Welcome to the Jungle

For the last few weeks I have been traveling around Brunei, Malaysia and Thailand. Following a brief stay in Singapore, I went out to Borneo where I met Brent. Our first stop was the tiny Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam. When we were going through customs they searched our bags for alcohol, which is illegal. The people of Brunei seemed very pleasant. If I flashed a smile, they tended to burst into a grin, but they were often the ones to be smiling at us first. Brent and I did some hitchhiking and we were picked up almost instantly. On the whole, people seemed perpetually eager to lend a hand, but they did not appear to aggressively pursue tourists to get their business. We visited the city mosque and then rode by the Sultan’s Palace at night on a water taxi.

Once we had crossed back into the Malaysian province of Sarawak, the cultural flavor changed again. Rural Malaysian Borneo is inhabited mainly by Dayak tribes which are an entirely different ethnic group than the mainland Malays, Chinese and Indians, and the Dayaks are predominantly Christian. From Miri we took a 45 minute flight on a propeller plane into the depths of the jungle to the Gunung Mulu National Park. A night walk through the park’s jungles put us up close with some horrifyingly large spiders and insects. On one hike I stepped on a snake, but thankfully it only bit the sole of my shoe when it tried to strike in self-defense. The most impressive sight in the park was probably Dear Cave which is roughly the height of a fifty story building. The cave is a mile deep, and 4 million bats reside on the ceiling where they rain guano on the hikers below. We also paid a visit to a longhouse of the Penan tribe. It seems that the Orang Ulu tribes of Borneo - who were formally known as the ‘head hunters’ - have largely been assimilated into modern society. Many still live in communal longhouses like the one we visited (with as many as a 1000 people under one roof), but I spotted satellite TV dishes on the roof, and their traditional tribal attire had been largely replaced by western-style clothing. My eyes got big, however, when I was told that there are indeed still some Iban longhouses near the Kalimantan border that display human heads to this day.

Once we were back on the mainland Brent and I decided to head our separate ways for the remainder of the trip, so I am now traveling alone. I spent time in historic Melaka and Kuala Lumpur before traveling to Taman Negara, which is a massive jungle reserve in the central highlands of Malaysia. When I arrived I immediately organized my gear and headed into the jungles alone. To say that I got absolutely filthy would be an understatement. It rained every day in the jungle, and I was covered from heard to toe in a greenish colored mud. I also got devoured by leeches, and at one point counted fourteen of the bloodsuckers stuck on my legs. The heat and humidity were stifling, but my primary concern had nothing to do with creature comforts. When it comes to animals that people might find threatening, I generally believe there is some truth to the argument that ‘they are more scared of you than you are of them’. However, when the animals are vipers, cobras, boas, massive spiders, elephants, tigers and tree leopards, I don't know that I fully agree. Despite that fact that my ‘fight or flight’ response was triggered every time I heard something crashing through the trees, I made it through the hike without any incidents. The only other person I passed in the jungle that day was an aboriginal tribesman who was wearing only shorts, and who was hunting with a blow-gun. He had no shirt and no shoes, but he had one of the best afros I had seen in months. When he grinned at me I smiled in awe. I felt like I was a writer for National Geographic.

I slept in a ‘hide’ that night and was lucky enough to have it all to myself. A hide is essentially an open air platform that sits overtop of a salt-lick where one would hope to see some of the larger jungle animals stop in for a taste. The only animal I encountered that night was a six-inch black spider with fangs in the rafters over my bed. I was not disappointed, however, as the gentle symphony of the jungle at night made the trip well worth it. With my eyes closed and ears open, I fell asleep listening to the panoply of sounds emerging from the forest as the nocturnal creatures began to stir. When I was leaving the jungle the following day I stumbled across a Bateq settlement and decided to stop in for a look. The women were topless, some of the kids were painted with white markings in patterns, and the homes were made of branches that had been folded over in a semi-circular fashion. I thought it would be rude to put them on display, so I took no photos and did not stay long. I was just glad to find that there were indeed still some people in central Malaysia who were resisting globalization and the use of shirts.

I spent my birthday en route to Kota Bahru on what is known as the ‘Jungle Train’. The toilet was merely a hole cut in the floor so your business flew down onto the tracks below, people smoked throughout the train as they pleased, there was no AC, it was stiflingly hot, very loud, and there were no lights in the carriages. Whenever we went through a tunnel it was pitch black inside the train. I arrived in Kota Bahru on a Friday, so the place was effectively closed down for the Islamic Sabbath. I managed to find a place to stay and some places to eat without much trouble though, and the next day I walked into Thailand. Crossing the border on foot was slightly amusing. I was in line between cars so it was like walking through a toll booth.

Southern Thailand has been plagued by an ongoing Muslim insurgency in recent years, and the violence had touched the area I stayed in during my first days in the country. At breakfast one morning in Hat Yai, a local sitting at my table took a break from trying to sell me a girl to make a point to tell me that he was friends with one of the culprits of a terrorist bombing that had occurred in the city several months earlier. He then started on a tirade about the foolishness of the American people. That seemed like a good queue for me to move on, so I got a share taxi that morning and headed north towards the beaches. Our van went through numerous checkpoints along the way manned by the Thai Army.

I am in Bangkok now getting visas for some of the countries I will be traveling to in the coming months. I had a ringside seat at a Muay Thai match the other night where I spent four hours watching guys wallop each other with fists, feet, knees and elbows. Let there be no doubt that those guys are tough customers. You wouldn’t want to get caught with one of their daughters!

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