As with all traveling there are days designed solely to get from A to B with as little fuss or excitement aspossible; today was just such a day. We met up and headed to the airport, being given a lift by the husbandof our friend the BBQ lady. Siam had obviously done his work as there seemed no sign of tension. Once at theairport we waited for our Focker plane - a twin prop slightly shaky looking affair. As the plane was takingoff I noticed that the wheel had a date written on it in much the same style of a best before date: 1987 -not inspiring! Despite this we arrived at Miri without incident and we're re-united with our main packswhich we had left behind. At this point Cherie departed to try and sort out her passport which had beenmislaid the last time we were in Miri while the rest of us killed the two and a half hours until the nextflight. I can confirm that there isn't much to do at Miri airport but the curry pasties are top notch.
Our second flight of the day took us to Kuching where we checked in and promptly walked into town to try and catch some of thetourist shops open. On the way round we popped into an Internet cafe to look up any advice to relieve thepain in my ear, which still hadn't recovered from snorkeling a long while back. It seems the tired andtested combination of paracetamol and ibuprofen is also the magic combination for this ailment as well.Happy that self-medicating was as easy as opening up the first aid kit and shovelling down the relevantpills we turned our attention to shopping. Only to be surprised that all the shops were shutting so early.There was a parade starting in celebration of the birthday of a god whose name I didn't quite catch but thestreets were clearly gearing up for some fun so we headed back to the hotel to meet the others.
With everyone but Natsha at the hotel we waited a while watching floats roll slowly past before loosingpatience and giving her a call. Normally we wouldn't have gone to such effort but Natasha was leaving thetrip early, having been lured by the bright lights and big shops of Singapore, and this was her last night.Turns out that she was in a taxis from the mall having started the shopping early but was stuck behind theparade. We took a ring side seat to watch the parade and waited and before long our view of the once a yearparade was interrupted by a bouncing Natasha telling us all about what she had managed to buy. We headedout for a nice meal by the river side and found a random bar for a couple of drinks. Once the kareokestarted up we started for the door before some joker suggested we give it a try.