Riviera Hotel Kuala Belait

... Lunch and then back to the main river for a second motorboat ride from hell courtesy of Lewis Hamilton at the wheel.<br><br>Back in Bandar, we tried to fit in a trip to see the proboscis monkeys in the mangroves. Our mini-bus driver knew a friend who could help us out. (Strange how tourism people know someone who can ........). A swift deal was struck to hire a water-taxi to give us a tour of the main river sights, the water village and the mangroves+proboscis monkeys and we're off ...

... br>Back to the airstrip for the short Fokker hop to Miri. Same taxi ride, this time all the way into Brunei, via the duty-free booze shop on the Malaysia/Sarawak side to pick up beverages for Vanessa. Brunei has no open sale of alcohol to the native people - not in bars, hotels, restaurants - but expats can purchase a limited supply from a hole in the wall outlet with an approved licence!<br><br>Supper chez Vanessa and another early night. We're off again tomorrow!!!

... to be met by Vanessa (an old friend from our Muscat days). The taxi duly dropped us off at the Malaysia border and pointed us towards the Brunei Immigration posts. We walked through the border formalities out of Malaysia, onwards into Brunei and the first of several medical checks for swine flu. Much form-filling and question answering in an inscrutable language. Thermal imaging and a thermometer in the ear check and we were declared disease-free! Then we ...

... bus station is on the outskirts of town. It was nearly midnight and the last taxi was about to pull away from what was otherwise a dark, empty bus park. This was one of the rare occasions when we were grateful for someone looking at us and seeing dollars. The altruistic taxi driver allowed us to share the ride with her other client (two fares are better than one) and still charged us about twenty percent more than we thought we should have paid - we were ...

... planet describes this national park as 'the single most impressive destination in all of Borneo' so we are very excited about this. While we where traveling to Sibu we met a very friendly and helpful Malaysian. After a brief stop at a cafe he came back on the coach with a can of coke for each of us. He told us that we are all brothers and sisters, and drove us to our accommodation in Sibu (once we arrived). Our initial plan had been to get a ferry, and the tourist ...

... by now. There was also a cultural show during dinner to show us the various different colourful tribes of Sarawak. Quite entertaining to watch the different kinds of music and dance which they have. 29th December 2007: 2nd adventurous day We were met by our guide after a hearty breakfast and instead of trekking, we were taken in a long boat through winding rivers with beautiful sceneries of mountains and low hanging clouds ...

At the moment we are in a town called Miri, which is where that friendly company Shell started way back as a humble importer of kerosene and exporter of polished shells before taking the leap into the new-fangled oil industry when domestic oil was found here. I can't say it's all that exciting, so we've been relaxing and wandering about a bit and trying to organise the next step of the trip. Hopefully we'll be ...

... at 11:30 AM but doesn't arrive until 12:30 PM because of engine trouble. This gives us time to check out the duty free shops by the dock. It his turns out that buying wine in KK was not to be a good investment. Not that the wine was bad but because Labuan is a duty free island; we could have gotten wine here at half the KK price. We're telling you this so you won't make the same mistake. The ferry crossing takes one and a half hours. Because ...

Hi All We arrived safely in Brunei after an early flight on Saturday morning. The only issue with the flight was the fact that we could choose our own films on the seat back TVs, so Q and I chose different films and started watching them, then with 30 minutes of the flight to go they decided to prepare for landing and turned off all the TVs which meant I missed the last 5 minutes of my film (which was really the climax) and Q missed the last 10 of his - most annoying! Anyway my ...

... the other is to visit the War Cemetry. Labuan played a major role in the Borneo arena during WWII. The Japanese forces in North Borneo surrendered here at the end of the war, and the Japanese officers responsible for the 'death marches' from Sandakan were tried here by an Australian War Crimes Court. Labuan is a federal territory governed directly from Kuala Lumpur, and today the main industry is petroleum gas installations. Our flip flops are sticking to the ground ...