May 8 - June 6, 2001
Short Version
We only hit Penang on peninsular Malaysia before school holidays forced us off to Borneo early. Borneo's a surprising paradox of modern cities with untouched wilderness. Sarawak's capital, Kuching, is as livable a city as any in the west. The highlight of our wilderness adventures was seeing wild orang utan's!
Long Version
Malaysia
Day 73: An overnite ferry ride & 2 mini buses later & we're in Malaysia! Specifically Penang; an island off the west coast near the Thai border. Malaysia is a little more upscale than much of SEAsia (eg. rental bikes come with helmets, club sandwiches come with chicken & you can drink the water), likely due to being occupied by the British relatively recently. This has the added benefit of making it the only SE Asian country where English is routinely spoken.
Day 74: Penang's capital is Georgetown a lovely colonial city with an incredible ethnic diversity & a lovely mix of architecture that's even better than our previous favourite; Havana. We wander to the old English fort, past Muslim mosques and Hindu temples, through the old Armenian quarter & onto a jetty with the stilt houses of old family clans. But the bulk of Penang is Chinese with a wide diversity of food & old chinese shophouses.
Day 75: Bus over to Malaysia's largest Buddhist temple, then ride the worlds slowest funicular up Penang Hill. The 75 minute walk down to the Botanical gardens goes thru lovely old forest but killed our knees! En route a rustling in the trees reveals our first monkeys since India! It amazes us that in our 8 weeks in Thailand/Cambodia/ Vietnam/Laos we didn't see any wildlife larger than the omnipresent gecko (a 4" mini lizard that runs around all the hotel walls!).
Day 76: Rent yet another motorbike to tour around the island (all 70km of it!). Pass some 1/2 decent beaches, nice jungle walks & a lovely waterfall. Today we see our first water monitor lizard (about 4' long). It sure is nice to have our wildlife back. Unfortunately we stopped for a little too much shopping in the morning and as we return to Georgetown it's dark and the traffic picks up horrendously. Louise has a complete cow!
Day 77 (May 12): More Georgetown siteseeing, a little 10-pin bowling and then a quick visit to Malaysian Airlines. Turns out it's school holidays from May 25-June 6 and all flights to Borneo (our next destination) are sold out. Two hours & 5 visits to the travel counter later, we've formulated a new plan; we leave for Borneo tomorrow! We'll finish peninsular Malaysia on our return. Tonite we enjoy a well deserved nice meal at an English pub we've discovered. Plus we get to watch the FA cup final (that's soccer for you Canadians). Fortunately Liverpool wins so Lou's fanatical brother will be a happy camper.
Sarawak
Day 78: Borneo is the third largest island in the world (after Greenland & New Guinea). It consists of the tiny Islamic sultanate Brunei, the huge Indonesian state of Kalimantan & two Malaysian states; Sarawak & Sabah (together called East Malaysia). Today we fly to Kuching; the capital of Sarawak. We were expecting farmers fields, tribal villages and no electricity. Turns out Kuching is one of the most civilized cities we've been to (thanks in part to the British occupation in the 1800's). There's an impressive array of gleaming office towers, an incredible riverside promenade & lovely little chinese shops.
Day 79: Today we hit all the tourist info places to plan our time in Borneo. We have a $2 steak meal at a great food court, a lovely cheesecake at the Holiday Inn and cap it off with a beer high above Kuching in their breathtaking Civic Centre.
Day 80/1: Two days at Bako National Park. We trudge for 6 hours thru jungle/rainforest (is there any difference between the two??) only to find that the best animal spotting is by the lodge. We see macaques (monkeys), giant bearded pigs and a pit viper! The next morning we get up at 6:30 to look for the elusive Proboscis monkey. It's a very human like monkey with a huge nose & it's only found in Borneo! We walk 20' from our lodge and there three are!!! They're about 80' up in the trees so we watch for a while trying to get a good picture of the nose! They move behind our lodge and as we follow Louise almost steps on a giant scorpion. It was unfazed, but Louise was very fazed. The next 20 minutes of watching is on my own! We return to Kuching in time to catch JCVD in The Replicant. Our first movie this year!! ps That stands for Jean Claude Van Damme.
Day 82: Travel day from hell (but still better than working!). Today we head to Gunung Gading Nat'l Park to see the worlds largest flower; the Rafflesia. We've checked with Visitors Info twice to confirm that one is in bloom & to ensure the 8am bus will get us there. We arrive at 7:50am & are told that the 8am bus is no good. We insist so he puts us on it (just to get rid of us I think) & we arrive at the regional bus terminal at 8:20 to find out the Gunung Gading bus left at 8:15. Next bus is at 11! The best deal we can negotiate on a cab is $60, so we opt to bus back to town to kill some time. The 11am bus gets us to Lundu at 12:30. We have to wait 20 more minutes for the bus that (we think) actually goes to the park. Turns out it drops us 10 minutes from the park entrance & we could have walked to the park faster. We finally arrive at 1:20 & (of course) they're closed for lunch. They reopen at 2, but we've been told it's a 1/2 hour walk to the flower & we need to catch the 2:45 shuttle bus in order to catch the last bus back to Kuching (4pm). We console ourselves at the swimming hole (where as usual I go swimming with our maps etc still in my pockets!). At 1:55 we head back to find out there's no guides. A few calls yields us a private guide who'll take us for $4. Happily we do end up seeing the flower (3 in fact), but the guides English made it seem like the biggest one was last. In fact we had seen it first, so we try to go back on our own for more pictures (it was only a 5 minute walk from park headquarters). After 30 minutes of wandering lost thru the forest doing creek crossings & falling down holes (Louise's least favourite part) we find our way back without re-seeing the flower. It's now 3:20 & our only choice is a 1/2 hour walk in the hot sun to catch our 4pm two hour bus ride back to Kuching. Thank god for Eminem CD's & our new discman!
Day 83: A breeze by comparison. The Sarawak Cultural Village has recreations of 7 types of local ethnic housing (including Dayak Longhouses displaying enemies heads just like what went on in Kalimantan a few weeks ago). It's quite interesting & we learn a lot. En route back to Kuching we get dropped at the Cat Museum (Lou's in heaven!). We expect the ride back to town to be awkward but a nice man gives us a lift (nice man, bad driver). We arrive back in town just in time to buy our last internal Borneo flights.
Day 84: Up at 6:10a for the 1st bus to Semengoh; Sarawak's orang-utan sanctuary. Although the staff were useless we end up spotting a family of 4. We watched them for an hour as they posed for us & uprooted park signs to eat the mud (much to the chagrin of the park staff who chased them away with bricks!). Tonite we walk thru a Kampung (village) & play badminton with some kids (it's the 1st badminton we've seen in Malaysia which is weird since they're a world class nation at it - in Vietnam we saw it everywhere!).
Day 85: Up at 6:10 for our flight to Mulu; Sarawak's premier National Park. For the 2nd time in two flights I spill orange juice all over me (this time it was my fault). We land in Miri at 9:30 and check in for our 11:50 connecting flight and are told we can take the 9:45! That's the advantage of flying 19 seat twin otters (you unload your own luggage)! The flight is great for siteseeing & takes us over Mulu's famous Pinnacles; a forest of 45 feet tall limestone spikes rising out of the mountainside. Mulu has great wildlife & nature trails but the main sites are the caves. This afternoon we see Lang & Deer cave. Lang has breathtaking stalagtites/mites & Deer cave is the largest in the world. Deer cave houses over 1,000,000 bats and for a hour at dusk we were treated to the sight of them streaming out of the cave in a twisty turny mass like the writing of a giant skywriter. On the way back (much to her chagrin) Lou experiences her first nite forest walk.
Day 86: A lovely (but long) 2 hour walk past a native settlement takes us to Wind & Clearwater caves. Clearwater has an underground river that goes for miles & is the longest cave passage in Asia. The highlight however was seeing the Rajah Brooks. They are beautiful wide butterflies with green markings & a big red body! After a refreshing swim in the natural spring we wait 2 hours to hitch a boat ride back with a tour group. The rest of the afternoon we relax. That nite Brett goes for some additional hikes while Lou goes for some additional relaxing.
Brunei
Day 87: Not a good travel day. There used to be direct flights to Brunei from Mulu but now we have to fly to Miri, then to Limbang, then ferry to Brunei. There's no vans left at the Nat'l park so we have to walk to the airport for our 9:55a flight to Miri. At Miri we try to get on the 1pm to Limbang (we're currently on the 3pm). No luck so after a 2 hour wait, we wait another 2 hours! At 3:10 I inquire about our flight and am non-chalantly told its cancelled due to weather (apparently the 1pm flight had to be diverted!). Busing to Brunei is a convoluted whole day three bus journey so in desperation we ask how much a cab is. Turns out it's just $100 & takes only 3 hours (the flight would have cost just $20 each!). By 6:30 we're in the capital of Brunei; Bandar Seri Begawan (BSB)and have been regaled with sob stories by our driver (apparently the locals & the chinese don't get along). The cheapest hotel is $55 but it's got carpet so we're in heaven.
Day 88: Brunei is a tiny sultanate sandwiched between Sarawak & Sabah. The population is about 300,000 and they live a comfortable life off Brunei's oil wealth. There's no income tax & we see more Land Cruiser's than in Hollywood. The population is Malay & the religion is Islam, but it's a little more strict than Malaysia (eg. no alcohol). Not that Malaysia isn't a little strict themselves. We recently read how a lady was refused her drivers test since she was wearing a tight top & how cops forced 100 kids at a bar to submit urine tests to see if they were on drugs! Today we see a big beautiful mosque (one of many) but they wouldn't let us non-muslims climb the tower. Next was the Brunei museum and it's fantastic collection of Islamic antiquities. Some truly incredible stuff; unfortunately no pictures allowed & there's no postcards. On the 4km walk home (as we are continually passed by Land Cruisers that look at us struggling in the heat but just keep on driving), we end up catching a boat thru the stilt villages. Most people in Brunei still live over the water just like in the old days. Tonite we go to a huge amusement park built by the Sultan. It opened at 5pm, we arrived at 5:50 and got tickets number 1 & 2!!! All nite we saw about 50 people. It's not as much fun as you think to have an amusement park to yourself. No one else was ever on a ride with us! Strangely public transport home from the park stops at 6pm. We were hoping to see hundreds of people driving back to BSB but it was slim pickings. After being refused a ride by the Islamic foundation, we found one friendly guy & were home in no time.
Sabah
Day 89: Some last minute VCD-buying & a quick walk thru the stilt village then we're off to Kota Kinabalu (KK) in Sabah. KK is not the posh enclave that Kuching is, but it's a pleasant enough place to spend a few days.
Day 90: The morning is spent looking into our diving options. Sabah's Sipadan Island is a world class dive site and although it's normally extortionately expensive we find a 4 nite deal for $700 (about half price) and are off tomorrow. Tonite we get a haircut. As usual Louise can't find herself in the haircut sample books they provide . . . they don't speak much english . . . few women in Asia have short hair . . . she ends up using the men's book.
Day 91 am: Up at 4:40am for our 5am shuttle which becomes a 5:10am cab when the shuttle doesn't show up. We do however run into the shuttle driver at the airport & he gives us a package to carry on the plane. Images of "Brokedown Palace" appear in our minds, but we're not crossing a border so we go for it. The flight, van ride & boat ride go smoothly and we're soon at Sipadan Island waiting 2 hours for our room to be ready.
Day 91-95: Sipadan is a one hour boat ride east of Sabah. It's covered in jungle, fringed by sand and is a haven for a huge variety of wildlife. But the highlight is the 2000' drop off, just offshore. In our 5 days there we spend 13 hours under water. Last year when Louise saw her first shark she grabbed my (well actually the Dive Master's) hand. By the end of our diving when I point to a shark, Lou looks around thinking I must be pointing to something more interesting. Sometimes however we couldn't see the sharks for all the giant turtles. Sipadan is a breeding ground for them and we see several on every dive. Sometimes they come right up and stare at you while you stare at them. Quite exhilarating! The kaleidoscope of colour is unlike anything we've seen before. Bright blue & orange fish with an extra stripe of neon blue just to show off, jet black clown fish with white spots, orange lips & thick yellow nose stripes, fantastically coloured sea slugs with wild spots & coloured antennas and fluorescent orange sea squirts which is basically an empty sausage with a hole at each end. We see our first leaf fish (which looks exactly like a dried up leaf), our first thresher shark, the deadly but beautiful lionfish & a well camouflaged stone fish. On the nite dives I (Lou is safely in the room by this point) see tiny red & white banded shrimp, translucent fish, lobsters & giant 5' sleeping parrotfish. There's so much to see that frequently one diver would be pointing in one direction while someone else is pointing elsewhere. It's not all perfect though; the constant activity leaves sand all over the coral & some sections are dead as a result of El Nino. But it's still pretty spectacular. Between dives there's some excellent land activities. We do a leisurely walk around the entire island (20 minutes), a jungle walk seeing huge coconut-cutting crabs endemic to Borneo and watch as baby turtles are released to clumsily drag themselves to the sea (where some are quickly gobbled up by hungry eagles). At nite we watch as a turtle comes ashore to dig a giant hole & lay a hundred eggs (It was sheer luck that we hadn't already paid $300 & spent an entire day to go to Sabah's famous turtle island to see the exact same thing). It's an idyllic place to lie around but at these prices it's hard to just relax & lay on the beach. As a side note this is the island where 20 people where kidnapped and held hostage for 6-9 months just last year. A fact we are reminded of when basically the entire Philippine navy shows up. Apparently a bunch of people on a Philippine island were kidnapped just a few days ago. The lodge itself is a little strange. For a place raking in tons of $ (people we dived with paid $2700 for a one week package) the rooms are rather ratty, the a/c doesn't work (in the 4 rooms that have it), the rental gear is in bad shape & the tank filler broke down. They squeeze in a crowded 10 people per dive master (at $25 per dive on Koh Tao there were just 4 people per dive master). But the island is limited to just 80 people per nite so I guess they can charge what the market will bear.
Day 95 pm: We boat back to civilization (going back to our travels seems like going back to work after Sipadan) and are off to the above land wildlife of Sepilok. The mini-van ride starts of easily enough. But soon the requisite chicken escapes from it's box & starts eyeing Louise (much to her chagrin). We make a few more stops where chickens get on & off. Then nite falls & we change drivers. Soon we're zooming thru the dark windy roads of Sabah at 140km/h in a minivan (a car type I recall isn't famous for it's handling) and by now with just one chicken. Louise fears for her life & starts practicing the crash position airlines teach you. Soon (very soon actually) we've covered the last 100km of our journey and are at Robert Chongs B&B where we quickly arrange tomorrow's trip.
Day 96/7: Off on a 2 day/1 nite trip to the Kinabatangan River valley; Sabah's best wilderness sanctuary. Enroute we see the Gomantang Caves where the locals have harvested swiftlet nests for centuries. It sounds mundane but the harvest is worth $1,000,000/year (birds nest soup is an expensive delicacy in China - is there any animal related product that isn't a delicacy over there?). The nests, made entirely from the birds saliva, are on the cave roof hundreds of feet up. The harvesters climb up on unbelievably rickety bamboo/rope ladders and someone dies every few years. We take a couple of boat cruises and are overwhelmed with wildlife, literally having to decide where to look first. Orang utans, rhinoceros hornbills and tons of other beautiful birds surround us but the highlight is group after group of fascinating proboscis monkeys.
Day 98: Off to Sabah's Orang utan sanctuary; Sepilok. Unlike the one outside Kuching this one is famous & the orang utan feeding was like a rock concert with kids & adults jostling for position. It is a great show however. And we watch for almost an hour as they hang off ropes & platforms in a variety of contorted positions. The 2pm bus to Mt Kinabalu is sold out so we ride the local bus (no chickens this time) to mini bus junction. Unfortunately no one wants to do the 4 hour drive this late in the day & we (& one other white girl) are stranded. Forty five minutes of wandering & negotiating get us no where, so we just wait for the bus & hope for empty seats. Appropriately it starts to pour. Luckily however they seem to have added an extra bus & we get 2 seats at the front (right in front of the TV showing Malaysian videos - and worse yet - Sly Stallone movies).
Day 99: Everyone (& we mean everyone) that comes to Sabah climbs Mt Kinabalu. We have yet to meet a traveller that didn't start their conversation with us by asking about the climb. Louise however doesn't like to follow the crowd (especially when the crowd is going uphill!), so we opt to hike the trails around park headquarters. We get up at 6:30a to increase the odds of seeing wildlife & are rewarded with many sitings. For you birders here's some specifics; a big one with a long tail & a medium sized red one. Louise seems to have developed a fascination with moss (& mushrooms). Every 5 minutes she tears the camera from around my neck & spends ages compasing a shot of some new fungi! We'll have to get this looked into when we get home. Checkout time is 10:30am so when we go by the office at 12:45 we just drop the key and run! We meet 3 other travellers trying to catch a ride to KK but all passing minibuses are full (they don't normally start moving until they're full). We negotiate a private ride for $40 but the normal fare is $6/person & one of they 3 guys would rather wait than pay $8. Happily his friends eventually talk him into it & we arrive in KK in time to find our hotel has jacked their rates up. Time to go find a new one.
Day 100 (June 4): All flights out of Sabah are full until June 7 (because of school holidays), so we can't move our flight up. Luckily our new hotel has a VCD player so we can watch some of the 40 VCD's we've bought. Last nite was "Sugar & Spice" (bankrobbing cheerleaders). Tonite we watch "Agent Red" with Dolph Lundgren (as good as it sounds). But first we head off to the Sabah museum where the displays are unlit due to a power failure. On the way back we catch Pearl Harbour at the theatre ($3.50). Classic hollywood tripe, but enjoyable nonetheless.
Day 101: Up at 8:30a but nothing in this town opens until 10a so we watch "Reservoir Dogs". I think Quentin Tarantino has some issues. Another power failure has me stuck in the elevator for 15 minutes. Luckily Lou notices I'm gone & brings me a flashlight (what a sweetie). Off for breakfast then our forth VCD (& our 2nd cheerleader movie) in 3 days; "Bring it On". Not bad. Next Lou watches "Billy Elliot" while I play Euchre on the internet ($1.60/hour). I may be resigned to watching cheerleading movies but I draw the line at little boy ballerinas. Tonite we watch the Jackal. I think we're addicts . . .
Day 102: We've recently looked up several words on internet dictionary (eg. the difference between jungle & rainforest). Today we learn the meaning of the word "rickety". It means Borneo Trains. I should say Train since they only have one and today we ride it to go rafting (Lou said I wouldn't be able to do nothing for 3 days). We bump & bounce our way along the river past little villages & raging rapids. The rafting itself only takes one hour but it was action all the way! Tonite's VCD is "The Patriot". Some half-decent action but primarily a bore-fest!