With love

Well dear all that's it for now, we promise we will be back very soon but until then come to London!

Bali, Bali, Bali

Since 1st August we are on Bali and its fantastic! Internet here is bad and slow so will try to upload some images and smiles.

Bali, Bali, Bali

Nyoman is The Man

The Gili Islands

Bali, Bali, Bali

Galungan Celebrations and offerings at different temples

Kuching

We are now in Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, which is the nicest town we have been to in Borneo! The river flows through the centre and you can enjoy the sun set from the beautiful waterfront, there is beautiful street with small colourful Chinese shop houses and lovely white colonial buildings. We have rented a motorbike and are exploring the surrounding areas for the coming days until we fly out to our next destination Indonesia!

Niah caves

Traditional Longhouse with human skulls hanging around for good luck

Shop in Kuching

Pitcher plants, eating flies and insects who drop into their pitcher, yummie!

The most amazing thing in Borneo is the sky, even during a normal day you look up and the clouds are going crazy

Miri adventures

Once again we were back in Malaysia, the largest of its states Sarawak. Sarawak has a very fascinating history as it was ruled by the so-called White Rajahs of the Brooke family. Its wild and jungly but the most important thing it has is oil! Here Shell started its first drilling operation in Asia (did you know this Stu?!) and still has a very close relationship with the government.

In Miri we ran into Roz and Hans an Australian couple who left their farm to look for lost cities and civilisations. When we met them they were looking for a Japanese war ship that was destroyed during WW II somewhere around Miri but no one really knows where. They needed crew so we joined them for a what turned out to be a great adventure, we lived on their boat the Southern Sun, a beautiful ship and looked with their sonar for the wreck. Peter even dived down to look for it. The incredible thing was that we actually ran across an image that looked remarkably like a sunken ship-nose but it never showed up on our screen again… Unfortunately the weather turned bad and we could no longer go out at sea so after a couple of days we said good-bye and went further to Kuching. GOOD LUCK ROZ AND HANS!!!

Miri adventures

The Southern Sun

Roz and Hans

Peter is also looking for the sunken ship ;)

Mazal and Helmee were great and took us to their farm and shared with us their daily life

This is the palm fruit that is grown for palm oil, one of Malaysia's biggest exports

Brunei impressions

Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah, the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam
during the celebration for his 62nd birthday!

The Brunei Spice girls

A floating Shell petrol station in the floating city of Bandar Seri Begawan

The view of the Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque with its golden roof and crazy green lights!

We spent two days in Brunei and that was more or less enough, as we were totally disappointed to find a normal, rather slummy looking Asian city, with the odd mall and newly built mosque, instead of the gold covered capital of one of the world’s richest men. We also saw no trace of the supposedly thousands of Bentleys, Mercedeses, Ferraris, etc. that the Sultan owns, and we wondered where would he be driving them?!?
All in all people seemed to be content living in this benevolent dictatorship as education and health care are free and no one pays any taxes whatsoever!

Brunei

And tomorrow we are taking the ferry from Labuan (where we are now) to Brunei.
On 15.07 its the Sultan's birthday so we are expecting to get an invitation for the party :)

Sipadan and Mabul

After the jungle we headed towards the sea again, passing Sandakan and Semporna, to the island of Mabul, the island itself is nothing special but gives a great insight into water village-fishermen life. The amazing thing was diving in Sipadan, one of the top five diving locations in the world where even Jacques Cousteau was amazed. It was a truly spectacular experience with thousands of fish, sharks, barracudas, beautiful corals and tens of turtles swimming around us. Unfortunately no underwater picture capabilities yet...

A water village on Mabul

Kids fishing

and developing innovative means of transport

Beware of the smorkels!!!

and Yva posing as usual ;) these chairs were fantastic btw, you can always learn new things on every new beach!

Pictures of the days we pent in the Borneo jungle along the Kinabatangan river

Mist over the Kinabatangan river, the second longest river in Borneo

This is more close to the actual colours

Our leader J, alias Sandokan, the tiger of Malaysia :)

J playing with a scorpion during the walk in the night through the jungle

Are we packed well enough? Will it save us from the leeches?!?!?!....

Proboscis monkeys, kind of ugly but males have a long nose, a sign of masculinity and walk around with constant erection...

Jungle fruits ;)

Strange animal

Jungle group trek

Check out the boots, they should call these treks mud treks :)

Borneo

We incidentally ended up on Borneo after our visa for the Philippines ran out too quickly! We are having great fun with all kinds of strange animals around here in the jungle of the world :) Have to run now as we are off to a special trek along the Kinabatangan river going to see more funny animals and not be eaten by them ;)

Baby Orangutan

Eating is fun

So is stretching

It really happened, drinking caipirinhas with Sladja in Manila!!!

Some wildlife pictures

First picture of a cousin of Nemo

A school of baracudas

and Jackfish

and two distressed divers!

Travel update

Well after crashing on the beach for a whole day Peter decided that we have to once again do something meaningful (pfui!) so we started the Advanced Open Water diving course. It took five dives a lot of fun and fishes and here we are certified! Cheers Sander! In the meantime we were almost blown away by Fengsheng typhoon which hit the Philippines and the news. On our island it was only grade one but it caused massive amounts of rain, extremely strong wind, which made the house we lived in the give strange sounds, some power cuts and no internet for two days. But you can still dive during typhoon as we learned. Well, we have no desire to find out how the other grades feel like... It also caused a delay in our "schedule" as we were supposed to be already in Manila with Sladja :) but we will be there only tomorrow when flights resume.
So after finishing the dive course we rented a motorbike to see some of the bigger island of Bohol. It was a great drive through green rice paddies, small villages and incredibly friendly people. Our first stop was at a sanctuary for Tarsiers (we didn't think it was important but it was one of the two sights on the island). In the forest we saw the cutest little things with big popped-out eyes clinging to the tree branches. They are from some forgotten branch of the evolution tree, not really monkeys but similar and are so incredibly small and cute and can turn their head 180 degrees :) I realise it does not sound that exciting but have a look at the picture below.

We had lunch at a local market in a Eatery, a place with a few pots where the food has been cooked for the day and booming karaoke. It once again confirmed our lack of enthusiasm for Filipino kitchen.

Then once again through rice fields and forest off to the famous (at least around here) Chocolate Hills. Its not really clear how they were formed but there they are a thousand or so humps, which unfortunately are not made of chocolate :(. I liked the place very much but Peter is not very sure about the hills :)

So today is our last day (for now) at the beach, we head back to Manila tomorrow and then most likely to the island of Palawan.

The Spanish-type churches, dear colonial heritage

Same with La Virgen

Rice paddies

Loboc river terraces

The cutest little tarsier :)