Hyeres

I had a link to the Strava record of my walk in Hyeres but it looked rubbish so I've removed it.

This is a pic from the walk I did. It was hilly and hot. Man the water was BEAUTIFUL!

We went back to a beach I'd seen on the walk in the afternoon and snorkeled and I properly saw an octopus 🐙

Proof of critter encounter photos are in the Big Trip photo album. Promise.

Nice

La Spezia

Florence

Rome

Chiang Mai

It looks like I'm not really in charge of this blog. I had thought I'd scheduled a couple of posts about remaining time in Borneo but have no idea now I'm offline and about to fly to Bangkok if they did. Hmmmn. 

Anyway, this update is about Chiang Mai. We've just had a bunch of lovely nights in Thai's northern capital. Here's how the Chedi was looking yesterday (before it absolutely pissed down with rain).

In places like Chiang Mai it's obligatory to take temple photos and monk photos. Well it's not but sometimes it just happens. This monk was wading through the flash flooding on the sidewalk while Arthur and I took shelter under a restaurant awning across the road.

Anyway, thank you monk. And thank you Chiang Mai for another great stay. It was filled with family and friends, Thai activities and a tonne of Thai food.

Haven't go much to say really. Chiang Mai is a relaxed easy city. It was made even easier with nice accomodation (weirdly I didn't take any photos of the place) and having a Noon to give some great local insights and tips and LANGUAGE help. 

Kids had a great time with Cooking School, Water Park, Elephants and lots of interesting eating activities. But really the best bits are always the fun bartering and the tuk-tuks. 

Kuching

After diving we travelled to KK airport and jumped on a plane to Kuching for three nights in Sarawak's big city. 

Malaysian Borneo has two main states Sabah and Sarawak, with Brunei nestled in the middle and Indonesian Kalimantan taking up the read of the world third largest island!

My main memory about Sarawak was pepper because a Malaysian ex co-worker gifted me a small container of Sarawak pepper after a trip of his back home to Malaysia.

Anyway as it turns out that was enough of a memory to make me reach out and make contact and I'm so glad I did. Immediately on arrival Kuching gave off an exciting and exotic vibe, this is what I will remember as my first vision of Kuching!

So starting off really well it only got better with a few 'local' tips pointing us towards a really good mix of activities and fantastic food.

Standout was Borneo Cultures Museum - great, modern museum which entertained whole family for a decent chunk of a day. Here's a dog and a hat from one of the displays that I took fancy to:

And I ate so well chasing down some dishes suggested as 'must try'. Here's a collage:

We also had time to head to the Bako National Park and saw a proboscis monkey up real close, as well as a family of silver leaf langurs including orange furred babies (too cute), a small boar, and sea eagles swooping (on the boat trip) but mainly the outing was a valuable walk (I even used Strava) in quite a lot of HEAT. Didn't take enough water, lesson to be learned there.

Life is pretty good. Kids are dealing with the heat OK and we are all settled in on the take things as they come. We took the bus, and it came, on the way back from Bako. First bus photo. 

There will be more!

I'm on the plane on route to Thailand. This will publish when we arrive. I'm pretty sad to have left Malaysia. I really liked Borneo and already want to re-visit.