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Published: October 21st 2012
Welcome to the Malaysia edition of our blog. It's a lengthy edition, so some of you 14 readers may wish to give up now, but for the others - hold on tight, you're getting your money's worth!
We arrived in Kota Kinabalu, Borneo and checked into the hotel. Thankfully KK was just a place for our Intrepid group to meet - it's frankly rubbish. Our group of 12 met and were briefed on the trip, amongst the 12 was a young go-getter by the name of Sheard, a great friend of mine and Emma seemed to get on fine with her.
The following day we travelled by minibus to a home stay, which was very interesting, but not exactly what we expected. We had envisaged meeting an elderly tribesman, who would show us his village, we'd eat with our hands from wooden bowls and sleep in a mud hut....this wasn't the case, Mr Roberts was an elderly gentleman, but he and his family lived by the side of the road, he introduced us to Facebook, Twitter, whatever they are, and told us what rubber is used for whilst we tapped a rubber tree. Turns out that rubber is used
for tractor tyres, motorbike tyres, sports car tyres, bicycle tyres....we get it....tyres.
We paint a bad first impression of Borneo and specifically the home stay, but we have decided that we wouldn't change it, ironically it fuelled many jokes that lasted the full 10 day tour and what a superb tour it proved to be.
At Mr Roberts' crib we got involved with rice pounding, a local group of kids showed up and in between updating their Facebook status', danced and played gongs, which we all got involved with. I showed them the 'shut down' dance move and they were so impressed that I'm returning in a couple of years to open a new school that's to be named after me.
The following day we travelled to Mount Kinabalu, settled into some very comfortable cabins and prepared ourselves for the following two days of climbing. Day 1 was spent trekking up for 6km through jungle and above the clouds, it was a tiring day and ended by staying in a rest home for an early night sleep....in bed by
6pm and trying to sleep in a room of 10 people wasn't a problem. We had an early
start, up and ready to leave by
2am, head torches on and some warm clothes!
Emma and Laura bored all our new friends with stories of climbing 'kili', for which I apologised. One element of that climb that I had heard Emma had difficulty with was altitude...and apparently that was something that we might encounter when climbing a mountain. For the summit day of the climb we stuck together and that 'altitude' started to take its toll. Emma needed to take it slowly and secretly that was absolutely fine by me.
It certainly wasn't as easy as we had expected, there were rope sections and you weren't clipped on, so a slip could easily mean broken bones or death, but thankfully we bought some marigold washing up gloves for added grip and comedy value. Also, I thought that Emma could do with a new pair for when we finally get home, those dishes don't wash themselves.
The mountain is the highest in South East Asia and we reached the summit with the help of a mountain guide called Pinky, or at least that's what we called him for the entire two days, only to learn that his
actual name was Pingi, now all we had to do, after climbing 3km to the summit was to get down, the whole 9km down...needless to say, our legs were in pieces for the following 2 days.
We stayed in the most wonderful place called the Round Inn in Pouring hot springs for 2 nights...our room was painted grey, had a porthole window as big as a postage stamp, a cockerel that woke us up
at 4am and a shower positioned directly over the toilet...they are very time efficient.
The bugs that were at this place were tremendous and massive, Rhino beetles, fire flies, giant poisonous grasshoppers. What was brilliant about staying there was the fact that it was walking distance to see a Rafflesia flower in bloom. These things literally smell like a rotting animal, they are huge and rare to see in bloom - they only last for 7 days, so we were very fortunate.
To help soothe our weary legs, we visited the sulphur baths and then gingerly climbed up to a tree canopy walkway. Too much of a good thing n all that, we left the Round Inn and travelled to an Eco village in
the rain forest. Traveling by boat, we saw a crocodile, that was fun. We saw lots of wild animals and insects, monkeys, monitor lizards, birds. The night walk wasn't so great, it was raining, we saw very little and leeches and mosquitos were rife.
Leeches are horrible little things, thankfully, nobody had their blood sucked, but 2 of the b@57@rds were trying to work their way into my pants...can't blame them, really.
We left the Eco camp shadows of our former selves...or at least I did, turns out Mosquitos quite like me, despite practically burning my skin off by applying deet every 5 minutes, my back resembled that of a 15 year old kid with terrible acne....I obviously didn't complain.
Next stop was Sandakan for a night, before we headed to Turtle Island. Sandakan is similar to Kota Kinabalu....rubbish, but we weren't there for long, it was just a useful place for us to stay, with access to some exceptionally good places.
We took a speed boat over to Turtle Island, the half an hour journey was good and I politely waved to prospective pirates as we sped past.
The island was idyllic and we
were very quickly greeted by a monitor lizard and a baby turtle, not at the same time, that wouldn't work.
We spent the day lazing on the white sands and snorkelling, then just before dusk we made our way to dinner and waited for the giant sea turtles to come ashore and lay their eggs. We had heard stories of having to wait until
5am to see this, so I made a few calls and one mother turtle came ashore at about
8pm.
When turtles lay their eggs they dig a big hole and enter a trance-like state, this means that they are not fazed by 20 or 30 people gathered around taking photos...flash needed to be off, though.
She lay a total of 133 eggs, which were swiftly taken away and buried in a much safer place along with many, many others, all 30 inches below the surface of the sand, away from predators and detailed with date, number etc.
After all the excitement, we then got to witness the release of the baby turtles that had hatched that day...amazing. They all scramble to the water and away they swim. Many will not make it,
but the conservation centre are making steps to increase numbers of the endangered species.
Off to bed, we woke at 7 the next morning, boarded the boat back to the mainland and headed to see the
10am feeding of the Orang-utans.
The sanctuary looks after many orphan Orangutans and many who have suffered at the hands of greedy people who chop down the rainforest of Borneo. Palm oil plantations form a huge percentage of the economy of Borneo, but it's at the cost of the rainforest and inhabitants.
The sanctuary is vast and the animals are wild, there are no cages, they are looked after and fed, but slowly the human contact naturally lessens as they fend and feed themselves. Once ready, they are released back into the rainforest.
The morning feeding was amazing, 3 Orangutans, one mother with baby, showed up and ate, not much more to say than that really...it was just impressive to see them swinging onto the platform with such ease, stuffing their funny faces and then swinging on the ropes back out again...with a bunch of bananas clutched in their feet!
We swiftly left the Orangutans and jumped in a
taxi to the probiscus monkey sanctuary. Probiscus Monkeys are the ones with massive noses...or shlong noses as I chose to call them. They were a little shy at first, but soon livened up, joined by hornbill birds and grey leaf monkeys. The grey leaf monkeys came to join us close up for a few photos, I think I want one for Christmas.
After that feeding we jumped back in the taxis and to the Orangutans again for the afternoon feed. This was a little more energetic than the morning, as the 3 adult Orangutans showed up, along with lots of macaque monkeys. The Orangutans showed off, hanging upside down on the ropes. The macaques were there to pinch the Orangutans food and it was funny to watch the Orangutans shake the ropes and the little thieves fall off!
The feeding was over and we started to make our way out of the rainforest sanctuary, but not before bumping into 2 male Orangutans...Toby and Ringo. We'd been warned about Toby, he'd bitten our tour guide on a previous visit, so when he hung off a tree and swung for the hat worn by the bloke in front of us,
we backed off!
The sanctuary pair up orphan Orangutans, one confident one with one not so confident, this helps them learn from each other, much like they would from their mother in the wild. Toby and Ringo were quite the double act! Orangutans share 96% of human DNA or 100% of mine.
So that was our fill of primates and it was bloody great. We flew back to Kota Kinabalu and shared a farewell Borneo meal and some drinks with our new friends from the group.... ...next up was a 2 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur....the capital of Malaysia. In stark contrast to most of the accommodation we encountered in Borneo, we pitched up at the Grand Hyatt and lived for a couple of days like decadent pigs. The room was amazing, the best I've ever stayed in, not the best that Emma's ever stayed in, but she is high maintenance and posh.
The hotel overlooked the iconic Petronas towers and the buffet breakfast was taken full advantage of. We enjoyed food and drinks on the rooftop of the third petronas tower and watched the sunset, shortly after we had a thunderstorm....the end.
So that was
Malaysia and now onto Melbourne, Australia. We are going to spend time with our very good friends Spud and Alice and try to persuade them to move back to the UK.
Until next time, bonsoir.
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Dave
non-member comment
Stop winging Karl
Al,great to hear that you're both having a lovely time.the pics look amazing.i am a bit concerned that you have aged 40 years however as there is an awful lot of whinging going on in this blog.i look forward to less wining when I hear of your next adventures.send our love to Emma. P.s British gas rang and said that you left the oven on.bonsoir