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Hi everyone,
sorry for the delay but I ended up having an unexpected trip back to
the UK as my amazing Gran passed away (don’t worry, I’m doing
ok). But now I have arrived in New Zealand so I thought I should
update you all on my month in Malaysia before I start attempting to
describe New Zealand.
So on 24th March I said
goodbye to Alex (she flew off to Australia) and then flew to
Malaysian Borneo. I spent the night in Kuala Lumpur’s budget
terminal, quite possibly the worst place to try to sleep and it was
rammed full of people and benches with more arm rests than seats.
There were also a little gang of workmen who kindly asked me to move
at around 230am after I had just managed to get 30 mins sleep so they
could maintain the ceiling. So by the time I arrived in Kota
Kinabalu, the capital of the northern part of Borneo, I was
exhausted. I was really lucky to get a lift with the owners of my
hostel. Kelly and Peter were so kind and looked after me very well as
I spent a total of 6 nights with them during my stay in Borneo. They
bought everyone icecreams (yam or durian flavour!) and an array of
local pastries and cakes for breakfast which were available all day.
If I ever go back to Kota Kinabalu I shall definitely stay with them.
They also took me to the airport and to another hotel later in the
trip and looked mortified if I offered to pay. Most places would have
charged to make any transfers so it was particularly nice of them.
So initially I had 3 days in KK, as
Kota Kinabalu is known. It isn’t a beautiful town to look at as
most of it got blown up in the second world war but it is pretty
interesting as most people are going about their daily business
without worrying about tourists too much. There are around 10 malls
full of shops, a huge fish market, another two story market for
everything else and a few islands off shore. But there were also
hundreds of options for cheap and very tasty meals, yes ladies and
gentlemen ultimately it ALWAYS comes back to the food and Malaysia is
a good place for food. Fresh seafood, lamb, chicken or beef satay
sticks, noodle soup, pork belly, pastries, fried chicken in sauce,
squid, prawns mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Anyway I then flew across the island to
a little fishing port called Semporna. The guidebooks all trashed
this place but it was great fun and soooo busy. Most of the people
who live there are called Bajau. They are an ethnic group originating
in Borneo and Philipines but most of the people in this part of the
island are from the Philipines originally. They seem to be much
poorer than most people in Malaysia and most do not qualify for
education or any other government provided services as they haven’t
applied for Malysian citizenship as they don’t realise they are
eligible (others are technically illegal immigrants even though their
families have been visiting the island periodically for hundreds of
years).
So I stayed there one night and then
got a boat over to the little island of Mabul. The dive office said I
might get bored on this island. Never. I was meant to stay in the
dive shop’s own accommodation but it burnt down a few weeks before
I arrived so I ended up staying in a longhouse on stilits over the
water in the village. It only took 5 minutes to walk from one side of
the island to the other but I managed to get seriously lost on my
first night to the amusement of the locals. I spent hours playing
with the kids (most can’t go to school) and puppies in the little
ramshackle village or watching kids fishing using string and a
waterbottle from mini boats. The houses were made with anything the
owners could get but often thin plywood sheets and a timber floor and
frame.
The dive shop was really well organised
and great fun and had a mixture of young brits, older expats and
locals working there. Stayed 7 nights on the island but could easily
have stayed far longer. The diving was brilliant and saw so many
different creatures and corals but my favourites were the normous
turtles, green and hawksbill and the little juvenile sweetlips that
bumbled about trying not to be spotted but being awful at hiding. Oh
and the frogfish with legs and feet that crawl around looking like a
bit of wood or coral. Went back to KK after that for couple more to
wait for Jon who came out to Borneo for a couple of weeks for his
hols
Didn’t do much in KK this time as I
found out about my Gran when I got back and also had an ear infection
which was pretty painful. Moved to a swanky hotel when Jon arrived
but it was such good value. King size bed and amazing views of the
bay from the 13th floor. We left our bags there whilst we
went to climb Mount Kinabalu. The day after Jon arrived we took a
share taxi (minibus full of locals and bags) up to the base of the
mountain. We stayed in a lovely little place with glass walls in the
bedroom and the bathroom looking out over the valley. When we arrived
the mountain was shrouded in clouds which made it easy to pretend it
wasn’t really there! We signed in with all the companies we were
using and booked a guide etc and got an early bed ready for the
climb itself.
It took from 9am to around 3pm to climb
to base camp which works out at around 1 km an hour! The altitude was
noticeable from the start and it was raining most of the way. The
guides and locals (who carry up to 40kg of provisions) wear rubber
shoes called Kampung Adidas (Village Adidas) and plastic ponchos and
don’t seem to notice the climb at all. We stopped frequently to
fill up waterbottles and to rest. So glad we picked up walking sticks
(the man had had to search for a Jon sized one as he is 6 foot 4)
which really helped towards the end. We ate early at the restaurant
and were in bed asleep by 830pm ready(ish) for a 1:30am alarm to
start the final descent at 2:00am.
That was the worst part for me.
Climbing in the dark wet with a torch and the air got thinner and
thinner. I was feeling really nauseous for about 2 hours of the climb
that morning and I very nearly decided to wait for the dawn on the
upper slopes but I managed to keep going by counting to 10 over and
over again – and the guide Anndy grabbed my hand and kept me going
bless him. Parts of the climb you have to drag yourself up with rope
or on hands and knees. Near the top (3 and a half hours later) I
suddenly found my legs and felt much better so seemed to have more
energy than most people on the last bit much to Jon’s amusement ( I
had done the same thing on a training run for my half marathon last
year). It was stunning up top and it was such a relief to have made
it in one piece and without throwing up like lots of the Japanese
ladies seemed to do.
On the way down we engaged in a rather
scary sounding but in reality fairly easy activity of Via Ferrata,
well at least it would have been easy if we weren’t already
exhausted hehe. Basically you climb down and across a sheer rock face
but you are attached to a line which is securely (apparently)
fastened to the mountain side. It was good to do something else for
part of the climb down and I realised that I was not as scared of
heights as I previously imagined. Anyway we arrived back at base camp
at around 830am and spent the next 7 hours stumbling and staggering
down the mountain. My legs gradually lost all coordination so that I
would aim for the small step down and my foot would land on an
entirely different and more tricky rock. Fortunately I only fell once
on a slippery bit of rock and managed not to injure myself
particularly.
We finally arrived at the bottom of the
mountain where we had originally intended to get a public bus back to
KK but we decided to get a private cab straight to the doors of the
hotel. We then washed and ordered room service (which was
ridiculously cheap by western standards) and collapsed by about 8pm.
The following day we lounged by the side of a pool but to get there
on the way we had to traverse a number of normal sized kerbs however
due to extreme stiffness and quite a lot of discomfort I found it
easiest to use a roadsign pole to heave myself up and down much to
the amusement of the locals. It took me and Jon around a week to walk
with no pain whatsoever. I shall consider carefully if I shall ever
repeat the experience on some other mountain but it was completely
unforgettable.
Anyway in Malaysia it seems to be
cheaper and far quicker to get cheap flights around Borneo rather
than buses so the following day we flew to a rather grotty place
called Sandakan which seemed to be full of shady looking guys on
street corners doing dodgy money exchange deals from Malaysian
Ringgit to Philipines Pesos (the nearest Filipino island is just 20 k
from Sandakan). We got an ancient public bus to the famous Sepilok
Orangutan Sanctuary where we joined the throngs of people crowding
around a wooden platform in the hope of seeing some orang-utans. A
number live around the area and return to the sanctuary for the
snacks. We waited and waited and just when everyone thought we might
not be lucky a young male arrived. He stuck his head in a bucket and
stuffed his face with fruit before stealing large handfuls of long
beans and dangling off a wire above us all. As everyone was watching
him a much larger male rocked up behind us all. It was a bit of a
shock. He strutted through the crowd as though we weren’t there.
The rehab centre is highly controversial as some conservationists
believe they have not fully rehabilitated any orang-utans however
when you see the extent of the destruction of the rainforest on that
island you can’t help but think that anything that keeps the gene
pool going and that encourages locals to look after orangs to ensure
tourist income has to be positive really.
The following day we went to stay at a
safari camp on the banks of the river Kinabatangan. It’s actually a
pretty sad place because the rainforest has been decimated to within
a few hundred metres of the river bank and that is why it is
relatively easy to see such a wide range of wildlife in such a small
space. Anyway we decided to go because we are hoping what little
rainforest that is left remains there to keep the tourist money
rolling in. To get there we had to get a bus for around an hour on
the road and then on the palm oil plantation track to the little
village to get a boat to the camp. Unfortunately there had been heavy
rains the night before and so the road had turned into a quagmire.
Hence we moved from our comfortable coach into the back of a pick up
with all our luggage and proceeded on our way with a lot of churning
noises and mud spattering onto our faces. We saw different kinds of
hornbill, storm storks, monitor lizard, snakes including a python,
many many macaques, some probiscus monkeys and eventually a wild
Orangutan. It was astonishing how easily he merged with the tree.
Even though you knew he was there you couldn’t see him at times!
When we got back to civilisation we
arranged a taxi to go to a protected bit of forest where a number of
groups of Probiscus monkeys live. They are hilarious and the locals
originially named them ‘Dutch monkeys’ – the Dutch were in
control of that part of Borneo at the time!!!! Incidentally they have
red hair, huge droopy noses, fat pot bellies and the men have
enormous erections permanently. Hilarious but also amusing to watch
for hours. They jump from tree to tree and you often are convinced
they will fall but they rarely do.
Anyway we waved goodbye to Sabah and
flew down to the other end of Malaysian Borneo to Kuching (it means
Cat in the local tongue) in Sarawak. Plenty of good food court meals
and we wandered around town for ages looking at beautiful artefacts
in the shops. Managed to not buy any which is a minor miracle. We
then went on a 3 day 2 night homestay trip at a Bidayuh longhouse.
The Bidayuh are an ethnic group who originate in that area (read were
there many many moons before the Malays) and they are doing really
well at promoting their way of life to tourists. We went on guided
walks to hot thermal springs, ate meals steamed in huge bamboo tubes,
treks through the jungle, music and blowpipe workshops and repeated
rice wine tastings….I still have a small amount in a miscellaneous
glass bottle at home
Finally we left Borneo and flew to
Singapore. We made the most of my last few hours and walked for miles
and miles. My favourite area was Little India. Roads and roads of
tiny bustling shops and curry houses. We ended up in Raffles, the
famous hotel and had a number of Singapore Slings (they were invented
at that hotel).
Phew, I am exhausted just writing about
it but it was a truly amazing month and I shall miss Borneo.
