How I arrived in Borneo (East Malaysia) is both incredible and very boring. I flew with AirAsia, the new budget airline in SE Asia, for 71 ringgit one way (ten pounds!).

AirAsia is offering some wonderfully cheap no frills flights within Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and now the south coast of China - so opening up places like Sawarak to futher tourism boosts. As one example of how this is changing backpacking here in SE Asia, I've met travellers making cheap two week jaunts to Bali from KL. The "very boring" aspect is that now, of course, one of the set backpacker conversations is "How much did your AirAsia flight cost"? My answer is invariably followed by, "Oh, ok, that is a good price, but I once met a girl whose ticket cost [insert your own absurd number here]"...

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I arrived in Kuching deeply fatigued. I had sleep badly or non existently on three of the past five nights. On the night before my flight, I should have been able to sleep until five am (I flew at seven am), but at three, someone in the dorm woke me up during their trip to the toilet and, as my bunk bed companion above me was snoring with real feeling, no more sleep was possible. Figuring I might as well head off to the airport shuttle station and get breakfast, I shouldered my bags and alone in the darkness, walked the house lined lanes and crossroads of Johur Bahru.

I got to the station's cafe, taxi drivers were shouting at me - I tried to convey that I didn't want or need their services, as I had come by the station the previous evening and double checked that the 5.30am bus was running. Then a particularly fat taxi driver looked over at me and with a superior grin, started a conversation. "I'm taking the bus to the airport", I perhaps too politely explained. "Bus, 10am" he opined. Taxi drivers and their fucking lies still rile me, and here I was very sleep deprived. I gave him a pained "try the next tourist" look, but he continued asserting his self serving nonsense - no bus until 10am. I stuck out my hand: "Ok, then, let's have a bet. If the bus comes at 5.30, you pay me, if it doesn't, I'll pay you". There was a level of shaking and volume to my voice that I didn't like, but I didn't know how to bring it back under control.
Anyways, the fat cabbie's English was too bad to understand my point - he just kept nodding and smiling. In the end I just asked a waitress to tell him to leave me alone, not sure she understood, but she gave him a sour look and he wandered off. I chewed some peanuts, drank my tea and calmed down marginally.

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The flight went on time with no problems. Kuching from the air:

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More Can-Do please

An interlude - what ever happened with Can the monk from Laos? Although he now has the money myself, Richard and Gari wanted to give him, it has been a nightmarish effort. I've toyed with just posting up all the emails between him and I, to show you how long it took to sort all this out, but... just take my word for it. Part of me is very happy that we have been able to help him, part of me is just relieved it is over, part of me is left a little cynical about the whole business. Although I recognise that there were difficulties at his end, it did feel like things would have been a lot more straightforward had Can been a bit more resourceful, a bit more Can-Do. For instance, I could only send money to Vientiene, Laos' capital, and he was refusing to go, as he was worried and had never been there before. I threatened to call the whole thing off in order to persuade him to make the trip to collect the money order. And there were further complications when he got there.
Part of me wishes that I had chosen someone with more, you know, um pah pah - I think I will just be very diligent next time I try to do something like this. Work out issues like: Who are you? What are your plans? Why do you need someone else's money to get there? What steps will you take if money materialises?
But, the positive side is that through this process, I have become more aware of the efforts of traveller related organisations to help the world. Please vote on Brad Newsham's BackpackNation - you just need to read the shortlist of stories and choose you favourites.

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Meeting Cayce

Meeting someone in the flesh, even after weeks of reading their emails and internet diary, is still very much meeting them for the first time. I felt, I now realise, that I had got to know Cayce pretty well: we had shared jokes, got over odd misunderstandings, got comfortable with a style of speaking. Then, on Kuching's waterfront, I met the physical Cayce, a quite different person to the one I had got to know, and realised that the physical Daniel and Cayce would have to go through the same getting-to-know-you process that the online ones had.
Cayce in her blog comes across as bubbly, ideas sometimes running into the next one, a bit naughty at times. In one very memorable diary post, she shouted out to an assumed question from her readers, "NO SIRREEE"! Physical Cayce, I discovered, is quite thoughtful, seems to hold some of the things crossing her mind without speaking them. Physical Cayce isn't naughty at all - she's quite earnest, and I think keen to speak well of most people. Physical Cayce, rather than being flightly, is open and forthright on things important to her, leaving me in no doubt she was the boss were I to be included in her next field trip to the rainforest (which was quite understandable).
I suppose that the self we present through writing is no less a persona than the one we present in person, especially when first meeting new people. I wasn't concerned by any of this, I was immensely looking forward to getting to know her and her friends Marita and Gette (whom I'd also met online). I felt a tremendous appeal for having some actual friends for a few weeks (at the very least, they had made the mistake of inviting me, so perhaps had an obligation to spend time with me), rather than my usual forming of friendships among travelling folk soon to be departing.

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Kuching is a very pleasant city. Quite a small town atmosphere - I've been here two days and already feel familiar with the centre's streets and people. There is a definite relaxed feel here in Sarawak, some odd tension in West Malaysia that I only noticed now I'm not feeling it anymore. People have big smiles to see me, I feel very welcome here. Cayce is taking me to Sawarak's annual World Music Festival in a few days, really looking forward to it.

Daniel, 10 July 2004, Kuching