Day 240 (Sun 4 Mar) - Kota Kinabalu / Kuching

Up early, left our lodgings at 6.45am and caught a local bus to the airport.

As usual, we were there far too early, checked in and went through to the departure gates. There were scales to check the weight of hand luggage so we jumped on to see if we had lost any weight.

Had a bit of breakfast and boarded the Airasia flight to Kuching which left at 8.50am. There were very few passengers and the plane was very cold so we were glad when we arrived in Kuching at 10.15am.

Collected our bags and headed out of the airport building. Were shocked to discover it was chucking it down. We waited some time for a bus but it didn't arrive so we ended up getting a taxi.

We hadn't booked any accommodation but we knew there were some cheapy hotels in the Greenhill road area so we asked to be taken there. Our taxi driver got a bit confused and ended up dropping us outside a posh hotel some 5 minutes away from where we wanted to be. It was raining even heavier now but we needed to find somewhere to stay.

During our travels we've established that Sarb is not always the most reliable person to choose accommodation (basically as long as it's got a bed he's happy) so Jo, leaving the bags with Sarb, went off in the rain to find somewhere.

A soggy Jo returned about 15 minutes later and we both braved the rain to check into the Mandarin Hotel. It was only Rm 50 for an ensuite room and they had promised hot showers.

Dumped our bags and as the rain had eased off, headed out to explore Kuching.

Kuching is the city of cats, so as we walked along the waterfront we weren't surprised to see statues of cats dotted around.

Ended up having a bite to eat in MacDonalds - think we are now a bit addicted to fast food.

Headed back to our room and whilst Jo chilled, Sarb headed off to find an internet cafe.

Later we went out for a drink and popped into a busy cheapy chinese for dinner.