Bako National Park (aborted)

So we tried today to head to Bako National Park, but it didn't quite work out that way. We're heading out on our way underpowered motorbike -- did I mention that the speedometer and odometer don't work, and that it doesn't have a fuel gauge? Not that the fuel gauge is broken, it just doesn't exist. Who the hell makes a gasoline powered vehicle where you can't tell how much fuel is left? (Yamaha, is the answer.)

Anyway, it starts raining a bit, and we're only marginally prepared for the rain (and I'm not sure how prepared the bike would be). The downpours here are often very hard, but very short, so we decide to pull over and wait it out (along with another bike). This one was indeed hard, but not short. At some point it let up a bit so we ran across the street to the cafe. But by the time it really started to let up a lot, it was about 2 hours later. And at that point we figured that by the time we headed to the ferry, and took the boat, and left enough time for the return trip, it just wouldn't be worth it. So we headed back into town and will try again tomorrow. (It did end up being a beautiful sunny day later on.)

We're having mixed feelings about heading over to Borneo. I think there is a lot interesting to do here, but we kind of just need to get out of Kuching. But looking at our remaining time, and how much traveling we ultimately need to do in the reverse direction, and that we don't want to cut short our time on the Perhentian Islands, we just don't have quite enough time to explore Serawak (the Malaysian province we're in on the island of Borneo) as I think we need to to give it justice.

So tomorrow we're going to try again for Bako National Park, and then the next day we're moving yet again, heading in the direction of the Perhentian Islands. (We just booked flights from Kuching to Kuala Lumphur and then from KL to Kota Bharu, which is close to where we ultimately need to be.) This ought to hopefully leave us plenty of time to relax in our final beach stop and spend enough time there that we don't feel so much like we're moving from place to place. And give us enough time to spend a little bit of time in Penang and enjoy Bangkok again before we head on home.

The Perhentian Islands sound like they're fairly undeveloped as of yet, which means that available, uncrowded, reliable, useable, and/or cheap Internet connections might be hard to come by. So we might go for quite some time without posting, and uploading any more pictures might also have to wait awhile.