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Published: September 10th 2009
Rafflesia Flower on the forest floor
At only 40cm across, its not the biggest Rafflesia, but it was ours! The red and white quite striking against the forest floor.One of the beauties about travelling with no fixed itinerary, with no pre-booked accommodation, with a little bit of time, is that you can change your mind about what you are doing and where you are going. Its something we have a habit of doing. Like the time we took the bus to Sao Paolo to watch a football game, arrived at the bus station, remembered we didn't like Sao Paolo last time we were there, and got on another bus heading to Rio. And saw a better game at the Maracana. Its been a while since we have had the luxury of the time to change our minds, the past few trips have been a bit short and rushed. Even the start of this one was, with the diving and jungle trip already booked before we arrived. But this morning was like the old days of our travelling. We couldnt meet up with our CS host last night as he got stuck in KK, and we'd already done everything we wanted to do in and around Kudat. Up until lunch time, we were planning to stay one more night to meet up with Howard (CS).
By lunch time we had walked round town twice, visited all the markets, got Colin a haircut, looked at the brightly coloured Chinese Temple, walked the waterfront looking at the fishing boats, and generally got bored with the place.
Going to the barbers was funny, they found it highly amusing cutting Colins hair. The guy did a good job though, even if he did cut it a bit too short! He asked what number we wanted, we picked 4 as that is about what I use at home. Trouble is, being untrained, I tend to use the same grade all over. This guy used the number 4 on top, and by the time he was down the ends, well, there isn't much hair left on poor Colins head! Then out came the cut throat to trim neck and ears.
So anyway, around lunch time we just kind of looked at each other and said “lets go”, meaning lets get out of Kudat and head for somewhere else. Somewhere else turned out to be KK again, where we hoped to rent a car and go over the Crocker Ranges, maybe find a Rafflesia in bloom.
We grabbed our
bags from the hostel and headed for the shared taxi / mini bus lay by. We expected to have to wait for an hour or two till something filled up, especially as it was getting late. But no, we walked up, someone asked where we were going, we were led to a car and off we went. Checking the price first of course, a few ringgits more than the bus, but it would be quicker and more comfortable. While we were the only people getting on in Kudat, the driver did say he would pick up along the way, he just wanted to get going back to KK with a fare.
It was a pretty uneventful drive, apart from the fact the Colin did some of the driving. The driver looked tired, Colin offered to drive, the driver said he was fine, then a while later pulled over and swapped seats with Colin. After driving at about 100kmh and overtaking when he felt like it, the driver made sure Colin wasn't going to go over 80kmh.
The drivers here have been surprisingly good. Experiences elsewhere in Asia led us to expect speeding, crazy manoeuvres, horns blaring all the
time, three lines of cars in a two lane road, but no, its much more civilised here. We cant remember hearing a horn at all, the drivers seem more courteous, some of them even stop to allow us to walk across the road! Sure the overtaking leaves a lot to be desired, but then you do go round a corner expecting to see someone on your side of the road so you are ready to slow down and pull over. Sure people tailgate, forget to indicate, speed in town, but it all seems so relaxed, so civilised, so lacking in road rage. Then again there are the bus drivers. They'll quite happily cut you up, pull out in front of you, change lanes suddenly without warning. At least the minibuses arent crammed with people as in other parts of Asia. Generally if the bus is a 10 seater, only 10-11 people will be on board. Of course, having that extra row of seats squished helps get more people on board, no matter that there is nowhere for them to put their legs. The only mini bus I didn't really want to get on was one where the lady in the
seat behind us had her kid on her knee and was picking nits out of her hair. Not just searching for them, but picking them out and squashing them between her nails. Slightly off-putting!!!
So that was us back in KK. The city felt familiar as all places do when you go back to them. We knew roughly where we were heading and could find our way around the centre easily. But talk about busy though, cars and scooters everywhere, to cutting across the road, we had to wait for the lights to change. Why did we come back to the city a couple of days before we really needed to???
We went down to the night market to find some dinner. There are several options for those that dont want to cook for themselves. You can go to one of the stalls round the edge and get something to take away. This is the type of food we have been getting a lot from the markets, rice, noodles, kebabs / skewers of meat or seafood, various vege dishes, and all sorts of colourful and sweet desserts. Or you can sit at one of the many tables lined
up in the middle and get served whatever the Malay folk running that table are cooking that night, soup, noodles, rice, chicken, fish. Nothing much for a vegetarian there! Or you can go to the Filipino BBQ section that the LP raves about. Again nothing for a vegetarian as its a seafood lovers haven. You pick your stall and choose whatever grilled seafood takes your fancy - shrimp, crab, tuna, squid, unidentified all sorts, some on skewers, some just large chunks. Take a seat while the server takes your choice of food away for a final blast on the grill. While you are waiting, make your sauce from whatever is on the table, chili sauce, soy sauce, salt, limes. Then tuck in and enjoy. We just got some noodles and one of the deep fried egg and cabbage fold-over things and ate on the hostel balcony. Boring eh?!
Wednesday 9th September 2009 Not a lot to write about today. We found another hostel in the morning, one with more of a communal area and a better breakfast. We posted a couple of blogs and caught up with emails. We found a place to hire a car from. We
The road over the Crocker Ranges
The road before us dropped off the edge of the hill, but we could see it winding its way over the ridge line out in front of us. bought and sent some postcards. We met a CS guy from Finland who wants to come out with us in the car tomorrow. We did a lot of non-descript things to fill the day nicely. We thought about going to the movies, even looked at what was on offer at one cinema, but changed our minds when we found that every movie was a horror or martial art flick. We had a blow out lunch - wholemeal rolls, Philadelphia cream cheese, tomato and chocolate milk. Its amazing what you can find in the supermarket when you ignore the price labels! We've been having a bit of chocolate milk here though, Milo is very popular, both hot and cold. For some reason though, its cheaper to get hot Milo in a cafe than cold. By about 50c sometimes. From the shops though, the Dutch Lady brand is better than Milo, more chocolatey. The cans of green tea with peach are also lovely and refreshing. And the “100 plus” drinks too, especially the lemon / lime ones. They are a kind of isotonic sports drink.
KK is so much hazier than before. Last time we were here, we had clear skies,
blazing sun, and good views over the water in front and the hills behind. Now we are in burn-off season and the haze is blocking everything. We were on the waterfront and some of the islands of the Tunku Abdul Rahman Park were blurry outlines rather than nice, green islands. And as for seeing past the first line of hills behind the city, dont bother looking. We are so glad we had those few days here before so we could go up Signal Hill and get good views over the city to the islands, and looking from the back of the hill over to Mt Kinabalu. Everything is now mired in a slightly orange tinged haze. It makes the light towards dusk a cool colour, and the clouds around the sun set seem more colourful. But it also makes the place seem more grimy, more polluted.
Thursday 10th September 2009 Moving swiftly on. We got the car at 9am this morning and headed out shortly after. We got the cheapest one available, the little “Kancil”, a 660cc tin box on wheels. A bit of a gutless wonder, fine in town but hopeless going over the Crocker Ranges. We
were stuck behind trucks much of the way over, so didn't really notice its gutlessness until coming back when the road was wider and clearer. We also decided after a while that it could be the same car that the American couple we met at the longhouse had. It had the same broken bits, but we didn't remember it being quite so underpowered, but then we never attempted many hills around Kudat.
We'd hoped for better views going over the ranges between KK and Tambunan. While where we were at the top, the sky was a clear blue, there was enough haze around that we could only see a couple of lines of hills and no sea.
First stop was the Rafflesia Reserve just outside Tambunan. We stopped at the information centre hoping that a flower would be out somewhere, and we were in luck. There isn't much point stopping otherwise, the display in the centre is ok to look at while waiting for a guide, but nothing special. We had about a ½ hour wait for the guide to come back from taking another group to look at the one flower that is in bloom at the
moment.
There are about 14 or 15 types of Rafflesia, and three of them live in the area around Tambunan. Some are spotted, some plain, some smell more than others, some grow up to 1m across. They are a parasite, they have no stem, roots or leaves, instead the flower grows on a vine (of the Tetrastigma family) and steals water and nutrients. The plant starts as a bud that can grow for 6-7 months before the flower opens. Once open, the flower lasts up to 7 days before rotting away. They are pollinated by carrion flies, hence the smell of rotting flesh used to attract the flies.
We were told that the flower we were going to see was a 10 minute drive down the road then a 20 minute walk through the jungle. The drive took 5 minutes tops, then another 5 minutes walking down a slope into a fenced off section of the jungle. The flower itself was a bit of an anti climax. It barely smelled at all! It was a Rafflesia Priceii (spelling?) and only about 400mm across, so quite small. It was very red though, with lots of white splotches, and we
could quite clearly see inside. Within the fenced area there were also a couple of buds growing, along with a recently dead flower (vague flower shaped black rotten matter) and a not so recently dead flower (black stain on the jungle floor near a vine). Worth the RM12 each to see it? Hmmm, tough one. It was pretty neat, but still an anti climax die to lack of smell and in some ways lack of size. Still, Kuni had said he'd been up there 4 or 5 times and hadnt seen a flower yet, so we must have been lucky getting to see one on our first (and only) try. And it was cheaper than what was on offer around Poring, where it would have cost us at least RM20 each.
We headed into the small town of Tambunan to get some lunch, then backtracked a bit to the Mat Sallah Memorial, on the site of his “last stand”, the fort where he was killed. An interesting little monument, but desperately in need of some TLC. The few displays needed cleaning and the building needed a lick of paint.
After that it was mainly driving as there is
little to see in the Pegalan Valley. Where we joined the road, it was windy and the valley narrow. By the time we turned off to go back across the Crocker Ranges to KK, the road was straight and the valley wide. We turned off just after the busy town of Keningau, onto what we though was a much more minor road than we had come across on. This road was much newer, maybe the maps hadn't been updated, with passing lanes on most of the uphill stretches, of which there were many. And steep too. The steepest we went up and down was 19%. There was one point where the road seemed to just disappear over the edge of the hillside, we could see it along the ridgeline in the distance, just not in front of us. It was along this road that we discovered just how gutless that little car is. It lost power really quickly on the uphills, and in places we were reduced to crawling in 1st gear. Now remember we are used to driving an old kombi, so we know what underpowered and slow is. Our old splittie would leave this thing for dust, even
fully loaded with camping gear and going uphill. I think this little car also badly needed a visit to the mechanic for a bit of a tune up, it had some strange rattles along with its lack of grunt. After (quietly) laughing at the driver from Kudat turning the A/C and fan off each time he went uphill to get more oomph out of his decent car (then opening the windows creating more drag), we ended up trying exactly that in case we could get another horsepower to help us. If we'd found a horse on the side of the road, we'd have hitched that up too.
Still, whatever speed we got up the hills, it was still easier and quicker than having to take the bus. A Dutch couple we met at the Rafflesia place had caught the bus there, then waited two hours for a bus going back to KK before giving up and hitching. Hitching isn't easy here as its not really a recognised form of getting places, and 'ordinary' people, as opposed to shared taxi or mini bus drivers, wont often stop. If they do, you are still expected to pay for your ride. If
we'd known their plans, we might have offered them the last little space in the back of our car, but they had gotten a ride to the start of the flower walk with the other people in our group. But would the car have even made it up the hills with five people on board?
The scenery was neat coming back, more tree clad hills, line after line of them disappearing into the haze. Still no sight of the ocean, the South China Sea.
And that is about the end of our trip to Sabah. Just under three weeks of diving, jungles, beaches and mountains. Its been a fun trip, we've loved the wildlife, jungle and ocean, the people have been really friendly. But it somehow hasnt lived up to our expectations. Maybe we hyped ourselves up a bit much, or maybe what we want to see is disappearing fast. We've had no regrets, we of course wanted to stay longer diving, stay longer and explore further in the jungle, go to other parts of Borneo. Go to Sarawak for the headhunters, explore the wilderness of Kalimantan, but all that is for another time.
Tomorrow we are
off to Singapore for a fast paced, frenetic twenty-something hours of mad-dashed exploring of a multitude of cultures crammed into a tidy and efficient city.
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dianne
non-member comment
Hostels and leeches
Hi to you 2 travellers What hostel would you recommend in KK? Always handy to have a back up plan if hosts don't work out for some reason. How did you get rid of the leeches? I read somewhere about them not liking tobacco and to stuff it down your socks!