Borneo – saskatoonie.com

October 23, 2024October 23, 2024

Kuching

On the road again - in the sky again!

We left Saskatoon Thursday October 19 around 5:45 pm for Kuching, Sarawak Malaysia. The 2 1/2 hour flight to Vancouver in a Dash-8 turboprop was almost the low point of our trip. Air Canada now has free beer and wine onboard to drum up business. We had an 5+ hour layover in Vancouver, then off to Singapore on a Boeing 787-9 aircraft for the perfect 16 hour flight. When we landed in Singapore we breezed through customs. This is due to having already filed our SGAC. All travellers are required to submit the SG Arrival Card with Electronic Health Declaration before arriving in Singapore. We had a very short wait for the luggage and then stepped outside to transfer from terminal 2 to terminal 4 via a shuttle bus. In no time we were in terminal 4 and had our bags checked on discount airline, Air Asia. We ended up with time to spare. It’s awesome when you plan something with no idea if things will work out and they actually work out flawlessly.

We found a lounge in terminal 4 and had something to eat. Our flight departed at 11:45 am for Kuching. Technically it was almost lunch time in Singapore which is 14 hours ahead of Saskatoon. By now we were 24 hours into the trip and about 35 hours since we got out of bed.

We arrived in Kuching on a jam packed A320 where our knees rubbed the seat in front of us. Air Asia discounts on leg room the most. This flight AK1776 was not as cheap as previous flights on Air Asia due to the need to buy a flex ticket, just in case our Air Canada flight was delayed.

We purchased SIM cards at Hotlink for our phones getting the fastest speed and largest download amount for the next month. It was around $34 CAD for both phones. Good price! We booked a Grab using our phone with the new SIM card for Malaysia. The fare was about $6.15 to to the hotel, around 12 km away.

Check-in went smooth mainly because we know the idiosyncrasies of Malaysian tourism. The booking includes a 10 Malaysian ringgit tourism tax per night. The proof of payment is sent by email which you must save in order to prevent getting charged twice. Yes, we have the emails and the downloaded receipts, all three of them as we are staying 14 nights in this hotel. We made 3 separate bookings in order to have the opportunity to cancel if something went wrong, God forbid. The first 2 bookings of three days each were made through agoda.com and the third booking for 8 nights was made through Aeroplan. We made use of the Aeroplan promotion to get a free night for every 3 nights paid for. That’s 8 nights for the price of 6 plus we made use of the 33% discount on Aeroplan points and the 2,500 Aeroplan bonus on top of it all. Almost free you might think. Wrong. Aeroplan is our rewards program of choice for a reason. We have much time invested in figuring out the different angles to milk the rewards. It’s hard work.

Our first night in the hotel was great. The air conditioning was just the right temperature and the bed was dreamy. We even got a complimentary plate of fruit consisting of 3 bananas, 2 apples, 1 orange, 1 kiwi and 3 beautiful big strawberries. Gary’s total sleep was 8 hours 45 minutes plus another hour and 43 minutes of being awake. Over 10 hours in bed and we were going by 7 am. Breakfast was an oink-fest of coffee, yogurt, pastry, watermelon, oranges, noodles and Gary had his favourite, Sarawak Laksa. Laksa is a spicy, curry-coconut-based noodle soup that originated from the Peranakans, who are of mixed Chinese-Malay heritage. It comes with chicken, shrimp, strips of fried egg and vermicelli noodles. It’s a spicy way to wake up!

Our first day in Kuching was pretty good, we walked about 8 km, had a one hour massage for 65 ringgits each, that’s $21 each, for one of the best massages we’ve had. We wandered by the Ceylonese restaurant and had a mango lassi, it was really good so we decided to head back for supper. Our supper cost us 51.80 ringgit, $16.60 CAD. We had lemon iced tea, Tikka chicken, Aloo Gobi, Garlic Naan and some assorted sauces like mint chutney. Aloo Gobi is a simple Indian vegetarian dish made with potatoes, cauliflower, spices and herbs. Supper was excellent! We headed back to the hotel in a blustery 28º wind with a few drops of rain. We tried our umbrella and they turned inside out. It was windy so we walked fast and didn’t really get wet. Off to bed for another great sleep. We are tired and no where near recovering from the jet lag.

October 28, 2023October 31, 2023

Welcome Back to Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur Malaysia

Low clouds cover the top of Merdeka 118 the world’s 2nd tallest building.

We left Saskatoon October 18, 2023 on the 5:25 pm flight to Vancouver. We then endured a 7 hour layover in Vancouver. Thankfully we have lounge passes to the Air Canada lounge through our Aeroplan credit card. Free food and beer and a relatively peaceful and comfortable place to stay. The lounge closed at 12:15 am so we went to our gate for the second flight from Vancouver to Taipei on EVA Airways. We left on time around 2 am Vancouver time (3 am Saskatoon). Yes this sounds tiring. After our meal, which was chicken and rice, or in Linda’s case, “silicone chicken”, we fell asleep in our seats which were ok. We arrived in Taiwan’s capital Taipei about 11 hours later. We had a short layover of one and a half hours. Our flight was perfect, at least for us. We landed in Kuala Lumpur about four and a half hours later around 11 am. We were met by a person holding a sign with our names on it. The bad news, our luggage was not on our flight, it would arrive in 3 hours with a China Airways flight CI721. We could either wait or have it sent by midnight to our room in downtown Kuala Lumpur. We were so tired by then, we couldn’t even think straight.

We proceeded to get SIM cards for our phones at a 7-11. It took forever as the place was extremely busy. After we got our phone SIM cards activated we have Malaysian phone numbers with unlimited data. The cost was about 45 RM (Malaysian Ringgit) or $13 CAD for one month. Unlimited texting and voice calls in Malaysia. To activate, you need to take a photo of your passport page with your picture and then take a selfie that apparently needs to match the passport picture. Our passports were issued in 2017 and after being up for 40+ hours, our selfie looked bad. Terrible in fact! It took a dozen selfie photo tries to get each SIM card approved. Our 3 hour wait for luggage turned in to less than an hour.

We bought a bottle of water and ate some trail mix while we waited. We went to the “missing luggage” area and they allowed one person to go fetch the luggage. Gary went and walked the whole length of the baggage area, around a dozen sections to the very last spot where we were told to report. Once there, he was directed back to the carousel that had the China Airline flight’s luggage. Gary waited on a bench beside a guy from Vancouver that had been on the same flight as us. He was in the same boat. Finally bags started dropping onto the carousel. The guy from Vancouver got his immediately, so Gary was hopeful. It wasn’t long and both bags came around. Gary texted Linda and we met at the arrival hall. We got outside and to the Grab (like Uber) pick up area. In about 15 minutes we were on our way to the Bukit Bintang area of Kuala Lumpur. Destination Hotel Swiss Garden.

We got checked in to room 1301 which we booked through the agoda.com booking site. We got unpacked, charged our phones a bit and headed out to the Jalan Alor street food night market. When approaching Grand Sky Restaurant we were met by the staff that remembered us from the previous year. How do they do that? Our waiter Janson gave us hugs and remembered our names. Ok, he remembered Linda’s name for sure! Amazing. We ate a great meal and had a few well deserved beer. It wasn’t long until we headed back the few blocks to our hotel. It was raining by then and we were fine with the warm wet air. The airplane had dried us out like prunes.

Shrimps, sweet and sour chicken and stir fry vegetables.

The next day we tried to make some flight and hotel bookings for the next 12 days. We had purposely not booked any flights or hotel rooms that did not have adequate cancellation in case we got delayed or something worse. Our Aeroplan card was useless because when we tried to book flights online the two factor authorization went to our Canadian mobile number. We ended up using a different card that authenticates via an email address. Aeroplan’s card failed us. We got some hotels booked for Kuching on October 24 and Miri on October 28. Both places are in Sarawak the Malaysian state located on the island of Borneo, also known as East Malaysia. When we called the credit card company, they gave us a work around that was supposed to allow us to add another phone number to our Aeroplan card profile. We tried their suggestion but when we tried to verify the number, a process where the credit card sends a text message, we could not receive the message. We eventually figured out we flipped two numbers around when we recorded Gary’s phone number. Stupid mistakes are easy when you are tired.

We went to a nearby mall for some lunch and a few batteries for the GoPro camera. We returned to the room for a rest, then headed back to our favourite spot, Grand Sky Restaurant. Supper was great. We got back to our room in decent time around 8 pm. Exhausted. Linda killed a bug right by the door on the tile floor. A quick google search identified our bug. Gary took a photo and the bug on a piece to tissue in a ziplock bag to the front desk. He showed the picture on the phone to our favourite bellman and he took Gary’s phone to the manager. Not a question was asked and we got upgraded to a slightly nicer room down the hall, room 1309. Maybe not far enough for our liking, but what can you do? We had washed and hung up shirts, undies and socks in 1301 earlier in the day so we had to haul everything to the new room. Once in the new room we realized the safe was locked shut and dead (no light came on the touchpad). We made countless phone calls and a trip to the front dest to get that resolved. We never got to bed til after midnight. We were wrecked by then. Of course a day later the safe quit again, another trip to the front dest, a chat with our trusty bellman and we had new batteries in the safe. To be honest, our trusty bellman Sabuj was the main reason we booked a return stay to the Hotel Swiss Garden. Sabuj is the nicest guy!

The next day we took a Grab to the butterfly park. It was warm, humid and an enjoyable outing. Grand Sky again for supper. We met a few guys from Miri, Sarawak where we will be going October 24. Gary sat at their table and next thing he has another beer in front of him. These guys are commercial divers that do rig inspections. You couldn’t ask for a nicer bunch of guys. Finally Linda moved over from our table. She too had a beer in a flash! We had asked what frog tasted like and before we knew what happened they ordered a frog for us, We both loved it. Even Linda tried it! Yes!. We chatted with these guys for at least an hour, probably more. One of the fellows is Iban, an ethnic tribe of Borneo. We had lots to talk about from diving to Malaysian politics. Finally, Gary went to pay for our supper and to buy a few beers for the guys! John, one of the guys shows up and has a chat with the waiter (in Malaysian) and it appears we are unable to proceed because they insist to pay for our meals and drinks. We already know how this ends, you can’t pay. They are so generous it brings tears to your eyes. We got John’s contact information and went back to our room. We kept one eye open for blood sucking insects that crawl into bed. Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite!

The next day we went hotel shopping for our next trip back to Kuala Lumpur. We found a couple of nice options. One is very nice, newly renovated and right in the same area. It may be slightly more money. We have not booked it yet, but that’s our plan.

We checked out of our hotel October 24th. We allowed for one hour travel time to the airport so we’d arrive 2 hours before departure. On the way down the elevator with our bags we got a message that our flight was delayed. Due to the delay we arrived at the airport with extra time to spare. We checked in for our flight and were politely informed that we would need to show a return flight to KL from Borneo before they’d issue our boarding passes. Malaysian Borneo runs their own immigration. In some ways, it’s like a different country. We ended up standing off to the side at the check in counter and booked a return flight on Gary’s cell phone for December 6 from Kota Kinabalu. Guess what? The Aeroplan credit card does not work, again! So we re-do the booking and used a different credit card. We get the return flight confirmation and finally get checked in. The Dec. 6 return flight we booked cost RM 999 for a 2 hour trip. That’s $288 CAD for 2 people one way. We paid extra for a flex fair because we didn’t know what day we wanted to return. We have an overland wilderness adventure planned on November 30 for 2 nights and wanted to keep our options open.

We were 3 hours late arriving in Kuching, the capital city of Sarawak. We got into our room and went to the Top Spot Food Court for supper. The food was great. 6 huge shrimp served in Asam (sour sour). The prawns are like chicken drumstick for $8.65 CAD Linda had sweet and sour chicken and we shared one small rice and a plate of stir fried vegetables. Our meal cost RM74, including a huge bottle of water. That amounts to $21.30 CAD. We actually were too full to eat it all – we left no prawns.

December 8, 2022December 8, 2022

Palm Beach Labuan

Two Weeks In Paradise

Thursday November 24 was a travel day! We had our last breakfast at the Royale Chulan in Georgetown Penang and caught a Grab to the Penang airport. We are headed back to Labuan in East Malaysia. We were in Labuan earlier in our trip and really liked it.

We had two flights – Penang to Kuala Lumpur (a one hour flight) and then Kuala Lumpur to Labuan ( 2 1/2 hour flight ). We got to the Malaysian Airlines check-in and the gal tagged our checked bags as “hot transfer” items as our layover between flights is just over an hour. We had a bad feeling about that. We easily found our gate and settled in to wait. Our flight ended up delayed by almost an hour! Finally we got on board and took off. When we arrived in Kuala Lumpur we had approximately 15-20 minutes before our next flight took off. There was an attendant at the gate calling for us and they had a golf cart and driver waiting for us. They loaded us on the cart and zoomed off through the airport. As Gary said, we even had wind chill on the golf cart as the guy hustled us to the next gate. It was a long drive – we’d never have made it on foot! He dropped us at our gate and took off to save some other poor travellers! First ever golf cart ride at that speed in an airport!

The gates can be confusing in the Kuala Lumpur airport. We’ve witnessed and been part of several chaotic boarding calls as they change gates and then change back and load two planes at the same time at the same desk. For example in Kota Kinabalu airport, gate 6a and 6b use the same departure lounge making seating impossible for latecomers. We were worried they may already have started boarding our Labuan flight but once we checked with the desk they said there was a slight delay and they’d start boarding shortly. Turns out this flight was delayed at least 45 minutes. We finally arrived in Labuan around 6 pm. Sadly, despite being tagged as a hot transfer and even our second flight being delayed, our luggage didn’t make the flight. It was left in Kuala Lumpur! We spent sometime with the lost luggage gal filling out forms and as a result the Palm Beach driver and van (half full of people) had to wait for us making the other guests endure our pain. We actually know better to be prepared for the worst but once again we are caught with no deodorant or extra electrical plug adapter in our carry on. Malaysia uses these huge United Kingdom style plugs. To add to complexity the outlet is 220v and each outlet has a switch on it. We were better off than the other 2 guys at the luggage claim – they were travelling from Bangkok to Labuan and their luggage went to Japan by mistake! Supposedly, they wouldn’t see it for at least another 2 days if they were lucky!

We are staying at the Palm Beach Resort and Hotel for 13 nights. It’s sorta the resting part of our trip. No more running around and making tours happen for sightseeing. We get to spend our days either reading, soaking in the pool or walking along the beach and trees.

Today we walked about an 8 Km round trip down the beach. We walked by many families and groups parked at the beach enjoying the beautiful cooling breeze off the ocean. While it is quite hot, you would never know it along the beach in the shade of the huge trees. We stopped for mini donuts and a cold glass of lemon ice water at one little restaurant. We passed a group barbecuing under the big trees. On the way back towards the hotel we walked by the same group again and they all said hello again. They offered us a taste and we stopped to sample the food. We were offered chicken wings and chicken butt (they are all washed out and clean) nicely barbecued. Gary tried a chicken wing and Linda took a nibble. It was delicious. We declined the butts. Maybe someday. They were a very friendly group of work colleagues out for a Sunday barbecue at the beach. We of course got asked the usual questions like “where are you from sir?” The usual “Canada” reply. We are an anomaly and stick out like a sore thumb. While deep down we know this, we don’t feel out of place, not too much at least. Although Gary is wearing a bright orange shirt on this day, we don’t really feel like fish out of water, at least not too much.

The locals are so friendly here and the usual question is “why would you come to this tiny island?” They don’t know what they have here because it is all they know. If Labuan wasn’t so far from Canada and especially Saskatoon, the place would be flooded with snowbirds. It’s not easy to get here but once you do the price is right, the climate is amazing, and the people are welcoming.

November 13, 2022November 14, 2022

Mari Mari

Borneo Head Hunters

Today we were up in good time. We have been trying to book a flight back to Kuala Lumpur for the past day and we keep running into issues. We even called the credit card company to see if the issue was with our card which, thankfully, it was not. We tried again this morning before breakfast and still had some issues so we finally left it and headed down for breakfast. It wasn’t as busy today but there was less selection and things were extremely slow getting replenished.

We have a tour to the Mari Mari Cultural Village today. Our guide, Albert Lai, picked us up in front of the hotel at 8:45 am. The Cultural Village is located in the countryside outside Kota Kinabalu about a half hour drive. Along the way we asked about a post office as we had some postcards we wanted to mail. We had bought stamps in Labuan but didn’t find postcards until we were in Kota Kinabalu. There was a post office nearby and we parked while Gary ran into the post office. What was supposed to be a simple errand ended up taking 15 minutes or longer as Gary found out the postage the other place sold us wasn’t sufficient. The gal was forever figuring out what stamps she had and then there was going to be an issue that the stamp might cover some of the writing!! Good grief. He finally left the cards with her after she assured him she’d get the stamps on and mail them. In the end it cost us 7.75 MYR or $2.25 CAD per card to mail them. Obviously no one mails post cards anymore!! We can only hope they arrive. In 2019 while in Penang, Linda spent ages writing up 12 cards and adding the stamps the post office sold us. We left them with the front desk and they promised to mail them – to this day not one card has ever arrived. We now suspect the postage amount may not have been correct!

After the post office fiasco, it was a short drive to the Mari Mari Cultural Village. The Village offers a glimpse into the lives of Sabah’s rich culture with its distinctive houses, costumes and traditional skills of five major ethnic groups in Sabah. It was interesting to see the homes, costumes, food and drink for the Dusun (farmers), the Rungus (traders) the Lundayeh (hunters) and the Bajau (cowboys and sea gypsies) and the famously feared warrior tribe Murut. We heard all about the various tribes, who were the farmers, the feared head hunters, who had stingless honeybees and how they lived and celebrated in their community. I think we all remember hearing about the Borneo head hunters. These are the guys, they are no longer quite so scary! But we were told, back in the head hunting days the groom had to provide a head as a dowry.

We visited each of the 5 homes. At each home they had demonstrations related to each tribe. Some it was making rice wine, distilling the rice wine, cooking a tasty dish in a bamboo stick, making cookies and pancakes from rice flour or sampling the honey. At one home, they demonstrated how they started a fire with some bamboo shavings and their bamboo “starter” sticks. It was amazing how quickly they had a fire going! Following the tour and demonstrations we went to the performance area where they put on a show highlighting their music and traditional dances. It was really interesting and entertaining. At the end we made our way through the forest up a staircase to a dining area where they had a buffet lunch for us. The weather cooperated until we were ready to leave and it started spitting rain.

Check out our video below on Youtube.

Once back to the hotel we finally managed to book our November 15th flight back to Kuala Lumpur. Keep in mind it is November 11 as we write this. With that task finally out of the way we headed out to the Maybank just down the street and across the bridge from our hotel. We had only got part way and it started spitting again! Last time we used a Maybank ATM we were able to get 3,000 MYR in one transaction. This ATM informed us it’s limit was only 1500 MYR. We decided we’d check out another bank’s ATM and see what we could find. There was a Bank of Islam a block away so we walked over there and found their ATM machines don’t support any of our card types. There was also a BSN building in between the Islam Bank and the Maybank. Linda googled BSN and found that it was also a bank. We tried there. The security guard told us you could take out a maximum of 5,000 MYR in one day but it had to be in transactions of only 1500 each and one for 500. We threw caution to the wind and immediately tried for 3,000 MYR on one transaction. The ATM surprised both us and the security guard by spitting out our cash! “Just like Las Vegas” said Gary to the astonished security guard! We managed to get back to the hotel without getting soaked. After we returned it really got down to business with lot of thunder, lightning and pouring rain.

Our recent lesson learned on financing in a foreign country. 3000 MYR cost us exactly $888.70 CAD which means $1CAD buys 3.375 MYR (Malaysian Ringgit) through BMO at an ATM. Believe it or not, with our Home Trust VISA card, $1CAD buys 3.45 MYR. On our 3000 MYR cash we received 66 MYR less than if we had used our credit card for tap purchases through Apple Pay. Approximately $19. CAD. It would be ideal to use our VISA card everywhere but some places only accept cash. The real appeal of using our VISA is that it’s the funding source for our Apple Pay and it is 100% secure. We are not sure what the limit on the Apple Pay tap is but so far we have had no problems up to 150 MYR.

November 2, 2022November 2, 2022

Moving up island

We are off to a new hotel

The Tiara Labuan Hotel suite we had was great, the air conditioning worked well and the breakfast was good. They’ve had water issues there, not so much the hotel but the supplier, according to the info note left in our room. A few times we had low water pressure but nothing serious. The worst thing was poor internet, so poor it didn’t work. Disappointing! Check out the tour of our king suite at Tiara Labuan below. The internet was so poor at the Tiara that we couldn’t upload this video using the hotel wifi.

We are moving to the north end of the island. It’s a lot farther from town and hopefully quieter. We are hoping for some new scenery in that area so we’ll check it out at the Palm Beach Resort and Spa. Yes they have a spa, we plan on a massage!