Borneo

FYI: There are a lot of hyperlinks in this post.  Any words in a different color are a link.  Just click.

I realize that I'm still missing at least four posts from my last holidays. I'm finding it difficult to write them before putting pen to paper (as it were) about the holiday I just had. I am experiencing deja vu.  I left Vietnam promises to come back as I didn't see even half of what I wanted to and now I feel the same way about Sabah.

It was a seven day trip in and around the town of Kota Kinabalu in the Sabah region of the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo.  Also on Borneo Island is the Malaysian state of Sarawak, Brunei, and an Indonesian section called Kalimantan. Borneo is one of those places that immediately makes one think of sand beaches, tropical vegetation and blue skies.  I didn't make it out of Sabah, but I will vouch for all the above.

The government in Sabah is wisely doing what Indonesia isn't. Nearly all the Sabah region is protected wildlife parks and natural reserves. They are well run, well protected and still very wild.  The money is put back into care for the parks and for the good of the towns. It's really amazing.  In twenty years when 98% of Java is paved over, they'll still be scratching their head wondering what happened. In Sabah, they'll have some of the last great jungles in the world.


I traveled with Jenn, she's the person I've known longest here in Indo. We suffered through EF together, we were groupies together, we've been through a lot together. All that said, we'd never traveled together.  We left Saturday and arrived there just after midnight on Sunday. Sunday we awoke to find a very nice Sunday Market just outside our window. Lots of strange options and interesting products.

Dead frog change purses.  These were not the only ones we saw.

The town of KK is small and very walkable.  The trash is almost non-existent, the sidewalks are smooth and the length of the town manageable in about a half an hour. The waterfront is largely unimpressive and there's no beach there. 20-25 minutes from town by taxi is Tanjung Aru, a nice three-part beach. We rocked up right next to the Shangri-La resort and found a beautiful, empty, soft, sandy beach.  The walk along it was brilliant, watching the sand crabs was entertaining and I could hardly stay out of the surf.

Tanjung Aru beach #1

We spent two days on tours: the first a jungle canopy/hot springs and the second a village and a boat.  The Canopy tour was a raised walkway in the rainforest. Our tour guide was Melissa also. In Malay when you meet someone with the same name you call them Ang Ai.  The trees were huge and there were great views.  They did a good job of monitoring the traffic on the narrow pathways.  We did get to experience the rain part of the rainforest on our walk to a waterfall. 

Canopy walk

After that was a dip in the volcanically heated sulfur hot springs and a stop to see the rafflesia flower. It's a rare, carnivorous, parasitic flower. We missed out on the botanical garden because it was raining and cold but it was a good, full day.

Rafflesia flowers

Our second day of tours was a full one.  Two half-day tours  The morning was the Mari-Mari Village.  It's a village with examples of traditional homes of five Sabahan ethnic communities—the Bajau, Lundayeh, Murut, Rungus and Dusun.  We tasted rice wine, make some authentic food, see a wedding altar, try cookies after a demo, got a temporary tattoo, saw a trampoline made of bamboo in action and watched a traditional music and dance show. All before lunch!  A buffet topped things off and then onto a minibus to catch a boat. 

The village chief inaugurating our group "chief"

The dancing was very intense.

A two hour bus ride to see proboscis monkeys, silver leaf monkeys and long tailed macaques proved fruitful.  We saw monkeys almost immediately.  They were wild but accustomed to the boat motor sounds.  They stayed at good distance but didn't fling poo at us, which I took as a positive thing. We weren't close enough to really see the nose on the proboscis but if you've read my blog you know how I feel about zoos. We saw babies with all the groups. 

Macaques all look like they have mustaches and mohawks.

Proboscis

Can you find the five monkeys in this photo?  Answer at the bottom.

There were two trees side by side.  One was a group of proboscis and one a pack of silver leaf. Neither group seemed disturbed by the other or by us. As sun set we nearly stumbled on two packs of water buffalo neck deep in the river.  I was totally awed by the huge fruit bats swarming across the sky.  The wing span must have been a meter or more and there were dozens or more.  I have a new appreciation of bats after living in Indo where the little ones eat insects. Dinner was great and then we went back out on the boat to see fireflies.  We didn't see many but were lucky to have seen any since there was an impending storm.  It was a brilliant day, aside from the random, unidentified bug (possibly ant?) attack on my feet.

Water buffalo having a bath

We wasted a day going out to Labuan island.  There is nothing to see apart from this cool mosque that I think is an Alien spaceship docking station. There was cheap beer (I had Peroni, Stella Artois and Hoegaarden) plus Strongbow cider form England. All except the Hoe are unavailable in Jakarta, and I refuse to pay ten dollars for a bottle of Hoe.

We wasted a night but we didn't know.  The next day was a small boat out to Pulau Sapi or Cow Island.  There were no cows. We walking fifteen minutes from the crowded beaches to a tiny beach that we had all to ourselves. Snorkeling revealed maybe 30 different kinds of fish, plus starfish, crabs, sea cucumbers and anemones. If we'd known we would have spent more days out on the Tunku Abdul Rahman Park that is made up of five islands. 

Fan-slippin-tastic Sapi Island

We'd not only burned the candle at both ends but we burnt it out.  Most night we were sleeping four or five hours and then would fall asleep on any bus or boat ride that was more than twenty minutes.  Well, I did.  I can't vouch for Jenn since I was asleep. Friday I'd started coughing.  By Saturday, our last day, the cough turned into a full on head cold and was compounded by a vicious hangover. We both drug ourselves outta town with promises to return.  


A last note: The locals and night life were very chill but interested.  We've concluded that KK is full of men with very bad hair and started to ponder the rationale. The food was cheap and fresh.  Vietnamese, Indian, Malay, western and a variety of fresh seafood were all readily available.

See? Five monkeys.

Intention vs Reality

My intention was to return from my Vietnam/Cambodia/Sumatra holiday and start blogging again. I'd have two weeks to write about all those adventures before I left for Borneo.  I'm leaving today.  If you've seen the map of my trip, I haven't finished blogging about that trip.

Instead I spent nearly every day in the past two weeks meeting my friends for a variety of catch-ups, dinners, birthday events and near dance-a-thons.  I basically packed as much as possible into these past two weeks. 

I leave in a few short hours to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, in the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo. Here's a map for the geographically challenged amongst you. You can also switch over to a map view and see where Brunei is.  I'm going to try to pop over for a day because how often does one get to go to a sultanate?

My good friend Jen is going with me.  She's the person I've known the longest in Indonesia.  We are thick as thieves and it promises to be an epic trip. 

When I return there will be blogs on Sai Gon, the Mekong Delta, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and a couple from this Borneo trip. That should give you something to look forward to.  Take care in the meantime.

Penang

After spending three weeks at home and ten days in Hong Kong and Macau, I headed back "home" to Jakarta.  I arrived late Sunday night, worked Tuesday through Friday and at 03:00 on Saturday I was on my way to the airport again. By 07:00 I was heading toward Penang, Malaysia after a whopping hour of sleep.  I had planned a trip to Penang, through Krabi too Phiphi island and then out of Phuket but after the ramblings of the previous four weeks, I trimmed the trip and was happy for it.

I went to Penang after rave reviews from my friend Donna.  She's been there multiple times of the years and always enjoys it. It was nice and quiet in comparison to everywhere else I had been.  The weather was nice as it was cooler than Jakarta while not cold; it only rained twice - once for about five minutes and once for an hour.  There is a "downtown" central area called Georgetown and, like Macau, was built by and influenced by Europeans.  The buildings have been well maintained over the years and it makes for an aesthetically pleasing town.  I spent a lot of time walking around the Chinatown and Little India areas of Georgetown.  Roti Cani is always my favorite food in Malaysia.  It's an Indian flat bread (less bready that naan bread) served with curry sauce.  At between 0.80 and 1.00 MYR (Malaysian Riggits, running about three Ringgits to one USD), they make a fantastic and fantastically cheap snack.  I must have had close to a dozen.  By the end I was known at a little restaurant where I'd been several times.  Their tea tarik (or pulled tea, it's the color of red clay,  poured from arms length after adding condensed milk) was worth the trip too.

These were around town as explanations, put up when Georgetown because a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Penang, again like Macau, is a great example of a mixed society living harmoniously. Culturally and religiously, there are many factions on this small island.   I know it hasn't always been that way.  There was a monument to the war dead that included the Indo-Malay conflict. Now, the city's Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists all co-exist in very close proximity.  I saw temples for all those religions plus Christian and Catholic churches.  All the building were beautiful and impressive and only blocks apart. If there is tension between the groups, I didn't feel or notice it while I was there traipsing amongst them.

I found yet another cemetery, this one truly looking like it was being reclaimed by the jungle.  A couple of building in the middle of street blocks were also heavily hung in vines and plants whose roots had begun to break them apart. It was probably the smallest of those I'd seen in Asia but interesting in its variety.

Near the end I was definitely getting templed out and I'm not anxious to run out and find any more any time soon.  Bar none, the temples/churches/clan houses were beautiful but started to all look the same, much as Churches in Italy did after days and days of looking at them.  There were two the last day, a Burmese Buddhist Temple and a Thai Buddhist temple that looked different.  It was a beautiful sunny day and after weeks of being surrounded by people and having a travel buddy, I was happy for the solitude. 

This is on the Burmese Temple grounds (I think).

I hope to head to Penang again.  Nice smooth sidewalks, a decided lack of crowds and comfortable weather all appeal to me.  Not to mention I got to the temples but not the national parks or botanical gardens. The people were friendly without being rude or overbearing. The food was excellent and cheap.  In my time there I moved at my own pace, to my own tune and enjoyed it immensely.