We arrived in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah, after a six hour bus journey sat by the toilets, and as the seat infront of Rich was broken he basically had some guy laying on his lap. Not very comfortable. We thought we were getting the hang of haggling with the taxi drivers, only to find later that the taxi driver had driven us around in a big circle.

Whilst here we decided to go to the cinema, which is a strange experience as all the fims seem to be rated U, but after watching a film we realised that's because being a Muslim country they edit out any kissing, sex, or pretty much anything else suggestive, although stranger still the word "b*ll*cks" managed to make it onto prime time TV.  So kissing is taboo but the word "b*ll*cks is OK?!

Another strange thing about a Muslim country is the prayer rooms, as they have them in many public places, and as men and women pray seperately they are signposted by a male or female sign.  The confusing thing about this is that what else is signposted by a male or female sign?  Yep, you guessed it, the toilet!  The amount of times we nearly walked into prayer rooms for a slash!!  Probably wouldn't do Muslim-western relations a lot of good.

Borneo has some great sights, including two of only four Orang-utan centres in the world, and as so much of the country is made up of rainforest there are great jungle and river safaris, but strangely the country does not seem too set up for tourists (discounting the Aussies who get off the plane, get driven to their four-star hotel, then driven to the sights then back again). We probably only saw a few backpackers our whole time there, which is great as you feel like you're off the beaten track a bit, but also means locals stare at you like you have two heads, or in Allison's case make disgusting noises at you.

Which reminds me, did you know there are no words in Malaysian for 'manners' or 'politeness', but there are 25 variations of the word 'pervert'!? OK, that's not entirely true but that's how we felt, as the men are generally disgusting pigs, hissing and leaning in to say stuff in Allison's ear, always after Rich had walked passed funnily enough. 

The other thing about tourism in Malaysian Borneo is that the infrastructure is awful, so within two weeks we had to take about six internal flights.  At this point we should mention air travel in South East Asia. 

Air Asia is South East Asia's answer to Ryanair and Easyjet, only you don't get the same feeling of safety.  Our first flight was delayed by three hours, then when we finally got on the plane and accelerated down the runway, we suddenly had to slow down and pull back into the terminal, before waiting for another hour or so with no air-conditioning whilst the mechanics fixed the plane below.  Not very encouraging.  Another of our flights was cancelled, so we had to wait four hours for another plane too. 

Air Asia also don't allocate seats for flights, so boarding is just a mad free-for-all, though they do have a strange priority boarding system, where basically anyone over 40 qualifies as an OAP (we saw one "OAP" bounding up and practically sprinting to the plane), and groups of about ten people are allowed to board first if they have one young child between them, though apparently young child also means about fifteen years old.  The strangest one was a woman who walked on as priority as she was holding a cuddly toy.

Anyway, after about three nights in Kota Kinabalu we flew to Mulu National Park, in the middle of both the country and the rainforest, to see the world's largest cave passage. 

Our flight to Mulu was strange in that there were only four other people on the plane apart from us, and this was about a 50-seater plane.  This did make us think that maybe we had made a mistake in flying to the middle of the jungle just to see a few caves, but when we arrived and were taken to the Royal Mulu Resort we were happy enough, as for about 20 quid we had a huge room with TV, air-con and a swimming pool.  Compared to our room in the jungle at Sungai Kinabutangan this place was a palace!

Mulu National Park has some of the most extensive cave passages in the world, including Deer Cave, the largest cave passage in the world, which is big enough to fit five St Pauls in (before we left England we weren't too big on spelunking, but we are suckers for "the world's largest...", though we gave the world's largest toothbrush a swerve in Australia).  Mulu is also known for the massive bat exodus at dusk from Deer Cave.

On our first day we headed off to Lang Cave and Deer Cave, which were about a four kilometre boardwalk trek through rainforest, with our guide Roland pointing out flora and fauna along the way.  Roland was a bit jumpy though, as the day before a poisonous snake had been spotted hanging from a tree, and at one point he saw something in the bush move and he jumped about six foot.  Re-assuring!  We were also shown a poison tree on route, which is where the local men extract poison to make poison-tipped darts for their blowpipes.  This is the reason many of the local men are missing their front teeth, as the poison rots them away.

Arriving at the caves our first stop was Lang Cave, which is a beautiful cave with many stalactites, stalagmites and columns, before heading off to the big one, Deer Cave. 

Deer Cave is 120 metres high, and the entrance to the cave is famous for it's silhouette of the profile of Abraham Lincoln.  The cave houses 3 million wrinkle-lipped bats and swiftlets, which at dusk every night group together in group's thousand's strong before flying out of the cave in snake-like formations, which is to protect themselves from the many bat hawks hovering outside.  If they seperate from the pack they are in danger.  The bats can fly around 100 kilometres away from the cave in search of food, before returning the next morning.

The next day we were picked up by our long-tail boat for our trip down the Melinau River, first stopping off to visit the Batu Bungan Penan Settlement, the Penan being the local tribe.  The tribes live in houses called 'longhouses', which are massive structures housing up to 200 people all under the same roof, but with many small, seperate rooms.  We felt intrusive as we were shown along the long porch and looking into the small rooms where these people lived, though was amazing to see how the locals lived.  There was so much life along the river, as men were out fishing and possibly hunting with blowpipes (apparently they still do this), and the women were washing their clothes and children in the river, and young children were playing naked in the river, waving as we passed by on our boat.  Definitely an experience.

After visiting the village we carried on down river to visit Wind, Clearwater and Young Lady's Cave.  Wind Cave known for it's many stalactites, stalagmites and columns in King's Chamber, as well as the cool breeze blowing through the cave (although not cool enough today judging by Rich's sweatiness), Clearwater known for the clear, underwater river that runs for over 100 kilometres, and Young Lady's known for the silhouette of a young lady made by a stalagmite.

That evening back at the resort, we watched a performance by the Seri Melinau Dance Group, displaying local dances including a war dance with a blowpipe demonstration.  Rich tried the bamboo dance with the performers, where you have to step between the bamboo sticks as the girls crack them together on the floor, and then popped a balloon with a blowpipe, before we were asked to be guests of honour the next day at the Malaysian flag-raising ceremony (think everyone else had turned it down).  We agreed.

The next morning we turned up to raise the flag to the national anthem, which is more difficult than it sounds as you don't want to get it up (so to speak) too early or too late, and lets be honest, does anyone actually know how the Malaysian national anthem goes (sorry Adrian).  What made it even funnier was that about one hundred members of staff turn up to belt out the anthem, and they even had ex-army personnel on their staff as security, so there was all sorts of saluting and funny walks.  We were rewarded with a certificate and told we'd be on their website for 60 days (though I don't think we are), but check it out if you have a chance on the Royal Mulu Resort website.

Sorry if I banged on a bit today.  It hurt me a lot more than it hurt you!