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Goodbye cosmopolitan Singapore,
hello Borneo. It was a long travel day on Tuesday to get from Singapore
to Kuching, a city of 500,000 people in western Sarawack province,
Borneo, Malaysia, but we arrived safe and sound.
Our route to Kuching was rather
involved. We followed Lonely Planet advice and booked a Malaysian
Airline flight from Johor Bahru, just across the border from Singapore
in Malaysia rather than a more expensive flight from Singapore. The
glitch was getting to Johor Bahru, the second largest city in Malaysia.
The Malaysian Airline bus mentioned in Lonely Planet was cancelled last
year and our hotel manager cautioned us against the local bus option.
She said it could take ages and end up potentially causing us to miss
our flight. She recommended Andy Lau and his taxi to take us directly
there. It was good advice.
Andy was waiting for us promptly at 9 AM and 20
minutes later, travelling over crowded divided highways we were at the
border, along with hundreds of other cars, trucks and motorcycles. About
135,000 vehicles use this crossing every day and everyone must go
through both customs and immigration checkpoints. It was handled
amazingly efficiently for the numbers involved. I doubt if our own
border crossing operations are as efficient. We were glad we were in a
private car as the motorcycle lane was a crush of bikes a few 100 M long
and the buses were in a much slower lane. In addition, all bus
passengers must leave their bus and queue up to cross the border, then
find another bus to carry on. We were all clear in about 25 minutes from
start to end. Andy muttered that the officer who checked our passports
was too talkative and slow but we weren't complaining.
Weather in Kuching has been very
rainy recently. It was bad enough to delay our flight by almost 2 hours
as the plane, originating in Kuching could not depart until the weather
improved. At least we encountered no delays by the time we finally
departed and our 1 1/4 hour flight was pleasant. We took a taxi to our
hotel, just one block from the Sarawak River. Our room in Singghasana
Lodge is quiet and comfortable. A different touch is a seating area on
an upper platform reached by a ladder at one end of the room. Woven mats
and cushions provide a comfortable spot to read and relax. The hotel
also offers a toast and tea/coffee breakfast in their rooftop bar, so we
are set. Our plan is to stay here for several days, getting rid of the
last of our jet lag and taking day trips to several of the nature
reserves nearby.
With the continued unrest at the Bangkok Airport,
we have altered our itinerary. We had planned to fly from Kota Kinabalu
in Sabah, Borneo to Bangkok on 2 January 2009, then take a bus to our
volunteer location about 160 km south of the city. It doesn't sound as
if the situation at the Bangkok airport is going to be resolved quickly
and the newspapers have reported it will take at least one week after
resolution for normal flights to resume. We still want to volunteer at
the Wildlife Refuge in January, which has not been affected by the
unrest in Bangkok. That means alternate travel plans. We booked a flight from Kota Kinabalu to Phuket, Thailand on 2 January,
intending to catch a bus from there to our volunteer site. It will be a
little longer voyage but should be fine. We may even get a little time
at the beach.
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