18. Malaysia @ Borneo - Labuan + Kota Kinabalu

To get back to the Malaysian side of Borneo we went by boat and bus.



We took a bus to the northern tip of Brunei, to a town called Serasa. Then we took a boat to Labuan island where we spent a night before we went by boat to the little town Menumbok and by bus to Kota Kinabalu.

This is our first ferry to Labuan. An ok good boat, but the sea was not very calm and we were happy when we after about an hour reached the Labuan island.

Labuan island is mainly known as an offshore financial center and as a tax free island.

There is not much to do as a tourists on the island beside visit the beaches.

After a lot of hotel searching we found a not very cheap hotel that stank of smoke and had a shared bathroom. It was the cheapest in town even though it was not cheap, but in the end we took it.

The weather (it was raining like it would never stop) and the hotel were not with us, so after just one night we went further.

Markus felt very bad, probably because of some cheap Indian food. At least our soon to be helper thought so. So in the morning Carina went to get  some boat tickets for the fast boat to the mainland. She was told that there would be no boat because of the bad weather. When asking about if they in the boat office new when the next boat out of Labuan would sail the answer was "probably in a few days or later".

We wanted to get out of Labuan as fast as possible.

Problems:

1: Markus was very sick and we were afraid it was the same kind of food poison he got in Bolivia some years ago.
2: The hotel sucked big time and was not cheap.
3: The weather was bad.
4: There was absolutely nothing to do on the island and ending up in the hospital on Labuan would be bad.

Carina complained to the receptionist who did not understand many words, but then a man came in to the hotel and it turned out that he was the cousin of the owner of the hotel, spoke ok good english and drove us in his car the 200 meters to the boat terminal and showed/helped Carina to buy real ferry tickets out of Labuan due 2 hours later.
Markus felt really bad, he could hardly move, but gained the spirit and strength little by little.

This is our real ferry. It looked really old and it moved really slow.

We found a spot to lay down, and after less than 20 km and a couple of hours (not a writing mistake) we could take the bus from the tiny town Menumbok to Kota Kinabalu.

From the ferry we could see the mall and the businesses and offices on Labuan. Otherwise the island is little and flat.

Our detour to Labuan island was not good in any way, but the island has the potential of becoming a really really nice place. Exactly these words have we said about many many places in Borneo.

When we came to Kota Kinabalu it still rained, but Markus was feeling much better.

Kota Kinabalu is the capital of the state of Sabah.

Sabah is Malaysia's easternmost state on the island of Borneo. Sabah is often referred to as "Land Below The Wind" a phrase used by seafarers in the past to describe lands south of the typhoon belt.

Kota Kinabalu has about 500.000 inhabitants. The city and surroundings are major fishing destinations and the city is one of the major industrial and commercial centers of East Malaysia. Further the city is the starting point for many tourists who wants to visit the Sabah region of Borneo. All the above factors makes the city of Kota Kinabalu one of the fastest growing cities in Malaysia.

We stayed a couple of days in Kota Kinabalu and did a little sightseeing, but most of the time stayed in our hotel.

The Atkinson Clock Tower is the oldest standing structure in Kota Kinabalu.

We walked to a view platform, where we had a wet view over the city.

In Bali we were so unlucky because we got our credit card identities stolen and with that about 1250 euro or 9000 dkkr. When we noticed we contacted our Australian bank and they cancelled our credit cards. Later we got all our money back and the bank send us new cards to the Finnish consulate in Kota Kinabalu. One of the days the consul came by our hotel with our new credit cards. Jubii new credit cards with money.... :)

After a few days in Kota Kinabalu we were ready to move on further on our hunt to see the orangutans.

17. Brunei @ Borneo - Bandar Seri Begawan

We were picked up by a nice minivan from our hotel in Miri. It only took us and the one other passenger less than three hours to go through the border between Malaysia and Brunei and drive to our hotel in Bandar Seri Begawan, where we were dropped off.



This map shows the route we went from Miri to Bandar Seri Begawan.

This map shows South East Asia. The light parts are Malaysia. Brunei is the little country on the island of Borneo inside Malaysia.

Brunei regained its independence from the United Kingdom on January 1984. Economic growth during the 1990s and 2000s transformed Brunei into an industrialized country.

The majority of Bruneians are ethnic Malays, with Chinese being the most significant minority group, but everybody speaks Malay and quite good English.

Islam is the official religion of Brunei and at least two out of three adheres to Islam.

When we visited mosques Carina had to wear a scarf...

As a Sharia country the sale and public consumption of alcohol is banned, but Non-muslims can bring in as much alcohol as they wish for, for own private use.

Bandar Seri Begawan is the capital and the largest city of the Sultanate of Brunei. The population is estimated to about 200.000 inhabitants.

It was Friday, when we arrived and on Fridays the whole city closes down between 12 noon and 2 pm. Everybody goes to the nearest mosque or follow prayers on TV.

At 2 pm. we went to town to do a city walk. We went by water taxi. The water taxi service is known as "penambang" and is used for transportation between downtown Bandar Seri Begawan and Kampong Ayer and is hailed from the numerous docking parts along the banks of the Brunei River.

All the small boats on water are taxis. We had to take a taxi to go to our hotel, Every time it costed us 1 Brunei dollar each. 1 Brunei dollar = 5 dkkr or 0,8 euro.

We visited the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque.

It was built in year 1958.

It is beautiful, all white with a huge golden dome and several minor.

The interior walls are made out of Italian marble.

It is written that there are tunnels, which are used by the sultan on journeys through town.

The parade field near the mosque has a huge picture of sultan Hassanal Bolkiah.

On our city walk we among other saw the Royal Ceremonial Hall or Lapau, which is used for royal traditional ceremonies. The sultan was crowned on 1st of August year 1968 in Lapau. The interior of the Lapau and sultan's throne are decorated in exquisite gold. The place is unfortunately not open to the public so we could only see it from the outside.

We went to see the Royal Regalia Building, which is a museum devoted to the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. Basically, it's all about the Sultan. The Royal Regalia Building was officially opened the 30th of September 1992. The main gallery displays the coronation. To enter the Royal Regalia Building, you have to take off your shoes and leave them outside the building.

You're able to put on soft slippers provided at the door. So unless going bare feet, people go hissing around in the slippers the huge maze of a building. While going to the bathroom it is possible to change your hissing slippers into a pair of rubber-made flip flops so you won't get your feet wet. Very convenient.

Then we saw the Clock Tower and

had a fast dinner before we took a water taxi from the Kianggeh market back to our hotel.

The market was full of nice fresh vegetables and spices.

On the way we visited the Kampong Ayer or "water village" because

the people we were sharing our taxi with were going home.

The village contains of houses on stilts and stretches about 8 km. along the Sungei river. It is the largest of its kind in the world with approximately 30.000 residents. The Kampong Ayer is over 1000 years old and a well preserved national heritage site.

The weather was like on the rest of Borneo. Cloudy and a little rain. We checked on the internet and there it says that it should rain two out of tree days, with an annual rainfall of 2873,9 mm.

The next day we went to see the Empire hotel and Country Club which is said to be a 7-star-hotel.

It's said to cost over a billion dollars when sultan's brother Jefri built it. The hotel is really big and shiny. Normal people can visit it too, just to go and see how the rich live. So that was what we did. :)

The entrance of the Empire hotel has a fountain.

There's a piano in the main lobby. When we visited the place, no one was playing.

The escalator down from the main lobby brings you to the backyard...

Where the swimming pools are.

The hotel complex has it's own cinema, many restaurants, golf club, diving center and basically everything else you need. It doesn't really fit in the picture as it's quite large.

We got to the hotel with a public bus which doesn't always go there. Only if there's cheap tourists like us going. We had to wait for a long time to get picked up by another public bus. Taxi would've been about 20 times more expensive.

On our last day in Brunei we went to see another huge mosque, the Jame'asr Hassanil Bolkiah mosque. The sultan built it as a present for his people to commemorate his 25 years in charge in 1992. Makes you wonder who was the one getting the present.

Also the mosque was hard to get to fit into one picture.

The sultan has a private escalator to the mosque. No one else is allowed to use it.

Outside the mosque there are long corridors to leave your shoes before entering.

After the mosque we took a bus back to the town and a water taxi to Kampung Ayer, the water village.

We wanted to have a little tour around the village and to see the sultan's palace that's behind the trees and hard to see basically from anywhere even that it's really big. The palace is not open to the public except on the annual Islamic celebration of Hari Raya Aidilfitri (the festival at the end of the Muslim fasting month) when the palace receives about 110,000 visitors over a three-day period. The palace is also open to Muslims during 10 days of the Ramadan.

Sultan's palace behind the trees.

After about 15 minutes in the boat (which the driver drove really slow to save the fuel) it started to rain. So we decided to embark to Kampung Ayer.

As it was still raining we waited and sit under a shelter. We spent our time taking pictures about everything we could see. Like the neighbor pier...

The city center...

And Carina.

The tide was quite low so we could see the bottom of the river.

And somebody had been drinking in this non-alcohol country. Bad muslim!

The "streets" of Kampung Ayer didn't have any railings and it was a bit scary to walk around there.

Locals use a lot of those water taxis.

After three nights in Brunei we took a boat back to Malaysian Borneo. We went to an island called Labuan, just about an hour boat ride away from Brunei's coast.

16. Malaysia @ Borneo - Miri + Lambir Hills National Park

After about 200 km and 4 hours drive we came to the town of Miri.



Miri is the second largest town in Sararwak with a population of about 400 000 inhabitants. It is a very diverse town when it comes to inhabitants as they come from all over the world. In Miri the weather was cloudy, warm and humid and now we know that it takes long time to adjust to because we still sweat a lot.

This is the biggest Chinese temple of Miri.

This is the San Ching Tian temple which is the largest Taoist temple in Southeast Asia.

Petroleum is the largest industry in the region of Miri.

Masjid Jamek Miri. (one of the town mosques of Miri).

Lambir Hills National Park is known because of its waterfalls. Beside that it is probably the National Park with the worlds most complex and diverse forest ecosystem. The park has the greatest known level of plant biodiversity on the planet. It provides home for 237 different species of birds, flying squirrels, wild pigs, gibbons, many different types of monkey, various species of deer and untold insects and other invertebrates.

We are ready to go.

The only animal we saw was from this bridge, but we did not really see it, we only heard it when it ran into the bushes...

The first waterfall we saw was not very big.

We were told we could swim in this one, but we didn't. The water was brown, a bit cold and we were the only ones.

The park was quite pleasant to walk in. In some places they even made real stairs for us, but we were not that lucky most of the places and there the trails would be full of roots and not very easy to trek.

This was the last waterfall during our visit to the park. We had a lovely day where it took us about 5 hours to walk 5 km.

When we got to Miri we met a nice English man from London called Dave. We spent a couple of days with him and we also spent some time in the Lambir park together. One day Markus and Dave had several beers together. It was a fun night which also included some horrible karaoke. Most of the bars in Borneo are karaoke bars.

Also Dave agreed that Markus has probably the coolest hat in the world.