From the Forest

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The fireflies flit through the jungle canopy as the sun slides down over the lake here - somewhere in the rain forest of southern Sarawak. I can’t be more precise than that, as there isn’t anything other than the hotel we are staying at. It is architecturally modelled on an Iban (local tribe) longhouse and its sole tenuous link to the outside world is the boat jetty connecting to another jetty where the road to/from Kuching ends. The hotel has most of the modern conviences such as non-Iban plumbing and pretty much constant electricity. It is delightful and the place we have chosen to rest up from the tribulations of modern air travel and chill out (not an appropriate turn of phrase for this tropical climate) for a few days. Unsurprisingly we have no internet connection and so will post this on our return to the capital city of Kuching (lit.’ Cat‘ in Malay).

The journey from London via Malaysian Airways (cattle class) was tiring. We had thought the fates were smiling on us when on seeing S with her alpine stick hobbling towards them, the check-in staff moved us to seats with more legroom. But in a cruel twist this transpired to be a somewhat pyrrhic bonus as the seats turned out to be by the main lavatories with constant coming and going and cursing passengers stumbling over my legs as they lined up to use the ablution facilities. So it was bruised and bleary eyed we arrived in Kuala Lumpur and connected with the flight on to Borneo. After a brief overnight in Kuching we had an early morning start to be driven five hours to the jetty to catch the boat to our remote rain forest hotel.

The weather is – well the clue is in the previous sentence! To be fair the rain comes and goes and is refreshingly enjoyable in the stifling humidity. Oh and by the way it is not really roughing it as there is a great swim hole – well a beautifully tiled swimming pool actually. I have plans to possibly try out the rain forest canopy walk tomorrow or maybe the day after. No really the hotel does have problems - the rooms have bats and staffs are constantly sweeping up bat guano (notice the polite use of guano instead of bat shit)

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Photos

Rain
Rain Batang Ai