The Palace Hotel Kota Kinabalu

... br>
So off we went searching for our ride and we asked a guy if he uses the meter. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "no meter. 50 Ringgit." By law the meter is required except for zone fares, and 50 Ringgits ($11) works out to about double the already inflated going price for visitors, i.e. the "white skin tax" as foreigners here call it. Only the Japanese tax is higher by the way and they get taken for a worse ride and ...

Getting to Kota Kinabalu. Supposed to be a simple 45 minute flight....boy were we wrong! First off, the flight was delayed 1.5 hours, security or lack there of, were just letting people beep right through the metal detectors not even needing to show a bording pass. The metal detectors were at the gate of the plane and apparently when flights are late, there is no longer any need to check people as they enter. Once on the plane, we thought we had it easy ...

... as well as amazing tea plantations cannot make visitors unhappy. Although guided tours might bring interesting moments, my experience was that less visited sights and organizing trips independently generally means better value and more authenticity. People coming for watching wildlife might be disappointed, in most of the jungle and rainforest areas there is very little wildlife left.
Borneo is slightly more ...

... push the thing along. We travelled along 8k's along the railway tracks before we got to the river and although it was a bit uncomfortable it was pretty fun. The trolleys even went pretty fast at some points. Eventually we got to the river and had our safety briefing and a bite to eat and then jumped into our raft. There were 6 people in our raft and another 2 guides at the back to steer and tell us what to do. The part of the river that we were following was 21 kilometers long and the first 5 ...

... we had a couple of hours drive ahead where we thought we would be getting the train to the start of the river. However the trainline (mainly a tourist attraction) had been closed due to landslides. Not to miss a trick the locals have improvised by literally strapping roller skate heels to a wooden plallet and using that to move along the track. As we 'tourists' sat on the pallet, a guy would propel us along by pushing off the ground with a big stick - kind of like a ...

... The skipper of the boat was soaking wet and shivering to death with the cold. Shelley noted the concerned look across his face that said “I hope to **** I am going the right way!” I took a couple of photo’s to show just how bad it was. Turning to Shelley and John I took a photo and John laughing through the rain gave a big pair of Jazz hands… this weather didn’t phase him.
Arriving back at KK we waived goodbye to ...

... It turns out that breakfast is simply a loaf of bread, with no butter, jam or anything to put on the bread. Fortunately there is a community fridge though, so we went to the supermarket and bought some cheap jam to help make breakfast more appealing. So far only our full large jug of water has been stolen from the refrigerator and the jam has been safe. The Wi-Fi Internet was problematic at first, but I was able to fix it (since they had not changed the ...

... nur das Gepäck trug der "Sherpa". Letztendlich war es ganz gut, dass wir nicht den Gipfel stürmen konnten, da Tina ganz schön mit ihrem Asthma zu kämpfen hatte. Wir haben eine Frau gesehen die von zwei Guides mit Hilfe einer Trage ins Tal gebracht wurde. Alle die uns bei unserem Aufstieg entgegen kamen, sahen wirklich fertig mit der Welt aus und stolperten eher hinunter als alles andere. Genau lässt es nicht sagen, aber ich glaube wir waren so auf 2300-2400 Metern. Da ...

... uninhabited so the only buildings are for day visitors - a small cafe, a toilet block and a small dive centre. This meant it was nice and quiet (once the small group of Chinese had gone off snorkeling!). Chrissy made some new friends with the Hermit crabs and we both found time to write some postcards and some blog as well as read a bit. The only downside was the tiny black flying things with white wings that sucked our blood and left mosquito-like itchy bites everywhere - Chrissy ...

... had 3 walls and no electric, so we took a shower by candle light over looking the trees. After our homestay we collected our things from the jungle base camp and went to Sepilok, the home of the Orangutan santatory. This was an amazing day. We could of watched them for ever. Its hard to write about this day, I could sit here describing every movement we saw each Orangutan make, but I am sure you would have all switched of by the end, you will just ...