Journal Entry 27

December 13th, 2003

"Borneo: Clockwise"

 

My last update was written two days before I left mainland Asia for Borneo, where I've been ever since. Spent the night at the airport, fixing some clothes and enjoying the A/C. My two-hour flight was the #1 flight value anywhere, I think, as I paid about $30, booking only a couple days in advance! I was so excited to be flying to Borneo! Also, that day marked the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, where they fast from dawn till dusk. Cool time to be touring Islam countries!

Spent lots of time on Borneo. The two states of Malaysian Borneo: Sarawak (formerly ruled by an English dude) and Sabah (formerly run by the British, as British North Borneo). And Brunei, a tiny country that used to own all of Borneo and much of the Philippines back in the day. And Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, formerly a Dutch colony.

So I arrived in Kuching, capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, northwest corner of Borneo. Really one of the nicest cities I've been in, one where you could easily settle down and live. Lots of greenery, a nice river with a great waterfront area, quaint buildings and pedestrian streets, a cool museum, good
food...yellow rambutans, buttery peanut pancakes, fried midin (jungle fern), and umei (raw fish with shallots and tangy sauce).

In the next two weeks I flew five more times, to the tune of a bit over $100. Total. Started by hopping to Miri for a day to get a permit for the border region I was about to enter...then on to Bario, a small village only accessible by air in a small Twin Otter plane. Arrived there and hooked up with Jeremy
(Canada) and Angel (England). And somehow it seemed quite fitting that I ate monkey for the first time that day (being Halloween and all). Not bad, once you get over the fact that you're eating what I've always considered to be a little human. To my defense, I did not order it...I was served it and told what it was as I was digging in. The little bits of black hair and skin on the meat chunks may have been a clue as well. And no, it wasn't served in a broth inside the skull, just your run-of-the-mill fried monkey pieces in brown sauce on an orange platter.

Ended up spending eight days hiking around the Kelabit highlands in the Bario region. First day we hiked to see some stone carvings in a rice paddy. Then we did an all-day 40km hike through hills and marsh and jungle, passed through the abandoned village of Pa'Main, crossed rickety bridges and got attacked by leeches and sandflies and stopped for a swim in a river and picked the world's tastiest guavas outside the village of Long Dano, finally cresting a hill and descending into a beautiful valley to the village of Pa'Dalih as dusk closed in.

There, trekked into the jungle to see a stone carving of a gibbon on a little-used trail that had to be bushwacked. For this day, we hired a local to take us. I learned that when a guide shows up in fatigues tucked into his socks, and a machete around his waist, maybe do a reality check and take the trek
seriously. I wore shoes without socks, and shorts, and got mauled by leeches and skeeters.

In Pa'Dalih, we stayed on the floor in a longhouse. This is the traditional building that many Bornean tribes live in, still commonly in use. It's like it sounds: a big long building, sometimes the length of a football field. Families build individual units onto the house, connected by hallways to the common area, where cooking and hanging out occur. Really a neat concept that seems to tie a community together!

Also visited a village called Pa'Longan, where we hung out and watched 'Ghost' with a bunch of villagers at a home with a new generator and TV...a sign that times are changing everywhere. Visited a Stonehenge-like dolmen, and hiked to some nice primary rainforest as well, and saw more stone carvings on the return trip. Lastly, I attended a village meeting at a longhouse lit by kitchen fires, with my local host, and saw women with the long earlobes that hang below their shoulders and tattoos covering forearms and legs.

At this stage, my feet were in bad shape. Believe it or not, untended wounds will become quite infected in a jungle environment... I hopped on a plane back to Miri, then booked a ticket for a flight leaving in 10 minutes (made it!), and was immediately on my way to...

Gunung Mulu National Park, again only accessible by plane (or a boat that costs twice as much as the flight). There, I was the lone camper. I joined a group of Malaysian students and a German guy for a three-day/two-night trek to see the Pinnacles. These must be a wonder of the world...hundreds of hundred-foot high limestone shards of rock, rising stalactite-like out of the jungle. I'll post a picture, cause I don't really know how else to describe them. Also toured some caves in the park before heading back coastwards. It was raining all the time...I soaked my camera gear and got wet wet wet, and thought 'I gotta run' and so I escaped on a flight back to Miri, where 5 hrs later I was watching 'Matrix 3' by myself in a movie theatre at the mall.

Next stop: Brunei, a tiny Islamic sultanate on the cost of northern Borneo. All guidebooks describe this place as not being worth a stop, but it turned out to be one of the most pleasant surprises of my trip! Some huge and amazing mosques. A nice Ramadan gerai, a food market that opens for a few hours every day during Ramadan. The food? Green cane juice and kasaur and drinks with bits of corn and beans in them and popiya and lemang and haluwa and saga and fluffy pancakes with bright green sauce and I don't know what all this stuff was but it mostly tasted pretty good. And cool museums. And the Kampung Ayer, a floating stilted village connected by a maze of rickety wooden pathways where everyone's smily and friendly.

And Jeradong Park, an amusement park that the sultan of Brunei built for his people a few years back. Used to be free, but now it costs money, so no one goes. Imagine a full-on amusement park with only about 50 people in it! I was traveling with an English guy named Chris and we damn near had the place to
ourselves. Rock stars! Roller coasters and free-fall drop ride and go-karts and no lines and this isn't a good combination when you've eaten all the food at the gerai (prev. paragraph) but so what, cause there's no lines. Ended the evening by watching a water-and-light show set to classical music...and Mariah Carey hits.

Took a boat from Brunei to the duty-free island of Labuan, back in the Malaysian state of Sabah. After buying some cheap alcohol and chocolate, we split for a boat back to the mainland, arriving in Kota Kinabalu later that day. After a quick visit to the museum there, departed next day to the Tambunan Rafflesia reserve. The Rafflesia is the world's largest flower, some types are up to a meter in diameter. They eat bugs. They only open, um, not very often I guess, and only for a few days, then they die. I'm not big into flowers, but we were lucky enough to see two open ones, and it was quite cool.

Then moved on to Mount Kinabalu National Park via an obscure route that we were told wasn't viable. It was, though it took much of the day, and involved one hitched ride, a few hours in a random town, and two more van rides. Next day, we headed up Mount Kinabalu, the highest point in Southeast Asia, or more specifically, between the Himalayas and Papua New Guinea. Actually ascended the 4100m peak (or thereabouts) in the wee hours of the morning of the second day, and up top an hour before sunrise. And it was spectacular--brilliant colors and jagged peaks and a wonderful valley below! Truly one of the most amazing sights I've seen, equal or better than lots of bigger taller famous places.

After descending the mountain in drizzling rain, we moved on to Poring Hot Springs, and, obviously, sat in hot springs. Then to a wildlife camp on the Kinabantangan River, where I spent three days and got quite ill and saw lots and lots of animals...crocodiles, world's smallest frogs, proboscis monkeys (with the big ugly noses), hornbills, big snakes, a tarantula, owls, huge monitor lizards, and chameleons that really change color, and civet cats, and a swimming leopard, and a flat-headed something or other that's kind of rare I think, and other stuff that was probably cool but I can't remember cause I'm not that big into animals. Also sat on the riverbank and went fishing with some hooks and line I'd got and caught a small fish and a giant prawn which we ate for supper!

From there, I went my own way and visited the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center. Didn't see any apes in the wild, but it was still cool to see a couple of them come out for a feeding in the jungle at the Center! From there, it was a hitch-bus-landcruiser-van, all-day, combination to get me to Semporna, on the east coast of Borneo. Following morning was the first day of Hari Raya, the Muslim holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan, so hundreds of followers were out bright and early in colorful garb, overflowing from the mosque into the city streets.

Booked a diving package on Pulau Sipadan, a small island in the Celebes Sea. Three days/two nights on the expensive resort...Why? One of the top diving locations in the world...apparently one of Jacques Costeau's favorite spots! On my first dive, I was extremely lucky to see a hammerhead shark. In my 48
hours on the island, I did twelve dives, including my new record of six in one day! How? Easy. There's a 1200 meter dropoff only 20 meters off the shore from my resort. Grab a tank and a partner, suit up, and shore dive! Can't be more convenient! Add to that some great food and a friend and cornflakes and baby turtles being born and watching their release into the world....exciting!

Wake-dive-eat-dive-eat-dive-dive-eat-sunsetdive-nightdive-sleep. Heaven!

On some dives, saw up to fifteen giant sea turtles, and saw both white-tipped sharks and turtles on almost every dive. Also a moray eel, barracudas, GIANT parrotfish (lots of them at night...very eerie!), lionfish, frogfish, schools of jackfish and bright batfish, and other interesting and exciting things that
I've forgotten. Did lots of dives with Angel, the cool English girl I met in Bario a few weeks back.

After three days of diving and killer food and a beautiful beachside bungalow and nice weather, it was time to leave Malaysia for good. We returned to the mainland and moved on to Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo) the next day. We took a boat to Tarakan, en route reading in the guidebook that it was not an official visa-free entry point. Shit. We got lucky though, and were granted a 60-day permit without hassles!

It was nice being back in Indonesia again-no tourists, cheaper prices, "hello Mister" shouted from every third person, gado-gado (vegetables and stuff with peanut sauce). Immediately different from Malaysia, which is somewhat hard to comprehend when you cross an imaginary line from one country to the next, but a reality nonetheless.

Thanksgiving, November 27, for me, was spent in the border town of Tawau, Malaysia. Angel and I improvised a traditional feast by buying satay chicken, some mashed potatoes from a KFC, apples and fruit cake (for apple pie). That's about as close as we could get to a proper Thanksgiving, and roughly equivalent in quality to last year's Thanksgiving (where I had yak steak and new potatoes in Lhasa, Tibet).

We entered Indonesia on November 28, and then spent two weeks making our way down the east side of the island. From Sipidan, it took us over five full travel days to get to Long Iram, our next destination.
* Day 1--1.5 hr boat ride. Get pissed on by rain. 2 hr bus to Tawau.
* Day 2--9.30am boat leaves at 1pm. 3 hr ride takes 4. Arrive in Tarakan, Indonesia. Room with no light and leaky ceiling (it rained).
* Day 3--9am boat leaves at 10am. 5 hr ride takes 9. Arrive in Berau.
* Day 4--At bus station at 8am. 10am bus cancelled. 12pm bus leaves at 1pm. 14 hrs later, arrive in Samarinda...at 3am. In a parking lot...middle of nowhere. Taxi to boat dock.
* Day 5--Sit on boat docks in the wee hours of the morning....catch boat at 7am. Boat all day...riverboat (ala my journeys in China and Myanmar)...which I absolutely love! Beautiful scenery and locals selling food and sleeping on the deck with hundreds of others.
* Day 6--Arrive Long Iram at 7.30am. Sleep. Recover.

We were now over 400 km inland, about halfway down Borneo, right on the equator. The town, Long Iram, that we finally arrived in was really just a random shot in the dark. We picked a town and went to it. Perfect!-a small one-street village in the middle of nowhere! Spent a day wandering around, eating rambutans (from a fat guy picking them in his skivvies) and durian and chatting with random people. No one really speaks English out here, and we've been working hard at learning Indonesian, so it was a great place to be.

From Long Iram, we moved on to Tering, another riverside village. Animist beliefs in this region of Borneo are still quite strong--there are lots of patong (carved totem poles) and steps around. Our next stop was Barong Tongkok, where we based ourselves for three days. We spent our time hitchhiking and walking around the countryside, visiting villages and traditional longhouses. These were haunting. Inside, there are carvings and patong and buffalo horns. They're built on slilts way above ground to prevent the former headhunting practice of stabbing from below through the rattan floor.

We also met a local guy who brought us to a ngerangkau (Dayak funeral ceremony) which was five years after the woman's death, and is the last ritual before her spirit goes off for good. The bones are exhumed and kept in a box that hangs from the ceiling and they sing and dance to her, and chant while swinging her bone-box. They do this every night for about a month, until they've raised enough money by gambling and donations to buy a buffalo to slaughter and feast on. Then they cram the bones into a box and it's done with. Quite interesting...slow peaceful dancing and mesmerizing music and eerie chanting.

Another overnight trip down the river returned us to Samarinda, where we spent a day with a local dude we'd met a week before. Then we were off on a slow and loud and bumpy and hot overnighter bus (the highlight of which were some tomato cheese sandwiches on French bread that we found at a supermarket) to Kandangan, where we immediately hopped on a truck to Loksado. This is in southeast Borneo, a tiny green village surrounded by rice fields and hills and bamboo groves and rivers and misty skies full of rain. We spent a night there at the village chief's house and did more walking and chatting before finally leaving for our last destination on Borneo: Banjarmasin.

In two days, we walked around Banjarmasin a fair bit, kind of like the Venice of Borneo, with lots of rivers and canals and ramshackle stilted houses. Initially, it seemed quite an armpit, but turned out okay in the end. We hired a boat to visit the Pasar Kuin, a large floating market, similar to the ones in
the Vietnamese Mekong delta. You pull up your boat to fruit vendors' boats, or to boats selling tea, coffee, and snacks. All commerce is done on the water. Quite nice!

Two days ago, Angel and I sailed to Java, where I am now. Moving on again soon.

Been traveling a lot with English folks of late. I'm quite chaffed (happy) to have an occasional lie-in (sleep in) with a late brekkie (breakfast), perhaps of eggy bread (French toast), and I get gutted (bummed) when we have to get up early to catch a boat at silly o'clock (weird hour) to some random location, where there's fuckall (nothing) to do and everyone's wankers and flids (mean people). Techno!

I have a thing for buying toiletries, and mentioned before that I try to buy a tube of toothpaste in every country. For those interested...the best soap in Asia? Apepso. Green bar, also lathers green. Lasts a long time. Antibacterial, and helps prickly heat. Best toothpaste in Asia? Zact Stain Fighter. Taste not so good, but'll make your mouth feel cleaner than any toothpaste you've ever tried!

Developed quite an addiction to durian, which I never would've thought possible. I try to get it everyday. If it's not possible to find the fruit itself, it's usually not hard to find durian biscuits or candy or juice or ice cream (which I just had an hour before writing this).

Muslim countries...Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia. It's sad that my current president has really villainized these countries. They've been peaceful places filled with friendly people. Christianity and other religions are well-tolerated, a fact attested to by active churches and temples throughout the countries.

Borneo's been a microcosm of my trip: planned to spend three weeks there. Spent six-plus weeks, going around nearly two-thirds of the island. No wonder that after almost nineteen months I'm still in Asia. I had actually planned to be finished-up by Thanksgiving, Christmas at the latest, New Year for sure...but...impossible! Dammit. I sold my car this month. It does seem like I've been gone quite a while now.

"Afterwards I wasn't sure if driftwood had the right to say 'I succeeded' when the tide threw it up on the beach it sought..." (-Che Guevara, 'The Motorcycle Diaries')

 

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