Hello Borneo!

I've been here twelve days I realised checking my diary.  What have I done?  Where has it gone?  I feel like I've been on one of those kids roundabouts which you suddenly step off and stagger drunkenly away from, slowly regaining your balance.

I shook hands with young Paolo at Bari Airport then stepped on an Alitalia flight to Rome.  At Rome I got a Malaysian Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur.  It was half empty and I had a window seat right at the back.  The time drifted away eating airline curries and catching up on films I'd missed, "Rise of Planet of the Apes" and "the King's Speech".  Beneath me drifted Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India.  It got dark, then we dropped down towards KL over the Malacca Strait at dawn.  The light in KL was liquid gold, but my plane for Borneo it seemed left from a different airport.  Dazed I found my way to the bus station and was hurried onto a bus dragging my luggage behind me.

The bus tore round a ring road.  It was full of asian faces and suddenly I felt very big and pink and kind of floppy.  After twenty minutes we arrived at LCCT, which I realised with a smile stood for Low Cost Carrier Terminal.  It was satisfyingly like a bus station and my Air Asia plane to Sibu was the bus, it made Ryan Air look up-market, I was surprised not to see people strap hanging.  For two hours I dropped in and out of consciousness, then we dived into the cloud base and as the mist began to clear I could see palms and deep green fields and rivers like big brown snakes.  Sibu Airport was made of grey stained concrete with rusty bits of steel reinforcing poking out.  As we entered the Arrivals Hall we passed a pile of damp, crumpled red carpet smelling of mould and obviously there for minor VIPs.


In my second immigration queue of the day I suddenly glimpsed Sue in the terminal beyond, looking thin and tanned.

Welcome to Borneo!