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!