Malaysia & Borneo- 5

It has been a bit of a whirlwind the last couple of weeks, so I am a long way behind on my blog. Then a couple more weeks went by and I still hadn’t posted so here it is, eventually.

I am currently in Kuching, Sarawak state in western Borneo. I’m busy typing away at my wooden desk in an old colonial building, also know as the Marian boutique lodging house, as it is currently tipping it down.

It is still the rainy season in Borneo and Kuching is generally regarded as the wettest place on the island, but that’s OK because it is still hot and often sunny. In fact the broken clouds help with avoiding the sun as it is very humid, much more so than Thailand in my opinion. It also low season, so fewer tourists and better prices.

I started my journey in Kuala Lumpur, flying in from Bangkok as there were no direct flights to Borneo. Last time I was in KL, I had a fabulous hotel. This time I thought I’d save some money and lived to regret it. Yes it was centrally situated, but that was the end of the positives. The noise was horrendous, the ‘city view’ could not be enjoyed as the bed was rammed against the curtains and anyway the single glazed window, which didn’t close properly, gave straight out into the street, so I would have been a gold fish in a bowl. A very noisy band and some karaoke playing until 1 am, followed by motorbikes zooming up and down for the rest of the night, completed the misery. Luckily now some two weeks removed from my stay, I have forgotten many of the other awful aspects of the hotel.

The Jalan food street was still excellent as were the markets, Chinatown and little India. I had some lovely food and took a heritage walk around various historical sites. I used the Beam scooters again as well, which was fun, but they still need to do something about the bone jarring suspension.

Looking to fill my last afternoon, I went to the enormous Berjaya times square centre, which boasts an indoor theme park and the largest indoor roller coaster in Asia. The roller coaster was quite good with a couple of corkscrews and loop the loops as well.

There were a couple of other fairly decent rides and in the basement a Karting track. The karts were electric and quite slow, so even though I had a voucher I didn’t bother.

Up bright and early and delighted to leave my hotel, I was soon winging my way across the entirety of Borneo to the far eastern side and the city of Kota Kinabula in Sabah state. We were warned on arrival to make sure we went through immigration and not straight out the door, which was entirely possible as it was technically a domestic flight. However the individual states are fiercely independent and they stamp your passport with an additional entry in to the state of Sabah. When the time comes to leave, if you don’t have the entry stamp you are apparently in big trouble.

Kota Kinabula (KK) is a great city, the airport is only a few kilometers from the centre, so it is easy travelling and from time to time you can see planes above the city almost appearing to scrape the top of the buildings as they climb up in to the sky.

My hotel is in a part of town called Asia city, which looks run down, but is in fact really interesting. Filled with amazing places to eat, including a semi outdoor seafood restaurant that is the largest I have ever seen. It’s also very close to the seafront and all the markets, night bazaars and the jetty for trips out to the various islands dotted around. My hotel is also wonderful, with completely renovated large rooms, marble everywhere, comfortable bed and great attention to detail with nice little touches. Hurrah!

There is a covered sky bridge walkway that goes from just outside my hotel all the way to the seafront and just happens to end right beside all the nice bars and restaurants. There is quite a choice, but the Shamrock is particularly good, with live music every night and several beers on draught.

Food is generally really cheap here, although you can easily rack up a large bill with the fish and seafood. Even at local seafood places, which can be just a few tables and chairs by a stall or in the huge undercover market that has dozens of fresh fish stalls with tables and chairs as well as meat, vegetables and dried fish etc. There are many shopping malls, some of which are filled with individual traders and others that have international brands. There are also a couple night markets and a large market on Gaya street on a Sunday morning. Waking through the market, having already succumbed to purchasing yet another T-shirt, I noticed a couple of cops grilling a market stall holder, who was selling fake watches. I thought that he was about to get his collar felt, but it soon transpired that they were actually buying a watch from him.

Malaysian is much much easier than Thai to learn. The alphabet is the same as ours and there are no tones to worry about. So it’s very easy to learn a few words. Most signs are in English as well anyway, the plugs are the same as the UK and 999 is the emergency number. In fact I went on a heritage walk in Kuching, with a local guide and we were walking through an area full of colonial architecture, talking about the Brooke family, who were Rajah’s here in the past. The first Rajah, James Brooke was gifted the region from the sultan of Brunei in 1841 after helping him quash a rebellion. So when the guide heard I was English he said welcome home, sir. Without a hint of irony I might add!

There are numerous famous dishes here, but many start with the word nasi or mee, which means rice and noodles respectively. Nasi lemak (fatty rice) or Nasi Goreng (with meat and vegatables) are common. Roti with a variety of stuffings is also popular, as is Laksa and each region has it’s own version of Laksa. The cuisine is a real melting pot of flavours and spices, incorporating Chinese, Indian and Malay, but with their own unique twist. There are also numerous vendors with various brightly coloured tubs of liquid from white through to flourescent green. I tried a coconut one and as I walked away drinking it, I thought for a moment it was off, as the taste was very strange, but after a moment I realised that it had salt in it. Perhaps not a bad thing in this humidity where you are constantly sweating.

Before heading off to the jungle I though I would do some diving and so I headed out to Mamutik island with Scuba Junkies. I booked my Jungle trip with their sister company River Junkies.

There were a few people doing their advanced Padi course, mainly because they want to go on to the Sipidan islands to dive and you have be have at least an advanced qualification for that. The others in the group seemed very serious.

They had all of their own equipment including dive watches, waterproof camera’s, full wetsuits, flippers and torches. Except for me who had nothing apart from the kit included with the dive. Oh and Doug as well, he only had a pointy metal stick. A larger than life American, who was literally too big for a wetsuit. He also needed eight lead weights and his BCD didn’t even do up at the front. A really nice guy, who lives here part of the year with his Malaysian wife. The pointy stick, by the way, is a great idea. It allows you to push off from a reef if the current or your buoyancy causes an issue or you can lift a frond out of the way to see better without using your hand and risking damage to the coral or a bite from an annoyed creature.

I saw quite a few fish despite the visibility being fairly poor due to the rainy season. The Trigger fish here are docile unlike their crazed psychopath cousins in the gulf of Thailand. In addition there were several types of nudibranch, a large spanish mackeral, stingrays and school of barracuda to name a few. I could only do two out of the three planned dives as I have to fly tomorrow and you need to leave at least 18 hours between diving and flying, so I sat on an island enjoying the beach for an hour until they came back for me.

Another day, another flight. This one is number 3 of the 7 or so I will take over the next two weeks. Oooh you carbon belching, eco-villain I hear you say. The problem is that are a lot of twisty, bad roads and jungle in between destinations, so it’s a 45 minute flight or at least 8 hours on a bus, which as most of them appear to have been manufactured in the 1960’s would no doubt be worse anyway. Actually, I’m quite happy to fly anyway. 😉

So I’m off to Sandakan, south of KK and home to the Kinabatangan river and Seppilok reserve. My first night I am staying a lodge at the edge of the park, where you can go in and see orangutangs and several types of monkey.

I arrived in time to go to the reserve and catch the afternoon feeding time. The Orangutangs are amazing to watch and are very intelligent. They have an IQ of around 75 apparently and even make their own medicine. There were a few baby ones as well, hanging on to their mother’s as they swung between the trees or along ropes. A couple of them decided to hop over a railing and stroll along the wooden walkway just a few yards in front of me! I met a family from Johur Bahru, a city at the base of Malaysia across the river from Singapore and got chatting to them. Their English was excellent and they offered to take me out for the day when I get to Johur.

My transfer bus picked me up at the reserve the next morning for the 2 hour drive to the Hornbill lodge set on the banks of Kinabatangan river in the jungles of eastern Sabah. The Hornbill is the national bird of Malaysia and here, there are several different types.

Included in my trip are transfers, 4 river cruises and 2 night walks as well as meals and 2 nights accommodation. All for 600 ringitt. (£100), a very good deal I thought.

There are around one hundred villages dotted along the length of the river, but only 5 are involved in tourism and are set up to receive guests with accommodation, boats and other facilities. That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to visit other villages, just that there would be nothing there for you.

In the past, our guide explained, they used to swim in the river, but now it is considered too dangerous as there are plenty of crocodiles, even though they are smaller here than Australia. There probably were plenty in the past too, but they didn’t worry so much, he thinks.

There are occasional deaths on the banks of the river, but never the locals. It is always people from outside who come to fish, who don’t know the river and its dangers.

We head out on a powerful open top boat with around a dozen seats, cruising down river and going from bank to bank in our search of wildlife. I am on a boat with 4 other people so it is not crowded. It is low season and not very busy at all, which is great in my opinion.

At one point we see a rope stretched across the river high above our heads. It is there to allow the orangutangs to cross from one side to the other as they cannot swim and are scared of the water.

Soon we can see probiscous monkeys, that exist no where else on the planet, as well as some macaques. We see some small crocodiles on the banks and in the water as well as some kingfishers and rhinocerous hornbills. Then we get lucky and see some Orangutangs playing in the trees.

I took my bright orange towel and raincape that I bought in KK, especially for this trip, but I don’t need them, except to protect my legs a little from the sun, which is still blazing down at 4.30pm.

We are out about 2 hours and as dusk descends, we head back to our lodge, to freshen up, have a drink and dinner before heading out for a night walk in the jungle.

The food is good, a type of buffet with a variety of different main dishes. It is not very spicy as they cater for tourists, so I ask the chef if he would make some sambal for me, which is a very spicy malaysian sauce that they eat with most things. I have no doubt that they must have some in the kitchen and I find that I am suddenly very popular as there are a few of my fellow tourist who are quite keen on having some sambal too.

As it’s rainy season the ground in the jungle is very muddy and so we put on wellies, there are leech socks available to buy too, but no one goes for those. Despite the humidity and heat I wear jeans and a long sleeved top as there are mosquito’s galore in the jungle. A couple of tourists have shorts and crop tops on and they get bitten a lot. One girl finds a leech on her leg, but a quick spray of insect repellent and a flick of the finger from our guide and it is gone.

We see a mouse deer, several frogs resting on broad leaves and poisonous centipedes as we walk by. We also see a brightly coloured blue eared kingfisher perched on a branch staring straight ahead. Although he is not moving and unbothered by our torches, the guide assures us that he is not yet asleep. When they sleep they tuck their heads under their wings otherwise the mosquito’s like to land on their eyes, which is the only way they can bite them. A slow loris peers at us from high in the tree canopy, picked out by our guides powerful torch. Fortunately it is some distance away as their bite is very poisonous.

The next boat ride is at dawn and there is a heavy mist on the river so visibility is not great, although it is nice and cool. None the less we still saw quite a lot of wildlife, including a family of monkeys playing by the river side, but as the fog was hiding, what the weather was doing above, the guide did not know a deluge was on its way. Luckily a break in the fog allowed him to assess the situation and he spun the boat around and opened up the engine and we flew along the river back towards base.

The rain started as we raced along and I pulled out my cape. I wasn’t able to put it on with the wind whipping away at me, but I was able to huddle under it and use it as a shield, which was great for me as the heavens opened, but everyone else was soaked. Actually we were the lucky ones as it didn’t take us long to get back. There were other boats further out that had to spend quite a while in the downpour with no cover.

There were more boat trips and more animals to see, but unfortunately there were no pygmy elephants. There is a herd of around 100 on the way, but they are still a few days away from the area. Some of them have a gps tag so that they can be looked after and managed by the rangers.

Our trip over, the bus took us back to the main town of Sandakan. As I couldn’t fly from there to Kuching, I decided to go back to KK and spend a couple more nights there before flying onwards.

Sandakan is fairly run down. There is a heritage trail of sorts starting with a set of stairs that is famously called the 100 steps and leads up to Agnes Keith house and some great views. Unfortunately it was raining hard, so the views were minimal. Furthermore the 100 steps, are in fact 204 steps, followed by a few hundred metres of steep pathway, which turns a corner and then presents you with another 34 steps.

There are a few waterfront restaurants and a big indoor market. There are two roof top bars in town, with excellent views, but only one of them actually serves anything stronger than lemonade. All in all Sandakan is not very interesting and I’m glad I’m only here for the night.

Next morning my flight goes smoothly and I am delighted to be back in KK again at my lovely hotel in Asia City.

My 2 nights fly by and I am soon on the flight to Kuching. It is like taking an international flight despite it being within Malaysia. Several stamps are added to my passport and we are soon airborne.

Kuching is very different to KK, the airport is a bit further out and the sprawling city doesn’t look at first glance very interesting.

However once you reach the centre all that changes. There is a decent sized Chinatown and Indian part and the colonial influence is very marked here. Many of the buildings are in that style, with covered walkways to protect you from the sun or more likely, at the moment, the regular downpours.

Once I checked in to my hotel, an old colonial lodge in the centre of the old town, I went out with a guide and 2 other tourists for an hour long walk around the area. One of my fellow tourists was Spanish and the other Chinese, but it was all conducted in English, which they seemed perfectly happy about. The Chinese guy filmed most of it on his phone!

We learnt some fascinating history about the place. The first Rajah was James Brooke and he had a large house on the other side of the river, right on the bank, opposite the government building. Apparently this was so he could check that people were going into work! Now it is next to the state legislature. In front of that is an impressive fountain display, held twice every night. It resembles a fireworks display, but with multi coloured jets of water and lasts about half an hour.

You can watch from the riverbank or the impressive ‘S’ shaped pedestrian bridge which spans the river.

There are plenty of craftsmen and artisans here. On one street you could see old men hammering sheets of aluminum. Making whatever is required from cooker hoods to more intricate items. Others were grinding spices or making furniture.

There is a lot of great food here, from the local Laksa sarawak with prawns to tiny shop fronts selling satay with their own special sauce and chicken and rice shops with queues for a table it’s so tasty. I ate at all of them and more 🙂 All you needed was a good downpour as an excuse to drop in for a snack.

Kuching apparently received it’s name because the traders on the river used to park their boats under the shade of a longan fruit tree. The word for a longan fruit in Malay is mata kucing ( cat’s eye), so when they where asked where they’d parked they would say ‘by the Kucing tree’.

Kuching is known as cat city as Kucing means cat in Malay and there is a statue of several cats by the river. I didn’t notice a particular prevalence of cats though.

Kai Joo street, which has been through various incarnations, such as coffin street and opium street. It is often still called opium street for it’s past association with opium dens. It is here that you can sample the famous butter coffee, drunk by the opium smokers of old, as the fat in the butter soothed their throats.

Nestled in with the colonial architecture are several mosques. From the hidden and ancient Indian mosque, found down tiny little alley ways to the impressive masjid Jamek on the river. There are a few lovely bars as well, that wouldn’t look out of place in England.

I also went on a boat along the river for about an hour, but there wasn’t a great deal to see apart from little houses on stilts and some boat yards.

I decided to fly in to Singapore and spend a couple of hours there, before crossing the river at the woodlands checkpoint back into Malaysia and Johor Bahru.

My three days in Kuching over, I flew into of Singapore and in the short time I was there my impression was that it was very clean. Being very small for a whole country, there are tall apartment blocks everywhere, but they all look spotless from the road. Not even where you would expect to see some staining on the concrete from rain water running down the sides of the buildings.

The airport is very smart as is the massive Jewel shopping centre with it’s gardens and waterfall. The largest indoor waterfall in the world is really impressive.

The Woodlands crossing into Malaysia was quite busy, but nothing like it can be, with 45 minute traffic jam and long queues. I took the bus, but there is also a train or you can even walk across. It’s an easy process and I was soon in JB Sentral, a large train station and shopping complex. My hotel is nearby, right in the middle of things and across the road from a huge night market full of clothes, food stalls, leather goods and much more.

The family I met in Borneo are picking me up this morning to take me on a bit of a tour of the city.

Roziaini and his wife Shekin together with their daughter arrived in their car and we went off for lunch at a place they like about 15 minutes away. The restaurant was unusual in that a robot ‘waiter’ delivers the food to your table! I tried the Johur Bahru laksa and quite a few other dishes that I don’t remember the names of, but were all delicious.

As it is Friday, Roziaini has to go off and pray at a mosque. As his wife and daughter aren’t allowed to pray this week, she suggests I drive the car while he is at prayer and so I suddenly find myself driving around Johor Bahru.

The King of Malaysia is based on a rotating 5 year term. They live in the palace in KL, whilst they are king. The current king is the Sultan from this region and we drove past the palace he will live in again once he returns to being just a plain old sultan and a new king from another region of Malaysia takes over.

The Sultan’s son had the huge Johur Bahru football stadium built. It is famous through out Asia and has one of the best teams, I’m told. My new friends bought me a shirt as a souvenir, which is actually a really nice shirt.

We visited a lake and a few other places, before heading to an exhibition of old artifacts, letters and pictures from the colonial days and the earliest Sultans. It is a friend of Shekin that runs the exhibition, so we had a bit of a guided tour and it was very interesting. At one point Roziaini had to dash off to pray again.

Then it was time to say goodbye, but not before we stopped for another snack of various cakes and coffee. They really like their sweet treats over here, in fact in Asia in general it’s a popular thing.

I’m flying back to Bangkok tomorrow, so I spent my last evening wandering the night markets and sampling some more food from the many stalls.

Danika will here in about 2 weeks, so I’m heading back to Sasipa’s house for a couple of weeks before driving back to Bangkok to meet Danika at the airport. Can’t wait to see her again, after more than a year!