(November 2023)
It seems like a LONG time ago now that the post I wrote about below happened and not quite according to plan either, but that was not for lack of blog post writing and packing! Sometimes when you travel, life carries on without taking notice that you are not in your home country and things happen that you have to return for, so without dwelling on it too much or turning this into a downer post, we had to return prematurely for my mother-in-law who fell ill and subsequently didn’t make it to Christmas. It was sad, but three months on, it’s time to talk about the trip!
Ok, so the plan was for me to fly to Singapore whilst hubby went on his business trip to Hong Kong, during this time I would relieve myself of my larger luggage with my brother and sister-in-law in Johor, and take a flight to Kuching in Borneo with a much smaller pack so I didn’t need to pay for hold luggage.
My flight arrived in Singapore, Changi airport, and my first ‘intrepid adventure’ was getting the bus over the border into Malaysia. My brother-in-law had offered to tackle Singapore’s traffic to pick me up, but hell, no! I was Indianna Jones (notice what I did there? I can write, I can’t tell jokes!). In all honesty, it is SO easy and SO cheap but I did have a small panic at the first border at Woodlands. All passengers have to get off the bus but can leave their main luggage. You have to go on foot through the Singaporean exit whilst the bus goes round and meets you in Malaysia. You then get on again for about 2 minutes and you’re dropped, this time you MUST TAKE YOUR LUGGAGE as this is where the bus leaves you. The seasoned travellers know this but as the pasty tourist, you may end up looking the fool running back to find your bus gone along with your clean underwear for the next three weeks!
My brother-in-law was there to meet me at the bus terminal in Johor, but what I’d not appreciated is the amount of people and the slow pace of getting through customs on the Malaysian side, you need to plan for this if you’re catching forward travel. There are people who literally stand in these queues on a daily basis as they work one side and live the other!
The second thing I’d not appreciated is that Johor has its own airport and flies directly to Kuching. I had originally booked a flight from Singapore so was intending on doing the reverse of this journey the following day until O explained. Air Asia, however, being your cheap as chips local EasyJet did not do refunds, so I resigned myself to the stupidly early return trip on the bus the following day until luck intervened. About three days before I left the UK I got a notification that my flight was cancelled from Singapore and therefore I’d be on a much later flight or I could have a refund! Well… refund applied for, I booked the morning flight from Johor and saved myself a whole heap of hassle.
Kuching, for those who don’t know Borneo, is in Sarawak in the south of the island. Borneo as an island is IMMENSE. It is the third largest in the world and swamps the whole of mainland Malaysia. It is comprised of the states of Sarawak and Sabah and the principality of Brunei. Most of the island is part of Indonesia and the rest Malaysia and it has a very complex history which I won’t even attempt to pretend I understand.
Most people, when going to Borneo, go to Sabah. Kota Kinabalu is the home of Mount Kinabalu a highly popular and beautiful mountain, across the island on the East side is Sandakan which is home to rainforests, orang utan and probiscis monkeys, another huge tourist draw. To give you an idea of the enormity, Kota Kinabalu to Sandakan is a 7 hour drive!
I obviously wanted to do the tourist ‘stuff’, but Sandakan, where the orang utan sanctuary is, was just a bit too far for a three day trip from the mainland, so I opted for the much smaller and far less touristy, Kuching. I chose here as there is also a smaller orang utan sanctuary about a 45 minute drive from the city. The flight was only just over an hour from Johor and was costing me less than £30, so…
Kuching (the cat city) is fantastic. It sits on the banks of the River Sarawak and is an eclectic mix of Malay, Indian and Chinese. As a female traveller and a solo one at that, I never once felt unsafe wandering around. No one hassled me, even shop keepers were not on my case to buy things.
I had, in advance, booked myself into a ‘hostel’ for three nights and through ‘Klook’ booked onto a tour to the sanctuary and a second trip out on the river to find Irrawaddy dolphins.
My advice to someone going at the time of year I went is to not get too concerned about booking stuff in advance. It was a quiet time of year and as things happened it put a total shift on my plans. Firstly, the place I’d booked was a little more basic than I cared for at 50, so on night three I ‘splurged’ on a far nicer hotel two doors down to ensure I’d at least be able to get out of bed on the third day! Secondly because I was out of season, no one was booked on either of the trips I’d paid for, so I had the choice to cancel, again, or, as I did, ensure my trip to Semenggoh to see the orang utans did actually run as they needed a minimum of two people, so I just paid for Mr Invisible…let’s be honest, when would I get the chance to see these gorgeous creatures again, so felt it worth the extra £20 for my best ever, silent travel companion!
The dolphin trip I did cancel and booked on a day trip with a local company to Bako National Park where we hoped to see probiscis monkeys, wild pigs and a huge range of incredible flora and fauna. The top three pictures are some of the amazing wildlife we did see, as well as a flying lemur and this cool crab.
Kuching is small. There is plenty to do for three days, but after that I had itchy feet, so we are planning to return to Borneo in a couple of years but to explore the north, Sepilok and Turtle Islands are on the agenda.
I flew out of Kuching to Kuala Lumpur where I was meeting R, O and J and we were going to spend a few days before taking another bus this time down to Melaka. Bus transport in Malaysia is ridiculously cheap and pretty comfy (£6 for us both to go from KL to Melaka), however, the part of Malaysia we were in, is not that exciting for scenery as they have removed a lot of the indigenous forest for palm oil plantations so it is hour after hour of palm trees, which even to those of us from the northern hemisphere, gets a touch yawn after a while!
We had booked an AirBnB in KL which had incredible views of the Patronus Towers. KL as a city is very young, thus there is (for me) a limitation to ‘things of interest’ unless you love to shop designer items. Obviously there are the towers which are worth a visit and there is a great China town too. There are caves on the outskirts of the city that are accessible by the subway (Batu caves), but apparently these are dirty and not very looked after, so we opted against going there. However, the food culture is incredible. Our AirBnB was in Kampung Baru, and right above an incredible food market. We ate there both nights we stayed as it was so good.
Next stop was Melaka (sometimes spelled Malacca). This was around a 2-3 hour drive from KL by road and is one of KL’s federal territories. It has a huge Portuguese influence from it’s past and this can be seen in the style of the houses which look very colonial to my ignorant knowledge. It’s also on the river Melaka and has such a beautiful waterfront with colourful houses and cafes. It’s also home to the infamous Jonker street night market which runs Fridays and Saturday.
From here our trip was unfortunately cut short, we returned to Johor and rather than the planned weekend in Singapore going to the Marina Bay Sands (the restaurant, not the hotel itself!) we had to organise flights home. We are planning to return to Malaysia, Borneo and Singapore before my brother-in-law is repatriated, R wants his Borneo trip and I’d like to go over to Turtle Islands to see, well, turtles so hopefully for 2025! We do have a couple of great trips organised for this year and early next that I’ll write about when we get back, and I’m hoping to do another solo crone trip to Asia when R goes to Hong Kong in the Autumn and I piggy back. This time I plan to follow him and spend a couple of days up in Guangzhou.
