Post 2: Who's the crime boss of all lizards?

The iguanadon.

Many of you may have heard the story I was quite fond of telling regarding Singapore and tourism. The place has a bit of a reputation for being boring and quite "square". This is something of an issue for such a tourism-oriented country. When asked to comment on this situation, one former minister said "We need to take this accusation of not being fun very, very seriously". I think this sums up Singapore very nicely. As Grainne said, it's not not fun, but it definitely isn't fun either.

So to make up for the perceived lack of fun, we decided to fly to Borneo via the Man Utd sponsored Air Asia (or maybe the relationship is vice-versa, I'm not sure). This meant a trip just over the Singapore-Malaysia border to the town of Johor Baharu from where we would fly some 300 miles over the South China Sea to Borneo.

The fun duly began as it appeared that we were incapable of budgeting our time as well as our money. The bus took us to the border where you have to get off with all your stuff and reboard on the other side. The time issue being what it was, we ignored the bus and flagged down a taxi. When he heard that we had to be at the airport in 45 minutes he laughed at us. Not a good sign. Nevertheless thanks to his road skills (driving right up on the bumper of any car in front that wouldn't get out of the way), we just about caught our flight.

The flight seemed normal at first - as I said before, just like Ryanair except that the air hostesses had slightly more risque uniforms. However as Grainne became engrossed in her book, I became engrossed in the light show going on outside. It was smooth going as we were above the cloudline, but the lightning going on all around us outside was a trifle worrying. I did the noble thing and kept this info to myself as James Ellroy kept Grainne distracted. However the thunderclouds were impossible to ignore once we were due to land as we we had to fly through them. I like to think that I've done a fair bit of air travel in my time, but I've never experienced anything like this. We were shunted all over the place - it felt like we were in some huge arial tumble-dryer. What was most unpleasant though, was the thick cloud rushing by right up against the window, conveniently lit up by the wing lights of the plane. It served as an uncomfortable reminder of how bloody fast we were travelling as we were being shook all over the place.

Everyone else on the plane (locals to the last one) couldn't care less and the kids were all screaming with delight. My ego took a bit of a hit with that one.

Nevertheless, we go down in one piece and made it to Kuching, the cat city (I'm not sure whether this "cat" is a noun or an adjective). We've been here two days and - backpacker cliche to follow - everyone is remarkably friendly. Like the elderly Indian gentleman who stopped us for a chat and, upon finding out that we were from Ireland, gleefully told us how shit our football team is (and their manager - "Staunton - the Liverpool player"). That really made my day. You'd like to think you could escape such painful home truths in rainforest islands halfway accross the world. Unfortunately not - I drowned my sorrows in "pints" of Guinness as we watched WWF in the local bar.

Having seen the orangutans, we're off to national parks and beach resorts for a combination of exertion and relaxation. Should be out of the loop for the next while, so y'all can be thankful that there won't be another post for a while.

Post1: Why could Nicole Ritchie not take any aspirin for her headache?

Coz Paris eat 'em all.

So, to deviate from the more traditional means of annoying friends by group-mailing them tales of exploits from exotic locations, it's been decided that a blog will be set up instead. The reason? It shows we're comfortable with modern technology/it makes us look cool/it annoys people less than group mails because getting a message saying that there has been a new essay posted to a blog is more easily ignored than having same essay actually sitting in your inbox - take your pick.

Of course, photos are required too, and we've decided to set up a gallery with flickr (a big 2 fingers here to bebo, facebook, myspace et al).



Currently it's 11.30 ish pm on Monday the 9th. Been in Singapore since..um..Wednesday, I think. The jet lag really took its toll & knocked us out for a good day and a half. We got a private room which was sparse, clean and had a/c and a DVD player. On the other hand, it felt like a cell, with floor to ceiling concrete and no windows. When you woke up you had absolutely no idea if you'd been asleep for 3 or 13 hours.

We've seen most of what there is to see of Singapore, which is a crap place to start your holiday if you have not yet mastered the art of budgeting. Then again, we haven't had to buy a drop of sunscreen because of the beautiful haze - the result of all those forest fires dem Indoneejits have been starting on Borneo and Sumatra.

Tomorrow we're flying off to Kuching which is the capital of one of the 2 Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, and also the epicentre for all the bad air at the moment. We're gonna get ourselves some of those fetching construction masks and take off for some resorts. We'll be travelling around there for a few weeks and then back to Singapore before the onward trip to Melbourne. Thanks for all the well wishes and enquiries into our well being (for me, this amounts to a drunken message saying "Dude, are you in Australia? CCCCHHHUUUMMMPPP!").

Anyway, will post again with more information that you'll probably only want to read if you're slacking in work.