My Long Long Journey to Kapit, Sarawak

One of the trips that I anticipated most this year was a trip to Kapit, one of the innermost parts of Sarawak in the Borneon island of Malaysia. I had always wanted to go there for the fact that I was surrounded by Sarawakian friends when I was at the university. I’d listen to their stories – ranging from their upbringing environments to the their close day-to-day relationship with rivers which according to them were their lifelines. I was so fascinated by their stories and I tried to imagine to the best I could knowing that one day I’d go to some of those places that they mentioned and see for myself if my imaginations had been anywhere close to reality. Heh.

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Wisma Sanyan in Sibu, which at 26-storey, is the tallest building in Sarawak

One of the name of places that my friends kept mentioning was Kapit so when the chance of going there suddenly came knocking at my door, I was ecstatic. Of course there is no other way of going to Kapit more conveniently than by boat – or rather bot ekspres as the locals would call it. I flew from KL right to Sibu which is the point of access to Kapit and took a boat from there via Sungai Rajang, which is as known to everybody the longest river in Malaysia and one of the longest in the world. Continue reading

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Scaling the Adam’s Peak, The Holiest Mountain in Sri Lanka

One of the things that excited me most about visiting Sri Langka was the idea of climbing up to the Adam’s Peak or Sri Pada as it is locally known. We took a train from Kandi to Hatton and that was when we had our first glimpse of the beautiful highland of the country. I mean, the scenery was so stunning and beautiful and viewing them from a moving train was such an amazing experience.

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But then, the train ride itself was quite an experience. I would say it was quite comfortable and I had no problem at all. I happened to be seated next to a family from Hong Kong and a lone traveler from France who is currently serving as a member of the French army in Saudi Arabia. He told me how the people in Saudi Arabia are some of the most hypocrite people he has ever come upon, and how they always play holier than thou in front of everybody when in reality they are nothing but wicked people. Continue reading

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Conquering Selangor

So, after postponing the plan like several times, I finally made my way up to the peak of Gunung Nuang last weekend, on the day when (most) Malaysians were celebrating its 57th Independence Day although it was very much disputable since there was no Malaysia that we see now, not until 1963 when Sabah, Sarawak and Malaya all agreed to form the country together.

Climbing to the top of Mount Nuang saw me conquering the State of Selangor, at least elevation-wise, because standing at 1693 feet (516 m?) simply makes it the highest peak in the state.

Google Earth NUang

To tell the truth, it was not really my first time climbing Mount Nuang. I first climbed it with a group of veteran adventure-lovers back in 2010 but we didn’t make it to the peak, nor did we aim to, because we started off quite late. Continue reading

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Standing on Top of Sigiriya

I was first interested to come to Sri Lanka when I saw a picture of a massive column of rock with ruins of an ancient palace on top of it – towering out in a vast area of flatland. The best thing about it is the availability of steps for visitors to climb up on right to the top and view the breath-taking scenery from there. I was so fascinated by it that I instantly searched it on the internet. One name immediately popped up – Sigiriya. Apparently, it was located in Sri Lanka. I knew then that I would someday be heading there. Yippie!

Sigiriya

True enough, when I finally came to Sri Lanka, it was high on our list of must-go places, together with the ancient city of Polonnaruwa, from where we then drove off to Sigiriya. After burning another USD30 each over ticket, we walked over towards the rock with growing excitement. Continue reading

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Visiting the Ancient City of Polonnaruwa

Malaysia might be much bigger in size than Sri Lanka, but Sri Lanka has twice the number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites than it is in Malaysia. There are currently 8 UNESCO Sites in Sri Lanka compared to 4 in Malaysia and there are mostly concentrated on the southern half of the island. Naturally, we wanted to visit all of them but due to logistic and time limitation, we could only visit 6 of them. Sri Lanka might be just an island but traveling from one place to another takes longer than you might expect it to be.

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Thanks God three of them – the Ancient city of Polonnaruwa, The Golden Temple of Dambulla and the Ancient city of Sigiriya are located quite close to each other so they can be visited within one day. Continue reading

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