Despite the travelling it was a great trip and good to see somewhere different. Borneo is one of those places I've always wanted to go to and would love to go back to and explore more of.
My trip started off with a day and a half in Makati to rest after my initial long haul flight, then I flew into BSB, Brunei to meet Elaine. We stayed in the Gadong district of BSB, which is basically a marble clad shopping mall with a handful of western quality hotels, everything shuts at 10pm at the very latest.
For the next 3 days, Elaine showed me around Brunei - we saw the Sultan's Mosque, Palace, main town centre, Empire Hotel, Jerudong Park and went for a few boat rides along the river and into the national park rain forest.
Brunei is very clean and safe, it's like a low rise Muslim version of Singapore. It is also a very rich city, the Sultan has shared his country's imense oil wealth among his people who all seem to drive very big cars with big engines, but with Petrol at about £1 GBP a gallon, and the 3rd highest GDP per capita in the world it's not really surprising.
Despite that, after 3 days in Brunei, I had seen all I wanted to see and was getting bored with no beer and nothing open past dark. So we booked a 4 hour express coach ride to Miri in Sarawak, Malaysia.
We spent 2 nights in Miri. It is the Chinese part of Malaysia, with ethnic Chinese making up 70% of the population. The good thing about that is, there are plenty of Pork dishes and beer on offer in the restaurants and cafes. We also found plenty of Pinoys working in the restaurants and soon discovered a great place that sold ice cold SML. From Miri we took a day trip to the Niah Caves National Park, which involved an 8KM walk through an uphill jungle track until we reached the 250metre wide mouth of the caves. The inside of the caves was spectacular, and we were able to walk about 1KM inside along very dark wooden plankways.
After Miri, we went back to Brunei for a couple of days so that Elaine could celebrate her birthday with her sister and family, but I was itching to get back to Malaysia.
So we took a couple of boats and made the 7 hour boat journey to Labuan and Kota Kinabalo in Sabah. Labuan is an island just off the Brunei coast and is also a major port serving the ferries that run between the Malaysian ports on Borneo. It's a small place, but is quite a nice town to spend a few hours waiting for a connecting ferry.
We arrived in KK in the late afternoon, and found a Chinese owned hotel near the main town centre and park. KK's a nice town, full of Pinoys from Mindanao, and the night time Filipino Food Market is the best BBQ in the world, with a vast array of fresh BBQ'd seafood on offer at low prices.
I loved KK it was a great town, a real melting pot of asian cultures and culinary delights. If I'd stayed there for a few months I would have got very fat with all of the Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, Indian, Filipino, Thai and western dishes on offer.
KK was also very clean in comparison to The Phil's. Malaysia is more affluent than the Philippines, and it shows as there is no polution from trikes or Jeepneys, very little litter and the sidewalks
and alleyways are clean.
From the main harbour in KK you can take boat trips to some of the 9 Islands of the Tunku Rahman National Park, which take about half an hour to get to. These are all tropical paradise islands, with talcum powder fine sands, coral reefs, abundent tropical fishes and great jungle trails. We had a couple of day trips to Mamutik and Manukan islands. They are both beautiful, but Manukan is the better of the two, it's on par with Pandan Island in Palawan. We took the 3KM jungle trail on this island and came face to face with a growling 6foot Monitor Lizard. Elaine ran away and hid while I got as close as I could to him to get some photo's.
We also took a day trip to the Lok Kawi Wildlife park and saw some of the native animals to Borneo, including Orang Utans, Gibbons and Pygmy Elephants.
We had to head back to Brunei for our connecting flights and took the 9 hour bus journey from KK to BSB, which involved 2 border crossings into Malaysia and 2 into Brunei, 8 immigration points in total. It was a very long trip, but at least we got to see lots of the Temburong jungle National Park.
On our final day in Brunei, we went to Tamak Peraginam Tasik Lama Park Gardens and waterfal. Forget the gold plated marble domed mosques and 7 star hotels, the park is the most spectacular and beautiful thing in Brunei, and the walk around round a perfect last day for us in Brunei.
Elaine headed back to Manila a day before me, so I spent my last day walking around the harbour and Mall in downtown BSB, befoe my 10pm flight back to Manila.
My trip ended with 3 nights and 2 full days in Manila. The first day was a bit of a wasted day, as Elaine said we should go to the waterfalls near Laguna. We took the 2 and half hour bus journey, only to find that to get to the waterfalls, the boat, tour and insurance was another 1300 each. I'd only taken about 2000 in total out with me, so we ended up heading back to Manila.
I've been to Manila of 14 separate occasions, but have never actually been into the main city, I usually end up in Ermita, Pasay, Makati, Ayala, MOA, Bacoor or Imus and really wanted to see Intramuros and Rizal Park, so my last day was taken up by Elaine giving me a guided tour of where she went to University and the main attractions in Manila.
I had a great time with Elaine, and saw some wonderful places. After seeing Malaysia, it made me realise just how dity and poluted the Phil's is. Don't get me wrong, I love the Phil's, but it really struck me this time at just how little pride the people take in keeping their country clean. Everywhere is full of litter, people peeing in shop doorways, sleeping rough, pimps touts and pushers trying to sell viagra, sun glasses and hookers and everybody basically out to rip you off for as much as they can. I don't look at other places with rose tinted specs and realise that every country has its bad parts, but walking around Manila I realised it has some stunning colonial architecture and great road infrastructure and with a bit of pride and money spending on it, it really could be one of the worlds great cities and deserve its name of the Pearl of the Orient. They've cleaned Makati up and it really is like a mini Singapore or HK so why can't they clean Manila up?
Originally Posted by Englishman2010
... 
, Ian for sharing! 
