Yikes, we have been in nine different places since we left Bali! Here is where we have been just since November 16:

So, we returned for Singapore for 6 days for all the modern conveniences, like:

a beautiful hotel in Little India (there are more images in one of Shirl's galleries) that has a pot for hot water and a refrigerator and side tables with lights for reading things like the guide book on Malaysia, our next destination, all things one could take for granted, but not on the road

and the Affordable Art Fair, which had lots of wonderful pieces, including these:

and fabulous desserts, here being consumed by Shirl, who has, as usual, a diet soft drink too:

and Bel (our great friend in Singapore, who is in advertising, is never far away from her phone/email device, and works her ass off - who does that remind you of?), who had a much smaller dessert  :)

 

After Singapore, we proceeded to what they used to call Borneo, land of head hunters and world heritage sites and many animals, wild (darn, those orangutans did not show up at the preseve for us to take pictures of them while they ate!) and not:

This is Rowan in the Kuching (City of Cats) Cat Museum.  For those of you who know, this large cat looks a lot like our baby Chakra, being taken care of next door in Twin Peaks by Auntie Jenny-fur.  Both of us became quite misty-eyed as we looked at thousands of images of cats and missed our Macha and Chakra. 

Now we are in Kota Kinabalu, just arrived last night.  Strangely enough, we had to pass through immigration on the way from Kuching, a city in the state of Sarawak in Malaysia on the island of Borneo, and Kota Kinabalu, a city in the state of Sabah in Malaysia on the island of Borneo, where we are now.  The immigration officer compared the two states to North Korea and South Korea (!)  They are not separate countries, but whatever the immigration authorities tell you, it is *the truth.*  :)

So far, what we have learned, among other things, from yesterday's Sabah Times is that:

1)  Kota Kinabalu received three awards during the recent National Clean Toilet Award Competition, presented in Melaka, Malaysia on November 23, 2011, at the World Toilet Day Celebration ("the importance of having a clean and functioning toilet in all the premises as toilet is the first impression for visitors.")

and

2.  November 25, 2011 was World Children's Day and the first In Vitro Fertilizaion (IVF) Baby day at the Likas Women and Children's Hospital in Kota Kinabalu, where officials celebrated the government's first IVF centre, which is reportedly already starting to show results to address Sabah's dropping fertility rate.  Oh, how much fun it is to read local newspapers, both for how different the challenges are in Southeast Asian countries and to see how they regard the powers of the word, such as the United States. 

Between now and Deember 13, we will be here and then in Brunei and Singapore again.  On the note of being in 9 different places in the last 43 days, we are now in the process of planning a long, near-30 day stay in one place after Singapore over the holidays - destination soon to be announced.  And rest, it is soon to come for us!