AWOL Geordie - Steve’s global adventure

Hi, I am currently in Penang, Northern Malaysia. I was watching TV one night when the cheesiest ever tourism advert accosted my senses. Malaysia is heavily promoting 2007 as the ‘Visit Malaysia Year’ and uses ‘Malaysia, Malaysia the essence of Asia’ as the main line in the tune that accompanies the advert. Wow, don’t you just want to line up these advertising tossers and sling bricks at them?

I never made it up the Rejang river, I got back to Kuching and indulged in some boozing with two great Aussie lads and a Cumbrian hotel worker. I did visit the Sarawak museum and the Islam museum as a token effort to do something not booze related. I went to an aquarium and saw a huge crocodile although I was too hungover to think anything of it.

I left some great friends behind at the weird Anglican church hostel where I was staying when I headed back to Kuala Lumpur to meet my lass Fen. We headed straight to the very nice Pangkor Island on the West coast of peninsular Malaysia. A week was spent here swimming, snorkeling, kayaking, sunbathing, jungle trekking, reading, motorbiking and eating. We stayed in ‘A-frame’ digs which consisted of a small wooden tent type thing on the jungle periphery. During the week we saw: Hornbill birds, Sea Eagles, Monkeys, Snakes, Lizards, BIG scary jellyfish and many leeches. After a short jaunt into the jungle I noticed my ankles were covered in blood! I had FIFTEEN leeches sucking the blood out of my body. They had penetrated my socks. I took my shoes and socks of and flicked them all away, but my feet were covered in blood. It looked worse than it felt but as this was my first encounter with the little critters, I was a little disconcerted. An Indian geezer offered assistance and explained that these leeches are totally harmless (although this is hard to believe when your feet are bleeding profusely - I lost pints man!). I am glad I never experienced this in Borneo, I still have the marks on my ankles now.

We also had a sort of standoff with a huge pack of Macaque monkeys. I hate these creatures, they reckon they are so hard. We had just found a great spot to watch the sunset when these annoying shitty little monkeys started harassing us. I frightened the alpha male away but he came back with rienforcements - the whole troop of about 20 monkeys. I tried to get rid of them again but they stood their ground growling and flashing their teeth (strength in numbers you see, the worry is if one manages to bite you, you don’t know what disease you might get). Then they started advancing on our position so we backed off and found a big stick. Now armed with my stick I went back to claim my sunset-viewing position, however, the monkeys had retreated to the trees and intimidated us from above. The fact is I couldn’t believe how afraid I became when there were so many of them. I thought monkeys were cute when I was at home but not now - not Macaques, I would cull the pests if I were local. The locals tell me that these monkeys can ’smell’ that you are a foreigner as they are afraid of the locals, I don’t know about that.

Georgetown (or Penang as it more informally known) is Malaysia’s number 2 city. It is a canny place situated on a large island in the North West of the country. There are a few English colonial buildings from when we kicked arse around these parts. There is an impressive fort built to defend the island and all manner of impresive Hindu/Muslim/Christian temples, mosques and churches. Tomorrow, we are hring a bike to tour the city and island and on Friday we head for Hat Yai in the South of Thailand for 1 month of beaches and islands - Life can be such a bitch sometimes!

Melaka turned out to be a small, nice, quiet city. Very relaxing. It has a history that involves the Portuguese, Dutch and yes the English too (we were everywhere man). Infact, 2007 is the 50th anniversary of Malaysian independence from guess who?????……yes, the English. Many building styles are in evidence here. The first night here I got hammered in a bar with three Malay trainee Doctors (Warning - V Expensive beer here). They wanted to play pool and I kept winning (I was at the point when you have had just the right amount of beer). Then some Chinese lads wanted to challenge me, but for a beer per game to the winner. I had a real lucky run and won 5 or 6 games in a row and started to get really pissed when I finally lost one. It was a good laugh and put me at ease with the country which is actually a really good place to visit - very pleasant and friendly. To sobre myself up a little, I went to one of the 24hr coffee bar things which have a very Arab feel about them. I met this lad who worked there and he said when he finished at 0800 we can get some more booze from the shop and go to his house to drink it! You know me - I’m like ‘No bother - let’s go’! So off I go to meet his family over a beer and meal! It was good. The Father wore one of those Muslim hats and did his prayer thing now and then. It was quite an experience. We slept all day then I walked back to his coffee bar at 2000.

I took a walk along the city river with an ex-Royal navy geezer to see the ‘Kampungs’ (traditional Malay villages with houses on stilts) and we saw more than we bargained for. As we approached the village, the mudbanks of the river was swarming with mudskippers (like the things from the Guiness adverts), but more impressively, massive Monitor Lizards! These things were as big as a man with big fat bellies. They were totally wild and it was a relief they were more scared of us than we were of them! They were perfectly at home sheltering underneath the houses and swimming in the dirty river. All this is to a background sound of hypnotic Islamic chanting from one of the many Mosques. These chants are amplified through loudspeakers and occur at regular intervals during the day - it was a first for me.

I took a bus to Kuala Lumpur (KL) the capital of Malaysia. Four nights here spent drinking and trying not to choke on the traffic fumes. I visited the Batu caves - huge limestone cliff caverns where Hindu shrines and worshippers are in abundance. Soon there is a festival here where approx one million people come. I am told that some men pull weights along the ground by means of metal hooks hooked into their skin! I think this is to show their faith or something! The omnipresent Macaque monkeys reckon they are really hard. I visited the Petronas Towers - two hugely impressive silvery/glassy/shiny structures linked by a ’sky bridge’. I was too late to go up the things but it was enough to see these man-made giants from the bottom.

It was with much joy and relief that I boarded an aeroplane and headed out of this sprawling metropolis. I was headed for Borneo and the adventures therein. I spent 2 nights in Kuching with quite bad flu (bloody air-con in KL). I still felt rough when I went to Bako National Park for the next 4 nights. Anyway, despite the illness, this place was mint (I am running out of superlatives as I wax lyrical about all these locations). I saw among other things: Pitcher plants (the ones that eat insects and small mammals), Proboscis Monkeys, Silver Leaf Monkeys, Macaques, Bearded Pigs (you get these in the Bigg Market too), numerous Snakes (couldn’t identify the buggers), Bats, Rats, Squirrels, loads of multi-coloured birds and enough vegetation to keep David Bellamy occupied for years. Insects also like it here - they are here in their billions, big ones, little ones, biting ones and worst of all those mosquitoes - aaahhhh.

I went on long hikes everyday to waterfalls, secluded beaches and hill tops for glorious views. These hikes were exhausting. I did 11km one day but it feels like 20km in England. The heat and humidity make you sweat like some kind of weird alien creature. The effort is worth it though as you find yourself alone, miles from any human, deep in the dark, dense, steamy, exotic, scary but thrilling rain forest. These places are giving the name ‘rain forest’ because it rains very much………funny eh? To say it rains ‘a bit’ here is like saying Simon Cowell is ‘a bit’ gay. All the clothes I have been wearing stink to high heaven. I have washed them but they don’t dry properly and then you stink them out again within 5 mins anyway. My hiking boots??? Don’t even try to imagine what they smell like.

I did a night-hike with my two torch-owning Swedish room mates. I called them ‘George’ and ‘Bungle’ but they had never seen Rainbow. We hiked deep into the jungle with its deafening night chorus and then switched our lights off. What happened next was magical. Many of the decaying leaves were luminescent in the pitch blackness of the night. We didn’t expect this - beautiful. We saw many fire-flies doing their intoxicating nightly dance which was an honour to witness.

All in all, these 4 nights in the jungle have been one of the greatest experiences of my life. Next I want to head up the Batang Rejang river and see some tribal shit.

Ciao (Italian for Bye)

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