areas, but these days they are modern houses, with flat screen tellies and playstations. Communities continue to live in the longhouses and the elders still continue to practise their spiritual beliefs, but many of the younger members have turned to Christianity and travel to the city to work. We learnt a litte about the "headhunters", who were mainly from the Iban tribe. To prove their bravery they would cut off the head of an enemy and hang it from their property to warn others, many of the skulls are now displayed in the museum we visited!

Whilst in Kuching we also visited Bako national park, to see some off the wildlife and rainforest of Borneo. It was only a short bus journey and a 20 minute boat ride to the park and we began walking. We saw probiscis monkeys and a monitor lizard! We were returning from our small little trek, when the sky turned very dark and the wind picked up, the rain came and didn't stop for what felt like hours. We were soaked! Our clothes were completely drenched and my walking boots filled with water! So that was enough for us and we hopped back on a boat to take us back to dry off!!

A couple of evenings we visited the topspot food court. This food court was randomly based at the top of a multi storey carpark, and served up fresh sea food to your liking, at a very cheap price! We tried some mud crab, fresh snapper and giant prawns, all washed down with a cold beer! Perfect!

So when it was time to leave we said goodbye to the lovely guys at our hostel (Liverpool fans)! and got our flight over to Kuala Lumpa!

We arrived quite late into KL and found our hostel that was based in the centre of China town. The hostel was a bit grot, and slightly random, but we had lots to fit in to two days so we were out and busy! We explored China town, and Little India! Little India was really good, beautiful material shops for Sarees and brilliant grub! We found a local spot to eat and the very lovely staff pointed us in the directed of the trays and explained what the different dishes were. We piled our plates high and sat next to the guy who was busy rolling out the rotti's and Naan!

We took the train to the city center and viewed the huge twin towers, we also wondered through the huge, very fancy and very cool air conditioned mall that is right inbetween the towers, to cool off and people watch. We tried to get to the top of the towers but soon discovered you had to get tickets and the queue formed very early in the morning! So we were up at 6am the next day and in the queue by 7, we queued for two hours before getting our tickets, mental, we went up at 5pm that evening. It was good to reach the highest point and view the city, but we didn't quite understand some of the other tourist's excitment about getting in a lift. Maybe we are just getting a bit ungrateful, who knows?! Anyway, after two days of what felt like serious all day strolling we booked our 7 hour train to Butterworth, so we could catch another ferry over to Penang!

The train was brilliant, a journey which felt like we were going through the jungle, easy to have a little kip and alot safer than the buses! ha ha! Penang has been nice, much quiter than the big city KL, and again its all about the food! Today we went for Indian cuisine again, and was sat with a very friendly local bloke, who recommended what we should eat and chatted away to us about our travels and himself, he explained that Penang is 80% Chinese, 15% Indian and 5% Malaysian, he also explained that as its Friday afternoon everyone is off work and school as its a Muslim Prayer day, so Friday is a good day! He made sure the staff didn't forget about us and we drank Mango lassi and ate our food off of a banana leaf, apparantly the traditional way! The food was amazing!

So Tomorrow we are off again to Thailand!! Koh Phang Yan for a lazy beach week! Can't wait!

Hope you are all ok? Missing you all

Kate and Jon xxxxxxx