Malaysia The journey to Penang took a long time but the crossing to Malaysia was very easy. We arrived at about 9pm and checked into our hostel which was very nice; Jess described it as 'an ikea show room'. The following day we were picked up at 11am by a lovely lady called Jennifer. Jennifer and her family lived in Singapore with my Dad's family between 1966 and 1969 and my Grandparents kept in contact with her parents. She very kindly took us on a mini tour o...

Borneo 5 Mantanani island was stunning! The camp was right on the beach and we slept in bung houses which had 3 level bunk beds and were completely open. The first evening we took a walk around the village and bought a fresh squid for dinner. The cooks cooked it in it's own ink and fried it like calamari. On the second morning we had a session on coconuts. We found out how to climb the trees like the locals, were taught about their many uses and how to weave th...

Borneo 4 The past couple of weeks we have stayed at camp Bonkud. It was a really nice camp in the middle of a village and, unlike Camp Tinangol, the project site and school were right next to camp. We slept 2 people to a tent which was comfortable in the evenings but you couldn't enter the tents in the day because they got so hot! The first evening we were given another local dance by the villagers who ranged in age from 12 to 17 and we subsequently saw them pe...

We went to Mamutik island (off Kota Kinabalu) on Sunday and it was so pretty, with sand like a Caribbean beach! We spent the day swimming, sunbathing and eating before heading back and going out for dinner all together for our last night in the capital. Our coach picked us up nice and early on the Monday and we headed back to Camp Tinangol for a last couple of days on the construction site. On Wednesday we had a 7 hour bus journey to Batu Puteh on the Kinabatanga...

Borneo 2 Last weekend we went to the tip of Borneo, the local gong factory and had a beach BBQ. The tip of Borneo was very pretty and we climbed down onto the rocks. We had clear blue skies for a bit before the rain came in and we made a run for the buses! The next day we drove to a local beach for our BBQ. The food was frankfurters and bad quality chicken burgers so not what we had been looking forward to (we had forgotten that they don't eat pork) but still a...