Then we had a great day yesterday the 25th. Went to the Jurong Bird Park in Singapore. World's Largest Bird Park. Amazingly well-constructed and well-cared for birds. Some of the enclosures were so large you forgot you were inside. The African bird sanctuary is the largest bird-dome in the world. Miranda saw dozens of birds she had never seen before in any similar zoo's, etc. We watched a couple of bird shows as well and left after the entire day disappeared into wandering the park.
Tired and ready for bed we decided to fly to Borneo in 24 hours, from Kuala Lumpur. This would give us plenty of time to catch a bus there, etc. At 9pm I asked Miranda to buy the plane tickets. While she clicked on the proper link in Kayak.com, AirAsia switched the flight time without her ever noticing. She ended up buying the nonrefundable $300 ticket for 7am the next morning. After running around seeing if we could change it, we decided we just would have time if we caught the last 10pm bus from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur... We rushed struggling to get the bus-ticket changed to 10pm and hopping on just as it was scheduled to leave. NICE BUS! Lazy-boy style chairs. We arrived in Kuala Lumpur at 3am.
Unfortunately, we had to take a taxi to the airport which was 40 miles a way! ($65) Worked our way through that slow airport and onto a 3 hr plane ride to the Malaysian town of Sandakan on the Island of Borneo. Here we took a taxi to town, and flopped on the bed of the first hostel we noticed. (They had private rooms with ensuite and free wifi for $20, so no dilemma there...) Now... Do we nap the day away or go see some sights... Supposedly there are WILD ORANG UTANGS here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (This is why we flew quick) Among other adventures to be had here. Compared to Singapore's cleanliness and perfect infrastructure, everything is a little rougher, and far less english, but we are still managing pretty easily. Looks like it will be a good adventure here.
Off to find lunch!
-Joe
Nifty birds in the African Aviary. Can't remember what they're called now.
Scarlet Ibis
Purty Lories.
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Well, we got to the airport with some help from Emma and Ben, the couple we stayed with for a couple nights in Perth. The flight was a little late. Which, considering how much flying we've done this trip and that was our first late flight, that's pretty good. Anyway, we left the ground at around 10:15pm and landed in Singapore at 3:30am. We each might have slept about an hour on the plane, but probably not. We tried dozing at the airport. That didn't work either. We finally took the train into Little India, found a vegetarian Indian place and had breakfast. It was something totally new. Joe had to ask them what type of thing they would have for breakfast that wasn't spicy. Haha. They were very friendly.
We found the place we planned to stay at, but check-in time wasn't until 1, so we just paid for the room and dropped off our bags, then headed out again. We decided to go look around the Art Science Museum. It's a neat building, with "The Helix" leading to it, which is a very neat, and large, foot bridge. Next to that is a huge mall and the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. This building looks like it has a boat on it! We paid the $20 each to go up and take a look. The view was amazing. There's even a pool that makes it look like the hotel guests are swimming on the edge of the building.
Anyway, we didn't end up actually going into the Art Science Museum because it was a bit pricey and we weren't really sure what to expect. Also, by that time, the two of us were so tired and both had monster headaches, that we didn't think we would be able to appreciate it anyway. We got back to Little India found some lunch, then headed back to the hostel. We napped a little and are otherwise vegging before heading to bed early.
Tomorrow will be the better test on how we can handle the heat, since we hopefully won't be super tired.
-Miranda
The building in the center is the Art Science Museum, then you can see the Sky Park and hotel. The 'mall' is between the two and The Helix is to the left of the mall under the hotel.
View from the Sky Park. They're working on a new crazy building. We have no idea what it is. The area they're working on is huge though. Also, all those ships out in the water? They're all huge freighters. Not small boats.
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We've been enjoying our time south of Perth staying with Baila and her husband Frank. We went for a couple canoe paddles. One around the island they live on. Well, they only had one kayak paddle, so Joe did all the paddling while I sat and looked for birds. It was gorgeous out though. Unfortunately, I didn't really get any good photos. Most of our time spent here was working. We got a lot caught up.
Today we are heading back into Perth and then to the airport for a 9:30pm flight to Singapore. The flight lands after 2am, so that should be interesting... Also, it's apparently 90 and humid there. Yep...
-Miranda
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We spent one night in Cairns, meeting up with Sandra again. The next day was when we were flying to Perth, but that wasn't until the evening. We spent the morning walking around some before catching the airport shuttle.
Joe had set up a place to stay using AirBnB. Emma and Ben picked us up from the airport. We stayed at their place a couple nights. The first full day we took the train into Perth proper and did a lot of walking around. We went to the Western Australian Museum. It was big! Lots of very neat information, but as usual, it was a bit of overload. So much information in such a short time.
Anyway, the next day we headed to Fremantle. It's an area where England sent convicts back in the 1800's. There was a prison there that they built. It was even used until 1991 even though it apparently was considered uninhabitable back in the late 1800's. Pretty crazy. We didn't do the tour of the prison, but there were some interesting exhibits that we did check out though. There was also some good food and vegetarian restaurants in the area. One place sold lentil shepherds pie that was excellent.
We left that evening to meet up with Baila, a friend that lives south of Perth. She lives on an island that is only accessible by boat, which is fun. Hopefully it's not raining one of the times we want to head off.
-Miranda
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We just spent the night in Cairns, then headed north to Port Douglas. Apparently Daintree has the oldest rain forest. We stayed just a couple nights.
On Friday we rented a car to check out the forest trails. There was also a 'river cruise' that we did. The trails were very neat. Each forest looked very different from the others. Very classical jungle.
The river cruise was fun. We only saw one crocodile (I didn't get a photo because it was on the wrong side of the boat). However, we did see a lot of birds. One was a Kite that swooped down not far in front of the boat and plucked a baby crocodile from the shore. The boat driver said he had seen it a few times, but had never had it happen when he had a tour out. We also saw an Azure Kingfisher (gorgeous bird) and a bunch of Whistling Ducks hanging out in a tree.
Nothing too eventful happened on the walks, however on our drive back, we did see a Cassowary on the side of the road! There was a truck behind me, so I didn't get any really good photos. It was still very neat though.
This evening we're heading back to Cairns and we're off to Perth Sunday evening!
-Miranda
A common sign up north. It's stinger season from November to May.
A purty flower.
The trees have buttress roots to get their roots out of the saturated soil. Some were pretty amazing looking.
Amusing sign. It is graffiti. The top sign was of a Cassowary and the bottom was just a speed bump originally.
Cassowary!
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