Day 278 - the leeches turned me into a cross-dresser

There’s such a well trodden backpacker / tourist trail around much of South East Asia now that escaping the crowds whilst still managing to visit interesting areas is a difficult if not impossible challenge. One place that still seems to be slightly less discovered than the rest though, is the island of Borneo.

When I think of Borneo I see David Attenborough in black and white, trying to be very reserved and, well… English, but clearly struggling to cover up his excitement as he talks excitedly in that slightly breathless, hushed voice of his. It conjures up images of impenetrable jungle, first encounters with hidden tribes and endangered (and in some cases still undiscovered) flora and fauna, which David always gets so very excited about. That may be a somewhat outdated reality given those images come from 1950s BBC documentaries where Brylcreem and Khaki were all the rage, but Borneo still seemed the perfect location to flee from the hustle and bustle of city living and to take a little adventure to get back to nature.

A brief look at the diary whilst we were packing up resulted in us realising that we were actually only going to have just 10 days to get through Borneo before Sarah had to head off to meet some friends in Thailand for a few days. And this brought up one of the major decisions that a time pressed independent traveller has to take… either accept that there’ll be some parts you just won’t see, or spend some money, call yourself a tourist for a while and get on an organised tour to speed up the travel a bit. Although I’ve done a couple of tours, I hate being shepherded and much prefer the satisfaction of working all the travel plans out for myself and having the flexibility to travel as I want… but there are some definite advantages to joining an organised group: If you’re time pressed it’s a godsend - you don’t spend a day researching, a day travelling and then a day doing… it all happens in one. It’s also a great opportunity to meet a new bunch of people. And, in the case of somewhere like Borneo, where there are some really remote areas requiring specialist transport and several National Parks which require you to hire a guide before you can enter, it can actually work out cheaper and easier than tackling it solo.

So the agonising decision wasn’t really a decision at all - we booked onto a 7 day “grass-roots” (the new way of saying “budget”) trip, that would get us round the more tricky sights. And then, after scoffing a few anti-malarials (my third regime for this trip), we jetted off as quickly as we could.

Now I have to confess to being pretty ignorant about a lot of the history, culture, religions and modern-day politics of much of South East Asia (my preparations for this trip focussed so much on South America that I really don’t feel I’ve read up enough yet about the various countries I’m going to be visiting over the next few months). And if I’m honest, although I could have found Borneo on the map (it lies to the east of peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra), I didn’t know that it actually isn’t a country at all. The name Borneo (which probably originally came from a variation of Brunei back in the days when the Sultanate was much bigger) is now the name by which the island as a whole gets referred to, but the entire island itself is divided between the countries of Malaysia, (who occupy the north 1/3), Indonesia (who occupy everything to the south) and the small Sultanate of Brunei (situated on the northern coast).

Although there are no doubt a few attractions to Indonesian Borneo most of the guidebooks don’t put too much focus on it (perhaps due to Indonesia having the highest deforestation rate in the world). Virtually all the tour companies operate in the Malaysian section of Borneo which, despite heavy deforestation over the last 50 years too, is where the majority of the National Parks and tourism highlights are today. So we arrived, 2 days before the start of the tour, in the Malaysian state of Sabah in north-east Borneo and headed to the town of Sandakan to visit Borneo’s number one tourist attraction - the Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre at Sepilok.

This centre, in a joint program between the Malaysian Government and the UK Charity Orang-utan Appeal UK, provides medical care for orphaned and confiscated orang-utans (some locals have been found keeping them as pets) and funds research into the study of these great creatures as well as promoting their need for conservation both locally and globally. It is home to about 25 juvenile orphaned orang-utans, who are fed, cared for and educated in essential skills by the staff in the centre’s nursery, and a further 60-80 orang-utans, who have been rehabilitated enough to be deemed able to reside outside in the 45 square kilometre protected Kabili Sepilok Forest Reserve adjoining the centre. Human contact with the younger orang-utans is kept to a minimum in order to enable them to retain a wariness of humans and to prevent transmission of diseases - as such we weren’t allowed to visit the nursery area. But we did get to watch at one of the feeding platforms at the edge of the forest reserve, where they put out bananas and milk twice a day for the elder orang-utans (they keep the diet boring in order to encourage the orang-utans to learn to forage for themselves).

I’ll be honest and tell you that I did my usual and got all excited about the prospect of seeing another of the world’s great creations - so much so that I built it up too much - and so as we were standing on the platform with the other 100+ tourists, I felt a bit unimpressed at the fact that, when 6 or so orang-utans turned to up get their food and swung along the only rope to the feeding platform (which strategically passes right by the viewing platform), it felt a bit like the wildlife was on display and was expected to parade for the masses. Which I guess it was - I mean the admission fees help fund the program and if there were no orang-utans to be seen there’d be no visitors. But despite it not feeling like a completely unscripted encounter with a truly wild orang-utan in the jungle, it was amazing to watch them and I do believe that it’s about as close as even remote main-stream tourism will reliably enable you to get these days… unless you’re exceptionally lucky. Like the Australian lady who was sitting alone on the viewing platform after the crowds had disappeared and managed to take the perfect arm-cam photograph when a former orang-utan inmate came out of the jungle, sidled up, sat down beside her and put its arm around her for a cuddle.

We whiled away the rest of the day in Sandakan visiting a couple of other sights and trying Malaysian food in the market area (it’s heavily influenced by the Indian and Chinese heritage of Malaysia) before heading up to Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah state, where we joined our tour and met up with the other 5 people (4 Aussies - Kris, Brooke, Daran and Pip and another Brit - Mark) who we were going to spend the next few days travelling with.

“Grass roots” tours being what they are I suppose it was no surprise that for the initial part of our tour they actually dispensed with the need for a tour guide whatsoever. We were met at our joining hotel by a representative who issued us with boat tickets for the next morning and then we had to make our way via the island of Labuan and (thanks to a change of boat schedule) Brunei, to Limbang - a small town just inside the Malaysian state of Sarawak, which, as far as the tourist is concerned, acts as one end of a backdoor route through the jungle to Mulu National Park.

Our local guide, the excellently named Duke, met us in Limbang and, after a morning wandering the town and trying yet more local food, we headed to the river and jumped in a longboat for a couple of hours cruising upstream into the steamy jungle territory of the Iban People - the original inhabitants of Borneo Island.

The Iban are one of some 200 Dayak Tribes remaining in Borneo (Dayak is the term used for the non-Muslim people of Borneo). Like the other Dayak tribes, they were originally farmers, hunters and gatherers. The Ibans were pioneers of headhunting which is believed to have started when the lands occupied by them became over-populated. The way of war was the only way that any Dayak tribe could achieve prosperity and fortune and in those days, intruding on lands belonging to other tribes resulted in death. Confrontation was the only way of survival and Dayak warfare was brutal and bloody, to the point of ethnic cleansing. Many extinct tribes, such as the Seru and Bliun, are believed to have been assimilated or wiped out by the Ibans. So as you can imagine I was delighted at the prospect of having a cup of tea and a bit of a natter with them!

The Ibans live in longhouses, huge (several hundred metre long) wooden constructions where the various family groups all live under one roof. The particular one we visited was raised on stilts and had an open balcony running the full length accessed at regular intervals by steps. Inside, a wide open corridor also ran the full length providing communal space and off this area each family had its own partitioned section which was further divided into several rooms. Not to put to fine a point on it it was kind of like a block of flats… just everything on one level.

And now is where the illusion of this “tribe” being like something from yesteryear is shattered… obviously all the warfare and headhunting stopped years ago but I hadn’t expected them or their accommodation and way of life to be quite so modernised. Although the longhouse was old (it was actually in the process of being replaced by something in concrete) it had many of the fixtures and fittings of modern living - electricity and running water, gas cookers, refrigerators, television and telephone were all on display and yet we’d taken a two hour boat trip up a narrow river to get there. I didn’t have the heart to ask if there was a main road round the back Duke hadn’t told us about.

The way of life and traditional lands of all these “indigenous” people are rapidly disappearing as they become progressively more integrated to mainstream Malaysian society and the jungle areas they’ve roamed and called home for generations get swallowed up by logging practices or other modern developments. I don’t know what choice they have in the matter, I suspect none - it’s just seen as natural progression - but today, the younger generation are mostly found eeking out a living in urban areas, only visiting their hometowns during the holidays and struggling to retain their traditional heritage and culture. Its begginging to seem the same the world over.

So we had an evening playing with the longhouse kids, eating some surprisingly good food accompanied by some slow-cooked coconut rice and Pitaya (a bright purple fruit called Dragon Fruit) that we’d picked up on the way. Then we tucked into and grimaced through some local rice wine before heading to bed to spend a night sleeping on the floor of one of the longhouse rooms. And then about a million cockerels started crowing.

The rude awakening was relatively useful as we had a big day ahead of us… we were heading a few hours further upstream and preparing to battle the jungle as we followed an old route used by Kayan warriors as they made their way through the jungle to invade the people of the Limbang region. Today it’s called the Headhunters Trail.

How the boatman knew where to stop I don’t know as there really was very little sign that this was the start of a trail leading into a National Park. We got out and stood on the banks of the river and listened to the jungle positively hiss at us. I’d done some day trips in and around the jungles of Central America in the early stages of this trip but Borneo’s jungle really is about the most inhospitable you can imagine: The humidity and heat are oppressive - you sweat just standing still, it rains torrentially at a moments notice - turning a slightly muddy, tree-root covered path into a slippery and dangerous quagmire, for some reason every insect is about 4 times larger than normal - which makes even innocent ones look terrifying, and then there are the leeches - lots of them.

Now the leeches are something I wish I hadn’t known about - more specifically I wish they were something Sarah hadn’t known about. The look on her face when we were told about them on arrival made me feel mightily guilty for ever suggesting the trip! Leeches are initially about an inch long and about the diameter of a strand of thread. They hang around in the mud and manage to hop onto whatever is near them (usually feet), then begin to climb about, sensing heat. It doesn’t matter what shoes you wear - they’ll get in somehow. They can manage to get through most fabric so wearing socks doesn’t help much. Once in they’ll move, without you even knowing they’re there, towards the warmer areas of the body (think armpits and groin) and then latch on. Their saliva has an anaesthetic that stops you from feeling the bite and an anti-coagulant that ensures they get maximum blood flow. They’ll stay there for a few hours until they’re about the size of a slug before wandering off. If you do find one on you then getting it off is no easy task - burning with a cigarette or lighter and pulling at them just causes them to dig in deeper or worse to regurgitate their stomach contents into the wound. Some say that salt can work but sharp fingernails applied correctly is probably the best and quickest bet - although you’ll still bleed for a long while afterwards.

We were told we could buy special leech socks to help keep them out - but only after we’d already arrived in Limbang where there weren’t any. So, as things began to look desperate and the amazing hike we were supposed to look forward to began to hang over us like, well a big menacing leech, I latched onto the only hope left… women’s stockings.

No I wasn’t taking my mind off the problem by daydreaming - I was seriously considering wearing some…these magnificent inventions are apparently impregnable to the little leeches. So sod worrying about looking like a big girl’s blouse - I’m a modern man, I’ve worn thermal ski-wear before, I’ll do it… I thought. And then I realised that I was actually clearly more bothered by the leeches than Sarah so had to wait for her to decide to brave the heat and get some before I could dash off to the undies shop too. As it turns out we found ankle stockings which spared the embarrassment of going for full coverage trouser-type ones - worn with a macho pair of football socks I reckon no one had any idea… until now maybe!

Anyway after all that planning I was delighted to hear about the other leech they have in Borneo - this one a tree dweller that actually silently drops on you as you walk below. I mean for god’s sake!

The Headhunters Trail is a 3-4 hour walk from where we left the boat - it’s pretty much a completely flat walk so should have been an easy jaunt for the 7 of us, but we arrived at the camp site soaked to the bone with 2 of us bleeding from leeches, 4 in agony from being stung by giant aggressive hornet wasp things, and 1 heading to hospital due to a torn knee ligament…. Not quite a walk in the park. More of a “wolves did it” League of Gentlemen arrival. And we were only halfway.

Although I was one of the ones who was so rudely attacked by the overly protective giant superwasps (the path must have gone near their territory so they chased us and one got me in the chest - I swear it felt like being lanced with a hot knitting neadle!) I was really glad that, by the time we got to the Park HQ the next day, Sarah had gotten away without any injuries whatsoever and neither of us had been munched on by the leeches (I was told I couldn’t count the one that hopped onto my hand as I was hanging up my clothes even though it did attach itself!). Looking back on it the trek was really great (even if we didn’t get to go and see the amazing limestone spikes known as The Pinnacles and spotted absolutely no wildlife other than bugs) and now wounds have healed, the only true let down was for Kris who missed some of the park while she was carried off to have her knee examined.

Gunung Mulu National Park is a World Heritage listed park famous for its protected rainforest which lies on top of a network of underground passages stretching over 51km. It’s home to the Deer Cave - which I remember seeing in BBC’s recent Planet Earth Series - the cave has the largest entrance (100m wide by 120m high) and the largest cave passage (120m by 150m) of any in the world - and it’s over 2km long! That’s an unimaginably huge volume and photos just don’t do it justice! It’s named due to the deer that come to the cave to feed but the main attraction is actually the bats - an estimated 4 million of them live in the cave, creating the largest pile of guano imaginable that goes on to support an entire ecosystem. In yet another amazing wildlife spectacle for this trip, spending an hour virtually on our own watching the night time exodus of the bats as they streamed and spiralled out of the cave and off into the evening sky was a truly mesmerising and unforgettable experience.

We spent a total of two days in Mulu visiting other various caves (Langs, Clearwater and the Cave of the Winds) and trying in vain to spot some non-insect wildlife, before flying out of the park (a much less traumatic route!) and on to the coastal palm oil town of Miri which seems to be becoming the Dallas of Borneo. In Miri oil money made by the vast plantations that are replacing the jungle is getting splashed about like nobody’s business as they build some seriously big new mansions on the outskirts of the town.

From Miri we headed up to the capital of Sarawak state, the city of Kuching - city of cats apparently (although I never did find out why) - and then on to Bako National Park (the one National Park in Borneo where we’d been told there’d be lots of wildlife) to try and spot the amusing noses of the Proboscis Monkey.

Bako was actually a surprising highlight given we only had a few hours there. We spotted several of the 150 endangered Proboscis Monkeys who live there, caught some Silver-leaf Monkeys hiding in the trees and spent lunchtime being amused by the naughty Macaque Monkeys who, without warning, would leap onto the table to steal food straight from your plate. Oh and there was a Bornean Bearded Pig and lots of rare plants too.

And that was the end of the tour… after a last night out at a few of the surprisingly trendy bars of Kuching to celebrate Kris’ birthday, Sarah and I said goodbye to our fellow travellers and left Borneo behind us.

Borneo was certainly a bit different to how I imagined it - but then I hadn’t really done any research at all. Certainly there’s a much great population there than I was aware of - several very quickly expanding cities and an even more rapidly shrinking jungle are quite literally concrete evidence of this. But even with problems like this that seem to dog so many rapidly developing countries it’s still a remarkably unique place to go to for nature and wildlife. In fact it’s perhaps essential that people do go in order to bring money directly in to the local communities that need it so much now. And with any luck, a tourist presence there that manages not to add to the destruction, will help raise awareness for the need to protect as much of what is left as possible.

And for the traveller who doesn’t like mainstream tourism - well tourism in Borneo is still pretty undeveloped other than around the major sites where expensive tours fly trippers directly in and out without giving them much exposure to the real country. Away from these areas it sometimes feels like you’re the only tourist in town - a feeling that I personally think is great even if it means it’s because there isn’t much to see there. If you have the time to travel Borneo without a tour and can put up with the occasional extra expense of hiring guides where you’re forced to, then it must be an absolutely amazing trip… otherwise picking a good eco-tour company that will get money directly back to the local people is a great option.

So Sarah and I left Borneo and flew to Kuala Lumpur on the main Malaysian peninsular. And that’s where you find us now - we’ve opted to stay in the chaotic but really fun area of Chinatown which is pretty much where all the backpackers stay. We had Chinese food last night followed by a trip out to the Petronas Towers where we stood gawping at them all lit up before taking far too many photos. And then we headed back this morning to get a free trip up to the skybridge for a view of the city. We’ve also spent this morning exploring Little India and more of Chinatown (proof if ever you needed it of the huge influence those two giants have had on Malaysian culture) and wandered round the historic centre of KL - Merdeka Square - before browsing the huge central market and getting tempted by so many of the counterfeit goods on offer in the street markets around here.

And now we’re heading for yet another flight…. This one to the even more chaotic hub that is Bangkok in Thailand - Sarah’s off to see some friends who are on holiday on the island of Ko Pha Ngan (ahem Full Moon Party!) and I’m going to head straight off and try and lose myself in another of the (hopefully) more remote countries of SE Asia - Laos.



Malaysia Slideshow

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