Well this place is just as I had imagined
it. I know that most accommodation places in developing countries (and this
part of Malaysia
is very much rural and developing) are not up to the standard we are used to in
Australia.
Everything is still very comfortable but you just need to be comfortable with
things being a bit rougher around the edges, and to have a different standard
of hygiene and cleanliness (and that is something I developed well in Fiji with many
visits to remote villages and stays in rural hotels). It is definitely very
quiet and relaxing with no pressing load of work.
After counting hornbills and being dropped
back at the jetti (how they spell it here) and retrieving my backpack from the
Malaysian Nature Society Coordinator’s car boot (luckily with the plastic
bottles of gin unbroken) I settled down to wait for the pick up from Belum Eco
Resort. As you have reception at Banding
Island I luckily turned on
my phone and received a text message from the boss of the resort, Steve, saying
that I would get picked up at 1pm
along with some guests.
One thing I had not realised is that Friday
16 September was a public holiday in Malaysia making it a long weekend.
The resort was almost full with three groups (very multicultural with a group
each of Chinese, Indian and Malays) totalling around 40 guests with a bunch of
children between about 6 and 16. This made the place practically full and on
arrival I was given a small room on an unfinished houseboat until there was space
after the weekend.
Steve was quite busy with so many guests so
he said we would catch up on Sunday afternoon after they had departed to talk
about the work I would do. This suited me as it gave me a chance to rest, after
the days bush counting hornbills, with good food, Western toilets (with bidet
and bins for the toilet paper used to ‘dry’ yourself as system was not up to
handling flushed paper) and tiled shower enclosures with tub of cold water and
dribble of hot water.
Come Sunday afternoon I spoke to Steve a
bit about the artificial reefs though he seemed keener on setting up a system
for feeding hornbills fruit, just to provide a ‘bird experience’ for guests
which may encourage their support of conservation. I don’t mind helping with
the reefs as a small bit of extra habitat for the fish in this lake is not
going to upset anything but I won’t do the encouragement of unnatural foraging behaviour
in such a vulnerable species such as hornbills. I will make it clear to Steve
that I do not have any expertise when it comes to hornbills and he would be
best to find someone who does for any projects in that area. Another thing he
is keen on is environmental advice for a proposal he is writing for ecotourism
activities in the Royal
Belum National
Park (the one that is not being logged). Private
businesses have been invited to submit proposals for this as it has been
recognised that the government is too useless to establish anything that will
be sustainable. When it came to asking about expectations for my volunteer
work, Steve gave some talk about respecting each other but no clear direction
about hours or outcomes. I volunteered to help with any resort domestic duties
but was given no instruction and the staff were told that I would be doing
‘internet’ work, not anything physical with them.
Then Steve, his wife Susan and the rest of
the casual staff were off and I was left with two young Indian male staff,
Sanja and Babu, both of who have very limited English. On the Monday we were
joined by two local Orang Isli boys to help with some work. Other residents on
the island include two wonderful dogs, only about 18 months old, who are now my
almost constant companions. The tan one is called Gordon, after Gordon Brown,
and the black one is called Obama, no clues for where that name comes from.
There is also a little ginger female cat, who is called Hillary (I think Steve
can be a bit political), one black chicken, plenty of butterflies, cicadas,
birds and a small troop of long tail Macaque monkeys. The monkeys came down to
check out the resort on the Monday morning after everyone had left and I got a
photo of one on the deck railing.
Over the next few days we got into a lovely
routine of breakfast at 8am (does not really get light until 7am) of white
bread, bananas and eggs, while they lasted, or handmade roti and jam, curry for
lunch and curry for dinner. Near the end of the week they asked if I could cook
food to be ready when they stopped working. I assured them that my only
capability was to help as I did not know the ingredients (lots of noodles and
unmarked spices in pots), how to cook large amounts of rice by absorption, chop
a frozen chicken by cleaver, or deep fry fish in a battered wok on a commercial
gas stove.
In between the meals the boys would go off
and do some labour such as rake away all the nearby leaves and sweep the paths
(obviously to make them look good – but also deny the area you want to be green
from the nutrients that would come from the decomposing leaves and expose the
bare soil to be washed away with the rain L) and do repairs on the chalets.
My work would consist of sitting at Steve’s
laptop, with minimal internet, on the central table in the breezeway of the original
houseboat which has a bit of a feel of an old house. With lots of open space
for views of the surrounding lake and forested hills and a set of upstairs
rooms that I had moved into to sleep. For exercise I try to walk to the end of
the chalets and back a few times in the morning and in the evening and the
crazy dogs take a run along the path with me. Amazing though how much of an
upper body workout doing your washing by hand in a bucket is.
Steve and a couple of investor friends, who
are looking at funding a houseboat business, came back on Thursday but only
stayed for one night and left. I was woken up on Friday night by Sanja for a
call from Steve to say he now would not be back until the following weekend and
was I fine until then. The next day I sent him by email a proposal for
construction of artificial reefs based on my research and reiterated my desire
to access decent internet to upload photos to my travel journal so I could send
an update to family and friends.
He was happy with the reef proposal and got
the staff to take me this morning (Sunday 25) to a resort on Banding Island
and the jetti to access internet and purchase a few groceries. It was nice to
be out and the week ahead looks like more curry, maybe a kayak around the
island, and some limited research on sport fishing as an ecotourism venture.
Once Steve is here on the weekend I will get to see, along with a couple of
guests, some of the local sites including a forestry lookout and hopefully a Rafflesia
in bloom then we are off to the Royal
Belum National
Park.
