Greetings from Cat City, Borneo

I flew into Borneo yesterday, after a few relaxing days in Kuala Lumpur. After a couple of days of feeling really jetlagged and doing my own thing, I got to know some of my fellow travelers. Quite an entertaining bunch of people, but seriously cheap travelers. I guess that's to be expected when you're staying in a $3/night hostel.

Eating out was a bit of an adventure, at least once I was ready to be sociable. Starving, we'd set off in search of food. We'd find restaurants with delicious-sounding SE Asian seafood and such for ~$2, which would get the usual response of "I bet we can find the same for $1 if we keep looking!" Afraid to admit that I'm not a poor backpacker, and would happily buy them all dinner if we could just stop and eat now, I'd bite my tongue and continue the quest for bargain food. And sure enough, after an hour or so, we'd eventually find something amazingly good for about a buck. Those of you who've gone wandering for food with me probably think this is some sort of karmic justice.

Despite meeting some cool people, it was clearly time to move on. KL's not a terribly exciting city, and once I was over my jet lag, it was clear I wasn't going to get much sleep in the dorms. I had probably the worst bed in the whole place - upper bunk right next to the door, in an 8-bed room, with two other 8-bed dorms that were only accessible through our room. The place was packed, so 23 people had to squeeze past my rickety bunk every night. Fortunately, they were mostly drunk, so pretty sound sleepers.

The last night, some guy started screaming about water leaking on his bed at 5am, turned on all the lights, and started rearranging the room to avoid it. I took that as an opportunity to check out early and head to the airport.

Flying into Borneo was an amazing experience. I don't mean it was white knuckle landing, but the view as we approached was unique. The island of Borneo's mostly surrounded by huge mangrove swamps, with meandering streams cutting through them to the sea. Occasional rocky outcroppings poke up through the jungle. All the settlements are up the rivers a ways, past the mangroves.

I'm in the city of Kuching, Sarawak, which is in the Malaysian part of Borneo. Even though I'm still in Malaysia, it's like a completely different country in many ways. I think because of how they joined with Malaysia in the 1960s (don't worry, no history lesson yet), they still have their own passport control. Residents of the mainland have to get permission to come here, but for me it just means one more stamp in my passport! Mostly it's the people here that make it different. Even police officers will stop to say "Hello" in English.

My hour's about up here, so I'll have to leave the explanation for why Kuching is called Cat City for next time. Hopefully there will be pictures, though I may have to eat at KFC to upload them (free wifi there). With the amazing quality of the local food here, that will be a sacrifice.