The time we went to a rap/reggae concert and nobody was allowed to dance.......(I couldn't make this stuff up!)

So we'd heard about this rapper/reggae artist that was over in Brunei (for what reason I don't know) and he was playing a FREE gig at Jerudong Park (they like their free gigs here- Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston have played here and the public didn't have to pay a penny (cent). Their sultan really does love them). As you can imagine we were very excited. Stuff like this just does not happen in this country and we went along for a good night out.

Well we got there and there and sat down and waited. There weren't that many people there to start with and the opening act was this rock band called Karacoma (?) and they were OK.

Then King Lhota comes out and everyone goes wild cus he's got some good music!

and everyone's outta their seats and dancing cus it was just awesome and surreal and awesome......

(Now you see em.............)

then we see this dude running as fast he could and then thing you know a woman is coming out on stage saying 'we know you are all have a great time but..........you can't dance so can you all please sit down and DANCE FROM YOUR CHAIRS'!!! She actually said that! and we're all just gob smacked and the know-it-all expats then say 'oh yeah public dancing is banned in this country' like duh???

(now you don't- he looked very lonely)

Needless to say a LOT of people just left after that but the hard core rockers that we are (lol) we stayed right till the end and did enjoy the concert mostly because he was very good and his music was brilliant and there's nothing quite like listening to a reggae concert in a hot country. But we also knew we weren't going to see another one like this for a veeeeeeeery long time! (Maybe they could ask Whitney back? She would probably do a free concert now that she's kinda struggling.......) I think we need to book some festival tickets for when we get to the UK (if the ash cloud allows us!)

My Quarter Century Birthday!!

On the 17th of April 1985, the angels started singing, the world stopped turning and an amazing soul came into being- ME!!

Everyone rejoiced (apart from my 1 year old brother) and bought exotic presents from far, far away. Well they didn't really but you get the gist.

Anyways it was my birthday!!! I was sooooooooo excited (I still get disappointed if nobody does anything for my birthday and sulk) and Zaheer knew this so pulled out all the stops and totally spoilt me. I've gotta say it was the best birthday EVER! (Even beat the time me and my brother got them ultra cool sunglasses and thought we were the bomb on our 7th and 8th joint birthday party- his is on the 10th April).

So the day started with my darling husband cooking me breakfast. It was the traditional family special-Zaheer's home made toast, fried eggs, cheesy beans and Earl Grey tea! It was delicious! I did take pictures but it isn't a very pleasant looking breakfast so I'll just describe it instead!

I knew I was in for a very special day because Zaheer washed up! I couldn't believe it! In all our marriage life (8 years in December!) he has never washed up- well maybe once when I was pregnant but still this was amazing (he did forget to wipe down one counter but that was all the work I did on the day).

Yusuf was being ultra cute and announced since it was my birthday it was going to be my day and then proceeded to tell us he was bored and wanted to watch the Princess and the Frog! Since we weren't doing anything and nothing else was on in the cinemas (and we were told the prince looked like Zaheer) we decided to watch it. The Prince totally looked like a younger version of Zaheer- the reason I say this is because the Prince's hair was exactly how Zaheer used to grow his- v funny!

After that we went out to lunch. I wanted sushi but the damn place was closed (on my birthday as well- how dare they!) so we went to another place nearby and had pasta instead.

(can you spot Yusuf's thumb?)

(This milkshake was to die for)

Zaheer needed to get some ingredients for his Prawn Thai Curry that he was going to cook for me tonight so we went shopping. He also wanted to buy a cake for me so we went to the bakery where the Royal Family get their cakes from. The cakes they make are just stunning. They will literally make anyhting you ask them to. We bought a ready made chocolate cake with chocolate ganache. It was very pretty!

Zaheer then took me to my favourite shop ever- the Rainforest Gallery. I love everything they sell in this shop and Zaheer just said 'You have a $100 budget- buy whatever you want'. I nearly died! I actually asked him twice if he said $100?? So I bought these earrings,

this bracelet,

(how it sparkles!!)

and another bracelet. I was soooooooo happy!

We then went home where Zaheer started cooking and I watched the latest episode (episode 14!!) of Glee. A couple of my friends, Simi and Salome came round and gave me a huge box labelled 'Survival kit for Brunei'.

(PRESENTS!!!!)

There was a lot of funny stuff in there and it was so nice of them to have thought of everything and put it together. Got a lot of giggles out of me! Amongst other things, they bought me this necklace that I had seen in the Rainforest Gallery and had just told Simi how pretty it was and she bought it! That is what you call a good friend! (and no I didn't do it on purpose and I wasn't dropping hints!)

(PRESENTS!!! LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURVE IT)

And then it was cake time!

The cake was heavenly! The presents were beautiful and the company was brilliant! It really was a very special birthday! I was missing my family so so much (especially my mums brown rice that she always cooked on our birthdays!).

Thank you so much to my darling husband for making my day perfect, my little monkey Yusuf for just generally being a monkey and to all my friends (for their presents- joking!) for being there to celebrate with me.

Now I've gotta start planning Yusuf's 5th birthday (on the 30th April) and Zaheer's 30th (on 21st June)! Fun times ahead!

Niah Caves

This was the main attraction for us. We had heard a lot of good things about it and were very excited. The drive took us about 2 hours.

We arrived at 10ish because it takes about 5 hours to explore everything.

We had to cross this river (I don't understand why they don't have a bridge!) which cost us 1 ringgit (20p) each.

After this there is a very long board walk through the rainforest that takes us directly to the caves. It was very well done and perfect for Yusuf too.

It was a beautiful walk. You could hear so many different types of birds and monkeys. We also so countless of lizards and this one in particular seemed to want to pose for the camera.

Finally reaching the caves.

This was the first cave called the Traders Cave.

We didn't know what the scaffolding was for until we read this sign. Must have been incredibly hard for the workers staying here.

(You can click on the pictures to enlarge them)

After a bit more walking you come across the aptly named Great Cave. I took countless of pictures to try an capture the immense size of this cave but my camera just wasn't up to the job. It was literally awesome.

Tom Harrison discovered human remains dating 40,000 years in the 1950s. This was the oldest recoreded human settlememnt in East Malaysia.

The poles were for the workers that collect the Swiftlets nests.

We walked through the Great Cave and reached a point called the Moon Walk (or Cave I cant remember!) This was basically a long stretch in complete darkness! Even after your eyes had adjusted you just could not see anything. It was a scary experience and (like an idiot!) I couldn't help but think about the Aliens V Predator film and some alien hiding in the corner! Yusuf had the torch and found it incredibly funny every time he switched the damn thing off. Very stressful. The worst part after coming out of it was that we had to go back the same way! I wasn't looking forward to it.

After the Moon Walk/Cave/Passage there was another short walk to the Painted Cave. The paintings date 1200 years and were faded so the camera didn't pick up anything. Burial ships were also discovered near the painted caves. Again no pictures but the whole experience was beautiful even if we were essentially in a graveyard.

The walk there took us about 2 1/2 hours and we were pretty tired. After spending sometime in the Painted Cave we headed back. It is exactly the same way back. After coming out of the dark passage I got this one decent shot of the Great Cave. It was taken quite high up but still doesn't manage to show the huge cave or the vivid green rainforest beyond.

Just as we were leaving we came across this:

A snake!! It was the first time either one of us had seen one in the wild and to be honest it wasn't as scary as we thought it would be. Obviously it if was a bigger one we would have ran like crazy but this one was just cute. It also had recently eaten something as it had a slight bulge in the middle of it.

(OK after watching the video I realise I was s**t scared of the thing- how my memory deceives me (I was dancing and singing with the snake in my head!)

And that was the end of our Niah Caves trip. We felt very lucky to have had the opportunity to see it and the whole experience will forever remain in our memories of our time in Borneo. We went for dinner and I think Yusuf's face summed up our day.

(P.S-You can see the caves much better if you click on the pictures)

Miri Day 2- Lambir Hills National Park and Miri City Fan

We decided to go to Lambir Hills National Park. We had read good things about this Park in the Lonely Planets book and so we thought we'd check it out. There are a number of routes you can go. Two of them (I think) lead to waterfalls and there is one long one which reaches the summit. Since we had Yusuf with us we thought we'll get to the first waterfall and see how it goes from there.

The Park did remind us of Bukhit Shahbander but it was much bigger and the cicadas much louder (see video to hear them).

It took us about 20 minutes to reach the first waterfall. It was breathtaking!

The following is a video of the rainforest but I took it because of the noise one of the cicada was making. It was so incredibly loud. The video doesn't capture just how loud it was. We had never heard anything like it. I tried finding it on the tree but couldn't for the life of me work out exactly where the noise was coming from. The rainforest in Borneo is constantly like this- its never quiet.

We did start on the second trail and got quite a way in. The rainforest in this part was very different from the first waterfall. There were so many different types of birds that we could hear. We also heard monkeys and something that may have been a deer. But as we were walking along I heard something that (to me ) sounded like a growl, like a wild cat growl and nearly died! After hearing it again Zaheer informed me that it was in fact a wood pecker! I couldn't work out how he thought that sounded like a wood pecker but it calmed me down for a while anyway! We didn't make it to the end of this trail as Yusuf was getting quite tired and also due to our impeccable timing we were there at midday and it was HOT! So we turned around but I think we had seen enough.

After the Park we went to the Miri City Fan. It is a fan shaped (duh!) park with lots of small themed parks, a public swimming pool, a library and other things. It was heaven to us in that Brunei had absoloutley nothing like this. The weather was beautiful too (as we went late afternoon) and for a moment we felt like we were in England!

There are loads of trees like this everywhere.

This was part of the Islamic Gardens.

Yusuf was happy too!

We saw turtles/terrapins in the pond!! Very exciting!

And lastly, this was outside the Public Library. I thought it was beautiful. I was also very excited at seeing a public library as this is again something Brunei doesn't have.

Next stop- Niah Caves!!!