At Bako National Park.

At Bako National Park.

Apologies for the break! I spent last week in Kuching for a conference and then went to Bako National Park for a couple of jungly days. The next three weeks are looking relatively quiet so hopefully it’ll be blogging business as usual. Chinese New Year celebrations officially came to an end yesterday, but they had some beautiful decorations in the hotel in Kuching.

It’s a city not known for its fabulous vistas but even so the view of this derelict garden beneath the window of my five-star hotel was a shock.

The rhinoceros hornbill is my favourite Borneo bird. This unhappy-looking specimen lives in a cage in Labuan Bird Park, but I’ve got a couple of jungle trips coming up so I’m hoping to see some in the wild.

. . . okra, in the final installment of my fruit-and-veg-tower series.  I don’t even like okra, but this was so beautiful I was determined to try and do something with it. Sadly, more than a week later, the okra is languishing in a plastic bag at the bottom of the fridge and will be thrown out tomorrow before I depart for a weekend in Singapore.

. . . a papaya girdled with okra . . . (continued)

This has to be one of the best presents I’ve ever had. Star fruit, broccoli, green apples, red apples, yellow apples, oranges, pears, red peppers, plum tomatoes, carrots . . . (to be continued)

In Malaysia, at ceremonies and presentations, a cellophane-wrapped, beribboned tower of foodstuff is often awarded to dignitaries and prizewinners. I say a tower of foodstuff, but it generally seems to be a tower of junk food — giant bags of crisps coated in bright orange powder, family-sized boxes of sugary biscuits . . . the kind of food that is helping maintain Malaysia’s status as country with the highest rate of diabetes in Asia. Today, after nearly two years in Malaysia I got my first tower! It was for some work I’ve been doing on a literacy programme with one of my schools. But it wasn’t a tower of junk food . . . (to be continued)

In the dirty old town they’re getting ready for Chinese New Year.