Brunei

We've now left Sabah :-( and are in Brunei on our way to Sarawak. We've had a pretty good day wondering round the stilt villages and looking at the mosques which they've built with all the oil money!!

Mt Kinabalu (with some exciting news if you read it all!)

Hello everyone!
We arrived at Mt Kinabalu (4095m, the highest mountain in SE Asia) from Sandakan, nice and refreshed after a day spent in our hotel room watching free DVDs :-) Unfortunately when we got to Mt Kinabalu Park HQ we were told that they were renovating the room we were supposed to be staying in so we'd got a free upgrade to a suite which was supposed to be about twice the price! It was split into two storeys and we even had a sofa!!!
The next day we climbed the first 6k to the mountainside accommodation. It was pretty steep with lots and lots of steps (this perhaps indicates how much of a tourist attraction the mountain is!) but we coped ok and got to see lots of pitcher plants and some mountain squirrelly type things which we enjoyed:
By the time we reached the accommodation we were starting to feel the effects of the altitude (and the cold - only 13 degrees, freezing almost!!) but a big plate of exceedingly expensive fried rice soon sorted us out.
At 2am the next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed for the last 3km of climbing to the summit. This was the hardest part of the climb and for large parts of it we had to drag ourselves up with ropes, and all done by torchlight just to add to the excitement! It was worth all the effort though as we arrived at the summit in time to get a good spot to view the sunrise from.
Matt chose this as a great time to propose so the exciting news is that we are now engaged :-D So it was a very happy couple who scampered down the mountain back to park HQ!

Jungle Safari

We've just returned to civilization after spending 2 nights in the jungle on the Kinabatangan river. Accommodation was basic but it was sufficient and added to the jungle experience, the food was not at all basic and very very plentiful!! On the first night we had freshwater prawns which we bought from a passing fisherman on the way to the camp:

Check out those legs!!

When we weren't eating there was plenty of wildlife watching going on. We started with a night boat safari which gave us a great view of the equatorial night sky! We also did morning and afternoon boat trips and some jungle treks. The highlights were probably seeing a real proper wild orang utan with baby and also the proboscis monkeys (very strange looking creatures!!). There was plenty of other great wildlife though, including loads of monkeys and birds. Here's a selection of what we saw:

The wild orang utan!

Long-tailed macaques

Monitor lizard

Stork-billed kingfisher

Frog!

Proboscis monkeys

Here's one just for you mum - Claire

Borneo at last

We had to survive a plane journey with maggots raining down on us (!) but we made it to Borneo :-) We spent a couple of nights in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah, taking the time to sample lots of yummy and very cheap Malaysian food. Next we went to Sepilok for the orang utan sanctuary and they were every bit as cute as expected!! The centre was in the middle of the jungle which was kinda cool (well actually it was very hot and humid I guess!). Hopefully we'll be heading back to the jungle again soon for a couple of days wildlife watching - can't wait :-D
Will post picture of the wee orange beasties when we next get to a decent computer....
Hope everyone is OK!
Some photos of the Sepilok orang utans:

Cairns (via Townsville...)

We arrived in Cairns a day later than we planned due to flooding on the rail line. This meant that we had to spend a night in Townsville and we were initially quite upset as we were worried that we might not have time to sort out a snorkelling trip in Cairns and we also did not really know what there was to do in Townsville...
There was a lovely reef conservation centre/aquarium:
And a big red rock which we climbed:
(not as big as THE red rock but it was a good scramble to get up and there were lovely views of Townsville harbour from the top :-)

The next day we finally made it to Cairns, our final destination in Australia and home to 1001 different Great Barrier Reef diving companies. We managed to get some snorkelling booked up for the next day (our final day in Oz!) and it turned out that the delay worked in our favour as instead of snorkelling in mist and rain on Thursday we snorkelled in bright sunshine (with just one brief rain shower!). This meant that we had great views of the fishes and coral all very well lit up and colourful. Unfortunately the photos are on a disposable camera (haven't invested in a waterproof digital camera just yet!!) so we can't let you see what we saw. We saw a few of these though (but this particular one was in Towsnville!!)

Next stop Singapore!

The Whitsundays

Next stop after Brisbane was The Whitsundays. To get here we had a 20 hour (!) train journey which arrived at Airlie Beach at 4.30am. This caused a small problem as we couldn't check into our accommodation until 7.00 but we managed to amuse ourselves by chilling out on a picnic bench by the sea and eating breakfast while the sun rose...

We spent the rest of the day dodging rain showers in a very tropical feeling Airlie Beach but it wasn't too bad and we managed to find a nice Sushi restaurant for lunch so we were quite content :-)
The next day we headed off to Denman Island, an extremely small member of the Whitsunday Islands with just space for a Claire and Matt to camp on. Was pretty cool having an island all to ourselves even though we had to put up our tent whilst fending off attacks from huge green ants and the dreaded sandflies. We did a bit of snorkeling off our private beach and saw some zebra fish and a few others as well as lots of sea anemones. Was v v v good fun!

Brisbane

We managed to drag ourselves away from the vineyards and head up closer to the Tropics, stopping for a couple of days in Brisbane. There were some lovely gardens and a pretty cool manmade beach on the river but the highlight of the stay was definitely the tour of the Castlemaine XXXX brewery (which included 4 drinks in the bar at the end - nice!) Hmmmm.....this blog is beginning to make us sound like alcoholics. Nevermind though - we're off to Malaysia soon so won't be drinking much there.

Matt enjoys some Castlemaine stout

Wine Tour in The Hunter Valley

We went on a wine (and cheese, olive, fudge and chocolate....) tasting tour in The Hunter Valley today. Was all very good and was nice to get a chance to find out exactly what kinds of wine we like :-) We were relatively restrained and only bought 3 bottles between us, plus some cheese and fudge! (Well Claire did have some birthday money left to spend!!) The most exciting find of the day was the sparkling shiraz....fizzy red wine, how bizarre! Very nice though :-) Also very good was the port, including a white one, but unfortunately we wouldn't be able to get it back to England so we didn't buy any :-(
Here's what we did buy though:

Hope everyone is well and enjoying whatever they are up to. Really hope you're appreciating spring - Claire misses it a bit :-s

Sydney

Sydney was great but a picture tells a thousand words so we'll tell more when we get to a better computer...

We were lucky enough to be staying with Sarah K from the Hare and Hounds and her lovely parents (big thank you!) in Dover Heights near Bondi in East Sydney. This meant we got the chance for some nice running and swimming on the coast and were well based for an exploration of the city.

The bridge at night!

We saw all the typical tourist sites including the Harbour Bridge, and we squeezed in an opera at the Opera House. Other highlights included the Sydney Aquarium (we have cool photos, honest!) and a brief visit to The Lord Nelson, an old pub and brewery where Matt sampled some Nelson's Blood ;-)

A shark at the aquarium

We found Nemo!

We also went out to the botanic gardens, which were chocker with bats and even more great views of Sydney Harbour.

Canberra

We'd heard a lot of bad press about Canberra and it's not the most well known attraction as far as capital cities go so we arrived with a somewhat open mind and were prepared for pretty much anything. In fact we were pleasantly surprised and had a good couple of days in the Aussie capital. First of all - the campsite we stayed at. It was a lovely location in some Aussie bush just outside the city centre and we were surrounded by plenty of wildlife, including the ultimate Australian vermin - plenty of bunnies!!! There was also a very noisy growly creature that kept us awake on the second night but we survived ;-)
There was also some nice places to visit in Canberra, our favourite being the Old Parliament House, which was small and full of character, unlike the hotel-style new place they've put up. It's nice from the outside, but the interior is awful.
The city itself was rather nice too and had plenty of lovely parks and gardens.
***Pictures will follow when we're not using an antique computer!!**
Here they are:

Old Parliament...

New Parliament!