Week 38. Monday 2nd April - Sunday 8th April 2007

Following a sweaty 13-hour bus journey, Kuching arrived. It’s a small but picturesque town and has a nice atmosphere. The highlight though was the Sarawak Cultural Village. This offered the chance to the lucky ticket holder (anyone who rocks up at the entrance) to see a cultural dance symbolic of the seven tribes that inhabit the village and a chance to chat to them too. It sounds wanky, but was actually quite good and I had the chance to dress up in native dress (I look ridiculous!) and use a blowpipe, which I was quite adept at. Naturally the villagers were impressed and offered me a place as their new leader, the old one accidentally getting in the way of a stray poison dart that may or may not have come from my pipe. I gladly accepted the title along with the several vestal virgins betrothed to me, but had to quit the village as the football was on and they hadn’t any cold beer. Heathens.
Back to KL, back to the Land Rover and normality, back to the mechanics. Before we went back to our favourite mechanic though we joined the fabulous Land Rover Malaysia Group up in the Cameron Highlands for a big get together. Hey had a small off-road course there which of course we didn’t bother doing (at 3 tonnes we were going nowhere!) and we met fellow overlanders from the UK as well. A weird coincidence, but nice to chat to others and talk about the problems they’ve never had with their landy. Bastards.
Dave and Rose are on an extended vacation and have a 110 hard top I believe and you check out their site at http://www.nessiesadventures.com whilst Dan had gone one step further and bought some 3.2 tonne Wolf that was bound for a Sir Ralph Fiennes that never happened. A truly remarkable machine, but fat as hell! www.lonewolftransglobal.com. We also met up with Mohd Azhar Ibrahim who’s started up a 4 Wheel Driver magazine in Malaysia and will do a feature on the three of us I think. He rocked up in a great Toyota Troop Carrier and was kind enough to let me have a good snoop around – absolutely huge! None of the vehicles had as much room and comfort as our landy we have to say, but then again they can probably go over 60 mph without batting down the hatches and gripping the vibrating wheel for dear life!
Richard