An over-night at Laha Datu, noted in L.Planet for its fishermen who fear for their lives on a daily basis due to piracy was not much fun! We do now however have little regard now for LPlanet so with this in mind, we opted to take ourselves out for a stroll at dinner time. Hmmm.If you can believe that places can have good and bad vibes, this was the latter. Apart from the fact that it stank and was utterly filthy, it just felt very uncomfortable. Also, we could no...

'Maya' island Dumped by the jungle drop-off car at Laha Datu bus station, we decide not to wait a few hours for the big, nice air-con bus and jump into one of the local mini-buses. Big mistake - major mistake!! A revolting back-breaking journey took us from Laha Datu, through - you guessed it - mile upon mile of palm plantations to the port of Semporna. J and H disembarked, cranking their backs back into place, feeling nauseous with firm resolutions NEVER to tr...

The jungle…. Touching down to a humid Malaysian Borneo, we had two days in the capital, Kota Kinubulu to book as much of Borneo as we could. We discovered that this was one country where planning from abroad was impossible- no emails were ever answered and it seems that all the tour operators have bought up allocations. Still, nothing beats local info and with local info filling in the gaps and adding colour to the words in Lonely Planet, we booked two stints ...

Thelast bit of Oz So, chickening out of going further North, we blast our way back down the highway, destination Margaret River. Back through miles of red earth and scrub , slowly turning into farming country and then into a more autumnalSouthwest Oz. We stopped in Fremantle for a few days as we really needed to use the last bit of Oz to sort out Borneo and Japan.Fremantle was a great place to do this -a very European feel city, on the sea with a great street c...

With much deliberation we decided to head directly north rather than add on a scenic loop which would take in the sands of Esperance and the gold mining area of Kalgoorie-Boulder -now well known for the eerie iron sculptures dotting a salt pan nearby (well - 150kms nearby). This extra detour would have added another 1500 kms to the already long journey. We figured that amount of extra car time was pushing a 4 years old patience! So, foot on pedal going north. Fi...