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Archive for December, 2005

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The Night of the Southern Cross

Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

I blinked at the unfamiliar constellations. It wasn’t a full moon, yet the fans of the banana leaves and the feathery bushels of oil palms stood out as clearly as if they had been drawn in crayon.
[read on]

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Kota Kinabalu

Tuesday, December 20th, 2005

This may have turned into a bit of a city-trip, but when the cities are as nice as Kota Kinabalu—the state capital of Sabah—I don’t mind.

The lashing rains and grey skies have finally given way to sunshine, the better to show off KK’s waterfront with little islands scattered across the bay.

On wooden jetties, fishermen get on with their work.
KK waterfront.jpg

The area around the harbour is dominated by the extensive market where traditional wheeling and dealing takes place in the shadow of modern high-rise buildings.
KK market.jpg

The market is divided into different areas. There is a meat market, a spice market and, in one dark hall, countless stalls displaying souveniers and local crafts.

But it was a hot day and thus time to relax at the coconut bar…
Coconut Bar
…before making my way back to the hostel down the main street. KK may mainly comprise concrete buildings, but a splash of paint gives them a gaudy appearance.
KK street

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Flying in Circles

Monday, December 19th, 2005

Time for another rant. I’m beginning to think I’m not very good at this travelling lark.

Despite the late night, I snapped awake 30 seconds before the Palm started bleeping. When I got out of the bathroom, the main lights in the corridor came on. I had settled the bill, but one of the girls from reception had gotten up all the same: “Want Taxi?”

“Thank you, but it is all arranged. Taxi comes at 6:30.”

She got on the phone anyway. The service at ‘Highlanders’ is superb. It was just as well.

“No taxi—come at 6:45 perhaps?”

“No taxi?”

“Is busy.”
[read on]

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Surf ‘n’ Turf, Jungle Style

Sunday, December 18th, 2005

I don’t dig the food here. The flavours are weak and poorly balanced. There is no heat, no tangyness and too much sweetness and I don’t care to acquire the taste of the dried fish with wich nearly everything is abundandly seasoned. Seems I’ve done nothing wrong when I tried to cook Malaysian/Nyonyan food from a recipe book—it just isn’t very good.

After a few weeks of this, I started to crave Western food; yesterday I almost walked into a KFC. So when I instead found the Indian restaurant which I had passed on my first day in Miri but never located again, I was overjoyed. Sheesh Kebab, alive and kicking in a fragrantly spiced chilli sauce, fresh Naan, sour Lassi—things looked up considerably, despite the drab weather and unreachable beach. And no rice! The owner hadn’t even suggested it—it seems he knows his clientele as well as his food. In the street cafés here, you’ll get a bowl of rice with your soup.

It’s amazing what difference a good meal can make. Body and Soul ‘n’ all.
[read on]

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Jungle or Coral Islands?

Sunday, December 18th, 2005

At first Miri looked bad. Then it looked good, with the sun setting across the spit of sand which separates the ‘Highlands’ backpacker lodge from the beach. I thought I’d catch the sunset. I had just finished catching up with the blog—which took 2½ hours—my clothes were in the wash and the showers were hot. Time to relax.

It looked bad again when I discovered that the advertised beach bars were actually off the map and not on square ‘A4’ as indicated. By then I had walked my feet bloody, trying to get to the beach which was inaccessible across the Miri River.
[read on]

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Borneo Highway Express

Saturday, December 17th, 2005

(Cheers, ‘Blablablabla’ for this link to travels in Indonesia—forewarned is forearmed 😉 )

The nightbus to Miri would not leave until nine—I don’t know why I booked such a late departure, especially as the buses to the coach terminal only run until seven. I had nothing left to do, so I showered, said my good-byes and was at the main bus stop at the Padang Merdeka (Freedom Plaza) before 6.

A 3A bus rolled by just as I got there, not deigning to stop. It didn’t even turn in like it was supposed to, just went right past on the main lane. And it wasn’t full. Perhaps the driver had a bad day, driving off in a huff and leaving his passengers in the lurch. Bus drivers are like that sometimes. No matter, there were no fewer than seven different buses going in that direction.

I sat forlornly at the bus stop for almost an hour while the people who had been waiting with me peeled off in one and twos, boarding minivans, none which were going my way. At a quarter to seven, I shoulderd the backpack and trudged through the stifling heat all the way to the local bus depot, sweating out my fresh, soapy smell and the mozzie repellent. There in the gloomy shadow stood a dark 3A bus. To my surprise, there were people inside. I got on and stewed in my own juices. After a few minutes, the driver appeared, geared up the engine and we roared past the bus stop at exactly seven o’clock—turning in as supposed to, but there were no more passengers to be picked up.
[read on]

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Magical Morning

Saturday, December 17th, 2005

On my last day in Kuching I managed to catch the 7:00 am bus to the Sarawak Forestry reserve at Semenggoh, home to the state’s botanical collections and to an Orang Utan rehabilitation centre in a 630 ha rainforest reserve. 22 of the apes have been rehabilitated in this centre after being rescued from captivity or confiscated from poachers and a group of them are now breeding there. They still depend on humans for supplementary feeding (the site isn’t big enough to support them) but during the rainy season, one of the keepers at the information office said with a shrug, I would be lucky to see them: “Many trees are fruiting.”

No sooner had he spoken than a rustling in the trees announced the arrival of a mother and her one-month old baby—the park’s youngest resident. And she wasn’t over at the feeding platform but right in front of us at the visitor compound.

Nursing mothers need feed, I thought even as she was joined by two juveniles, hanging in the branches above us like benevolent apparitions, with the sunlight glittering through the leaves around them. I had to rub my eyes to believe it.

Semenggoh1
[read on]

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Bubble Tea with Cayce

Friday, December 16th, 2005

Seems that every day at five, without fail, the internet goes down. This is also the last time that I’m blogging from that horrible basement internet café, so I’ll keep this brief. Better updates hopefully tomorrow from Miri.

It was a lovely surprise when Cayce, a fellow Bootsnaller and local biologist featured in Daniel Wallace’s blog, got in touch, suggesting we meet up.

I had, somewhat hastily, booked a ticket for the nightbus to Miri for the following day (today), thinking myself lucky that she found the time for a quick chat, but she emailed back with an invitation to attend a wildlife film festival and a bird watching trip to Baku National Park over the weekend. For a while I was tempted to cancel that bus.

Back then, I’d followed Daniel’s and her escapades during his stay in Kuching avidly, my own travel plans still far off. I particularly remember an entry titled ‘Good Girls Drink Bubble Tea’. Like most of Daniel’s writing, it is funny and engaging and quite thought-provoking, but it left me with one burning question: what the hell is bubble tea? Google revealed that it is soy milk or flavoured tea with sago pearls (bubbles) in it and that it is not actually Malaysian but originated in Taiwan, although it’s fast becoming popular all over Asia.

One day, I thought: I, too, will drink bubble tea in Asia!—and ended up doing it in Kuching, with Cayce. A travel fantasy turned reality. By the way, the stuff is highly recommended; it is almost more of a meal than a drink. I’m keeping an eye out for more.

Cayce has a keen interest in travel and wanted to hear all about my plans. I told her that I was going to try to enter Indonesia via Tawau and continue on to Sulawesi and the Moluccas. On the way I hoped to see a lot more of Borneo, but off the beaten track if possible.

“That is amazing,” said the woman who has spent five years studying wild Orang Utans in the rainforest in the heart of Borneo and was currently in the process of organising a two-day international wildlife film festival.

No, that is amazing!

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Interlude

Wednesday, December 14th, 2005

If this entry is written badly, blame the internet café downstairs in this shopping mall. The woman running it listens to badly recorded Malaysian pop at full volume on the computer opposite. The Borneo B&B will have internet access from tomorrow, so perhaps I can do better then.

As the KLIA Airport Express sped past the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur in the grey afternoon light, I was in a really shitty mood. It was just like being back in London, with the exception of the TV monitor glaring at eye-level. The opposite seat, underneath the screen, had been taken by a bloke who had weasled in just as I turned my back for a moment while rummaging in my rucksack. All my clothes were smelly again. I could smell myself and I was sure that everyone else could as well—the only backpacker in a train full of business travellers. The man sitting opposite shifted uneasily.

I wondered what had happened to my trip.
[read on]

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U-Turn

Monday, December 12th, 2005

If Taman Negara is the green heart of Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur the commercial head, so—some say—Melaka is its soul.

Steeped in history from centuries as a trading port, under successive occupation by the Dutch, Portuguese and British, home to the Straits Chinese, point of origin of Islam in Malaysia, swept along by the economic boom of the late twentieth century, Melaka is a city of intrigue and contrast. This was not only the LP gushing but also Siva, fellow resident at the Kameleon Lodge in KL, who extolled the lures of his home town to such an extent that I had already decided to stay for a night, even if I did not have to book the ferry ticket to Dumai a day in advance.

However, when the bus deposited us in the concrete wasteland around the Pasar Bazaar, I wondered whether Melaka actually has a soul. It does, but colourful buildings and colonial charm alternate with horrendous traffic and shopping mall consumer hells.
Melaka, Stadthuys2
All the while, I looked ahead to my onward travel plans with some trepidation. The ferry for the short hop to Dumai costs 90RM—for that amount of money you could almost fly—and travelling surface across Sumatra and Java would take at least a week. I’m not even that interested in Sumatra. Worse, there is no way of avoinding Jakarta on that journey. Phil and his girlfriend, who I had met yesterday and who have just made the trip in the opposite direction, confounded my worst fears about Jakarta: a thief-and bug-ridden cesspit of 20 million people which LP diplomatically suggests was not built with tourism in mind. Simply sitting it out at the bus station is not an option: not only do west- and east-bound buses leave from different terminals, making it necessary to cross the grid-locked city, but both are also miles out of town. As for the train, I shudder at memories of India. To boot, touts pounce on you before your feet even touch the ground.

I’d give a lot to avoid Jakarta.
Easter Heritage Guesthouse
I put these worries out of my mind when I eventually located the ‘Eastern Heritage’ guest house, recommended by Siva. Built in 1918, it oozes character. The receptionist showed me to the dorm in the attic—like something out of an adventure movie. There was a guy sitting on one of the beds who bet me a can of beer that he’s older than me; not a sign of the 20-something American backpacker crowd whose names I had spotted on the register. We swapped tales of our past travels and I felt at ease. This was going to be an adventure.
Easter Heritage, interior

Cue back to the 21st century when I had to jump over a gutter to escape the roaring traffic on the road outside. There, on the corner opposite from me, was an AirAsia ticket agency. Two hours later I had booked a flight to Kuching, Malaysian Borneo, leaving tomorrow evening. Looks like the beer isn’t going to be cheap for a while yet 😉

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