Brunei and Sabah

Entering Brunei was a mission almost larger than the country itself. Although it has a free attitude to visas, the was a markedly different opinion about H1N1 and bringing in Bibles or alcohol. After dancing in front of a body heat camera and emptying our bags completely, Hyun and I entered the small Islamic sultanate with a view to spending a single night in the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan.

Brunei has close links with the UK, not least because it is surrounded completely by Sarawak, and indeed is divided in two by that state, courtesy of Charles Brooke, the second White Rajah. In 1847 a treaty of friendship and commerce was signed between Britain and Brunei, and the sultan agreed not to cede any more territory to anyone, without British permission first. However, this did not stop Charles Brooke seizing Limbang and dividing Brunei in two - this despite the fact that Brunei had been a British protectorate since 1888.


The BIG mosque in Bandar's centre

Shortly after WW2, the UK found itself with the new colony of Sarawak just as it was losing most of the rest - the third White Rajah Charles Vyner Brooke decided it was in Sarawak's best interests. Brunei developed a fairly healthy paranoia about the threat posed by neighbouring Sarawak, Sabah and Kalimantan, and it was only when treaties were signed guaranteeing it's independence did formal protection of the Sultanate cease.

The tortuous journey to our hotel in the capital involved several different buses and a tour of most of Brunei's developed coastal strip. With only a small amount of it's original territory left, Brunei found it still owned, by happy accident, the largest oil and gas reserves off Borneo's coast. These were centred around Seria, where a regiment of Gurkhas is still garrisoned (and from where the British Army still conducts it's jungle training). Seria was a proper oil town - nodding donkeys were present on most street corners and Shell sponsored almost all the development.

We arrived in Bandar at around 3pm, and after settling in a hotel, headed to the city centre to look around. Brunei is massively rich state whose citizens pay no tax, and where cars and houses are subsidised. We wanted to look around the Kampong Ayer or water village - an entire town built on stilts over the river that runs through the capital. Usual transport was by speedboat, and we opted for a quick tour in one of these "flying coffins" as a thunderstorm approached. Sadly the rain arrived much sooner than expected and we spent 20 minutes moored under someone's house, before getting drenched heading back to dry land.


Kampong Ayer as the storm comes


Waiting for the rain to stop

Brunei didn't blow us away, although I suspect with more time we would have found the Royal Regali museum pretty smart and the Empire Hotel on the coast pretty impressive - rivaling Dubai's finest for opulence. Instead we cruised over to the night market for food in the pouring rain - it was a tad washed out - and spent an hour or two wandering around shopping malls before calling it a night.

The following day we transferred east to Kota Kinabalu, in the Malaysian state of Sabah. Luckily our taxi driver to the ferry was more alert than we were, and smashed the speed limit in order to get us to the jetty in time for departure, 30 minutes earlier than we had been informed. We left Brunei with $2 to our names and a good deal of nervous laughter - Hyun was on a flight that afternoon from KK and missing the boat was not an option.

Kota Kinabalu - formerly Jessleton - is the capital of Sabah, which was formerly British North Borneo. Originally ceded ro the American consul in Brunei in 1846, the subsequent attempt to operate the American Trading Company of Borneo failed after 20 years, whereupon Dutch and English investors were convinced to take up the deal. Eventually in 1877 the cession was bought and extended to cover the present day area of Sabah, and 3 years later a royal charter was granted and the British North Borneo Company - and British North Borneo - was formed; the Dutch were booted out of the deal.

Kota Kinabalu - or KK - is a modern city with a thriving fishing, logging and tourism industry. It serves as the entry hub for legions of tourists arriving every year who want to experience the magic of Borneo without the difficulties of travel in less developed countries. We had been hearing stories of many of the most popular activities being booked up weeks in advance, and so I arrived with a pretty concrete plan of action for my two and a half week stay.

After saying goodbye to Hyun I set about booked and paying for my various trips - aside from the organisation required, many tourist attractions on Sabah are expensive and several well beyond the means of even the wealthiest of backpackers - the allegedly amazing National Parks of Tabin and Danum Valley cost well over US$100 per night. So I signed up for a rafting trip, booked my Mount Kinabalu climb, arranged some diving and a river safari - all within a couple of days. At least I wouldn't spent too much otherwise, I thought.....

The El Nino-inspired drought that has affected much of Borneo had taken it's toll on the river rafting. We took Sabah's only train to reach the access point - it was full so we rode on a flat iron car at the back, legs dangling over the edge and getting sunburnt. Health and Safety would have raised the odd eyebrow. After a remarkably thorough safety briefing I joined an all-Dutch raft to navigate our way down what should have been Grade III-IV rapids to lunch.

It was great fun, but a little disappointing. The rapids weren't huge, but it seemed like most of the time I was the only person who knew how to paddle and by lunch my shoulders and arms had had a good work out at least. We watched the video footage of our most exciting rapid over lunch - one of our team was washed out when we became perched on a rock - then pressed on quickly as we were running very late. It was a case of catching the train back to get a bus for the return - this time we had the privilege of seats. I was back in KK at 10pm that night, aching but happy... and a little burnt.

The next day I moved out of KK and up to Mount Kinabalu National Park- popularly known as South East Asia's highest peak at 4095m - that works if you don't include any of New Guinea in the equation, which has a couple over 5000m. Geographers might care to explain if SE Asia doesn't include New Guinea..... Given my past experience with nausea and headaches at that kind of altitude, I stayed a night close to the Park Headquarters, meeting a seemingly alcoholic American called Diego en route with his lovely Japanese girlfriend who didn't speak much English. Given Diego's passion for TV, it turned out to be a quiet night when he found we had HBO in the dorm room. In the morning, however, there was a tremendous view of Kinabalu in the early morning sun that made the stay well worth the effort.



The next morning was the day I had booked to start my trek to the summit of Kinabalu. The National Park is privately run by a luxury lodge company, Sutera Sancturary, who fail to appreciate that most of the customers are backpackers - it was some GBP80 for an unheated dormitory bed plus food for the following 30 hours - and that didn't include the compulsory guide and a few other extras. Luckily I met up with a couple of Irish girls and an English couple and we banded together to share costs and form a little hiking team.

The first day's hike was a long, tedious uphill slog that sapped strength and enthusiasm. For much of the time we were in fog and cloud, and were wary of the rain that was forecast to start - along with thunder and lightning - at any time. We made it up to the Laban Rata guesthouse after about 4 and a half hours, and were just sitting down with hot chocolates as the rain started to fall, progressing to hail shortly afterwards.


Laban Rata after the rain


Sunset at Laban Rata

What Sutera Sanctuary fail for in accommodation they try to make up for with food - there was oodles of it. Having gorged myself on a high carbohydrate dinner I settled in bed with a makeshift hot water bottle and tried to get in a few hours sleep before our summit day, which would start at 1.30am.



At a time that could officially be called silly-o'clock I woke up and had another carb-loaded early breakfast, before starting the slow walk up to the summit in the dark, along with about 200 other people. The route had many stairs and roped sections, and unsurprisingly progress was very slow as people struggled in the thin air and dark. Nevertheless we made it to the summit in time for sunrise, and everyone stopped to take photos as their fingers froze and feet went numb. The summit was a very crowded place.





Surprisingly for me I was unaffected by the altitude, but many of the others in my group were - mainly nausea, dizziness and headaches. Everyone began to feel brighter as we progressed slowly down the hill with a spectacular morning unfolding before us - layers of white cloud obscured most of the land below us, and the granite peaks were lit in beautiful warm glow.





After our second breakfast at Laban Rata the really tough part began - descending another 1.5km of vertical height, mostly in giant-sized steps. It took hours, and by the time we were indulging in a vast lunch all our quads and knees were aching in a way we hadn't expected to feel until we were about 70 years old.



I departed from my group and made my way stiffly to the road, where I stepped on a bus to Sandakan and the next part of my trip. Sandakan, on the east coast of Sabah, is extremely close to the Philippines (that was originally on my itinerary) - nowadays it is a base for fishing and exporting palm oil, and an ugly one at that. Fortunately I had just one night there before my next booking, which I spent limping to a harbourfront cafe for dinner, then back to my room for an early night - it had been a 22 hour day.

The next morning I headed to Sepilok, the home of probably the most famous orangutan rehabilitation centre in the world. They do a good job - rehabilitated apes are flown into the remote Tabin Wildlife reserve and left to their own devices. The centre's popularity though means that the usual morning feeding, as witnessed elsewhere in Sumatra and Borneo, has an audience of around 200 tourists. Sadly it was the least impressive one I have been to - until the pig tailed macaques came by after the orangutans and tourists had gone, and pilfered all the remaining bananas. Although even the largest male is much smaller than me, it doesn't take a lot to be intimidated by a group of 40 or so as you walk right past them on a boardwalk.





I was picked up from Sepilok for next trip - a 4 day tour on the Kinabatang river. On the way we passed neverending palm oil plantations - and I mean that literally, there was no break at all. Plantations ranged from freshly felled forest to newly terraced slopes dotted with small palms, through to full sized palms producing several kilo of fruit a month. Each plantation tends to be huge, with accommodation for its workers and its own mill; the palm oil is used is a huge range of everyday products from food to cosmetics and, of course, biodiesel. Current EU energy policy has resulted in a huge increase in demand for palm oil - the principles of which are fine until you look at what the palm oil replaces.

Through this land of palm oil runs the Kinabatangan, or the "Corridor of Life". It is a designated wildlife sanctuary, small in area, that runs in a narrow strip up the banks of the Kinabatangan and it's major contributaries. It is the only area in the world where 10 species of primates can been seen in the same place (I won't list them), along with elephants, crocodiles and a range of hornbills. Due to the small size (and restriction of range of the animals) wildlife sightings are pretty much guaranteed, although elephants and orangutans prove more difficult usually.

On the bus I met a group of 3 Kiwis traveling together, and I quickly became an honorary member of the crew as we were assigned a dorm together. They were also staying longer than the standard 3 day/2 night trip, and we quickly settled into a routine of early morning and later afternoon cruises, night walks and volleyball in the intervening periods.







The first afternoon we were doing very well - proboscis monkeys up close already ticked off, when we came across a herd of Bornean pygmy elephants. Only recently identified as a separate species, these smallest of elephants were having an afternoon dip and crossing a river - even the guide said it was very unusual to see. It was an incredible sight; after initially seeing some grey shapes moving through the jungle undergrowth, they came out to test the water and swim, all the while trumpeting to each other with bellows that came straight out of Jurassic Park.





The various walks on offer were less rewarding. After 3 night walks we had seen several sleeping birds (dazzled by camera flashes) and a few large insects including a huge scorpion; there were no slow loris or western tarsiers that make up the nocturnal primate population around the Kinabatangan. We visited an oxbow lake one day too; aside from some distant stirrings of my geographical memory, it failed to excite with wildlife sightings and instead we were rather hot and mosquito bitten.


The best wildlife sighted on the day walk

We struck wildlife gold again the next 2 days, seeing orangutans, elephants, and orangutans watching elephants. There were also the proboscis monkeys and a wide variety of bird life that our guide, despite his somewhat elementary English, was able to identify incredibly rapidly and from a distance.






Elephants being watched by an orangutan

It was with some reluctance that I got on the bus with another English couple after 4 days and headed south again, to Semporna. It was only around 250km away but took a good few hours, in which time we passed only palm oil plantations. It was scary.


Semporna fish market

In Semporna I found myself a hostel for a night before the final part of my Sabah trip - diving at Sipadan. Pulau Sipadan is at the centre of a marine park with a huge richness and diversity of marine life due to it's location as a limestone atoll separated from the rest of the Borneo mainland by a huge channel. There are sharks and turtles a plenty, plus huge schools of fish not seem in many other places, and wonderful coral gardens. I had booked to stay a couple of nights on an old oil rig, parked a few miles from the island and a unique place to stay. Sipadan is one of the most popular dive sites in Asia and the numbers are strictly limited by permits, so getting the chance to dive there even for one day would hopefully be worth the significant amount of money I was shelling out.

Luckily it happened that my Sipadan experience was pretty good - I really loved the atmosphere on the oil rig, and there was a friendly bunch of Aussies and English to pass the time. I buddied up with Karen, an nice Aussie who worked for the Australian Antarctic Survey - I was incredibly jealous until I discovered she had to live on a ship and study phytoplankton. Her stories of 'going south' made me yearn for both a colder climate and a trip back to Antarctica though. As expected I only had a single permit to dive one day at Sipadan but managed to do 5 dives there, so was pretty pleased - we paid for a boat back in the afternoon at the princely sum of RM86 per person. The dives were better in the afternoon and there was almost no-one there, bar the Army chaps who were practicing swimming.

At the end of the day I also shelled on a 'Scuba Zoo' DVD of the day's diving - I look like an idiot in most of it, true to form. I also managed to purloin all the photos the a couple of Hong Kongese boys took who dived with me all the time - just as well really as they did puch everyone else out the way in order to see what was going on! Those will have to wait though, as there isn't the internet connection here to upload them.


Semporna grafitti

Back from the oil rig, I was hot-footing it to Sulawesi, the Indonesian island east of Borneo - as fast as my no-fly time would allow. Everything worked all too smoothly on the way to Sualwesi - my overnight bus arrived on time at 4.30am in KK, where I sat around for several hours waiting for places to open to get some breakfast - no evidence of pre-dawn Ramadan feasting there! The flight to KL was on time, and there was the normal laughable AirAsia organisation in the LCCT where the gate was changed 3 times in 10 minutes and the final call for boarding was made before anyone had left the departure lounge. Fortunately the flights themselves are impeccable - I had 3 emergency exit seats to catch up on my missed sleep from the night before.

By 8pm the next day I had made it - just about on time - back to the land of "Hello Mister!" and, rather more surprisingly, "Metered taxi?"

Sarawak

Jakarta airport did not seem unduly affected by the bombs that had exploded the previous day in the city centre. Indeed, the fear of swine flu was much greater - there were surgical masks everywhere and where those were lacking, people were happy to use the in-flight eye masks or hands to protect themselves against the dreaded virus. And there was a good deal more upset that Manchester United had canceled the Indonesia leg of their southeast Asia tour - they had been due to stay at the Jakarta Hilton - than for the victims of the bombs.

Jakarta airport is a vast, sprawling place, completely forgettable except for the incredibly high concentration of donut outlets in every terminal - quite possibly a world leader. I was particularly glad of this when my Air Asia flight was delayed and they handed out free donuts and water to everyone after an hour - Ryanair and Easyjet, take note!! My flight departed some 2 hours late and touched down in Kuching, just over an hour later. I was in Sarawak, the western province of Malaysian Borneo, back in the northern hemisphere and ready to explore.

There were immediate challenges. In Sarawak, ATMs close at midnight... so by 12.10am I had cleared customs and was ready to get a taxi to the hotel but found myself penniless and unable to change money. A kind-hearted taxi driver agreed to take me, for a much-elevated fare, on a short detour to the HSBC ATM, the only one working in town... only it didn't like my Nationwide card. By the time I had used my fall back card and got to the hotel, the driver was only too happy to pocket the RM3 change he owed me from my fare, and smirked when I demanded it back. I was ready to floor him, but not having had dinner decided to save my energy.

At the hostel I met Hyun, a friend from Gili Trewangan, and settled into an aircon room where my anger cooled along with the temperature. Despite local protestations to the contrary, we found a local fast food stall still open at 2am and I dined on a burger of dubious provenance, sitting right next to another stall selling all kinds of Chinese herbal remedies "for Men".

The following day we set about exploring Kuching, capital of Sarawak. The region has a history going back almost 40,000 years - an old skull was discovered buried very deep in some bat guano, but evolved into it's modern from during the domain of the "White Rajahs" from the mid-1800s. From around the early 19th century it was ruled by the Sultan of Brunei, but the region what chaotic and plagued by pirate raids. In 1841 an Englishman by the name of James Brooke was enlisted to help bring the territory under control for the Sultan of Brunei and Sarawak's erstwhile leader, the Sultan's uncle. In short order Brooke became Governor of Sarawak and in 1842 had bestowed upon him the title of Rajah by the Sultan of Brunei.

Kuching is a modern, clean city, full of airconditioning and short on litter. There is clearly a lot of money around - there are new cars everywhere and an excess of plush hotels, all based on the oil and logging money that makes Sarawak such a great earner of export revenue. We headed over to the Sunday market past the old Governor's residence and the Astana palace (built by one of the White Rajahs) on the opposite bank of the large river that flows through the city. It was bustling, busy market with all kinds of unidentifiable fruit, vegetables, seafood and meat, which we were only too happy to sample. After a couple of hours we returned to our hostel laden with fruit, and enjoyed a fabulous pick-your-own-fish seafood dinner at a local food court.

Kuching waterfront, the new golden-roofed State Assembly building on the far bank

In 1842 the territory of Sarawak was small - most of the surrounding land belonging in theory to the Sultanate of Brunei. Over the years, Brooke was able to quell various local rebellions and pirate groups of Dayaks - an umbrella term for indigenous people of Borneo - and gradually annex more of the Sultanate's territory, under the guise of bringing order and prosperity. In practice the Sultan of Brunei was powerless to resist, and first James Brooke then his son and successor Charles Brooke expanded Sarawak relentlessly until 1905, at which point it surrounded Brunei on all land borders.

The following day Hyun and I set out to learn a little about Sarawaks history with a trip to the Sarawak Cultural Village. Established in 1990, this tourist attraction tires to promote and conserve traditional ways of life of the Dayak peoples. In Sarawak, the most numerous ethnic group are the Iban tribe, accounting for some 30%, with the Chinese following shortly behind and Malays around 16%. Other tribal groups including the Bidayuh, Melanau and Penan are left in varying numbers; there last remaining traditional nomadic tribespeople, the Penan, number 300 or so, with the other 20,000 or so settled in villages as per government policy. The traditional dwelling of the non-nomadic tribes is a longhouse - as structure usually elevated on stilts and sometimes over 100m long, where a number of families live together. The longhouses are usually described by the number of doors they have - 30 to 50 being average for 200-500 occupants. Longhouses are still an integral part of life in Sarawak today, albeit looking rather new and shiny with concrete walls, metal roofs and satellite TV.

Many tourists come to Sarawak hoping to have a "genuine" longhouse experience or stay, and hand over good quantities of cash to effect this. The problem is, an authentic longhouse experience nowadays would involve eating some instant noodles whilst watching Malaysian soap operas on a TV turned to maximum volume - anything else is a show.

However, it was wildlife and not longhouses that brought me to Sarawak, and the following day we were off to the first of 6 National Parks that we would visit, Gunung Gading. Although it is the oldest park in Sarawak (started by Charles Brooke) and has a significant amount of primary rainforest, the main reason for the visit was to finally see a Rafflesia flower - the largest flower in the world - one of which was blooming at the moment. Our Rafflesia specimen was a little small (about 2 foot across) but impressive nonetheless. Fortunately it had not started smelling yet - it is pollinated by carrion flies and gives off a powerful stench of rotting meat to attract them. There were a few waterfalls further up the path which made for great swimming spots, excellent after a hot and humid slog up the trail.


Rafflesia flower


Waterfalls at Gunung Gading

Borneo is also home to orangutans - about 50,000 by most estimates, but their number is shrinking fast. A distinct sub-species from the Sumatran orangutan, it was only right to go and see a few at the Semengok Wildlife centre the next day at the feeding. Semengok has a very similar program of rehabilitation and release as the centre I visited in Bukit Lawang; so far it has released some 24 apes, of whom 4 have never returned to the regular feedings. After hiring a scooter for the day we whizzed over there and enjoyed the morning feeding in a much more formal setup than Sumatra, although we were able to get very close to a mother and baby after the main session had finished.







That added extra made us late for our next stop, Jongs Crocodile Farm. Billed as some kind of conservation effort (it was difficult to see how), Jongs had a huge number of wild and captive bred saltwater crocs from the coast of Sarawak. Twice a day they were fed with some fairly choice plucks, and the spectacle of watching the giant creatures leap some 10ft out of the water to grab them from the line was truly impressive. Their largest beast was some 16ft long and had been caught at a local river, although it had not eaten anyone unlike some of it's bethren, which a gallery of graphic photos demonstrated .







We popped back to Semegok for the afternoon feed and were rewarded with a close encounter with another oranguan as we walked through the arboretum - she seemed not to have a care in the world as she strolled past us looking for fruit.



Back in Kuching we made preparations to leave for a three day trip to Bako National Park the next day. We were constantly hounded around the city by the wail of police sirens as motorcades tore up the city. We found out that in a few days the Sultans of all the Malaysian states (including the King of Malaysia) were coming to town in a few days to celebrate the opening of the huge golden-roofed State Assembly on the opposite bank of the river.

The trip to Bako the next day was great, risk-of-crocodiles and falling into the water notwithstanding. Unreachable by road, Bako has a mix of lowland dipterocarp and heath rainforest, as well as a population of proboscis monkeys, endemic to Borneo. We had booked for a couple of nights in the Park HQ accommodation, and set about exploring the local trails to various idyllic beaches. It wasn't hard to spot the wildlife; the proboscis monkeys spent a lot of time around the Park HQ along with bearded pigs scrounging for food and long-tailed macaques who would actually steal food - or anything else left unattended for that matter.





The best beach was Pandan Kecil - a quiet bar of sand, overlooked by huge cliffs of moon-like dark rock and fringed on all sides by jungle. It was just like a jungle beach should be, right down to the jellyfish that gave me a good sting across my shoulder.





We tried spotting the proboscis monkeys early one morning as they were due to cross a walkway across a mangrove swamp - their regular route. They failed to appear although the boisterous macaques did, who showed no fear in investigating the cameras and one giving me a good pinch. The proboscis monkeys showed up an hour later at the Park HQ, feeding on a fruiting tree as the sun rose, paying no heed of the tourists clustered around with their large collection of SLRs and high-powered zooms.




Macaques


Proboscis monkey




Sunset at Bako....


...and the hermit crabs come out

Back from Bako we went to a concert - the first event celebrating the big opening of the assembly building. As the stars of Academi Fantasia (read Pop Idol) wailed out their latest hits (and I do mean wailed), the satay stalls nearby were by far the most exciting thing and sufficiently removed from the action to not risk aural damage.

The following day was a little more of the same and somewhat frustrating - being a Sunday most things were closed, including the Tourist Office, National Parks Office and motorbike rental places. We settled for a stroll along the increasingly busy waterfront, by now set up for a huge regatta the following day and teeming with all kinds of armed police on boats, bikes and jetskis. The constant noise of the motorcades as they swept imperiously around town added to the atmosphere, although by evening time it was strangely quiet as we crossed the river to enjoy some pansuh, a traditional dish slow-cooked in bamboo over a fire. That was disappointing: the bamboo used only to serve the pansuh in - it was probably stewed for a couple of hours in a large steel pot - and consisted of chicken (mostly bone) and a wide variety of inedible "jungle roots and ferns".

The carnival atmosphere came into it's own the next day, and we spent an hour standing in the sun awaiting the arrival of the King and various Sultans. We were well placed right by the red carpet where the armoured limousines would pull up, and I shook hands with at least one "important" person who nobody seemed to know. The main player of the day, the King, was a no-show as he decided to sleep in (it was past midday), but the other Sultans appeared, some of whom I could even recognise from the photos patriotically displayed in most businesses. The regatta started once all the royalty who were conscious had arrived, and there followed several dragon boat races up a rather choppy river. These races were great, not least for the fact that in every race at least one boat, overloaded with paddlers, would start to sink. That night the waterfront was incredibly busy with people seemingly just hanging around - we escaped back to the hostel and only re-emerged when a huge firework display lit up the sky around the new assembly building.

The following morning we turned our backs on Kuching and took a fast boat to Sibu, northeast across a bay of the South China Sea and then upriver some 60km. Our plan was to get to Kapit, a small logging town further upriver, and then from there get up to Belaga, an even smaller place about as far away from it all as you can get in Sarawak. The boat ride to Sibu was fast and efficient, and we transferred almost seamlessly to an express boat heading the 125km upriver to Kapit.

The express boats that ply the waterways of Sarawak are precisely that; very fast, resembling an aeroplane without wings, with a comically huge engine in the back and huge exhausts belching volumes out the back in an effort to get people where there are no roads. We arrived in Kapit as the sun was setting, found a hotel and a pasar malam (night market) with excellent food.


Express boat.... missing the wings needed for takeoff

Sibu, Kapit and Belaga are the main towns people visit for their "longhouse experience". Cynical as Hyun and I were of a genuine experience with financially motivated origins, we had decided to head up to Belaga by boat, and then go back to the coast by logging road to Bintulu, some 3 hours northeast Sibu by paved highway. We figured the journey would be experience enough..... but in order to get to Belaga, we had to get permission first.

Kapit is in the odd position of being unconnected to the outside world by road, but with some 4000 cars competing for 400 parking spaces on it's small amount of paved road. We got a lift to the Residents Office in the government building, a vast, 10 storey concrete and glass tower block that was as out of place in Kapit as it would have been had they built it in the Masai Mara. However, we were duly issued with permits for visiting Belaga, along with a few raised eyebrows and mutterings along the line of "You haven't a hope in hell".


Kapit - lots of cars with nowhere to go

Armed with permits we asked almost everyone with a boat if they would take us to Belaga... the answer was a resounding negative. Kapit lies on the Rejang River, and upstream was the mighty Pelagus Rapids which are impassable at the moment. Despite the best efforts of the British Army and a lot of dynamite in the 60's, the rapids are still only navigable when the water is high and you have a very powerful engine. We were fast becoming aware that not only was this the dry season, it had also been very dry, and passing the rapids was impossible. We headed back to Sibu with a wry grin.

On the boat to Sibu we met a few local Iban lads, who seemed very keen to take us back to their longhouse and ply us with beer. This could have been the "genuine" experience we were after, but not long after they were all asleep and we were left watching the modern longhouses that formed most settlements on the Rejang and the endless timber barges running downstream to the plywood factories.


One of the many timber barges

If you've ever wondered about the statistics involving deforestation of rainforest, you only need a short trip along the Rejang for those soundbites to become a cold reality. "An area the size of Wales every year" or "six football pitches every hour" becomes a little hard to visualise, but seeing barge after barge after barge loaded with timber, and seemingly endless factories churning out plywood from vast lumber yards, was a thoroughly depressing and humbling experience. There may be controls in place but believe the quotes, they are true - the rainforest is disappearing and at a rate you cannot imagine.


Plywood factory on the lower Rejang

Back in Sibu, barely 24 hours since arriving, and our Iban friends scarpered off the boat leaving us to get on a bus and carry on northeast up the coast. The next stop was Bintulu, a town booming fromboth a huge LNG reserve found offshore (Malaysia's largest reserve) and timber. It was not, in any way, shape or form, set up for tourism. After a staggering unsuccessful attempt to find a road full of good restaurants (it was only 40m from our hotel, but no-one knew that), we tried the following day to visit Similajau National Park, a coastal strip home to nice beaches and nesting turtles. It proved impossible to find a bus there or a motorbike to hire, and we gave up and had a relaxing day wandering around town, eventually finding the restaurant street ourselves, plus a small funfair for some evening entertainment to boot.

The following day we headed up to Niah National Park, another couple of hours northeast along the coast. We had booked a couple of days to explore the vast limestone caves there that are a feature of eastern Sarawak. The caves are so huge due to the very dense limestone found in the area - it allows for large caverns to develop but water dissolution/erosion whilst not collpasing. Niah was famous for a few of reasons. First was the bats - some 500,000 live in the the main Great Cave, and leave each night to be replaced by the second natural wonder - some half a million swifts that also call the cave home. For several hundred years the caves and their contents have been exploited - the bat guano has been mined, and the swift's nests are collected for birds nest soup.

The caves became of archaeological importantance in 1963 the Curator of Sarawak Museum found a human skull some 40,000 years old, forcing a total rethink of hominid occupation of island south-east Asia. There are a couple of hundred identified grave sites within the great cave, and within a smaller cave are the oldest cave paintings in Borneo, estimated at some 3,000 years old.

Hyun and I decided to save the below-ground for the following day, and headed on the only above ground trail to scale the heights of the limestone cliffs in which the caveas are found. It was a very steep 200m climb - a lot of it on ladders - but the view from the top was well worth it.



The next day we headed over to the caves in the afternoon, hoping to see them all and then the "changing of the guard" - when the bats left at dusk and the swifts returned to the cave. The caves were huge, awesome structures; in places roof collapses had left windows of daylight that played down into the cavern casting eerie shadows over boulders. There were a huge number of ladders and poles affixed to the roof to allow the birds nest harvesters to work. The job involves an incredibly risky climb up the poorly supported poles to the roof of the cave, where twice yearly the workers are allowed to takes nests and harvest the glutinous secretions that both bond the nest together and go into making the soup.


West Mouth of the Great Cave


Inside the great Cave - the hanging things are all poles for the bords nest harvesters



The paintings in the so-called "Painted Cave" were disappointing to say the least, protected by layers of fencing and barbed wire, but the pitch-black cave walk to get there was fabulous fun, though Hyun and I reflected that if we had each been alone it would have been just a little scary. We got back to the West Mouth of the Great Cave just before sunset, and sat down to watch. There was a steady stream of bats but not a huge number; at one point a bat hawk flew in to take a few easy pickings, and we left in total darkness wondering what all the fuss had been about - we saw pretty much nothing.


The Great Cave mouth by night.....

The following day - a Sunday - we arrived in Miri, our last city in Sarawak from where we intended to do some diving and visit a couple of National Parks. To cut a long story short, we spent the next 36 hours trying -and failing mostly - to sort out an independent trip to Gunung Mulu National Park. Everything was fully booked or close to being so - flights were full, accommodation at the Park was full, activities in the Park were full. We eventually bagged a couple of flights and tried to book a tour; when that failed, we had a stroke of good luck and picked up a room after a cancellation just hours before.


Miri lighthouse... or seahorse.....

Gunung Mulu NP is famous for it's limestone scenery - both vast cave networks and a series of limestone prominences, the Pinnacles, that make Malham Cove's karst scenery look decidely second rate. We knew that the Pinnacles trip was fully booked but assumed visiting the caves, canopy walk and other attractions would be easy... but first we had to get there.

We organised a brief day trip to another local National Park, Lambir Hills before heading to Mulu. Lambir Hills boasts the highest biodiversity per hectare identifed anywhere in the world, with a bewildering mix of tropical rainforest types. We went for the waterfalls and swimming to be had, although in the current drought they were reduced mainly to a trickle, and the views were obscured by an everpresent haze of smoke drifting from myriad fires over the border in Kalimantan.


Arrival, eventually, in Mulu

The following day the Mulu trip started well, at least. The flight in a large Twin Otter turboprop left about on time, but on descent to Mulu airfield the haze was too dense to see the runway with any degree of safety, and we headed back to Miri with another wry grin and wondering if the Mulu place was really worth the bother. MAS Wings, a division of Malaysian Airlines, did a sterling job and whilst I waited to get our baggage back Hyun got our replacement flight tickets for the following day - scheduled earlier to avoid the haze - plus accommodation in the local country club, complete with Olympic sized swimming pool. We had to take that one on the chin.

The following day, after 2km in the pool and a rather large breakfast, we were back on a Fokker 50 turboprop flying to Mulu. The haze semed identical but the pilot landed anyway, and we installed ourselves in a pleasant room at the Matumau lodge - a full board lodge with just a few rooms. Within an hour or two we had figured that many of the activites in the Park - run by a private business and charged in that way - were full. We eventually settled on a program taking in all the large "show" caves, plus short caving trip, a night walk and canopy trip. Part of the issue in Mulu NP is that there are not enough guides in peak season to cater for the numbers of tourists and trips fill up rapidly; there are very few trails to be walked independently as this would mean a loss of income for both the Park business and the local Penan villagers, many of whom are employed within the park.




Pygmy squirrel



Mulu boasts the largest cave chamber in the world - the Sarawak chamber - but this is unreachable except on a rather extreme caving trip. Instead, we did the one '4-5 hour' self-guided trail in the Park - it took 2 hours for the roundtrip and finished at a pretty sorry looking waterfall. Here as well the drought was clearly evident, from low water levels to wilting leaves. Afterward we visited the Deer and Langs Caves as part of a huge group, led by a guide who walked far too rapidly - we never saw her after we reached the cave. Langs cave was beautiful but the Deer cave and it's passage through to the Garden of Eden was awe-inspiring - it is the largest cave passage in the world and home to 2-3 million wrinkle-lipped bats. After leaving the caves we stopped at the "Bat Observatory" to watch the bats leave at dusk - groups of 100,000 bats would leave in a dense, heaving spirals, one after another. Niah paled in comparison.


Malham Cove, but with jungle. And caves. And much, much bigger.


Langs Cave


Heading into the Deer Cave


Deer Cave entrance


The Garden of Eden


Bat exodus


Bats! Count 'em.....

We filled the rest of our time at Mulu visiting more show caves and shelling out for trips that we could easily done ourselves - except our brief adenture caving trip. With all longer trips fully booked we had a 1 hour explore of Turtle cave that was great fun - just ourselves with a guide, scrambling and swimming through tunnels exploring small spaces and even being allowed to try and find the way ourselves briefly (my sometimes infallible sense of direction did not work underground).


Hyun in Wind Cave




Fearless on the canopy walk....


From the canopy walk - an 'emergent'

We were due to depart in the afternoon after 4 days in the park, but the flight was moved forward to avoid the worsening afternoon haze, so we left a little early and found ourselves back in Miri, eating large donuts and drinking Earl Grey in a classy shopping mall cafe. We had booked a dive trip the next day and so early the following morning found ourselves in Miri marina with a affable Westcountry expat called Steve, heading out to sample Miri's diving delights.

Billed as having underwater delights to rival much of southeast Asia, Miri didn't have bad dive sights but was not amazing - I have been well and truly spoilt though. The current El Nino, as well as causing the drought, has led to unusually choppy seas for this time of year and poor visibility for diving. Nevertheless, we had 2 good dives with schools of barracuda and jacks circling around us, before a third dive with awfulo visibility but some interesting macro lifeforms. All in all it was a thoroughly pleasant day out. That evening, our last in Sarawak, we headed over to the Taman Selera, a collection of outdoor seafood restaurants where we had eaten the preceeding week and been blown away by the rich and varied pickings , accompanied by the sound of breaking waves and a large Tiger beer.... or two.

Next destination is Brunei for just an overnight stop whilst in transit to Sabah. I'll try and fill you in on that lot before heading to Sulawesi at the end of August.