October 2006

Monthly Archive

Borneo: wow! (part 1)

by andris
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Borneo, 26 Oct 2006 --

Ok, that is seriously the lamest title in history.  I promise I have not accepted employment with the tourism commissions of Sabah and or Sarawak (the two Malay provinces on Borneo)…but no matter how many superlatives I stuck in I don’t think it would do the last few weeks justice. 

We spent our first few days on Borneo in Kuching at the south end of Sarawak.  Kuching is a very nice town, but it doesn’t compare to some of the things we’ve done since so I won’t say much.  I will say, though, that if you fly to Sarawak you will probably land in Kuching.  The crafts there will seem very nice, but you will think “Hey, I just got to Sarawak…I bet I can get this stuff everywhere.”  I can say now having gone from one end to the other that you can’t, in fact, find that stuff everywhere.  I don’t usually buy stuff, but I wish I would have bought this big rug made of what sort of looked like wooden dominoes that I saw in Kuching for something like RM 100.  Kuching is the place to buy crafts.

From Kuching we stopped in the small fishing village of Mukah on our way to Miri, from where we flew to Gunung Mulu National Park.  Mulu is billed as “one of the world’s premiere caving destinations” by Lonely Planet…and I have to agree.  We spent our first day seeing the park’s “show caves” which are lit up like the most accessable areas of Mammoth Caves if you’ve seen those.  Mulu boasts the largest cave chamber in the world and the largest/longest cave mouth opening in the world (Malaysians love their superlatives, so those may be taken with a grain of salt).  Sometime around 5 in the evening, we got to see the cave’s collection of wrinkle lipped bats (possibly the world’s largest, I’m not sure) all flying out of the cave together to hunt insects.  The thousands of bats come out in one long line, which sort of waves from side to side like a sine wave (hey, a degree in physics does come in handy sometimes).  Apparently, the big bat togetherness party is so they can avoid the hawks which prey on them as they exit the cave and only partially works as we saw a few hawks enjoying the bat-buffet.

We spent our next two days at Mulu doing adventure caving trips with the park’s caving guides.  We had only planned on doing one adventure trip, but we had to prove that we were ‘experienced’ cavers before they would take us on the advanced Clearwater-Wind Cave connection trip.  Really, they’re just looking to make sure you won’t freak out underground or do something really dumb.  If I had one bit of advice on Mulu, it would be to scribble ‘caving certification’ on a piece of paper and to laminate it before coming to the park so you can get around this requirement…but oh well.

At any rate, the Clearwater Connection trip was good stuff.  We spent about 5 hours scrambling, wading, and climbing in pitch darkness from Wind cave to Clearwater cave and then down an underground river. At two points (the ‘connection’ itself) we downclimbed through some tiny passages which were only discovered a few years ago by a local.  It was this discovery which made the connection possible, and was probably the best section of the trip.  Technical rock climbing is a lot easier when you have a rock wall in front of you and behind you…who knew. :) .

This seems like a particularly good place to break this post in half before I start talking about the rest of our Borneo adventure…so I will.

to be continued…

Categories Malaysia
 

not dead

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Borneo, 26 Oct 2006 --

Hi everyone! We aren’t dead. Or arrested. We’re in Borneo.

Sounds cool, doesn’t it? Borneo. I guess before this trip I might not have been able to identify Borneo on a map easily, but now I am fully acquainted with this island and it’s odd history. For the uninitiated, Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is governed by three different countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei. We’ve spent the majority of our time in the Malaysian part, having side stepped Brunei altogether (too expensive!), and only briefly visiting a small jungle village in Indonesia.

Borneo is a lot like the rest of Malaysia, which means it is a mixing bowl of Malay and Chinese, with a few Orang Asli (original people). We have been very lucky on this trip and were able to visit some villages where we got to meet many more of the Orang Asli in a non-tour-group way. Borneo has been exciting, and more off-the-beaten-path than we’ve been able to achieve until now. That means that the local people have been nicer, and so have the other travellers, which has been a great experience.

Categories Malaysia
 

Singapore: Utopian city of the future?

by andris
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Malaysia, 9 Oct 2006 --

We spent the last 4 days or so exploring Singapore, and we have come to the conclusion that Singapore is, in fact, the city of the future.  The city is ultra-modern, multi-cultural, multi-theological, Disney-land spotless, and packed to the gills with artsy events. 

During our visit, we were fortunate that the Singapore Biennale 2006 was taking place.  For those of us who were unaware, a biennale is a bi-annual contemporary art exhibition hosted by a city.  Singapore’s government has obviously thrown a great deal of money and support behind the event, and cultural, governmental, and commercial venues throughout the city were transformed into exhibit spaces for modern art installations.  The main venue (containing 200+ works) was a former military camp (others included mosques, temples, and the court chambers at city hall).  It turned out to be something like an art scavenger hunt, and was a fantastic way to discover parts of the city we might not otherwise have seen. 

While in Singapore, we were also fortunate enough to stumble across the ‘Mr. International, 2006′ contest, sponsored by urban male.  The pictures (mostly from the ‘cultural costume’ portion of the evening) have to be seen to be believed.  We sat in the back row, (mostly) successfully stifling giggles as these guys came out in one ridiculous costume after another.  Would you believe they had a Mr. Latvia?! 

Singapore pictures are here:

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 I also posted a few more pictures from Kuala Lumpur (check out the very unhappy monkey):

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…and some pictures from our jungle trip to Taman Negara:

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Sorry this isn’t the most descriptive post ever….I’ve gotten this picture processing and uploading down to less than 2 hours, but by the time I’m done with that I don’t have time for anything else!

We’re in Kuching on Malaysian Borneo at the moment…off in search of proboscus monkeys in the jungle tomorrow.

Categories photography , Malaysia
 

in the jungle

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Malaysia, 3 Oct 2006 --

I’m not sure if I accrued good jungle karma from NOT killing all of the leeches that I pulled off my shoes, socks, and legs, or from NOT hitting the rat that was eating our food when I chucked the bottle of hand sanitizer at him (although I meant to hit him and karma is all about intention), but I felt like the luckiest girl in the world yesterday.

The plan was this: Andris and I had arrived at Taman Negara (literally “National Park” in Malay) in order to explore the world’s oldest rainforest. Unfortunately, the place is relatively touristy and everywhere you go people are trying to sell you guided tours that cost much, much more than our budget. We decided to do all of the activities that were possible without a guide, even though if you asked a guide, none of the activies were possible without a guide.

On our first day we did the Canopy Walk (us: RM 14, guide: 60), and trekked to Ear Cave (us: RM 4, guide: 80). The Canopy walk was really wonderful and fun. The Ear Cave expidition started with a boat trip and then an hour hike. We did our own cave exploration which involved squatting in mud, avoiding bats, and crawling through bat poop. There were hundreds of bats hanging so close to your face that you could pluck them from the roof, which, of course, I didn’t. It was awesome, though a bit scary, as I don’t really care for bats.

Our second day was more ambitious. We were going to hike 7 hours to a “hide” in the woods where you can watch nocturnal animals at a salt lick. The next morning we would hike back. With a guide, this expedition costs RM 230. We started early in the day, and it was a heck of a hike. I might almost say it was the hardest hike I’ve ever done. Between the hills, the mud, the leeches, and getting off trail once, it was rough. By the time we got to the hide (a simple cabin on stilts) we were so sweaty and smelled so foul that I felt badly for the loud group of Germans and one random American we found there, who had taken a boat in an hour previously (Taman Negara is next to a big river that you can hire people to take you up and down). Their plan was to boat in and hike out. Our new plan was to take the boat home after a night in the hide because doing that hike once in the trip was enough.

Occupants of hides are supposed to be quiet so they don’t scare away animals. Around 8pm, the Germans finally quited down - and this is when we got lucky. First, a tapir showed up. After he left, a group of jungle cattle came by. Andris and I had rented a high powered flashlight so would could see these animals really well, and it was really amazing. The rest of the night was a parade of more tapirs and cattle. Andris and I took turns staring out the window in case any other animals came through. I was hopeful that a jungle elephant might come by, since we had seen droppings on our way there, but we weren’t so lucky.

Half way through the night rats started running around in the rafters of the hide where we had all hung our food. I caught a big one red-handed eating our bread, which is when I chucked the hand sanitizer at him. This scared him away for about a minute, so I had to move the food into a backpack and hang it from some thinner twine. Once our bag was no longer a target, the rats moved on to a plastic bag belonging to the Germans. I was asleep at the time it happened, but a small rat climbed into the bag and got stuck. All of us were awakened by a rat frantically screaming to be freed from the plastic bag hanging from the rafters. The Germans didn’t know how to deal with it (much to my annoyance/entertainment) and let the rat scream until sunrise. Somehow, it freed itself a few hours later, though it ate all of their cookies and bread and left droppings and urine in their only food bag. I think the rat went in and then ate so much it couldn’t get out. Overall, it was pretty amusing.

When we woke up, we wished the Germans and the American good luck on the hike back, and then headed to the boat dock 2km away. They had told us it costs RM 120 to rent a boat (which is way too much), and we didn’t know how often boats came, so we were prepared to wait for hours and hope for a better deal than RM 120. When we arrived at the dock, to my amazement, there was already a guy with a boat who said he could take us back for RM 20 each! He also said we were incredibly lucky to see all of those animals the night before. Just before we left, a girl from the group of Germans showed up and said she had changed her mind about the hike. (As we found out later, all but two of the Germans and the American had given up on the hike at various points and went to the river to flag down boats) The three of us set off on the 40-minute ride back to our guest house, which was lovely in the perfect weather, and as a bonus we “shot the rapids” (RM 40 with a guide) on the way for free.

So this is why I felt like the luckiest girl in the world - We finished that amazing hike, saw lots of crazy jungle animals, and only spent RM45 each, instead of the RM 230 we would have with a guide. And I only had one leech successfully draw any blood! It was great.

Categories Malaysia