Travel to Malaysia, Sarawak, Kuching.

My flight left Kuala Lumpar on time and landed in Kuching several hours later. I grabbed a taxi and headed to my accomodation, Singgahsana Lodge, but I was too early to get into my room. It was barely 10.00am and as check-in time was 1.00pm, I had a few hours to kill. So, I left my suitcase in their care and headed out into the streets again.

Once the capital of the White Rajahs of Sarawak, and now with a population of 600,000, Kuching is small enough to explore on foot. The name of the city, Kuching, is thought to derive from the Malay word kucing, meaning cat. There are certainly plenty of cat statues in the streets and cat themed tourist junk in the shops to support this theory. I walked the promenade along the river and browsed the tourist shops in the street opposite, to pass the time. I also needed to find an ATM machine as I was down to my last $10.

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Travel to Malaysia, Sarawak, Miri.

I only spent one day in Miri due to time constrictions with my travel plan, but upon my arrival I immediately wished I'd allowed a bit more time. My friend and I decided to hire a car and visit the Niah caves an hour outside of town. The caves are considered one of the great wonders of Sarawak and we felt it would be time well spent.

We arrived at the caves around 1030am, got a map, and rented head torches for 5 MYR. It's about a 3.8 km hike through the rainforest to the caves. Luckily for us, my friend was a biology major when he was in uni so watching the small wildlife along the way was a lot of fun. He was always able to identify what we were looking at and what said creature was doing. Most likely I would have missed quite a bit if I'd done the hike alone. We saw a variety of insects and some birds, and even a squirrel I'd never sen before. The trees and plants were pretty amazing, too, though nothing like how the rainforests are depicted in the movies. Much of the boardwalk trail follows a murky river
A walk in the rainforest...and we kept joking about watching for crocodiles. (There was a sign to beware of them at the entrance to the park.) We never did see any.

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Travel to Malaysia, Penang, George Town.

Ah, the romance of the train. The clickety-clacking of the rails, being gently rocked side to side as you fall asleep like a newborn. The romance of waiters in white uniforms serving our wonderful meal on crisp linen tablecloths and sparkling china while we clink our wine glasses to the end of a perfect day. After a peaceful night’s sleep, going to the restaurant car for steaming cups of coffee and freshly-made croissants. That’s what we saw as our train passed the Singapore to Bangkok Orient Express going the other way. Now the reality of the 2nd-class sleeper. After leaving our beautiful apartment in Bangkok, we caught a cab. We had heard that the traffic could be miserable, so we didn’t want to take any chances. We got to the train station with two hours to spare. Okay, we could kill two hours. Then we got on the train and had to wait. And wait. And wait. The sun was about to set by the time we pulled out of the station.

Before the train left the station a woman came around and asked us what we wanted to eat. We placed our order for both dinner and breakfast the
Line Clear - Nasi Kandarnext day. We were told that our dinner should be coming by at 7. We didn’t know that the man who made up our beds also came by at 7! So much for our wonderful meal…

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