Simply cycling around
We did not cycle much for that second day. The alarm rang at 6am but it was raining. Finally we left the place at 8am. We did not have any rain for the rest of the day. Today we manage to travel off the main road for the little while, it was nice, especially quiet until we reach a beach where there was a kind of Chinese event. So much things were going on: food places and other shops, kites. The traffic was jammed too. Glad we cycled further along the beach to have a nap :-)
This is it, finally after one week staying in Kuala Lumpur with Sabariah an Amir’s family, we are on the road again. Thanks for your welcome guys :-) It was nice! I wish we would spend less time front of our screen and more outside but we were sooo later on our blog. Today we want to reach a town where we can observe fireflies in their natural environment. Hope it’s nice.
Now everything is fixed, we can leave Kuala Lumpur tomorrow morning. This time IS the real one. Tomorrow we leave for sure. The place where I bought the filter is not far away from Batu cave so we decided to do that today more than tomorrow morning. Batu cave is free and just around the city centre of KL. Lots of people come here naturally.
Normally, we should have been gone this morning but I had an issue. I had to replace the filter of my Katadyn mini (the cap attached to the ceramic cylinder broke). I could not find any shop in KL where I could buy a replacement part so I looked online and discover this one : the Sawyer mini water filter. The brand is American (again! Everytime I find a good product today it’s coming from the U.S.). This product was cheaper than a new ceramic filter from Katadyn. It’s much lighter, easier to use, much more compact and can filter more 300.000 litres! Thanks a life time!
Today is our last day in Borneo! Our flight leaves at 10pm so we’ve got some time front of us. Stephane wants to visit another National park which is close to Miri. Personally I don’t want to walk anymore and will stay in the city. I’ve got little things I want to buy. This is better to do it here, in Miri, than the huge city of Kuala Lumpur. So we split for the day and will meet later this afternoon at the airport.
Today we are going to visit the Niah cave. We had to come back first to the “long distance” bus station. Now we know there is a public bus going there. The trip to Niah junction (where the bus stops on the highway) cost 15 Ringgit. Then we had lunch had to catch a local taxi (15 Ringgit each for one way). Finally there is a 4km walk in Niah national park to get to the cave.
The next and last big step of our trip is to go to Miri from where we will fly back to Kuala Lumpur later. We also want to visit the Niah cave which is about one hour and a half from the same city. Today is a real mission. When we woke up this morning, we could barely walk. Our legs are all cramped from Kinabalu. We feel like we are 80 years old guys who struggle to go down a single step haha. This is so hard. First we walked to the bus station which was a painful start. The thing we did not realised yet is that to go from Kota Kinabalu to Miri there is 9 borders to cross. Yes, nine borders! Why? The first one is the one from the state of Sabah to Sarawak, in Borneo. The others are from Sarawak to Brunei to Sarawak again, to Brunei and finally Sarawak again. If you look at the map you will realise that Brunei is in two parts. As Singapore, this is an independant state. So every time we cross a border we have to get a stamp on our passport. Make sure you have minimum two pages free. Now that’s okay, but the worse is coming. Every single time we had to go down the bus and line up front of the immigration office. Every single time we had to come back in the bus. They forgot something… We are 80 years old today! we cannot walk! This is pain in the a**! Naturally we had some other stops along the road to have lunch or buy some snacks… Here we suffered again, life is so hard! haha. The positive thing is that our free Malaysian visa is 90 days again :-)