Three nights after originally planned, my stay in Kuching came to an end this morning as I bid Sarawak farewell and prepared to move onto the next unexplored lands on my itinerary.
My experience in Kuching was a fantastic one, particularly the first two days when I visited the national parks and I think that the fact I decided to stay for an extra three days demonstrates the importance of flexibility when you go travelling for a long period of time.
Obviously this creates its own problems - as I am discovering, there is a constant need for me to be on my laptop every evening booking flights and hotels, but it completely changes your outlook on the trip giving you a feeling of greater freedom and more choice as the journey develops.
I'm not sure if I have mentioned it before, but slightly before arriving in Kuching, I compared and contrasted the list of how many days I expected to be in each place against the actual total of how long I have spent in each location. I tried to do this to give myself an idea of how I was getting along, and at the moment I am about six days ahead of where I thought I would be. Apart from in the Philippines where I ended up staying a day extra, I have been slightly under by one or two days in each of the other places. My most significant difference was in Sabah where I was going to stay for six days in three different locations but ended up changing to just a single location for two nights.
This isn't a problem however as there are some countries coming up where I have given myself a lot of locations to visit, but not a great amount of time to do it in - these extra days should help me find some balance.
The other reason for me checking my dates is because last weekend my girlfriend Sarah booked some flights out to come and see me in Hong Kong.
This is the fourth last stop I will be making on my trip so I calculated what day she will arrive (115th day in the total of 181) so as the time when she is due to arrive gets closer I can try to make sure that I am on track. Not sure she'd appreciate spending a couple of days without me in Hong Kong whilst I finish off elsewhere....
I felt like I had a fairly disturbed sleep last night.
Thankfully the firecrackers which woke me up in the early part of the week have now ceased, but I suffered an even more dreadful issue of being irritated by the sound of mosquitoes buzzing around my ears in the middle of the night. Anyone who had heard the high-pitched piercing sound of these serial biters will know exactly what I mean.
I thought I'd managed to catch the few of them that somehow escaped into my room, but turns out there was one left who felt like torturing me a couple of times on Monday night before I eventually resorted to sleeping with the air conditioning on, and freezing him out.
The last two nights I've slept with my ear-bud headphones in and with the covers over my head to prevent having to suffer the trauma in the middle of a peaceful sleep. It worked on Tuesday night, but last night I still heard the sound that nightmares are made of so I spent five minutes trying to catch the little bugger before eventually resorting to the A/C again.
I kept hearing noises outside of my window last night, but I wasn't sure if that was just the usual loud zipping of motorbikes as they fly down the main road where I'm staying or something else. Upon opening my curtains this morning it turned out that it might well have been the rain lashing on the road that made things not quite so enjoyable in bed last night - that and the fear of sleeping through my 5.30am alarm and not making my flight I guess.
I'd asked the owner of the guesthouse if they could very kindly wash some clothes for me to be ready for heading out this morning, and they'd obliged with a black plastic bag full of stuff left outside of my door. Unfortunately due to the earliness of my flight there wasn't time to even sneak in any breakfast this morning, but I did hope to be all checked in and ready to go, giving me time to grab something to eat if I needed it before my flight at 8:15am.
Bidding my farewells to the couple in charge of the Marco Polo I headed out onto the main road in a bid to flag down a taxi who would take me to the airport. Typically, whenever you don't need a taxi, they seem to be readily available, but I must have stood on the corner of the main road for about twenty minutes this morning before deciding to head to a slightly busier junction where I might have a bit more luck as traffic came from different directions.
By this point the rain had stopped, but none of the cars which splashed through the puddles on the road appeared to be taxis as I started to consider whether or not walking away from the town was a wise move. Eventually having walked for a good 400m or so, a driver heading the right way was willing to pick me up and drop me off at the airport.
Kuching International Airport was only about twenty minutes from where I was staying, but with the additional morning traffic it took us about 40 minutes to arrive. As is customary on this trip, I paid way less for a return to the airport than I did to depart from there in the first place, but I managed to check-in with no problems and arrive at my gate with plenty of time to spare.
Even though it's called 'International Airport' there are only a handful of international destinations to fly to from Kuching. Much of it's traffic is domestic from Sabah or the Malaysia peninsula.
I looked out of the window whilst waiting in the airport lounge and saw no sign of a plane as 8:15 ticked by.
Eventually we were called to board our plane, a tiny little jet propelled vehicle which I felt wouldn't survive very well in a strong wind - no wonder I hadn't been able to spot it through the window.
My flight to Pontianak in Indonesia was only 45 minutes long, and due to the time difference between the two locations, it was actually a journey of minus 15 minutes as the plane was due to land at 8am local time.
To say it was a short flight the crew still managed to dispense a couple of drinks and some snacks before we eventually landed on the outskirts of the city
If you Google Pontianak, one of the first things that comes up is the history of where the word comes from, and there are some rather scary looking pictures of a spectre of some kind. My stay of one night here was much less supernatural and more self-fulfilling as I was stopping her to visit the Equator Oblique.
With the heart of the city around 5kms shy of the Equator, Western Pontianak where I am staying is just in the northern hemisphere with other parts of the region below the famous dotted line.
Stopping at the sight at which the Equator Monument in Pontianak sits on was my sole reason for visiting this area. I felt like it was a good opportunity to do something cool, and tick off another item on my traveller's bucket list.
Having taken such an early flight this morning, I had to do the same as I did in Brunei and spend some painful hours in the airport this morning waiting until around 12 when there might be an opportunity to check-in a little bit early. I sat and finished off my book (the excellent 'The Kite Runner'), and I also had to work out how to take some money out. Indonesia is the first country that I have been to on this journey where I have needed a visa to enter; thankfully the process was relatively easy though, and the US $s that I brought with me proved to be very useful in paying for the required documentation.
I kept feeling like I was nodding off in my chair sitting in the arrivals area of the airport so I went for a walk to try and work out how much money to withdraw for my stay in Indonesia. I have decided that this is definitely one of my least favourite parts of travelling as it's so hard to know how much to budget for. Having juggled so many currencies in my head in the last couple of days, I'd forgotten to find the rate from pounds of Indonesian Rupiah so caused all types of hilarity when I went up to the money exchanging counter in the airport to find out what they'd offer.
The women I'd spoke to initially had no idea what I was on about and called someone else over to see if they could help out. Neither of the people understood what currency I was referring to when I said 'Pound Stirling' and then after calling a third and fourth person over I tried to give a visual demonstration of what I was talking by showing them a ten pound note I had tucked away in my wallet. All four of the people looked at it memorised as if I had just pulled a gold bar out of my bag, and eventually the initial women I spoke to gave me a rate, and therefore an idea of how much to withdraw.
_banknotes2009.jpg)
One of the other things I dislike to much about having to change money is the constant calculations you have to do in your head to convert prices back to your local currency. Denominations of Indonesian Rupiah are quite high (I withdrew RP 1,200,000) making it unbelievable complicated to work out how much you're spending on things like a taxi or some food. Considering I have spent the last few weeks working stuff out in Pesos, Ringits and Dollars, it is certainly not what my poor little brain needed.
At this point it was about time to book myself a taxi so I went up to the counter and managed to get a coupon to head to my hotel. Going through the swarm of drivers, I found my way to the one who was at the front of the queue, and began making my way to the Transera Hotel Pontianak. I didn't pay too much attention to the sights and sounds of Indonesia on the way from the airport to my hotel as I kept drifting in and out of sleep, but I do vaguely remember seeing some elements of both Malaysia and the Philippines here.
I don't know a great deal about Indonesian culture, but if you remember this was one of the three places that I'd considered not visiting at all because of how complicated it all appeared to be.
It's always a bit of a relief when you arrive at your hotel I find and it was even more relieving to find out that I was actually going to be able to check-in early.
My room here is on the fifth floor of an eight story building, and after the surroundings of the guesthouse in Kuching it was nice to be able to have the freedom of my own bathroom. I took advantage of this by having a shower as I didn't have time this morning, and then proceeded to have a bit of a lie down hoping that it would make me less liable to keep falling sleep throughout the day.
Waking up around 2pm I went down to reception to ask about borrowing the services of an international adapter for the plug sockets, and also enquired about the best way to get to the Equatorial Oblique which was my sole stop for the day. The lady behind the desk advised me that the best way to go about doing this would be to get in a taxi and pay for a round trip - thankfully they said they'd organise all of this for me whilst I waited in the lobby.
I'd read online that the other method of getting to the museum was by using the public bus, but I was quite glad they suggested booking a taxi because as it says on wikipedia..."Public buses are sometimes unsafe and you may be threatened with a knife and asked to hand over your valuables" Goodness me...
I look forward to this being my old method of transport at some point later in the journey.
The hotel managed to sort me out with a driver - I think it was actually someone from the staff rather than a local driver, and he explained in pigeon English which direction he was going to be headed in.
I kept my eyes on the road a little more this time around and saw a variety of sights that would be enough to give even the most studied traveller sensory overload.
Not to re-kindle my obsession with traffic, but there sure were a hell of a load of mopeds on the road. They were almost overpowering, coming from every direction, dipping between traffic, hurtling the wrong way down the road to avoid congestion, and even at one point taking to what I figured was a pedestrian pathway whilst travelling across a bridge.
You'll be pleased to know that the use of the horn is back in full force here - except more often than not it was necessary as mopeds paid little or no attention to the cars coming behind them. It took about thirty incredibly entertaining minutes before we eventually bore left into what looked like a car park which played home to the Equatorial Oblique Museum.
I know being on the Equator isn't the most exciting thing, but I was amazed by the lack of ceremony of the whole place. I've been to museums about mundane artefacts which celebrated their nothingness with greater vigour than a location which is only found around twelve times across the world.
Upon entering the gentleman explained to me in his best English that this was a monument which was laid in 1921 to signify that this point in Pontianak is at the centre of the earth. He also explained to me that due to global warming, and the repositioning of satellites that the point at which the museum dissects the Equator is actually about ten metres to the west of where the museum currently sits.
I took a few minutes to wander around and look at the exhibits, the descriptions for most of which were written in Indonesian. After taking half an hour or so to walk around the main museum, I headed over to the souvenir shop, and then back the car where my driver was patiently waiting for me.
Traffic was starting to pick up and go into 'Filipino mode' as at one point we were stopped in the road and what seemed like an endless stream of bikes poured past us. It was like water speeding down a plug hole as all manor of vehicles left us behind to continue their journey.
I won't bore you with all the varieties of moped riders I saw on my return journey to the hotel, but a few of my favourite are:
- Man with lady friend on the back, sitting sideways so as not to get her dress into an awkward position.
- Man with no helmet driving, women with helmet on appear to be holding the phone to the driver's ear.
- Man with no shirt on riding across the across the grass to cut out traffic on one particular corner
- Family clearly going for a day out with a pattern of (from the front) - Child standing up, adult driving, child, child, adult
- Woman driving with man on the back holding two cages with pigeons in
- Man standing up whilst wearing a backpack and driving with child balanced against the backpack and mother supporting them
After a couple of near misses, and what looked like a scene from a Formula One race with all the mopeds in a grip formation at the traffic lights I made it back safely to the hotel feeling like today had been a successful accomplishment. This evening I ate on the top floor of hotel which is a lovely roof top restaurant which had an excellent view out over the city. Even at 8pm it is still very warm, and slightly different to the experience of attempting to do this in England during late February.
One thing I feel like I haven't pointed out enough is how fortunate I have been with my hotels, and the general helpfulness of the people in them. I recognise that it is their job to be informative and pleasant, but one particular server this evening was particularly nice and jogged my memory to write something very positive about these types of experience I've had whilst in South-East Asia. I'm partly convinced that this is due to the 'magical foreigner' factor that people from the west have in these countries where people are always seemingly intrigued about what you're from, and what you're doing in their country. I also feel like the environment they live in is also less pressured than the one back in England so it seems less likely that you're going to be dealing with someone stressed who you catch on a bad day.
My stay in Indonesia is just beginning to take shape, and I really hate generalising about a country seems, but from first impression I feel like this may be an interesting stay here. Each of the three islands I will be visiting seem to be comprised of different activities and I feel like for a country where I am visiting a number of cities, this could certainly be the most diverse of all.
Stuck in the Middle
Stealers Wheel (1972)
My experience in Kuching was a fantastic one, particularly the first two days when I visited the national parks and I think that the fact I decided to stay for an extra three days demonstrates the importance of flexibility when you go travelling for a long period of time.
Obviously this creates its own problems - as I am discovering, there is a constant need for me to be on my laptop every evening booking flights and hotels, but it completely changes your outlook on the trip giving you a feeling of greater freedom and more choice as the journey develops.
This isn't a problem however as there are some countries coming up where I have given myself a lot of locations to visit, but not a great amount of time to do it in - these extra days should help me find some balance.
The other reason for me checking my dates is because last weekend my girlfriend Sarah booked some flights out to come and see me in Hong Kong.
This is the fourth last stop I will be making on my trip so I calculated what day she will arrive (115th day in the total of 181) so as the time when she is due to arrive gets closer I can try to make sure that I am on track. Not sure she'd appreciate spending a couple of days without me in Hong Kong whilst I finish off elsewhere....
I felt like I had a fairly disturbed sleep last night.
Thankfully the firecrackers which woke me up in the early part of the week have now ceased, but I suffered an even more dreadful issue of being irritated by the sound of mosquitoes buzzing around my ears in the middle of the night. Anyone who had heard the high-pitched piercing sound of these serial biters will know exactly what I mean.
I thought I'd managed to catch the few of them that somehow escaped into my room, but turns out there was one left who felt like torturing me a couple of times on Monday night before I eventually resorted to sleeping with the air conditioning on, and freezing him out.
The last two nights I've slept with my ear-bud headphones in and with the covers over my head to prevent having to suffer the trauma in the middle of a peaceful sleep. It worked on Tuesday night, but last night I still heard the sound that nightmares are made of so I spent five minutes trying to catch the little bugger before eventually resorting to the A/C again.
I kept hearing noises outside of my window last night, but I wasn't sure if that was just the usual loud zipping of motorbikes as they fly down the main road where I'm staying or something else. Upon opening my curtains this morning it turned out that it might well have been the rain lashing on the road that made things not quite so enjoyable in bed last night - that and the fear of sleeping through my 5.30am alarm and not making my flight I guess.
I'd asked the owner of the guesthouse if they could very kindly wash some clothes for me to be ready for heading out this morning, and they'd obliged with a black plastic bag full of stuff left outside of my door. Unfortunately due to the earliness of my flight there wasn't time to even sneak in any breakfast this morning, but I did hope to be all checked in and ready to go, giving me time to grab something to eat if I needed it before my flight at 8:15am.
By this point the rain had stopped, but none of the cars which splashed through the puddles on the road appeared to be taxis as I started to consider whether or not walking away from the town was a wise move. Eventually having walked for a good 400m or so, a driver heading the right way was willing to pick me up and drop me off at the airport.
Kuching International Airport was only about twenty minutes from where I was staying, but with the additional morning traffic it took us about 40 minutes to arrive. As is customary on this trip, I paid way less for a return to the airport than I did to depart from there in the first place, but I managed to check-in with no problems and arrive at my gate with plenty of time to spare.
I looked out of the window whilst waiting in the airport lounge and saw no sign of a plane as 8:15 ticked by.
Eventually we were called to board our plane, a tiny little jet propelled vehicle which I felt wouldn't survive very well in a strong wind - no wonder I hadn't been able to spot it through the window.
My flight to Pontianak in Indonesia was only 45 minutes long, and due to the time difference between the two locations, it was actually a journey of minus 15 minutes as the plane was due to land at 8am local time.
To say it was a short flight the crew still managed to dispense a couple of drinks and some snacks before we eventually landed on the outskirts of the city
With the heart of the city around 5kms shy of the Equator, Western Pontianak where I am staying is just in the northern hemisphere with other parts of the region below the famous dotted line.
Stopping at the sight at which the Equator Monument in Pontianak sits on was my sole reason for visiting this area. I felt like it was a good opportunity to do something cool, and tick off another item on my traveller's bucket list.
Having taken such an early flight this morning, I had to do the same as I did in Brunei and spend some painful hours in the airport this morning waiting until around 12 when there might be an opportunity to check-in a little bit early. I sat and finished off my book (the excellent 'The Kite Runner'), and I also had to work out how to take some money out. Indonesia is the first country that I have been to on this journey where I have needed a visa to enter; thankfully the process was relatively easy though, and the US $s that I brought with me proved to be very useful in paying for the required documentation.
I kept feeling like I was nodding off in my chair sitting in the arrivals area of the airport so I went for a walk to try and work out how much money to withdraw for my stay in Indonesia. I have decided that this is definitely one of my least favourite parts of travelling as it's so hard to know how much to budget for. Having juggled so many currencies in my head in the last couple of days, I'd forgotten to find the rate from pounds of Indonesian Rupiah so caused all types of hilarity when I went up to the money exchanging counter in the airport to find out what they'd offer.
The women I'd spoke to initially had no idea what I was on about and called someone else over to see if they could help out. Neither of the people understood what currency I was referring to when I said 'Pound Stirling' and then after calling a third and fourth person over I tried to give a visual demonstration of what I was talking by showing them a ten pound note I had tucked away in my wallet. All four of the people looked at it memorised as if I had just pulled a gold bar out of my bag, and eventually the initial women I spoke to gave me a rate, and therefore an idea of how much to withdraw.
_banknotes2009.jpg)
At this point it was about time to book myself a taxi so I went up to the counter and managed to get a coupon to head to my hotel. Going through the swarm of drivers, I found my way to the one who was at the front of the queue, and began making my way to the Transera Hotel Pontianak. I didn't pay too much attention to the sights and sounds of Indonesia on the way from the airport to my hotel as I kept drifting in and out of sleep, but I do vaguely remember seeing some elements of both Malaysia and the Philippines here.
I don't know a great deal about Indonesian culture, but if you remember this was one of the three places that I'd considered not visiting at all because of how complicated it all appeared to be.
My room here is on the fifth floor of an eight story building, and after the surroundings of the guesthouse in Kuching it was nice to be able to have the freedom of my own bathroom. I took advantage of this by having a shower as I didn't have time this morning, and then proceeded to have a bit of a lie down hoping that it would make me less liable to keep falling sleep throughout the day.
Waking up around 2pm I went down to reception to ask about borrowing the services of an international adapter for the plug sockets, and also enquired about the best way to get to the Equatorial Oblique which was my sole stop for the day. The lady behind the desk advised me that the best way to go about doing this would be to get in a taxi and pay for a round trip - thankfully they said they'd organise all of this for me whilst I waited in the lobby.
I'd read online that the other method of getting to the museum was by using the public bus, but I was quite glad they suggested booking a taxi because as it says on wikipedia..."Public buses are sometimes unsafe and you may be threatened with a knife and asked to hand over your valuables" Goodness me...
I look forward to this being my old method of transport at some point later in the journey.
I kept my eyes on the road a little more this time around and saw a variety of sights that would be enough to give even the most studied traveller sensory overload.
Not to re-kindle my obsession with traffic, but there sure were a hell of a load of mopeds on the road. They were almost overpowering, coming from every direction, dipping between traffic, hurtling the wrong way down the road to avoid congestion, and even at one point taking to what I figured was a pedestrian pathway whilst travelling across a bridge.
You'll be pleased to know that the use of the horn is back in full force here - except more often than not it was necessary as mopeds paid little or no attention to the cars coming behind them. It took about thirty incredibly entertaining minutes before we eventually bore left into what looked like a car park which played home to the Equatorial Oblique Museum.
Upon entering the gentleman explained to me in his best English that this was a monument which was laid in 1921 to signify that this point in Pontianak is at the centre of the earth. He also explained to me that due to global warming, and the repositioning of satellites that the point at which the museum dissects the Equator is actually about ten metres to the west of where the museum currently sits.
Traffic was starting to pick up and go into 'Filipino mode' as at one point we were stopped in the road and what seemed like an endless stream of bikes poured past us. It was like water speeding down a plug hole as all manor of vehicles left us behind to continue their journey.
I won't bore you with all the varieties of moped riders I saw on my return journey to the hotel, but a few of my favourite are:
- Man with lady friend on the back, sitting sideways so as not to get her dress into an awkward position.
- Man with no helmet driving, women with helmet on appear to be holding the phone to the driver's ear.
- Man with no shirt on riding across the across the grass to cut out traffic on one particular corner
- Family clearly going for a day out with a pattern of (from the front) - Child standing up, adult driving, child, child, adult
- Woman driving with man on the back holding two cages with pigeons in
- Man standing up whilst wearing a backpack and driving with child balanced against the backpack and mother supporting them
After a couple of near misses, and what looked like a scene from a Formula One race with all the mopeds in a grip formation at the traffic lights I made it back safely to the hotel feeling like today had been a successful accomplishment. This evening I ate on the top floor of hotel which is a lovely roof top restaurant which had an excellent view out over the city. Even at 8pm it is still very warm, and slightly different to the experience of attempting to do this in England during late February.
One thing I feel like I haven't pointed out enough is how fortunate I have been with my hotels, and the general helpfulness of the people in them. I recognise that it is their job to be informative and pleasant, but one particular server this evening was particularly nice and jogged my memory to write something very positive about these types of experience I've had whilst in South-East Asia. I'm partly convinced that this is due to the 'magical foreigner' factor that people from the west have in these countries where people are always seemingly intrigued about what you're from, and what you're doing in their country. I also feel like the environment they live in is also less pressured than the one back in England so it seems less likely that you're going to be dealing with someone stressed who you catch on a bad day.
My stay in Indonesia is just beginning to take shape, and I really hate generalising about a country seems, but from first impression I feel like this may be an interesting stay here. Each of the three islands I will be visiting seem to be comprised of different activities and I feel like for a country where I am visiting a number of cities, this could certainly be the most diverse of all.
Stuck in the Middle
Stealers Wheel (1972)
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