Shervin Emami's Blog: August 2009

In April 2009, me and my girlfriend Gay both quit our jobs in the middle-east to go travelling around south-east asia! We didn't have a plan of which countries exactly to visit, or how we will do it, or for how long, but we knew we wanted to visit my friend Ari in Thailand on mid June, visit some of our friends in Singapore, visit the Borobudur Temple in Indonesia, and visit my cousin in Kuala Lumpur. How we did it and through which countries was completely up in the air, and we wanted to just make the plan as we go. But we later found out that Filipino's have to buy a flight back into Philippines before they leave Philippines, and also a flight out of Indonesia if they enter Indonesia, so we ended up having to suddenly plan our whole trip while at the airport so we could buy our return flight tickets. But luckily we had a rough idea of what would be the best plan so we just bought flight tickets on the spot to come back from Malaysia after 45 days.

Since Gay has spent the last decade backpacking around Philippines, she had a really good idea of the rough travelling costs in southeast asia, and she predicted that it would cost each of us about $20/day including flights & transport & accommodation & food, if we do things as cheaply as we can while still having lots of fun. To save money, we brought things with us like a portable electric stove & pans (cost about $15), 10 packs of instant noodles, lots of packs of drink powder, etc. We used the couchsurfing website a lot to find local people that would let us stay at their house for free, or would help us find cheap accommodation & food in their town. And we used the Lonely Planet guide books as a bible to find the cheapest ways of travelling and accommodation and for rough ideas of where to visit. In the end, we travelled for 45 days in 6 different countries, and spent $1050 each, which comes to about $21/day each, just like we predicted!

Quick Summary:
We started from her apartment in Manila, Philippines. We flew to the close-by jungle island of Borneo (the 3rd largest Island in the world, made up of 3 countries: Malaysian Borneo, Indonesian Borneo and Brunei). For 1 week we caught buses & ferries all the way down the west-coast, from Kota Kinabalu (Sabah, Malaysia), through the Sultanate of Brunei, all the way to Kuching (Sarawak, Malaysia) where we got nailed really badly by bedbugs! Then we flew to Indonesia (Jakarta), and spent about 10 days in Yogyakarta (central Java), Gunung Bromo (Volcanoes in east Java), and Bali (small party island near Java). Then we caught a 29hr bus and 2hr flight to Singapore, and had so many problems trying to access a phone to call our friends or find hostels that we went straight to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) to stay with my cousin. We caught a buses up to the south islands of Thailand, and ended up spending several days in each of the 4 main islands of Thailand, and even went to Thailand's Full Moon Party. We then spent a few days resting in Phuket and renewing our visa on the border with Myanmar. Then we spent a few days drinking in Bangkok with Ari, and finally a few days in Kuala Lumpur again with my cousin before flying direct to Philippines at the end of our 45 day trip.

My most memorable parts of our trip were:
- eating at the night-market in Kota Kinabalu (Borneo).
- hiking in Kinabalu National Park (Borneo).
- sun-baking next to huge monitor lizards on Sapi Island (Borneo).
- river cruise looking for Proboscis monkeys in Brunei (Borneo).
- watching monkeys and wild boars walk past our room in Bako National Park (Borneo).
- trying so hard to find anyone in Indonesia that can speak enough English to activate my mobile phone or recharge my credits.
- sitting on top of the Water Castle in Yogyakarta (Indonesia).
- trying to let the spirits walk you blind-folded for about 50m between 2 giant trees in the park next to a palace, to grant your wish.
- pretending my girlfriend is a deaf & mute Indonesian, so we can get cheap "local citizen" entry to a temple! (Indonesia).
- getting a lift on a motorbike by a muslim mother in her 50's (Yogyakarta, Indonesia).
- almost getting ripped off $1 by a phone merchant in Indonesia, but eventually ripping him off instead!
- walking along the crater of an active volcano (Probolingo, Indonesia).
- chilling with some of the biggest "stoner" beach bums I've ever met, even though they're all muslims that don't take drugs or alcohol! (Bali)
- racing to the airport after our 24hr bus ride to the airport actually took 29hrs (Bandung, Indonesia).
- catching a flu / fever on the night before trying to cross the border to Thailand, where I would have been checked for Swine Flu!
- sleeping in a cheap beach hut just 20m from the shoreline in Koh Samui (Thailand).
- walking for 3hrs in the middle of a hot sunny day, carrying our backpacks through steep mountain roads, bushes and rock pools, just to save $3 each on taxi fare (Koh Phangan, Thailand).
- hearing the same cheesy 80's songs like YMCA and Lambada played over & over again at the Full Moon Party (Koh Phangan, Thailand).
- being invited to a BBQ at someone's house, but then having to build their BBQ for them and cook all the food because they don't know how to start a fire! (Koh Tao, Thailand)
- randomly meeting a 50yr old persian guy while trekking in Koh Phi Phi, thats been travelling south-east asia for the past 30 years! Then randomly missing our bus when we bumped into him again 5 days later in Phuket! (Thailand)
- finding various creepy crawlies and pieces of rat poo under our pillows and on our beds, in a cheap beach hut in Koh Phi Phi.
- chilling in a tiny secluded beach cove with an amazing view, with the beach just to ourselves, while watching all the tourists pay money to go to the crowded beach just next to us! (Koh Phi Phi Leh, Thailand)
- walking past the hot prostitutes at 5am on Kaosan Road, and later being told by my girlfriend that they were all thai boys! Damn its lucky I never went to Bangkok when I was single, otherwise I would have literally Bangkok!
- watching all the street merchants sell stuff to Ari when he was too drunk to say no.
- eating in a restaurant on the top of the mountain in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia).

My girlfriend Gay wrote highly detailed blogs of the whole trip, including lots of photos and videos:

North Malaysian Borneo: