Sharon and Andy's World Tour 2006

11 - 13 April

We touched down in Cairns very early (about 04:40) on Tuesday 11 April. Prior research suggested that Australian Immigration Control would be a tortuous process - very strict rules apply regarding what can and can't be brought into the country; for example, if you happen to be carrying any fruit, honey or cold meats on you they MUST be disposed of before passing through customs or you'll be liable to a hefty fine.

It's true that this was perhaps the longest Immigration process we had yet encountered, but the staff were friendly enough and we encountered no problems.

Despite the early start, we found an open cafe at the airport and passed a couple of hours before phoning our hostel for a pickup.

After Asia, Australia seemed like a homecoming... everything in English, normal looking houses and streets, rain, etc.

Cairns is a nice enough city; big on tourism and backpacking, and the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. It has a restaurant-lined esplanade which lies along a man-made beach and large harbour, and a great many shops and 'hotels'. In the Australian context, a 'hotel' is what the British would call a pub i.e. a drinking establishment.

We grabbed a few hours sleep at the hostel to recover from the flight then headed out into the evening. Cairns backpacker hostels routinely give out meal vouchers which can be used at a somewhat joyless wooden establishment (no offence!) called the Woolshed. We tried the place a couple of times - who can resist a subsidised meal? - but to be honest we found no shortage of better, livelier and more relaxed eateries.

After eating, we found a suitable 'hotel' to have a pint or two in. This had a large video-screen jukebox playing classic rock videos from the 1980s as well as more recent stuff - great!

At the bar, I noticed a number of folk drinking a dark brew which clearly wasn't Guinness. Not fancying a lager (99% of Australian beer closely resembles lager), I ordered a pint of the dark stuff. The barmaid seemed slightly taken aback by this request (and I suddenly noticed that everyone else was drinking halves), but she duly pulled me a pint.

Only on sitting down and taking a good pull of my pint did I realise that it was actually pre-mixed whisky and Coke! This seems fairly normal in Australia...
... I quickly reverted to lager.

Thursday 13 April

Of course, there was no way that we could stay in Cairns without paying a visit to the Great Barrier Reef - one of the most impressive wonders of the natural world.

The day didn't start well; it was pouring with rain as we made our way to the harbour to board our boat.

Then, not too far into the trip, Sharon's usually reliable sea-legs succumbed to the 'motion of the ocean' and she joined the ranks of green-faced, bag-clutching landlubbers on the upper deck.

Sharon had the last laugh though; being the chicken non-swimmer that I am, I didn't last in the ocean for more than ten minutes even despite wearing a rather slinky (Sharon assures me) wetsuit for bouyancy. This is the only -poor- excuse I can offer for the quality of my reef photos which follow

That black looking, spotty, triangular thing in the third photo may be a fish. Sharon took some piccies with a proper waterproof camera which are much better. Honest.

Monday 10 April - Flying to Australia

And so we bade farewell to Singapore and closed the Asian chapter of our travels.

Soaring skywards toward Australia, we reflected on the fact that we'd been pretty much on the move every day for almost four months with very few breaks.

Luckily, this does not appear to have affected us in any way...

Andy

Sharon

6 - 10 April

By the time the bus from Melaka reached the border with Singapore it was pouring with rain. We are talking torrential rain. We'd been relatively lucky with our world weather up until now (i.e. four months of near-constant sunshine), but this didn't bode well.

However, the immigration process was commendably trouble-free and by the time the bus reached the terminus in Singapore the seemingly endless downpour had stopped.

We ditched our bags at the hostel (an awful room for the first night, as they'd cocked up our booking) and headed out for the evening.

Downtown Singapore

Two things became very quickly apparent;

i) Singapore is at least as humid as the worst bits of Asia, and
ii) Singapore is about ten times as expensive as the worst bits of Asia

Undeterred, we found a local pub - the Lot, Stock and Barrel and remortgaged our house to buy a couple of pints.

I'd had high hopes of Singapore as the guide books suggest there is lots to do. I particularly fancied the cable-car from mainland Singapore to the Sentosa Island theme park.

In a bid to be healthy, we embarked on yet another cross-city walk, following a long highway and finally climbing a steep hill to the cable-car station. Arriving sweat sodden and on the verge of collapse, we were told by the highly apologetic attendant that the cable-car was undergoing maintenance and therefore out of order. D'OH! Sometimes it pays to phone ahead...

The following day we headed to Singapore Botanic Gardens, and this time there was no room for disappointment. Out of the hustle and bustle of town, the gardens are a beautifully landscaped and peaceful haven, where you can easily forget your rapidly diminishing bank account for a while...

Another aspect of Singapore highly noticeable to a foreign visitor is that everything seems to be prohibited; chewing gum is banned, jaywalking is illegal, you can't eat or drink on any public transport, you can't smoke in public, you can't skateboard or rollerblade anywhere, and you'll be strung up (or worse) for drugs or vandalism offences. As such, Singapore seems a bit sterile and joyless, and almost as though fun is something that has to be enforced...

Anyway, following our slightly disappointing earlier visit to Kuala Lumpur Zoo we decided that the highly praised Singapore Zoo should be worth a visit. It is. In fact, it's the probably the best Zoo we've ever been to as care has been taken to provide as natural an environment for the inhabitants as possible. And they have Meerkats.

Eating, drinking and shopping seem to be the three main pastimes in Singapore and it's fair to say that we heavily partook of all three in our few days here (the shopping malls are endless)

But, of course, we couldn't leave Singapore without a visit to the famous Raffles Hotel and the Long Bar in which the Singapore Sling was invented. Once you get over the crunchiness of the floor, which is heavily covered with discarded monkey-nut shells (a big bowl sits on each table) the bar is very comfortable and homely, in a colonial sort of way.

And there ended the Asian leg of our tour. Next stop - Oz!

4 - 6 April

We returned from Borneo to AirAsia's airport terminal which is conveniently situated in the middle of nowhere. We knew that our next destination was the historic city of Melaka; question was - how to get there?
We could take the 9 Ringgit shuttle back to Kuala Lumpur, buy tickets and then hang around for a Melaka-bound bus OR take an unfeasibly expensive (198 Ringgit!) taxi from the airport. Which do you think we did?

Luckily, the taxi was a big luxury model making the two-hour journey very pleasant.

Melaka is reminiscent of Chiang Mai in Thailand, having a picturesque and historic centre bordered by a modern commercial belt.

We stayed in a good hostel called the Travellers Lodge, conveniently placed near a large shopping centre and several decent pubs and restaurants.

The older part of the city has some great architecture (particularly Chinatown)...

... and the odd surprise:

Melaka was to be our last port of call in Malaysia; our next destination was Singapore and we needed to book transport. We thought that a walk to Melaka's new purpose-built bus station to buy tickets south would be a good way to see the city. Hmmmm. The (very nice) new bus station was a long, hot walk from the city centre and is situated opposite -bizarrely- a huge new Tesco superstore!

A man in a fez sold us tickets for an -ahem- 'luxury' bus trip to Singapore for the following day (albeit in part-exchange for Sharon. I willingly agreed.)

Arriving in town after a slow walk back, the heavens opened and we searched in vain for a beer and respite. Finding nowhere we dashed back to our digs, pausing briefly once when a large Monitor Lizard (about the size of a baby crocodile) appeared from a storm-drain in front of us.

Another fabulous Indian meal in the most unassuming and inconspicuous restaurant rounded off our time in Melaka and our travels in Malaysia.

The following day, we were driven to the bus station by Albert, a taxi driver who has genuinely missed out on his true vocation as comedian, singer and all-round Bollywood star. Seek Albert out if you ever visit Melaka, but hurry - he's been driving his taxi for twenty years and plans to retire in the next five.

Friday 1 April

We'd looked at travelling to Borneo when planning our World Tour, as Sharon had always wanted to see Orang-Utans in the wild. We had to rule it out as the cost of flying to Borneo was prohibitive.

Until... returning to mainland Malaysia from Penang I spied a newspaper ad for AirAsia, a new budget airline which had an offer on flights to Borneo! Woohoo! We hastily booked a return flight to Kota Kinabalu (KK) on Borneo. Too hastily. The Orangs are actually to be found at Sandakan, a good five-hour coach journey from Kota Kinabalu...

Holy Mackerel!

Not to worry - to save time, we thought we'd buy a cheap(ish) internal flight from KK to Sandakan on arrival. We arrive at KK. "Sorry, all our flights to Sandakan are fully booked. Would you like a standby ticket?"

Cue four painful hours of waiting until -relief!- we find a plane with spare seats on it. It had been an arduous day by the time the taxi arrived at our lodgings. Tired and hungry we took the long walk to the resort restaurant and were surprised to be totally ignored by the staff! Various attempts at attracting attention were met with studied ignorance, to the point where we wondered what we had done to offend them. After a couple of years, the owner appeared and once she established that we had booked a room the atmosphere magically changed...

... in fairness, the beef curry which followed amply made up for any earlier misunderstandings.

Saturday 2 April
Orang = 'people' Utan = 'jungle'

This morning we wasted no time in heading off to the Sepilok Orang-Utan Sanctuary situated just five minutes' walk from our resort. We had to rush, as we learned that the Orangs were just being fed, and sure enough...

As human interaction with the Orangs must be kept to a minimum, we stood on viewing platforms a safe distance away. However, these platforms were fair game for every other monkey in the vicinity!

The Orangs are fed twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and so we returned to the sanctuary after lunch for more of the same...

Sunday 3 April

The day got off to an interesting start when one of the groundsmen at the resort took delight in showing us a large and clearly well-fed python he'd found near the restaurant that morning. We skipped breakfast and headed off to the Sanctuary.

By registering at the Sanctuary's reception and paying a nominal fee, you can take self-guided walks into the surrounding rainforest in the hope of seeing wildlife away from the crowds.

After attending the morning Orang feeding

we ventured into the rainforest on a 2km walk to a bird observation tower. Always assuming that these things will be easy, we were totally unprepared for the sodden, muddy quagmire underfoot and the intense humidity. We were sodden and filthy within minutes. A sudden screech from Sharon indicated that a small leech had attached itself to her hand. Persevering we eventually reached the old wooden bird tower. There were no birds in sight, let alone other wildlife! Oh well, you have to do these things...

A shower, change of clothes (and a shoe-wash) was in order when we got back to our room. YUCK! Sharon had a huge leech well stuck in to her back! With some effort I yanked it off and flushed it, and then, as we undressed, more and more of them appeared...

We got rid of about 10 leeches in all, but the merest mention of leeches gives Sharon the creeps now.

A final visit to see the Orangs being fed that afternoon helped to calm our leech-shattered nerves.

Monday 4 April

A 5am start saw us heading back to Sandakan airport for the first of our flights back to the Malaysian Peninsular, and the continuation of our journey south towards Singapore.

We left happy in the knowledge that another dream had been fulfilled.