Malaysia - you win some, you lose some...

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(N) Janoush, a German guy we met, described Malaysia as the “Schwaben of Asia” – orderly, perfectly pleasant, dull. It was a harsh judgment, but one not entirely without truth. I have strong opinions about every country we have visited so far but when people ask me about Malaysia, I struggle for an answer. “Malaysia... hmmm...” Unfortunately the same goes for Borneo. We anticipated wild landscape, charming villages and provincial towns with heaps of character but instead found fully developed cities geared up to systematically lighten the pockets of tourists. And in place of the epic jungle Borneo is famous for, we found palm oil plantations, neatly arranged in a grid, as far as the eye could see. It was shocking. A conservationist we met told us later that they were struggling to get some 20 percent of the jungle protected. 20 percent!! All else is apparently there for the taking of the palm oil industry, which is keen to capitalise on the west’s demand for “green fuel”. And rather than exercising foresight and evaluating the long-term effect on the island’s ecosystem and tourism, the government prefers to make a quick buck.

We left the beautiful Philippines unwillingly (our visa had run out), and flew from Clark to Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah. It was big, modern and felt rather sterile; other than that I don’t have very much to say about it. KK, as the city is commonly referred to, was only a one night stopover this time as we were flying to the other side of the island to dive the legendary Sipadan Island for Matt’s birthday.

This had been no easy quest as only 120 people including snorkellers are allowed on the island in one day and permits are snapped up months in advance. But after a few hours research back in Cambodia, I had managed to organise us two permits along with accommodation on Mabul Island, another famed diving spot across from Sipadan. We went with Sipadan.com, a company recommended for diving in online travel forums. People had however warned how very basic and scruffy the accommodation was, so we were very much surprised to find a clean, very decent double room with fan & seaview, presented to us by incredibly helpful local staff who also turned out to be amazing cooks. At high tide, you could jump from the dining area right into the turquoise, luke warm water. Mabul Island is tiny; you can walk around it in half an hour, and when we went to explore the villages, we discovered that our hostel occupied the best spot on the island. The water everywhere else was full of rubbish and human waste.... we saw more than one “toad fish” on a soon-aborted snorkel mission, which understanbly spoils the beauty of the island. Mabul has no refuse system, which the local dive schools are trying to change by organising weekly beach clean ups and pressuring the goverment into sending boats to collect the garbage. It’s very necessary – online word has already spread that Mabul is dirty and the water disgusting, most certainly keeping a portion of tourists away.

Luckily, it was a different story under water. The dive sites in Mabul are famous for macro diving – looking for tiny and often rare creatures as opposed to big stuff like sharks. For the sake of namedropping, we saw crocodile fish, stone fish, peacock mantis shrimp and exotic animals such as the ornate ghost pipefish and juvenile lion fish, which one of the macro-obsessed dive instructors excitedly pronounced “so rare I can guarantee you will never see one again!” It was very nice diving, but after six dives we were hungry for some HPA (huge pelagic action; our favourite new acronym compliments of the ever enthusiastic Lonely Planet). Our cynical dive masters had declared Sipadan “boring”... what a load of toad fish! The island is full of amazing dive sites and brimming with life. They are beautiful wall dives, where one after the other, dozens of green and hawksbill turtles dive off the island’s rim above you and “fly” over your head into the big blue. Once in a while, a white tip reef shark would whoosh around beside you as you drift along with the current. And there was much more to come on our second dive at the flagship site called “Barracuda Point”. When we entered the water it felt like we had been dropped into an overcrowded aquarium. At only 3 metres’ depth, we were surrounded by a school of huge hump head parrotfish, each about a metre long, and some hundred jacks on the other side, their silver bodies reflecting the sun. The remaining gaps were filled by a blanket of smaller tropical fish of all kinds, colours and shapes. After our dive master Christina managed to drag us away, we descended deeper towards a beautiful coral bed and held onto a rock to resist the current to watch a giant cloud of chevron barracuda gliding majestically overhead. It was spectacular. When we moved on, we encountered sharks “like packs of dogs” (quote an Afrikaner we’d befriended), circling on the bottom of the plateau calmly, giving us plenty of opportunity to observe them closely. Unfortunately we didn’t see the elusive hammerhead shark... which would have been Matt’s ultimate birthday present. But I hope, and Matt assured me, it was a great birthday nevertheless. In the evening, we threw a party with our fellow divers including our new friends Steph and Angus – a London couple that provided endless entertainment throughout our stay in Mabul. There was cake brought over from the mainland and cheap Filipino rum smuggled from Palawan, the latter ensuring much laughter and merriness and lowering inhibitions in a hilarious game of Pictionary that followed.

The next day, we left rather hungover (we’ve cleverly been making a tradition of drinking the evening before travel days), boarded a boat to Semporna, a bus to Tawau, and a plane back to KK, where we ended up spending another four nights. It was way too much. We had wanted to climb Mount Kinabalu but ditched the plan after finding out that a) permits were difficult to get last minute and b) the price was immense – US$150 per person for a 2-day trek. So we decided to pass our time with day excursions, while we waited for two free beds in the hostel in Mulu National Park, our next destination.

One day, we took a boat out to Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park, a cluster of offshore tropical islands packed with locals in bright orange life vests – a frequent sight in Asia, where many people can’t swim. However this does not deter them from engaging in recreational activities such as snorkelling or “SCUBA diving” (i.e. snorkelling with SCUBA equipment on the surface 5 metres from the shore - I swear). Another day, we went on an organised white water rafting tour to a river three hours drive away. This was great fun, if intimidating at first; we were looking at grade 3 and 4 rapids (5 is the highest) and in their safety briefing, the guides talked about “facing 3 metre-high walls of water” and predicted frequent overturning of our raft. We were put together with four lovely English girls who were equally scared and promised the guide an extra large tip if he managed to keep us from capsizing. It worked. The rapids were ferocious but we stayed in the raft and had the best time. It even made us temporarily forget the hole this outing had burnt into our pockets.

Borneo is hugely expensive, especially Sabah. The main reason for that is that it is practically impossible to get away from organised tours to the main attractions in the province. We tried to find information about alternative modes of transport and places to visit/stay but no matter how determined your research and questioning, people collectively keep schtum and you end up on a bus with 40 other tourists like we did on our rafting trip. As I said before, the trip was great fun but it hardly showed us Borneo. In fact, in the entire time in Sabah we felt like we didn’t even penetrate the surface, and were disillusioned about leaving Sabah so much poorer but no richer in experience.

Things marginally improved in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo’s western state. It got a little more affordable here, and we had one or two more interesting experiences. One of them was our homestay in Mulu national park, where we shared a room with four large coackroaches. I wasn’t overly happy because we didn’t have a mosquito net but what can you do.... the room was cheap. I have definitely hardened up on our travels. We spent our days in the park, “hiking” several of the park’s many trails (on wooden walkways, some suspended in the tree canopy), including to the Deer Cave, the world’s largest cave system that gained fame after appearing in an episode of David Attenborough’s “Planet Earth”. Every evening, unless it’s raining, three million bats leave the cave to go hunting. On television it looked like an epic event, a cloud of three million bats rushing out and darkening the sky so we were a little disappointed when the bats left in small groups at a time, in snake like formations. They do this to try and lessen the chance of an attack by the bat hawk that lurches in the vicinity, hoping to make a catch. It was still a spectacle, but you know how expectations can be a bummer...

The caves themselves however were stunning. We were lucky to have an amazing female guide who was extremely knowledgable -an exception to the rule in the park. She grew up in Mulu, and it was in fact her uncle who discovered Lang’s cave on one exploratory hike. She was a source of endless information about the geology of the park, the caves and their inhabitants and we could sense her passion about rescuing her beloved jungle from the fate of deforestation.

We also experienced the other end of the spectrum; alarmingly during the one excursion where you really need a professional: caving. Our guide couldn’t even answer basic questions such as the discovery date of the cave, did not brief us and even left part of our group, an Indian couple, scrambling behind once we had entered the pitch-black cave that was to host us for the next four hours. The cave was huge and scary. With only headlamps as a source of light, we squeezed through small crevices, climbed up and abseiled down 3-metre high vertical walls that were wet and slippery, all the time trying to avoid accidentally placing a hand on a scorpion, racer snake or one of the monstrous, huntsman spiders that inhabited the cave in sizeable numbers. The climbing parts were very difficult and I needed help from the boys on more than one occasion; I couldn’t have done it on my own. The Indian girl burst into tears at one point, while our guide stared and did nothing. The park had advertised it as “intermediate caving”, and I don’t think anyone expected this level of difficulty or danger. Of course Matt loved every minute of it, and in a sadistic kind of way, I also remember it as an incredible experience. But I don’t think the Indian girl felt the same way. I’m sure she slapped her boyfriend on the way out, but it may have just been my eyes playing tricks on me, not used to the bright sunlight anymore...

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