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Okay, as promised in Kirsty's post I'll tell you a bit about my "eventful" trip to Borneo...
So my adventure starts at about midday on the 22nd, when I caught my train down to London after a frantic few hours packing (I always leave things to the last minute...). I chose to travel by train because it's reliable (so I thought) and cheaper than flying - but I didn't take into account the unpredictable British weather and sure enough the train was delayed because of gales, and then everyone was transferred onto another train (complete with no empty seats...) leaving me running seriously late for my flight. Not knowing the London Tube system whatsoever I ran about like a headless chicken until I somehow found myself on the way to Heathrow - albeit almost 2 hours late...a rather long sprint up some stairs to terminal 3 with my massive backpack and I was shocked to find that the desk was still open for my initial flight to Mumbai - that was lucky! Even better, the flight was underbooked meaning I had a row of seats to myself - so far, so good!
My luck ran out when I arrived in Mumbai, where the descent took us over mile upon mile of shanty towns (an amazing sight). Apparently my flight had been changed to include an internal transfer within India when it should have been a single transfer from Mumbai to KL - a situation which got a lot worse when I found out I needed an Indian visa to do this! Without a visa I was confined to a small pocket of the airport and went to ask the Air India people for a solution. After a worrying few minutes and a trip down to the baggage handler's area (a very strange experience...nobody seemed to worry about the foreigner wandering around looking through all the luggage containers!) I was booked onto an even earlier flight which went direct to KL with Egyptian Airlines, meaning my arrival in KL was a day earlier than my booking! The Air India guys really worked their asses off to help me out, and I couldn't thank them enough.
The girl next to me on the flight, native to KL, was surprised to see me travelling on my own (people don't really do this in Malaysia apparently) and offered me a lift to find accomodation for the night, which I gladly accepted. After a rather expensive night and a massive buffet breakfast (gotta get the money's worth!) I was ready to fly to Kota Kinabalu. However I wasn't quite ready for the massive tropical storm which swept in as we waited to take off, and assumed another delay was on the cards. No such luck, this is Asia where the weather's like this all the time and soon enough the plane proceeded to take off into some heavy turbulence. A couple of hours later and I was in KK, with only my bags and a scribbled piece of paper saying "Borneo Backpackers" (supposedly my hostel for the night).
My Lonely Planet map showed 2 similar-sounding hostels which I headed towards on the bus (wasn't shelling out for a taxi after my expensive previous night) and on foot (after the bus ran into gridlock); neither had heard of a group of 7 people from Scotland but the second was really helpful and actually phoned around most of the hostels in KK (I think the lady took pity on me, I must have been looking pretty dishevelled by then!) and found our hostel, the North Borneo Cabin (which doesn't sound anything like "Borneo Backpackers Hostel" - cheers for that Kirsty!!) which was round the corner. After spending the rest of the day relaxing and exploring the city I met the guys, who seemed surprised to find me in the right place - and no wonder!
So that concludes the story of my travels to Borneo, keep checking for updates of what we're up to next
Allan
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