Shining Cities, White Sand Beaches, and Tropical Jungles

Our coach seats on our Malaysian Airlines flight from Bombay to Kuala Lumpur felt more like first class, probably more so because of some of the modes of transport we have taken in the last few months. But nothing prepared us for the KL airport with its shining glass and chrome, clean floors and washrooms, and functioning moving sidewalks. There was no sign of betel nut spit in any corners and not a cow to be seen in the entire terminal! And there, shining like a star at the end of the arrival hall, Starbucks! Our coffee cost as much as a 12-hour train ride in India, but it was worth every penny.

We were not expecting to experience culture shock after leaving India, but that was what it felt like when we reached Malaysia. We caught a bus from the airport to the city, about 60 km away, and could not stop staring at the beautifully clean and landscaped roadways with lines painted on every street… that people actually paid attention to! Traffic lights, pedestrian crosswalks, turn signals! To us it was overwhelming.

We spent a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur, a sterile but beautiful park-like city with more shopping malls than we’ve ever seen in one place. We stayed in the China town district which is also spotless but has a very nice open air market at night selling everything from exotic fruit to pirated DVD’s to chicken foot soup. We went to the Petronas Towers, the tallest buildings in the world. We did not go to the Towers’ lookout platform but instead went to the Menara KL Radio Tower (looks similar to the CN Tower) and viewed the city from there.

However even the nicest cities get boring after a while so we caught a bus southeast to the coastal town of Mersing where we hopped on a ferry to the island of Pulau Tioman. Tioman was made famous by Hollywood when the movie South Pacific was filmed there and it is definitely an island paradise. We rented a small shack on the Salang Beach and quickly made friends with the other travelers who had been on our boat. This island is busy in the dry season but right now Malaysia (predominantly a Muslim country) is in the middle of Ramadan and also on the cusp of the monsoon so we virtually had the beach to ourselves. Our little group of friends consisted of Mark and Christina (German); Tonya (Vancouver); Paola (Ecuador); Lisa (German interning in Singapore); Lucas (German); and Ilke (German living in London). We spent three glorious days swimming, hiking, sampling Malaysian beer, and relaxing. We found our own private bay with a reef just off the white-sand shore and discovered why it is called Monkey Beach when one of them grabbed a package of biscuits while we weren’t looking. One day we chartered a boat and Lucas and Tonya did some diving while the rest of us snorkeled in the crystal blue waters of the South China Sea. Every night we ate fresh seafood BBQ’d to order in banana leaves.

On the third morning we all caught the ferry back to the mainland. Kevin and I really had no definite plans about where we wanted to go in Malaysia. We bought our guidebook the day before we left India so we didn’t even have that much time to read about the country. Tonya was headed south to Malaysian Borneo and Lucas, Ilke, Kevin and I thought that sounded like a pretty good idea. The five of us boarded a bus to the city of Johor Bahru, which is situated just across the river from the city/country of Singapore. After an overnight stay and an early morning flight, we found ourselves in Borneo in the beautiful town of Kuching in the province of Sarawak. For accommodations we checked out a few seedy hotels and finally settled on the St. Thomas Diocesan Guest House, which is an old wooden building situated behind a large Anglican cathedral. The next item on the agenda was to source out the best and cheapest place to get some good food. The food-stall area we found was to be our main dining place for our time Kuching. Lucas and Kevin even their hands at cooking one night after a few Tiger beers.

We went to the Sarawak Museum and learned everything you would ever want to know about pottery shards and the excavation of the same. The older part of the museum housed taxidermied animals that I believe have been there since the exhibit opened in 1891. We wandered through the markets and found a quiet dock overlooking the peaceful Sarawak River where we got to know some of the locals. One extremely kind man even BBQ’d up some fish for us for dinner and would not take a cent in return.

The next day, the five of us rented a car from the Diocesan caretaker’s brother. The rental process involved him handing us the keys. We traveled out into Borneo’s thickly jungled countryside and explored two cave systems. The first was called Wind Cave and had some boardwalked sections and some tunnels where we just inched our way along the uneven, slippery floor with only the light of our torches. Outside the caves there was a muddy jungle river where Kevin decided to have a dip but to save getting his shorts wet, decided to jump in in the buff. Unfortunately for him the water was not as deep as he anticipated. In fact, it never got more than calf deep so there he was on the other side of the river with the rest of us looking on. He had to pull himself through the water on his belly to get back to shore with his dignity (somewhat) intact. The second cave was called Fairy Cave and just inside the entrance was a magnificent cavern illuminated by a hole where a portion of the roof caved in. This cave contained beautiful stalactites and stalagmites as well as a huge population of bats.

Our next stop was the Semenggoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre, which reintroduces captive orang-utans to the wild. Again, luck was with us and as soon as we walked into the park we spotted five of the orange, hairy beasts in the trees: two mothers with their babies and an adolescent. We observed the afternoon feeding time where we saw a massive male orang-utan as well as a two-week old baby. The male had extremely long fur and a flared face that made him look like he was wearing a costume. As he moved away from the feeding area, the trees bowed under his enormous weight.

The following day we drove to the coastal town of Bako where we boarded a boat to the peninsula that forms Bako National Park. This park has a well-marked and extensive trail system and although it can apparently be crowded on the weekends because of its proximity to Kuching, we had almost the whole park to ourselves. We hiked along narrow, root-covered trails through dense rainforest and up to a sandstone plateau where we saw carnivorous pitcher plants and very rare proboscis monkeys, which are the ones with the large, rubbery noses found only in Borneo. We also saw a huge bearded pig. Lucas went swimming in a black lagoon below a waterfall, dressed as only a German would be (see photo below) and then we hiked down a steep trail to a secluded beach where the sun came out while we enjoyed the lunch we had packed. The hike back to the boat dock was great as we saw even more monkeys and we somehow managed to avoid the scattered rain showers on our choppy boat ride back to Bako. The advice of a friendly local guided us to a riverside restaurant where we had some delicious prawns before heading back to Kuching to our favourite Chinese food-stalls.

This marked the end of our travels with Lucas, Tonya, and Ilke as they stayed in Borneo and we caught an early morning flight back to Johor Bahru. We really enjoyed our time with them and we had lots of laughs, good discussions and shared some amazing experiences. We look forward to seeing Tonya and Lucas again when Lucas comes to Vancouver for the last stop in his world tour in March next year. Now Kevin and I head back north to find some more beautiful beaches of which there seems to be no end in this amazing country.

B.

PS: If you’re interested, I have updated the “Food” section with an entry and photos about India.

Photos:
In KL Airport
Us at Petronas Towers, KL
Brandy Feeding the Fish - Tioman Island
Group Shot - Tioman Island
Brandy, Tonya, Ilke and Our New Malaysian Friends
Kevin and Lucas Cook?
Us and Borneo Rocks
Kevin, Tonya, Ilke in Wind Caves
Kevin's Shallow Water Scramble
Fairy Cave Cavern
Orang-utans
Bearded Pig
Pitcher Plant
German Swimwear
Beach Lunch
Sweaty Jungle
Proboscus Monkey

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