Week 84 - Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Kuching (Singapore, Malaysia)

First thing when we woke up, we asked to move rooms to escape the snorer who had kept us up all night. Our new dorm was empty and blissfully quiet. We hung around the hostel for the morning and Rhys made the most of having a quiet room and stayed in bed watching TV until dinner time. I ventured out to find the Kong Meng San Phor Kark Monastery. Luckily I missed the downpour and arrived at the temple complex as the weather was clearing. It was a huge place with only about 5 other people there. I spent an hour wandering around, soaking in the calm Buddhist ambiance before it was time to head back to find Rhys. For dinner we decided to head back to China Town, to explore a little more, admire the posh and super expensive chopsticks and eat cheap dishes in the food courts. China Town is a far more touristy area than Little India, it’s full of restaurants and hotels catering to more mid-range tourism and has souvenir shops selling hundreds of ugly magnets and cheap kimonos.

Kong Meng San Phor Kark Monastery, Singapore.

We had another slow start the following day and didn’t leave the hostel until 11:30am. Since we first arrived in Singapore a month ago we’d talked about the Southern Ridges Trail, a 9km walk from the Harbour Front, up to the top of Mount Faber, over the Henderson Wave Bridge, through the Telok Blangah Hill Park and on through a forest walkway to Alexandra Bridge, Hortpark, a canopy walkway and ending at Kent Ridge Park. All the tourist literature we’d picked up suggested it was a highlight of Singapore with panoramic views of the city and wildlife encounters along the way, we were a little disappointed. Although a nice escape from the city, it wasn’t mind blowing, the views were mediocre at best and it was too hot for wildlife to make an appearance. We got excited when we arrived at Hortpark which seemed to be a small botanic garden but further investigation revealed it to be a half empty space with some moss on a roof pretending to be a ‘roof garden’. We finished the walk in Kent Ridge and walked to the MRT station through the eerily quiet science park, it was Labour Day, a national holiday and all the office buildings were closed. We were starving by the time we got to the station and spent our last dollars on lunch then had to track down an ATM to be able to buy an MRT ticket.

Me, resting at HortPark, Singapore.

Back at the hostel we had a couple of hours to waste until we had arranged to meet Rebecca, a girl we’d met in Myanmar (and one of the best travelers i’ve ever met, the off the beaten track situations she gets herself into result in some of the funniest stories that make me wish we were as nonchalant as she was about travel!). Rebecca was staying with her friends Laura and Liam, and after meeting them at The Prince of Wales, an Australian owned pub, they took charge and we went to one of their favourite Indian restaurants nearby. Liam ordered a feast for us all to share and every last dish was incredible. We said our goodbyes and rolled back to the hostel. 

We had a bus ticket booked the following day to cross the border into Malaysia and back to Kuala Lumpur. After coffee we grabbed our bags and walked down to the Little India Arcade to wait. The bus left 30 minutes late and the 5 hour journey ended up being nearer to 8 hours, Rhys was not a happy bunny. First, one of the guys on our bus got held in immigration leaving Singapore so we couldn’t leave and the bus driver ended up (while everyone else looked on at us expectantly) making me and Rhys go back up to immigration to complain and ask for our bus to be cleared. Finally we were on our way again only for the bus to ‘break down’ 30 minutes further down the road. We waited an hour for a replacement bus and then stopped constantly so people could use the toilet or so the driver could make a phone call or just generally wander about, stretching his legs. In the end the bus dropped us off a couple of hundred metres from the bus terminal and we had a sweaty 20 minute walk to our hostel in China Town. It was gone 7pm by the time we finally checked in and we had no time to shop as we’d intended. We had a quick wander around the stalls of China Town and ate at Rhys’s favourite street food stall.

We were up early the next day to give ourselves time to pop to the shops to buy the bits we needed before our flight to Borneo. By 9:30am the shops weren’t open and we decided to give up and chill for an hour before leaving for the airport. The airline we were flying with, Malindo Air, had very recently changed terminals and forgotten to tell anyone so we went to Sentral Station with fingers crossed that i’d found the right information online and we knew where we were going. 

We were directed to a KLIA bus (with some discussion by the ticket guys about whether we should be going to KLIA or LCCT) and spent the next hour wondering if we were going to end up at the right place. A sign confirming Malindo Air had moved to KLIA2 was by the turnoff as we drove past and continued on to KLIA1. We assumed it would be easy to get a shuttle between the two terminals. We assumed wrong, we were passed back and forth between buildings and bus stops before finally finding the right spot to wait for a shuttle. Finally we pulled up at the new building. KLIA2 isn’t quite ready for passengers yet, it feels like they built a shopping mall and someone had the bright idea of sticking an airport on the back, there are hardly any signs and it’s a long walk to the check in counters. There was nobody there yet everything took twice as long as it should and all the staff working in the shops were so bored they were desperate for you to drop by. After the strange, and not overly enjoyable experience of the airport, the flight was smooth and left pretty much on time.

The view from the plane as we came into Borneo was stunning, lush green forest crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers and tributaries meandering through the landscape in the shadow of some awesome mountains. We arrived in Kuching and were out of the airport and in a taxi in no time. After checking in to our hostel on Main Bazaar, a touristy street running along the south side of the river in the centre of town, we wandered out to explore. We were blown away with how touristy it was, there were more tour offices and souvenir shops than you could wave a stick at and so many Westerners strolling along the esplanade. We took the opportunity to pop in some antique/jumble shops and zoned in on a beautiful, weathered, bronze, 3.5kg Buddha head statue. Back at the hostel, an old 19th century converted Chinese shophouse, we sat on the floor cushions in the common area drinking beer and thinking about the statue. 

When we decided to head to a food court for dinner we ended up sitting at a table clueless as to how and what to order, seeing our confusion the guy on the table next to us helpfully took us under wing and recommended some plates and ordered for us, it was delicious and cheap. It was Saturday night and there was a festival by the riverside with cars with more neon lights than you’ll find in Las Vegas and lots of food stalls. We tried some deep fried snake, grabbed an ice cream and headed to bed.

We decided to wake early the next day to get the 7:15am bus to Semenggoh, an Orangutan sanctuary where we hoped to see Bornean Orangutans, having seen their Sumatran relatives the previous week. The journey took just under an hour and, along with about 6 other westerners, we arrived, paid our entry fee of £2 and walked the 1.3km to the park HQ and the feeding platforms. Semenggoh was opened in 1975 to care for orangutans who had been orphaned, injured and kept as illegal pets, although the park looks after a wide variety of animals it is the orangutan rehabilitation programme that has made it a star tourist attraction. The orangutans live semi-wild in the jungle and as the space has reached capacity, the park no longer takes in new arrivals.

We’d left ourselves time to walk some of the trails around the park but everything seemed to be closed off so we figured we’d just spend more time at the platforms. When we arrived, 30 minutes before the official feeding time, there were already 2 orangutans there. It’s not fruit season at the moment in Semonggoh so the orangutans are appearing most days and are fed more of a variety of foods than in Sumatra, we felt like they were more reliant on the feedings than in Sumatra, the variety taking away the urge to forage for more interesting food in the jungle. When the food came out, so did the orangutans, swinging in to gorge on the bananas, papayas and coconuts. I think we saw about 10 different apes including a 33 year old male, Ritchie who is the alpha male and who, we were warned could get aggressive. We spent about an hour and a half at the feeding platform at HQ and at the main feeding platform, a little deeper in the forest before walking back to the bus stop to head back to Kuching. Surrounded by coach loads of tourists who were shipped in for 9am, I think it was fair to say the experience didn’t match up to Sumatra.

Grandma Orangutan, Semonggok, Kuuching.

Ritchie enjoying the bananas, Semonggoh, Kuching.

Ritchie leaving the feeding area, Semonggoh, Kuching.

Back in town, we had a much needed nap, went to admire the Buddha head statue again and mooched around some more souvenir shops, eating dinner at a river side cafe.

The next day we thought we’d spend some time exploring Kuching itself. We had a lazy start before popping in to a few Buddhist temples and then catching a boat to run us to the north bank of the river. We wandered up to the Fort Margherita (which was under restoration and closed) and stumbled through a meadow to get views of the Sarawak State Legislative Assembly Building, a bizarre building opened in 2009 that sort of resembles an Islamic circus tent. It turned out we couldn’t continue our walk along the river front so struggling with the heat we cross back over the river and back to the hostel. We had more time to think about the Buddha head statue and came to the decision we’d regret not buying it if we left without it. We haggled to a good price and ended up buying a couple of other little bits and a packing box to shop it home. That afternoon, Rhys stopped in the hostel to watch a movie and I popped over to the Textile Museum, it was rather small and uninformative but had some nice pieces. Since we spent so much on souvenirs we had a cheap dinner, kebabs on the riverside. 

One of the many beautiful Buddhist temples in Kuching. 

Sarawak State Legislative Assembly Building, Kuching.

We had thought to do a tour the following day but were shocked at the prices and decided against it. The cycle tours only took you to places you could see by foot and the reviews of the longhouse tours made them sound so extremely touristy that they really didn’t appeal (not for £20 each anyway - for an example, we spent £4 each seeing the orangutans, a tour cost £18 each). Instead we had a chores day. We went to the hairdressers and had immense head massages (Rhys loved it, sacrcasm...), went to the post office to send our parcel (it weighed in at 6.75kg, £40, oops!), went to the bank, did laundry and packed for the following day. While we waited for the laundry to finish, I left Rhys on a bench by the river and stopped in the Chinese Heritage Museum, an interesting exhibition giving a good insight into the Chinese immigrants that had such an impact on the history of Kuching.