SE Asia wrap up

It happened again and I am sorry.  Since my last post I got lazy/ busy/ unmotivated/ depressed and didn't post again.  Truthfully there is no incredible story that anyone is missing out on.  I left from the national park with all my leech fun and headed to Kuala Lumpur (known as KL).  

I couchsurfed here with a great guy, Mo, from Kenya.  I spent a week there hanging out with other couchsurfers and relaxing.  We gave free hugs one night which is growing in popularity especially among the community of couchsurfers in SE Asia.  

Mo from Kenya, Jason from NY, and Nash from Malaysia at Batu Caves outside KL

Basically we walk around with home made signs announcing our offer to passersby and anyone that wishes to take us up on the offer receives a sleeze free, content smile inducing embrace!  In the relatively social conservative muslim nation of Malaysia, we ended up hugging mostly men.  But I did manage to reach my goal of a car hug when I embraced the driver of a car through his window while he was stopped at a red light.  

Free Hugs in KL!!

After my week here I traveled to Singapore for basically one day and one night.  I again couchsurfed, got taken around the city by a fun girl, Nhazean, and then we met up with a whole bunch of travelers and locals for dinner and laughter.  

A huge gathering of CSers in Singapore!

Then I hightailed it back up to the north of the city and crossed back over the bridge into Malaysia where yet ANOTHER couchsurfer, Chris, met me around 11pm.  

Nhazean, my Singaporean guide, and myself at the biggest mosque in town

Since it was Saturday he decided we should go out for a drink and we did, inviting Alan, a more active CSer from the city.  They treated me to my first beers since Bangkok two weeks before- since beer is so expensive in this predominantly muslim country- and we stayed out late chatting at a high volume club.  Finally around 3am Chris drove us back to his place and set me up in my own extra bedroom.  

Alan and Chris, CSers in Johor Bahru outside of Singapore

After a glorious 2 hours of sleep, at 5am we drove to the airport outside of Johor Bahru and I flew over to Kuching, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo.  Here I was picked up from the airport by Teck, yet another CSer and we drove around all day with his photography club.  I wish I could say I enjoyed myself but I hadn't slept and I was exhausted and there is only so long that I felt I needed to watch him and his friends take pictures of orchids at the orchid farm or crocodiles at the croc farm outside of town.

Idealized picture of the croc farm near Kuching

Adrian and Barry, our incredible host in Kuching

Eventually we met up with Adrian, my Canadian friend who I was meeting in town, and we went back to our CS host, Barry's, home.  After a couple days we took a night bus  and a series of river boats down river into the more wild parts of Borneo only to find out the wild parts are significantly less wild than we had hoped.  

Slowing down in the small town of Belaga far downriver we basically played with the local kids for two days straight.  We had an offer to do a "trek" to some longhouses but we don't regret turning it down.  The longhouses here are less a unique cultural experience of jungle tribes and more relatively modern houses that happen to be long and accessed only by river.  They are expensive to visit, require a guide, and we took a pass.

Borneo: green jungle, brown river.

From here we decided that since we are relatively disappointed in our high expectations of what the tropical jungles of Borneo are truly like, we decided to hitchhike the rest of the way of our route for our last 10 days or so.  We hitched to Miri, near the border with Brunei which we really didn't like.

Hitching a ride across Borneo

 From there we got a short bus to the border, crossed immigration and needed 4 rides to take us into Bandar Seri Bagawan, the capital city of the tiny sultanate of Brunei, an oil-rich independent nation at the north of Borneo.  

Here we couchsurfed with an older Australian woman, Gillian.  She is a lifelong traveler recently returned from a trip to Mongolia and on the cusp of taking a long slow trip through SE Asia where Adrian and I had just spent months.  We were able to give her a number of tips and information and I think she appreciated that a lot.  

Spending an extra day in the city was a mistake.  There is nothing to do here.  We walked around, hung out in the mall (because it has AC and it is HOT and HUMID outside) and I read an entire 300+ page book, The Devil's Double, about the unwilling body double of Sadam Hussein's son Uday.  

The water village in the capital of Brunei

From the city we took a couple of ferries to reach the northern Malaysian state in Borneo, Sabah.  The capital city is Kota Kinabalu (KK) and we hung out here for a few days, staying for nearly free at a hostel owned by a young CSer, Hazmillah.  She showed us around, took us to see a movie, and basically just hung out with us in our laconic state for a few days.  

Hazmillah, our CS friend in KK

To break up the time in KK Adrian and I hitched up into the cooler climates of the mountains near Mt. Kinabalu National Park and stayed in the nearby town of Kundasang.  Here we ate delicious food, played badminton horribly in front of curious onlookers in the town center and watched WWE wrestling in cafes.  More of the same for our time in Borneo, just relaxing, chatting with people, singing to them, and wasting time.

We hitched back, spent another day in KK and then we parted ways on April 26.  Adrian flew back to Canada on May 3 from Bangkok.  After hearing of my time in Singapore, he spent a couple days with the couple that hosted me and also hung out with a lot of CSers.  While he flew to KL first, I flew back to Vietnam to visit some friends there for my last 9 days.  

I hung out with a number of CSers during my last week and even planned my first official CS gathering at a water park in town that was successful despite the rain that pelted us all day.  Turns out that in tropical areas with hot rain, water slides are still really fun! Unfortunately my camera was broken on my second night back in Vietnam and so I have no pictures from my last week.

A representative picture of CSers on my first visit to Saigon

I think I will write one more entry for this trip with some final notes, and a preview of my upcoming trip to West Africa this fall.  Stay tuned for that!