I arranged a few last little things in the morning, helped Gareth to transfer all his stuff to the airport on my (Tanja's) bike as he was unable to fit everything on his, took the bike to the Precission HONDA motorbike shop for crating and sending back to Queensland and got a taxi to the airport myself.

By the way, the guys in Precision HONDA are unbelievable! I can honestly say that I haven’t seen better customer service or met more friendly and helpful staff in a motorbike shop or elsewhere for that matter. These guys will do everything to help you and basically don’t even charge you for it! I really liked going back there. Thanks Darren, Toby and all you others there!

So at the end the whole crating operation for my bike to send it to Malaysia cost me 200 bucks (done by a guy nicknamed Curly who owns a motorbike wreckers shop) and I basically didn’t have to pay anything to the guys in Precission Honda. Only the crate was from them, which was included in the price I paid to Curly.

Thanks to the guys in Precision Honda I was also able to repair Gareth’s non-brand cigarette lighter power supply for his GPS. It is the very same power supply that I have and that I broke the first day of riding. He had the very same problem with it too – shook off the coil that is inside. I repaired it the same way I did mine that is still working after the repair.

While in their shop I also found out that I’m missing a train ticket from Malaysia to Singapore which is basically just a way how to overcome the fact that Brunai Airlines wouldn’t let me board the plane if I didn’t have official way out of Malaysia. It is a stupid requirement, I know, but they do require it and you have to comply. And the train ticket is a way cheaper option than buying a return flight ticket that I didn’t need anyway. Anyway, it was of course no problem for Darren to let me print another one from the internet using his computer. I wanted to re-print the ticket but I couldn’t remember the reference number and there is no other way how to re-print it from the ktmb website (www.ktmb.com.my) . I had a look at my credit card account on-line to find the number there on a statement but no such luck. You usually get such reference numbers on your credit card statement but not in the case of KTM Railways. The only way to solve the problem at this point was to buy a new ticket so I did. Fortunately the minimum price for a ticket purchased over internet is only 21 ringits which is about A$7.50. The ticket came handy just a few hours later when they really required it so I was happy I purchased it again, otherwise I might have had a huge problem.

Later that day we boarded the plane and were off to Brunai. We shared the same flight with Gareth, which was great. At Brunai airport we had to part though as he was flying to Singapore and I to Malaysia. We also said goodbye to Terri – a doctor who we met on the plane sitting next to us. She was flying to England.

One more thing deserves to be mentioned… During both take-offs you get an Islamic prayer before the safety instructions. It is quite long and very “dark” and serious to listen to. Kerri joked that that was all the safety instructions we would receive… :-) I quite regreted that I didn’t have my pocket PC with me to be able to record the prayer as it was truly quite interesting.