Day 659: Gods And Monsters
21.10.10: Up at 8am and onto the bus to Sandakan – the port town where the boat leaves for country 182: The Philippines. Happily, the bus left on time, but…
Day 658: The Battle of Brunei I
20.10.10: Although when seven o’clock wheeled around with alarming speed I thought sod it and hit the snooze button. Today I needed to fight my way through Brunei to the…
Day 657: Precious Cargo
19.10.10: Before dawn could shift her crack off my face we were at the border that separates Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan) from Malaysian Borneo (in this case, Sarawak). Malaysian Borneo made…
Day 656: When I Left School
18.10.10: Borneo. The second biggest island in the world, home of the mighty orang-utan and some of the last virgin rainforest left on Earth. It’s divided between three countries –…
Day 655: Monty Python’s Floating Circus
17.10.10: ROLL UP! ROLL UP! For one day only: the magnificent, the hilarious, the intrinsically fascinating BLOKE WHO’S NOT FROM AROUND HERE! Yes, I get stared at a lot. Usually…
Day 654: Time and Tide
16.10.10: The most irritating thing in the world – aside from Russell Brand – is when your infernal debit card gets declined at a foreign ATM because the bank assumes…
Day 653: As The Miller Told His Tale
15.10.10: First things first, I called the ferry company and found out when the next ship to Borneo was departing – not today but tomorrow, but that’s better than a…
Day 652: You Don’t Know Jakarta
14.10.10: Thursday took a while to get going. While my fellow travellers (in another cabin and arguably less full of Johnnie Walker) were rudely awoken at the crack of dawn…
Day 651: Lion City
13.10.10: Singapore! World’s End! You can get here all the way across the mega-continent of Eurasia from John O’Groats to Raffles via the Channel Tunnel, the Urals and the causeway…
Days 649-650: To The Ends Of The Earth
11.10.10-12.10.10: After two hours kip (I actually didn’t bother using my bunk – the communal area of the backpackers did just as well), by 7.30am I was shovelling breakfast into…