Malaysia turns out to be a lot easier to travel in than Indonesia.

We flew from Singapore to the city of Kuching on the island of Borneo. (Borneo is split between Malaysia and Indonesia, with the small state of Brunei nestled inside Malaysia. The Malaysian part of Borneo is divided into two provinces, the largest of which is called Sarawak. We only visited Sarawak).

We didn't expect much from Kuching but we were pleasantly surprised. We weren't approached by tens of would-be porters trying to carry our stuff. Not a single becak driver or taxi driver yelled demanding we ride with them. They have a fixed price taxi ticket you buy at the airport. That's all there is to it. We even found an ATM that accepted our card. (Travelers: Maybank and Hong Kong Bank accepted our Plus card).

The city turned out to be fairly clean, easy enough to walk around, and we were not attention magnets. Few people gave us a second look and no one tried to hard-sell us on anything. At the same time, they treated us politely when we ate at the restaurants or food stalls.

If we have any complaints about Kuching, it's just that it's sort of boring.

The forest fires have spread a lot of haze over Borneo. Kuching is not as bad as other places we hear about, but the sky never gets far from gray. It rains very hard almost every day.

Our first day we walked down the very well done esplanade along the water front. It has nice designs in the brick sidewalk and little coffee and food places here and there. Ramps lead down to the water where you can catch the little taxi boats across the Sungei Sarawak river. More cities in America should have river walks like this. The river is fairly wide and as brown as the Mississippi. Lots of logs and branches float along showing the steady current.

I liked the little water taxis. The driver stands in the bow and propels the boat (or just steers in the ones with motors) using two crossed oars. At his feet he controls a lever connected to a rudder at the back. To "row", he leans forward on the crossed paddles then rotates the oar so the blade is parallel with his direction to pull it back for another stroke. The blade never really leaves the water because the angle is too steep.

We checked out the Sarawak museum, which is quite good, but better yet, free. We really appreciated that no one offered to be our guide or to take us to their home where they want to sell us trinkets (as happened in Yogya!). The only trouble with the museum is the lack of explanation. Lots of artifacts but very little telling you the age, use, origin, anything like that. At one place they had a skull on display and a couple other things and the sign just said, "Head Flattening."

There was enough general information though to educate us a little. We learned that the various peoples of Sarawak fought for 300 years. Several tribes were already in Sarawak around 1600 then other tribes starting migrating in across the mountains from the south and east. Also Chinese and Malay immigrants started coming inland from the coast to the west. Where all these groups met, they fought over land.

It was during this long period of fighting that head hunting became popular. One western explorer around 1900 blamed the women. Apparently they went around taunting their men and singing heroic songs about head hunting and the refrain of the songs was, "Bring us more." The more heads in your home, the higher your status. They say there hasn't been any headhunting since the 1960s.

We also spent three solid hours doing email at an inet cafe. (Travelers: it's called Bellissini, on the esplanade. But for the same price, RM$10/hour, the Cyber Corner in the cafe in the basement of the Hilton (also near the waterfront) has a better connection). This is after a few email orgies in Singapore.

(Joan: We were so bored we wanted to turn the adventure factor up a little, but Eric definitely didn't want to do that with food).

We thought about going to this all-you-can-eat barbeque place. They actually have a little grill at every table and all the meat is raw. You take whatever you want and cook it to your own liking all for one fairly high price. They also had a big sign saying that the management fully enforces the rule that you "pay $5.00 for every 100g you leave on your plate." This scared me off. What if we got something we didn't like? Does this count fish heads? What about the prawn shells? Plus the cost was $15 before you got any drinks. That's just plain expensive for here. I expect a better deal if I have to cook it myself.

Our last day in Kuching we took a bus to the animal rehabilitation center where they have several orangutans. The bus ride offered little to comment on. It was not over crowded; it left on time; it was fairly quiet; no one harassed us.

The countryside, like the sky, was pretty bland the whole 30km south. Mostly we saw light industrial and commercial strips. We passed some tall apartment buildings with laundry hanging out most windows to dry. We saw some huge new mansions in the same style as the ones from Singapore to Vancouver - large white houses with red tiled roofs. Among the more modest homes we noticed they don't use as much corrugated metal as they do in Indonesia. You definitely can tell that Malaysia is way better off than Indonesia.

Next: Orangutans

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