Macau

Air Asia do some cheap flights so we took advantage of this and flew Kuching to Macau. Our daughter Kerri booked us into a nice hotel so it was a comfortable stay here in Taipa.

The first thing we noticed was how cold it was - 8 Celsius at night! The thermal clothing that we have been carrying and have rarely used has at last come in handy.

Macau is full of tourists and many of them are from Asia. The tourist office had free internet and lots of maps with some great walking tours of the old Portuguese settlements. Many parks, gardens and displays were free which makes a nice change from places that like to charge for everything. The no smoking signs everywhere were most welcome too! The place is so clean with signs stating the fines for littering!



The Guia chapel and lighthouse at the fort.

These signs were on display near the fort and school children had to learn what each meant as they were used during the monsoon season to let everyone know the status of the wind storms.


The hilly narrow streets.

Restored and preserved buildings.



Church of St Dominic.


Ancient and modern!


The red lanterns for Chinese New Year.


The Macau Museum was very interesting and in the olden days (and even into the 1990s) the Chinese residents used to hold cricket fights and bet on the contestants. They had ornate containers made of pottery to house the crickets and they were fed a specific diet to develop their strength. Some were so highly regarded that they had funerals and this is the coffin of a champ and its tomb!





The Venetian



A short walk from our hotel was The Venetian: a brand new casino built by a Las Vegas casino operator. It recently opened and there is still some construction work going on so it is not quite complete. There are already over 30 casinos in tiny Macau!

There are over 11, 000 staff at the casino and on the second there are gondola rides; they go from one end of the indoor canal to the other and along the way you pass by the brand name stores.

The Lisboa. We also noticed how smoggy it was after Malaysia.

The local bus system is great but some of the local buses don't allow big bags so we had to catch a taxi when we left.

Bako National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia

Arriving in the rain on the high tide.



Monitor

Bako National park is only a short bus ride from Kuching and a 20 minute boat ride. It was founded 50 years ago and Malaysia's first. It is showing its age but we heard that tenders have been let to upgrade the whole facility soon. We stayed 2 nights in a lodge near the beach.

John beside the giant stemless palms.

Although we saw the proboscus monkeys in Sabah we were able to get closer to them in Bako. The male has a huge nose (apparently the females see this as a sign of a worthy male) and a pot belly. They were in the trees in the mangroves every morning and evening. They are very shy and if you got too close they would move further up the trees.

Everyday the cheeky macaques would arrive at the lodge at check-in time-2 pm. They seemed to know that the new arrivals were careless with their food and bags. When the new arrivals put things down to take photos the macaques would grab what they could and climb up high to look for anything edible. The tourists have trained them well!

There were lots of well marked trails to walk and even though it rained everyday we still managed to get some long walks in. Luckily we missed the really bad weather 2 days before so the trails were not so muddy.

The park has 9 different ecosystems represented so the walks are interesting and varied.

On the night walk we saw tree frogs whose croak sounded like a bird call, tarantula, stick insects, and this pit viper beside the trail- about 30cms away!


During the day we saw 5 pit viper in the trees near the lodge canteen and one thin brown harmless snake. They were so close and didn't move it was amazing. We could see the outline of her eggs in this pregnant one!

Kuching, Malaysia

The ferry boat ride from Sibu to Kuching was very rough and lots of people were seasick so it was not very pleasant. All along the river bank were huge sawmills and logging ships, more signs that the jungle is disappearing rapidly.

In Kuching we stayed at a new lodge- the most modern we have met in all our travels so far. The staff were very friendly and helpful and made our stay relaxing and enjoyable.

Henry from Lodge121






Jeff from Lodge 121

Kuching has the cat as its symbol and we found many shops and eating places closed as the Chinese-run businesses were on holiday. Everyday there were fireworks going off as they believe the loud noise chases the evil spirits away and therefore they will have a prosperous new year. The stairway to the lodge was littered with red pieces of paper from the bangers.

While in Kuching we took the opportunity to buy a small Asus notebook. We left home without a computer or phone but found a 7" notebook that we can slip into our day bag and take advantage of the Free WiFi sites.




There is lots of construction work going on in Kuching and this place looks like a giant shuttlecock!

Kapit, Headhunter country, Malaysia

Sorry to disappoint but the headhunters are no more. They have replaced their spears with cellphones, computers and four wheel drives. Kapit is a small town of around 13,500 people on the Batang Rejang. It can only be reached by boat along this river, which is Malaysia's longest.

The river also gives access to the valuable forests and the logs are shipped down to the coast. We saw logging staging sites all along the banks and the river was full of logging detritus with the rubbish banging into the steel boat hull as we motored along.

The local tribes have traditionaly lived in longhouses and many continue to do so today. Some are very modern and built on the ground from modern materials and others are up on stilts made from timber and corrugated iron. These older ones are a lot more prone to fire and the papers feature regular stories of their destruction.

There are smaller villages upriver from Kapit but a Government permit is required to visit them. For us Kapit is the end of the line.

Gong Xi Fa Cai, Chinese New Year, Sarawak, Malaysia

Happy Chinese New Year and welcome to the year of the rat!


Red lanterns in Sibu, Sarawak.
At the local pagoda
John was born in the year of the pig (boar).
Lil was born in the year of the rabbit

Kerri (our daughter) was born in the year of the ratAll day and all night tthere were fireworks going off and we had a great display from our 7th floor hotel room.


Lots of shops stocked gift baskets of birds' nest soup ingredients.
Everything was closed and there was no one on the streets late afternoon and early evening as they met their families for 'reunion dinner'. It was a quiet affair for us and we never got to find the dragons or lions dancing although we hunted high and low.

Niah National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia

From Miri we made a day trip to Lambir National Park but were disppointed with the park, as it wasn't virgin rainforest as described in the literature- nevertheless we had a good stretch of our legs but it was hellishly hot!

The next day we bused to Niah National Park where we stayed in a lovely park hostel and met some lovely people from Canada and Holland who are 'grey nomads' like us!

There is a well constructed boardwalk into the park and at the end of the walk is a cave with a 250 metre wide entrance - one of the world's largest. The house at the entrance is used by the local Penan people as they sweep up the bat and swift excrement to sell for fertiliser.

Throughout the cave are long bamboo poles which the Penans climb with their oil lamps to look for swiflets' nests. The birds' saliva that binds the nests is used in the Chinese birdnest soup. We read that they can get $1,000US a kilo for good quality nests.

At the far end of the cave is a burial cave where some old funerial boats remain and some cave paintings.

The skull of a 40, 000 year old person was found in this cave and there are still archaeological digs going on presently inside the caves.