It probably doesn’t seem that long since I left, but Alice and I have packed so much into the last 2 weeks that it seems like a lifetime ago to me already! I’m currently sitting in a lovely guesthouse in Mae Sot (North-West Thailand, just near Myawadi), it’s all carved wood and white sheets and free internet connection (yay), for about £2 a night. Sweet. I’m starting my volunteer orientation for the BVP on Monday, and have heard on the grapevine (via a girl I bumped into who has been around this area for a month already) that they need people in Mae Sariang, which is about 5 hours north, and apparently a pretty quiet place but very beautiful and in the mountains, so I might end up there. If anyone knows anything about that village then please let me know asap! I’m sharing my room with this American girl called Hanna that was on the same bus as me from Chiang Mai, and she’s doing the same thing for the BVP for three months and isn’t really sure what’s going on either so it’s awesome to be slightly lost with her and able to wander about Mae Sot together. We got here last evening and have met a few people who work for the BVP who we’re going to see tonight and get the lowdown from, and met a lovely British guy from Bristol (people from Bristol are all over the shop, I met another one last week and it’s lovely to be able to say ‘College Green’ to someone and they know what you’re talking about!)
Anyhoo, so that’s all good, the hardest ‘alone’ part of my trip so far actually went as well as it could. Before that Alice and I had the best two weeks, possibly of my life, in Borneo. I’d so recommend it to anyone, I’m actually a little worried about if I’m gonna be able to top it! The Malaysian people are lovely and friendly and everything’s in English so it’s easy to navigate (it’s not like that in Mae Sot!)
So first Al and I flew to KL, met up and went across to an island called Mabul off the coast of Borneo. We stayed at this awesome hostel called Uncle Chang’s. Uncle Chang is a legend, he looks like a Native American with this long ponytail, and he bought Al and I lunch and then arranged a special boat to take us back to mainland for free when we’d finished and stuff, just so nice. Anyway UC’s was great, the rooms were pretty poor but the food was tasty and there were tons of people hanging around diving. We basically just did our PADI’s and lay around in the sun (I lay around in the shade being scared of sunburn). The diving was great, it was all learning at first but there were still giant green turtles and lionfish and angel fish and squid and tons of stuff in the water where we were doing our basic stuff, so there was loads to look at. And we met some brilliant people, there was a hilarious Danish guy called Kristian who said ‘amayshing’ all the time and was really fun, and some groups of friends and an awesome couple (hello Andrew and Lisa!) who were just up for having a good time so we’d just chat in the evening. And then at the weekend the boat drivers and Dive Masters (all these Malaysian guys of about 18 – 23) would rock out in this band. They’d just pull a wall down from the side of the food area and there were about 4 guitars and a full-on drum kit and keyboard, and they’d just go crazy for about 4 hours, it was brilliant. The singer (who Alice and I called Elvis cos he always wore shades and blatantly wanted to be a rock star) was absolutely terrible but he genuinely love it so much that it was great. So we got Radiohead, Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles and loads more, all lovingly murdered by Elvis. Ace.
And then at the end of our stay we dove Sipadan, which was just an island paradise with stunning coral around it, and we saw a 3m grey reef shark, tons of smaller white tip reef shards, huge tuna, a massive shoal of barracuda, lots of giant green turtles...just so much stuff I couldn’t name it all. It was the perfect end to our trip.
And although we were really sad to go, we hopped over to KK to climb Mt Kinabalu. We shared a taxi with the worst people I’ve ever met, who we called ‘Oxfordy’, or ‘Boring and Boringer’. They were really into achieving and the girl was just the most irritating person I’ve ever met, she had a massively shrill voice and kept saying hugely boring and stupid things to ‘Lenny’ her friend. Gah. So, 6 hours later and up the mountain at Laban Ratan (the lodge you stay in before climbing the summit) we decided we had to ditch them, and at a similar time spied 2 guys who were making outrageous claims about people dying from not farting at high altitude. Naturally we decided to befriend them, and luckily they hated the 2 other girls in their group, so the next morning at 2am we all got up to climb the summit and met downstairs for breakfast.
And it was blowing an absolute gail/hurricane outside. So we couldn’t climb then (there was apparently waist high water pouring the trail), but we stayed up chatting for a couple of hours (turns out they’re from the South-west too), and then got up to reattempt the summit at 8am. So Al, I, Abe and James went with Nuisse (their guide) and struggled up the next 3K (it was horrific, it was terrible weather, we were freezing cold and soaking wet and we had to literally pull ourselves up some parts with ropes) but eventually we made it, and then we turned around and came straight back down. It was such a long way, and really hard in parts, but some of the views were awesome and we definitely felt like we’d achieved something at the end.
We spent to next 2 nights at Abe and James’s hostel in KK, some of which involved drinking Arak and something akin to Special Brew (which was gross) and went scuba diving and generally chilled out. However we also introduced them to the cardboard box game at about 3am one night, which ended in Abe having to take a trip to Bornean hospital (it’s all about the experience). You can see some vids of what those guys have been up to, with me an Al in a few, at
http://www.youtube.com/user/abecambridge#p/u/10/MoluH8rWXkU
