So what happened then???

Hello... well we really have no excuse for not having this finished ages ago so sorry about that. Well we headed to Kota Kinabalu, hung out and watched some fireworks for Chinese New Year, then got a flight to Kuching, or cat city as it is also known for the end of the Chinese New Year festivities.

What we hadn't quite realised was that it was serious rainy season down there... and all the Kuching peeps had taken time off and headed out of the city to celebrate with their families. We booked ourselves into a nice hotel (no-one around so cheap!) and waited out the rain for 3 or 4 days not doing much but staring out over the river and wondering if we could avoid fast food for dinner again. Not much to report really!

We hopped on a flight to Singapore where the man who inspired this blog Andy Leonard put us up for the night and showed us around as well as very generously allowing us to store out bags at his place whilst we headed off to the Philippines... (We go back there and so I'll talk about Singapore later)

The Philippines are lovely, of that there is no doubt... Manila however is not an easy city to love... the Jeepneys (kind of local buses with the front of a jeep... and the back of a covered flatbed truck... generally painted garish colours and with Catholic accoutrements) add a touch of charm but the traffic is massive and doesn't move and walking around is pretty much impossible... our impression wasn't helped by the fact that having pre-booked a room and followed the instructions we then found ourselves approaching midnight in the foyer of a place with the same name... but without our booking which had been made on the other side of town... we should have had this cracked by now :) they found us space in what appeared to be a converted cupboard... we had to keep the door cracked open to allow any air in... it wasn't all sunsets and seafood.

To be honest it was probably such a shock as it came straight after Singapore which works perfectly, is clean and has little traffic etc. we had lost our travelling armour in just a couple of days! We headed south and for the islands as quickly as we could. We spent 2 weeks in ending the trip pretty much as it had begun... we sunned ourselves, went snorkeling and ate on the beach most nights overlooking the ocean and watching the sun go down... we had intended to travel around the islands but when we found a lovely spot and met some people we decided that we had done enough wandering and maybe we should just relax... and so we did.

We ended our trip in Singapore, we explored with Andy, went to the amazing zoo and the night safari as well, traipsed up a jungle hill and wandered around in a daze at how clean and efficient Singapore is "what do you mean you don't have to agree a taxi fare in advance? Are you quite mad?' we traipsed along the imported beach (no really.... from the Philippines actually) and ate ice cream whilst Andy explained how you could measure the economic climate by counting the number of ships you could see from his window... this was back at the beginning of the year, when he moved in there were no ships at anchor... now they stretched over the horizon and it meant the world wasn't moving things around.... how right he was.

Thanks for reading, we had an amazing time. Hopefully this allowed people to keep up with where we were and what we were doing. For us it will be an account of a great trip and remind us of the things that are already fading from our memories. Thanks to the people who recommended places to go and things to see (Amy, Will, Emil, JT & Pip, Andy and others we met along the way) and to people who let us know that they were enjoying the blog, you made the trip better and easier than it had any right to be and kept us carrying on with this record that we are both really pleased to have.

Cheers

Ben & Deb - September 09 - not lost anymore and settled in Perth.