The Wonders of Borneo

Semporna

Riding in a bus for the first time in SE Asia provides one with wisdom they don't soon forget. Fortunately I have ridden in one before, and I didn't forget. What you find very quickly is that despite the fact that the weather is balmy outside, the temperature in the bus will eventually become Antarctic on the inside of the bus. Dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, you will find that dying of hypothermia near the equator isn't as ironic as it first sounds. So I prepared myself, putting pantlegs on, and dawning my towel as a blanket, and praying for weaker than usual aircon. My prayers were answered. So with the help of a book cum pillow, and a sleeping-mask, I was set.

We arrived very early in the morning in Semporna, paid far too much ($3) for the cab ride, and were graciously allowed to come into the hostel. Semporna, despite having a name that sounds like much fun to be had, does not have much going on, except diving, which after all is why we came. The are around this dirty rundown city is flush with great diving sites, one of which is world renoun. The city is redeamed, however, by the warmth and generousity of its people. The children run over to have their pictures taken, the people direct you to cheaper places, one man showed us around his mosque and taught us a little about the goings on within it. Semporna, a beautiful kind of ugly.

Sipadan, the famed dive site, is unfortunately off limits to those, like ourselves, who do not have the foresight to book ahead by two weeks. Doh! But we decided on Mabul Island, which is supposed to be nearly as magnificent. While not having a point for comparison, it is hard to believe that Sipadan could top it. We saw so much life, including 5 green sea turtles. One was so huge and magnificent that I won't soon forget staring into its eyes from so near a distance as to make me nervous, if not it. It was fantastic.

We finished off our stay in Semporna with some people we'd just met, whose names I've mostly forgotten already. Nonetheless, we participated in the quiz night at the pub, and were handily routed in our attempt at intellectualism. No matter.

The Road to Sungai Kinabatangan

We left Semporna in hopes of going to Lahad Datu to see the elephants. The winding road along the east coast is verdant, but terribly sad; you realize that the virgin forest have be all but eliminated in favour of palm plantations. For as far as the eye can see, for hundreds of kms, the scene is naught but palm trees, or about to be so. It's enough to make one think that the whole world must be made of palm plantations. I let Mel sleep through it, waking her as we arrived in Lahad Datu. We walked into the city fresh faced, but soon realized that this is not a very easy place for budget minded people to stay. We were soon hungry, we were hot, we were daunted by the sense that the denizens of this city saw white people and went, oh good money. As each hotel we went to suddenly lost its economy rooms between the time we asked for them and the time we were going to pay for the night's stay. So we ate and quickly bailed on the city, with good riddence.

We called Uncle Tan's Jungle Adventure and told them we were on our way a bit early. They gave me some convoluted instructions about how to get there including a mosque and a bridge and then promptly hung up. When we got to the bus terminal a nice fellow helped us find the right bus. We told the driver we were going to Uncle Tan's - Kinabatangan. Umm no. According to the driver, they were not the same thing, one was 1 hour, and one was 3 hours. After some serious confusion for all of us, I drew a mosque and a bridge. He looked at it a moment, and said. "AH! Gum Gum." That rung a bell for me too and we were off.

One of the great thing about traveling is that if you're paying attention, you notice little gestures. I'd seen kids flicking thumbs with each other. At this triumphal moment he put his out, and I mine; he gave it a flick. Ah ha - A Malaysian high five!

Sepilok:

Started by it's jungle-conservationist namesake the adventure is a chance of a lifetime. We started off in the morning before the official pickup with a visit to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. Here they capture animals that have been illegally taken as pets and are retrained to eventually return to the wild.

Most people in the English speaking world pronounce Orangutan with a certain "tang" at the end of it...NO -TANG! -TAN. There I said it. Anyway, they were a riot. They have such distinct personalities. I was not disappointed with my visit to the park.

Uncle Tan's Jungle Adventure: Nature is Brutal

We saw some brutal nature though. In one instance, we watch a monkey toss a baby off of a rope, with as much resistance as the little guy could muster. He fell ten feet from the rope to the platform below. It yelped, got up and continued, but wobbled like a broken antenna in the wind; its back was clearly broken. Then at the jungle camp, we watched as the male boar turned suddenly on its progeny and turned the little "Kaka" into raw, squealing, eviscerated bacon. Nature is as brutal as beautiful. We saw wild orangs, crocs, proboscis monkeys (whose noses look like flaccid penises dangling from their foreheads), snakes and scorpions, millipedes and centipedes, boars, and butterflies. It was really quite stunning.

The adventure, as it reminded people innumerably throughout its pamphlets, was no Hilton. The camp was muddy and flush with knee high water at points, the beds and as a result the people, ie. me, smelled of a dank musk, and I managed to step on a nail that could well have been on a tetanus warning poster, that pierced to the bone. Not to worry though, they amputated my foot and salvaged my leg :) That said, the experience was definitely a highlight on the Borneo circuit.

Mt. Kinabalu National Park:

According to the Lonely Planet guide book in the hostel where we stayed Kinabalu National Park is still a very reasonable place to stay. However, as of 2006 it seems that Japanese tour groups had not yet stumbled upon this place, and the prices had not yet skyrocketed. Arriving in the park, dropped off in the fog on the edge of the highway, we expected to pay 12 ringits a night per person, only to find that it was now a minimum of RM85. We blanched at the price and asked the lady at the counter how we might be able to flag down a bus in the dark of night shrouded in a deep mountain fog? She hesitated, then saw we were really not going to brook such a gouging, then directed us down the road to a little homestay. The Mountain Backpackers was quaint and relatively clean, and lent a sense of adventure to sleeping there, in the way only future landslide scenes can. I've never really stood at a 30 degree sidways angle to take a piss.

Despite our initial shock, the free walks around the park were well worth the time and effort of getting there. We didn't see much in the way of wildlife, but the exercise, fresh air, and moderately good views lent themselves to a worthwhile day in the woods. After seeing it, we caugh a ride with some Buddhist machinists back to Kota Kinabalu.

KK Revisited

I take it back. Kota Kinabalu is actually quite charming and at night it is really a fairly lovely place. I was particularly impressed by the sunsets over the KK harbour. Mel and I spent a couple of days looking around town, visiting the excellent Sabah National Museum (well mostly excellent), and a day on Sapi Island, part of the offshore island chain (as most island chains tend to be). The snorkeling was unbelievable, almost as unbelievable as the shade of red I am now as a result of the sun. Let me put it this way: I'm so red that Lucy, the hostel owner exclaimed Wow! You Red! Red like a lobster!

It seems that I made a long series of errors that resulted in what is now quite painful. "Can somebody throw me some cream, or a wet towel. I'm burnt very badly down here. Anybody?" Such mistakes can be seen as follows:

• I overestimated my sunscreen's ability to stay on while I was wet
  
• I underestimated the luminocity of the sun
  
• I underestimated the reflective capacity of the ocean to burn parts of me that were not even facing in the direction of that, the nearest star to Earth
  
• I forgot, only to remember the next day, if ever so vaguely, my doctor saying that the anti-biotics (the ones I'm taking due to the foot stabbing) cause extreme sensitivity to the sun.
  

It is by far the worst sunburn of my life. Just call me Pinchie.

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