The new series of Celebrity Race Across the World has landed, and the route is a cracker: four famous pairs racing 4,660 miles from Kuching in Malaysian Borneo to Melbourne, Australia, armed with nothing but local transport, a map and a budget of £26 a day per person.
The line-up mixes musicians and TV familiarities. Brit Award-winning singer Ella Eyre races with childhood friend Nana, Eurovision star Sam Ryder teams up with best friend and tour manager Kaz, former Soccer Saturday presenter Jeff Stelling runs with his son Matt, and siblings Princess and Junior Andre — the children of Katie Price and Peter Andre — complete the field. The show airs on BBC One and iPlayer on Wednesday nights.
The starting city is worth knowing about even if you never watch an episode. Kuching, capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, is nicknamed "cat city" — kucing is the Malay word for cat — and feline statues dot the streets. Highlights include the S-shaped Darul Hana bridge over the Sarawak River, the floating-look Masjid India Kuching mosque, and a waterfront promenade lined with food stalls. Eat well cheaply here: Sarawak laksa and Kolo Mee noodles are the local signatures. Bako National Park, with its proboscis monkeys and odd rock formations, sits within easy reach.
The first checkpoint sent the teams 1,000km south to Pangkalan Bun in Indonesian Borneo, a river city of stilted houses that's mostly a base for Tanjung Puting National Park — one of the two places on Earth where wild orangutans live. Boat trips reach Camp Leakey, the research centre established in the 1970s, plus a care centre rehabilitating orphaned orangutans. Along the way the celebs passed through Dayak longhouse communities such as Nek Bidang and Tae Village, and Pontianak, a port city sitting exactly on the equator.
The finish line is Melbourne, Australia's cultural capital, famous for laneway street art, a serious coffee scene, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre. Sports fans time visits around the Australian Open, the F1 Grand Prix or an Aussie Rules match.
For travellers, the appeal is obvious: this route stitches together two of Southeast Asia's most rewarding slow-travel regions with a natural finish in one of Australia's most liveable cities. Overland Borneo — ferries, buses and jungle roads between Malaysia and Indonesia — remains genuinely adventurous, and the show is effectively a free route-planning demo for anyone tempted to skip the flights and see the island properly.
