Braving Borneo

Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei:  Palm Garden Hotel

First and foremost, this hotel is kind of out on it’s own.  It’s not in the city center, it’s not next to the Gadong market (although the walk is only about 10-15 minutes and they’ll drive you there for $5 Brunei).  I was a bit disappointed as we drove up, I checked in and went up to my room.  It is pretty basic, and seems a little run down.  That said, I was just at Le Meridien in Paris a couple night before, so maybe it was just shock of the change.  The staff was very friendly and helpful, I paid $88 brunei including breakfast (about 45€), there is air conditioning, a small pool, and a very nice fitness club on site.  Major drawback for me was the very hard bed.  Overall in summary: decent value for money, location a bit of a challenge, bed not comfortable for “soft mattress” lovers, but otherwise okay.

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia:

Eden 54

I liked this hotel.  The lady at check in was very friendly and helpful, offering luggage storage if I needed, pointing me towards a restaurant for dinner and supermarket to buy a few snacks.  My room was a bit small but very nicely decorated with dark wood floors, nice colors and furnishings, bed was a bit on the hard side but not too bad.  Free Wifi available in the rooms, I think I paid about 35€. Location is good, in a bustling part of the city with shopping and restaurants right outside, waterfront not too far away.  I would stay there again.

Palace Hotel

This was my favorite hotel.  I had a beautiful, spacious room with wood floors,modern and comfortable furnishings and decorating, a nice bathroom and two relatively comfortable super-twin sized beds.   The entire hotel is very stylish and inviting, with a lovely pool area, nice fitness room, and on-site spa.  My massage therapist was great, and a 60 minute aromatherapy massage only cost about 18€.  Free Wifi in the lobby, air conditioning in the rooms, price including breakfast &tax was about 45€.  The only drawback is location, as the Palace hotel sits on the outskirts of town and really too inconvenient to walk.  A taxi costs 15 MYR (about 4.5€) into town. Still a nice place to stay and I would definitely go here again, especially if you’re looking for relaxation and not intent on the bustling city life.

Hotel Sixty3

Modern, comfortable hotel in a good location.  Since I was miserably sick, I got the most out of the comfortable bed: wasn’t really able to enjoy anything else!   It is farther from the airport than the Palace Hotel, so unless you want proximity to town, I personally preferred the Palace (with on-site spa, pool, etc).  But this one is also nice, similar cost and directly in town with shopping / restaurants just outside.

Very nice room for my last night in Malaysia

Mt. Kinabalu, Pendant Hut:

Small hut with dorm rooms.  Bed comfortable enough, sleeping bag, inner sleeping bed and pillow provided (so you don’t have to carry them up the mountain!).  Bring a small towel.  Very friendly staff, tea and coffee available all day.  Not heated, sitting around requires warm clothes.  Breakfast served at the hut (basic food), dinner served a few meters down the hill at Laban Rata (nice buffet).

Nature Lodge Kinabatangan

Good cost/benefit ratio.  Basic accommodation surrounded by jungle, my 1 night package included a bed in a 5-bed dorm room, dinner and breakfast, 2 river safaris and one night jungle walk for 370 MYR (about 100€).  The dorms are built in raised huts, limiting the number of non-human visitors inside, although I did have a friendly gecko perched on the wall next to my bed.  We had shared bathrooms and the showers looked a little scary but were fine.  Overall very natural, I would stay there again despite a not-so-comfortable bed (I could feel the lattice through the mattress).  Our jungle guide was great – very knowledgeable, superb English, entertaining stories and examples about the animals.  There are probably nicer places to stay, but this was good and budget-friendly.

Semporna, Scuba Junkie Dive Lodge

First, please note that a number of establishments run under the Scuba Junkie name: the dive lodge (backpackers lodge) in Semporna, a Bar / restaurant next to the lodge, the dive shop, and the Mabul Beach resort out on mabul island.  It’s important to keep them apart in your thinking, because I rate them quite differently.  I was not impressed with the Lodge in Semporna.  Very dark, dank, musty dorm room, toilets and showers in integrated cabins (3 of them on our floor, not sure if there were more elsewhere) meaning wet toilets all the time, check in staff didn’t seem very helpful or knowledgeable.  The plus: ease (across the street from dive shop), free Wifi, and cheap.  If you dive with Scuba Junkie, a dorm bed including breakfast only costs 25MYR (about 7€).  I can’t say I would stay there again, mainly because of the dark, dank room.  Felt a bit like sleeping in a dungeon.  But maybe there are some better rooms.

Mabul Beach Resort

Love it.   For a few days, maybe up to a week.  Right off the beach sits a collection of little beach huts, main  building with restaurant and bar, and a large building housing some dorm rooms.  The resort jetty is also right there at the beach, with the dive shop at the end of the jetty right next to where you board the dive boats.  My first night, I was in a 10-bed dorm room which was a bit hot and the air felt stale during the night (too many people breathing the same air).  The room itself was nice, all wood floored and paneled, nice looking and relatively comfortable beds, toilets and showers  en suite (4 of them, same strange integrated idea as at the lodge, albeit a bit bigger so water doesn’t get everywhere quite as much).   On my second night, I moved to one of the individual huts and it is great.  One double and one twin bed, ensuite bathroom that is quite roomy, nice porch with table and chairs out front.  All wood paneled and floored, ceiling and standing fan and some huts have airconditioning (you pay more). All rooming options here include 3 meals a day and a small snack at the end of the dive day, around 16:00.  Water, tea and coffee available in the restaurant, pretty much whenever you want it in my experience.  The food is good albeit somewhat monotonous – hence my note that a few days and up to a week is great.  I paid 95 MYR (about 25 €) for the dorm bed and all meals, and 170 MYR (45€) for the beach hut (single supplement, normal price is 115 MYR pp double occupancy).  The huts with air conditioning run about 60 MYR more per day.

The staff is great, especially the guys in the dive shop and the dive staff.  Although also reception and dining room staff are friendly and helpful.   I can definitely recommend this as a good, laid-back place to visit.  Very down to earth, mix of western and asian travelers (mainly western), both long-term travelers/backpackers and regular vacationers.  A bunch of like minded people intent on diving – early to bed, early to rise, conversation centers around diving and travel.  Nice experience overall!

My transfer was supposed to pick me up in front of the S.O.R.C between 12:30 and 12:40.  After watching a few minivans come and go (without me), I started to get nervous.  At 12:45 I tried to call the contact number I had – no answer.  I waited in the baking sun, and sweated, and waited a bit more.  Finally around the corner came a bus!  And they had my name on their list!  What a relief.

It took us about 2 hours to get to the part of the Kinabatangan River where the Nature Lodge is located.  Most of that time we drove my palm plantations, where they harvest the fruit and make palm oil (for cooking, cosmetics, etc).  These palm plantations, while doing a lot to help the Malaysian economy, are the primary reason Orang-utans are endangered.  Massive deforestation has happened to make way for the palm trees, leaving many small pockets of rainforest that are not big enough to support Orang-utans.  And as Orang-utans’ primary mode of transportation is swinging – and they cover large distances to find enough food – the plantations as well as rivers and such provide unhelpful borders.

Palm plantation

Jungle - this is what Borneo is supposed to look like!

Once into the rainforest, we unloaded the bus, loaded a boat, and motored over to the lodge.  Which is beautiful.  Trying to keep costs down, I booked a far-from-luxury but very integrated into nature lodge, and it was a good choice.  A few drawbacks (will document in my reviews section once I get to it), but overall had a good experience.  Our jungle guide, Mohammed, was great!  He really made an effort to tell us about the different wildlife we were seeing – their living, eating, reproducing habits and how they interact with each other.

We checked in and within 20 minutes were back out on the river for our afternoon river safari.

Heading out on safari

Cruising down the river. lined with jungle

A happy safari customer!

Having taken millions of photos (okay – 458 to be accurate), I’ll do my best to sort out just a few to provide an overview. Here is at least a partial sighting list:

Orang-utan (albeit way off in the distance)

green viper

macaque monkeys (loads of them!)

silver leaf monkeys (very rare and no photo – he took off quickly when he heard us approach)

hornbills

egrets

and the crowning sight of the evening – a tree filled with proboscis monkeys, including the dominant male.

A word about proboscis – they are only in Borneo.  The male has a very strange and big nose.  They are very shy monkeys, so sightings are quite exciting (I’m wondering if the nose thing contributes to being shy?  Certainly was a factor in my childhood shyness).  There are two kinds of groups in which proboscis live: a harem (dominant male with lots of wives)  or in a bachelor group (all the guys that don’t end up with a harem).  Listening to our tree full of proboscis screeching around, Mohammed’s words of wisdom: “that’s what happens with lots of wives…lots of family discussions.”

Dominant male Proboscis monkey

Back at the lodge, we had a 30 minute break to chill out and watch the bats fly around, then dinner and gearing up for our night jungle walk.  So here’s the thing and maybe you can help me understand it.  I wasn’t really worried about snakes (which are mostly poisonous around here), but I took tremendous pains to do whatever possible to ensure no leeches could get me (which are harmless creatures).  How does that make sense?  We all had to wear rubber boots because there’s been a lot of rain and mud – I was late picking mine up and ended up with some 3 sizes too big.  Oh well.  Left them on the porch and went in to pull on another pair of socks.  When I came out again, my boots were gone , apparently swapped out by some german students living in the dorm next to us.  And a pair of boots 5 sizes too big left in their place. Hmmmm.

Off into the dark we marched, flashlights on, boots sloshing, jungle sounds all around.  It was pretty cool.  At first. And then we reached the first mudhole.  Squish, squash, boot stuck, no – got it, squish, made it.  Sigh of relief and march on, looking for a ghost monkey and finding a flying lemur.  Next mudhole: squish, squash, stuck boot, pull, squash, squish, stuck…falling off!… no, falling over.  Hard to keep your balance in a jungle mudhole when trying to prevent your boot from falling off AND worrying about leeches

room-mate #5

at the same time.  And unfortunately, that was it.  I had trouble enjoying the rest of the walk and was very happy when we got back and I could dive into the (kind of scary looking) shower.  After getting cleaned up, went to bed, said good night to my female roommates and roommate #5  (a friendly gecko perched on the wall next to me) and slept away.

Day 2 was supposed to start with a 6:00 river safari.  Unfortunately, it started with someone’s alarm going off at 5:00.  Followed by her rummaging around for 20 minutes finding her stuff before heading to the bathroom.  WHAT?  Who gets up an hour early to go on a river safari?  Are you kidding me?  The rest of us had set alarms for 5:45 – I mean, how long can it take to pull on clothes and brush teeth?  It’s the jungle for crying out loud. I doubt the monkeys care how you look.

Mortal Lizard

Grey Eagle

Macaque - deep in thought

A wary Mama macaque, watching out for her baby

Safari was again great, followed by a big breakfast and packing up.  I am a bit sorry to leave this jungle – the beautiful trees and landscape, the mysteriousness of it, the wildlife and the pure nature here – this is how I’ve always imagined Borneo.  Next time (if I get back here), it will include a longer stay in the rainforest!

Macaques are amazing jumpers, covering up to 4-5m in a single leap