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July 25th 2013
Published: July 26th 2013
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A reader of my blog recently pointed out that I do not provide much useful information. So here goes: The airport bus from Kota Kinabalu airport does not go into the city of Kota Kinabalu. It parks up in a muddy field station on the outskirts of the city.



This is somewhat unwelcome if you have spent the previous night on the metal chairs of the KL Low Cost Carrier Terminal before the early morning flight and then waited for an hour on the KK terminal steps for said bus to arrive. The expected saving of £2.80 did not materialize as I decided to cast my principles to the wind and spent £2 on a taxi for the remaining few kilometers into town.



Kota Kinabalu is a pleasant and compact seafront city. The capital of the state of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo, it is more of a gateway to an interesting region than a 'must see' in its own right. That said, there is a surfeit of backpacker accommodation. It is definitely on the gap year itinerary, mainly because of the challenging but doable mountain a couple of hours up the road.



That would be Mount Kinabalu. The city was named after Borneo's highest mountain, not the other way round. Under the British it was called Jesselton after Sir Charles Jessel, Vice Chairman of the British North Borneo Company, which set up operations there in 1899 because of the deep anchorage. It was renamed Kota Kinabalu in 1967, four years after the state was renamed Sabah (from North Borneo) when it joined the Federation of Malaysia at independence in 1963.



There is a constant stream of people aiming to climb Mt Kinabalu. 60,000 per year equates to 164 every day. All but 4 of these take the 2 day approach which involves ascending to the strategically placed accommodation on day 1 and getting a few hours kip before an early start to catch the sunrise on day 2 followed, of course, by the muscle sapping descent throughout the morning. This is a real money spinner for the park authorities (read: Government) who charge extortionate amounts for those high beds – from £100 to £180 per person, depending on your care when booking.



Park authorities will allow up to 4 superfit young bucks to ascend and descend in a single day and thus only pay the park entrance fee. I met some guys doing this. They started off at 7am and got back down in time for tea, but they were virtually guaranteed to hit the summit in dense cloud rather than enjoy the wonderful views that are reported by the overnighters.



I spent a couple of days combing the area rather than climb the mountain. I wasn't sure whether to be offended by the fiscal extortion or fearful for my aging knees but the allure of the mountain experience was resisted.



I could tell I was a fair distance from modernity when, one clear night, there was the most wonderful display of a multitudinous starry sky that I have seen for many years. We have almost bleached out one of the wonders of existence.



I had now been in Sabah for about a week, so it was about time that I saw some Orangutans. There is an Orangutan rehabilitation centre in Sepilok, where I joined the crowds for some coo-ing at feeding time. Just down the road lies the Rainforest Discovery Centre where I enjoyed the canopy walk and thoughtful nature trails in pleasant solitude.



I stayed in a beautiful lodge in Sepilok consisting of wooden stilted chalets set in parkland on the edge of the forest. There was a large dorm with about 20 beds, which I had to myself.



From here I booked a 3 day river safari tour on the Kinabatangan river for about £100. From the riverside Nature Lodge there were twice daily motor boat excursions looking for wildlife and several day and night-time walks through the nearby jungle. From the river we saw plenty of proboscis monkeys, macaques, hornbills and, on separate occasions, four orang-utans including a big male high in the treetops. There are definitely more points for a sighting in the wild.



The coup de grace occurred when a troupe of Pygmy Elephants appeared on the riverbank during the final early morning excursion.



In truth, the density of palm oil plantations in the area has forced the wildlife to accumulate along the river.



On the walks we saw only leeches, although these can be surprisingly big and colourful.



I spent a few
Pygmy ElephantPygmy ElephantPygmy Elephant

somewhere in the background
days in Sandakan, the second city of Sabah. Both KK and Sandakan were left devastated following WW2. While KK was rebuilt with a certain amount of charm the architects of Sandakan could not think outside the (concrete) box.



North Borneo was occupied by the Japanese during WW2 and was the location of some of their most infamous atrocities, known as the Sandakan Death Marches.



Allied (mainly Australian) prisoners were marched 250km through the jungle from Sandekan to a camp in Ranau where the minority who survived the marches were starved and put to work. Of the 2400 men originally incarcerated at Sandekan the only survivors were 6 who had escaped along the way.



There are a few low key attractions around town, including an enormous Chinese cemetery and the renovated house of an American writer who found fame through her descriptive chronicles of her life in this remote outpost (as was).



I thought Sandekan made up with character what it was missing in beauty. The locals were friendly as is often the case in second tier locations. There is a high proportion of Pilipinos in the population and Mindanao is only a ferry ride away.





Actually the Philippines stakes a claim to this area of Borneo as the Sultan of Sulu ruled this part of the world as well as parts of the Philippines up to the 1870s. The Philippines maintain that the land was only leased to the British North Borneo Company, not sold. This has resulted in simmering tensions.



Earlier this year (Feb 2013) the current Sultan of Sulu sent soldiers onto Sabah to support an apparent uprising by the 'oppressed' Pilipino residents. Of course the Malaysian authorities responded. The unrest lasted for 2 weeks. I was told that about 1000 soldiers were killed in the skirmishes.



As always when these things happen, tourism fell off a cliff. Things seemed to be calm when I was in the area, but you don't get to access the undercurrents of a place when you are just passing through.



I spent an interesting morning wandering around Kampong Sim Sim, the original stilt village over the sea from which Sandakan originally grew. I was surprised at the size and luxuriousness of many of these stilt houses.
SandakanSandakanSandakan

Chinese Cemetary
People choose to live here because it is so pleasant, not because they have been pushed off the land, which is the case in some places.



Backtracking somewhat, I went to stay at the Northernmost tip of Borneo.



There is a great beach and a few lodges here. An English guy – Howard - has built a jungle camp nearby which has rave reviews on Trip Advisor. I turned up and was given a room in the home-made longhouse. It was a bit strange as it was both the most expensive and lowest quality accommodation I had stayed in so far. You are paying for the experience of an eco resort. I was looking forward to trying the composting toilet but a lengthy period of constipation blocked any such aspirations.



Howard ferried his guests between the camp and his beach restaurant which was an excellent chill out spot. Everybody was really friendly but I got a bit fed up after a few days. I've spent too much time on beaches this year (and the wifi wasn't working).



The most convenient way to get to Brunei from KK is on the fast ferry, which consists of two trips interrupted by a few hours on the island of Labuan around lunchtime.



My allocated seat was next to an English maths graduate called Fiona, who had just given up her banking job in Singapore.

'What do you think of minus i squared?' I enquired.

'Don't get me started.' She replied,' I just love minus i squared so much.'

'More than the square root of 2?' I ventured.

'Oh yes. Much more'



I was in the middle of reading a book on the moral philosophy of mathematics (hard going, but rewarding) so I was able to supply a few pertinent conversational entrees, though I have never been able to master the mental gymnastics required of minus i squared or root 2.



We did however find that there was enough common ground for us to become buddies for the next few days.



Brunei is a small place. Most of the population lives in the capital Bandar Seri Begawan, aka BSB.



The only budget accommodation exists at the youth centre where a dorm bed will set you back £5. As there are only 3 or 4 beds to a room and about 20 rooms in each of the male and female segregated blocks there is no problem for dorm users unless there is some sort of tournament going on.



BSB is incredibly quiet for a capital city, easy to navigate on foot. On the city side of the river there are a couple of mosques and the Royal Regalia Museum, all impressive.



The Royal Regalia Museum provides a potted history of the current Sultans charmed life, with life sized reconstructions of some of the key processions that have occurred at the significant moments in his preordained journey.



At some point along the biographical timeline presented his wife changed from a somewhat frumpy middle-aged lady to a svelte young hottie. This was left unexplained, only happy history allowed.



The other side of the river hosts Kampong Ayer, a stilt settlement claiming to be both the oldest and the largest in the world. At well over 30,000 people, 10% of the country’s population lives here. It has existed for 1300 years, though I can’t vouch for the decking.



Out in the waterway is the first floating petrol station I have ever visited for a fill up.



Fiona arranged to meet a local guy for lunch through the Couchsurfing website. I tagged along as he took us to one of the popular food markets for some interesting tidbits and then for no clear reason to some unexciting malls near the airport.



There were a couple more things to do in BSB. A group of us hired a boat for a lovely sunset cruise one evening and also took a public transport speedboat to Bangar and back for the fun of it.



Brunei consists of 2 separate pieces of land with a slither of Malaysia in between. Bangar is in one section and BSB in the other, so it is a lot easier to take a boat between them than go by land and have to cross 2 borders each time.



There were some other interesting sounding museums around BSB, but they were all closed for one reason or another.





Continuing South, I took the bus to
Bandar Seri BegawanBandar Seri BegawanBandar Seri Begawan

Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque
Miri in Sarawak, back into Malaysian territory.



Miri is the home of the Grand Old Lady, an oil well that started production in 1910. This was the first oil well on (current) Malaysian territory, and also the first oil well operated by the Royal Dutch Shell Group.



(The merger between Shell Transport and Trading and Royal Dutch Petroleum took place in 1907, before either had produced any oil. The Shell side of the business had its origins in a company that actually imported shells from the Far East to sell in London).



The oil field was finally closed down in 1972, but this well is maintained as a memorial. There is an adjacent museum, which was closed.



Miri served as a base for a couple of excellent excursions.



The first was a trip to the Kelabit highlands, well into the interior of the island. Access to the town of Bario is by light aircraft



Not having booked in advance I turned up at the airport at 7am one morning, hoping to get a standby ticket.

'Sorry, it's fully booked' they said
Bandar Seri BegawanBandar Seri BegawanBandar Seri Begawan

Jame'Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque
in the airline office.

'I heard that you can get a standby ticket' I said to the clerk.

'You can try putting your name down at the check-in desk'.



The lady at the check in desk pursed her lips and looked doubtful but let me put my name on the list.

'Come back at 10am and we will see if somebody hasn't turned up'.

So I hung around for 3 hours and then presented myself at the desk.

'I don't know yet' she said and disappeared into the offices.

Well after the scheduled take off time she reappeared.

'Ok. You can go'



I then had to rush to the office to purchase the ticket, back to check in to check in and then get through departures and security. There were only a handful of people at the gate.



Eventually we boarded. There were 21 seats and only 7 passengers. It seems that you have to pass a determination test to get on the plane.



The flight was a highlight in itself. Logging was completed on large tracts of the country years ago so the land is mainly green, but this is now bushland or secondary forests. Primary forest eventually became apparent as we approached the highlands, but these were veined by dirt tracks from where the logging companies are preparing their operations.



I had prebooked with a homestay recommended by the Miri backpackers. Accommodation in this region is all with homestays which provide a bed and 3 meals, and for convenience they all charge the same – £16.



I entered the small terminal building and identified the lady that had come to collect me. A look of disappointment swept across her face (I don't know what she was expecting) and she ushered me out to her car and drove to her place.



This is your room, here is the tea and coffee. Lunch at 12.' She said and disappeared.



So I had a look around the immediate vicinity and returned for lunch, which I found waiting for me on the table and I ate in silence.



I spent the afternoon investigating the area and returned for dinner. Now her parents had turned up and they were a bit jolly so we did our best at a staccato conversation where each party has only a few words of the others language.

The hostess turned up later on.

'How long you stay?'

'Yeah well, I think I will leave tomorrow'

She did not seem disappointed.



Next morning, after a solitary breakfast, I hoisted my rucksack on my back and set off on the trail to Pa'Lungan.



There are no roads to Pa'Lungan so they have to be pretty self sufficient. Once found, the trail was easy to follow and it took me about 5 hours to walk to the remote village. I was relieved to finally get there.



I found my way to the Batu Ritung homestay



'Oh welcome, welcome. Please come in' said the lady. I was relieved to get such a friendly reception and, indeed, it set the tone for a wonderful few days.



Supang and Nabun were the most warm and friendly hosts you can imagine. They had obviously given a lot of thought to what a homestay should be and decided to create a family experience.



Supang is an excellent cook and at each mealtime the table was piled with much more food than you could manage, nearly all sourced from the local jungle or their own field and pond. Who would have known that ferns could be so tasty.



I spent a morning in the ‘jungle supermarket’ with Nabun, where he identified the numerous edible plants and collected a basket of food for later consumption. He seemed to be an authority on a host of subjects and always had an interesting story to recount.



One night another village resident threw a party to celebrate his retirement, and I went along. It was a strange sort of party. All of the villagers sat in groups on the floor of a large empty room with, apparently, not much to say to each other. Eventually a large tray of food was provided to each group and they tucked in.



As more food rolled out of the kitchen people started to unearth tupperware boxes from their baskets and to fill as much as they could carry. Once fully loaded they said thank you to their host and toddled off into the night.



The next day the retiring teacher came to our homestay for lunch. He had some interesting tales to tell from his boyhood when Indonesia invaded Sarawak to try and disrupt the forming of the Malaysian Federation. Indonesian troops came to the village but were held back by only 3 British soldiers who were stationed there. He mainly remembers the raw fear that he observed on the soldiers faces and his first sugary sweets that they provided in some quieter moments.



Although it is a small isolated village and there isn't much to do, many people stay with Supang and Nabun for lengthy periods, no doubt seduced by the family atmosphere. They really go out of their way to make you feel like they are your long lost auntie and uncle. If only there was somewhere comfy to sit and read I would have stayed longer. http://baturitunglodge.blogspot.co.uk/



It only took me 3 and a half hours to walk back to Bario, but I didn't have quite so far to go as I stayed in a homestay at the end of the trail for a night.



The second excursion from Miri was to the Mulu National Park.



This time I booked my flight in advance. It was a big propeller plane with over 100 seats, but only a handful of people were on board.



This National Park would be only a short hop from Bario, but you have to go all the way back to Miri and then out again.



There is loads to do at Mulu, even excluding the multi day treks that are on offer.



You have to sign up for those excursions that are led by a park ranger and there are a few jungle trails that can be followed independently.



Here they have one of the longest known cave complex in the world, at over 150 km. This was only discovered in the 1980's. Walkways have been constructed to route visitors around some of the interesting rock formations.



"Are there any caves which haven't been discovered yet?' asked one lady. The guide admitted to ignorance.



The absolute highlight of the park occurs around before sundown when the many millions
Batu Arit MegalithBatu Arit MegalithBatu Arit Megalith

Towards Pa'Lungan
of bats which inhabit the cave stream out for their night of hunting.



This lasts for about an hour as they leave in (apparent) batches and form ribbons streaming across the sky. I have uploaded a video of this to Youtube, in case you are interested:





I joined a group doing a guided night walk. For ages it seemed like we were going to draw a blank, then we came across a tarsier right on the edge of the trail. The small primate hung on to his branch staring at us for about 5 minutes until people started taking flash photo's and scared him off.



After Miri, I was heading through territory that I had visited before (in 1991), so I went a little faster.



I spent a night in a rather dodgy town called Bintulu, then carried on down to Sibu. From here I ventured upriver to Kapit.



Back in 1991, Linda and I carried on further into the interior and stayed at a couple of logging camps. That was an interesting experience (we slept on the camp tattooists’ floor and then got scammed by the pickup driver) but those camps are long gone.



I remember there were hoards of barges carrying enormous tree trunks – 6 feet across - back down to Sibu. Nothing like that now in this neck of the woods (so to speak).

We passed through the logging area and it was a desolate state of devastation for miles and miles.



Finally I arrived in Kuching. Previously the river bank was just a, er, river bank. Now it is an attractive promenade, a stones throw from a selection of modern shopping malls.



There are a few old buildings surviving in Kuching which hint at the interesting history of the area. James Brooke, a wealthy Brit, was given control of Sarawak by the Sultan of Brunei’s uncle after he used his forces to help quell a separatist uprising. Thus began the era of the White Raja’s. A British family came to be rulers of Sarawak for 3 generations until WW2.



Having reached Kuching I had completed my objective for the trip, but I still had 5 weeks left before my flight back to the UK.



Fiona had told me about a website which connects volunteers with business owners around the world – www.workaway.info.



I had a look and there was a farm homestay outside of Kuching that had an entry. I signed up, sent an email and the homestay owner came to see me within an hour or two.



In view of my biotech background he was interested in getting me to do a few projects on the farm. So, over the next few weeks, I set up a plant to make liquid fertilizer from waste fish; made a microbial serum of useful composting bacteria; and filled a few sacks with Bokashi, a composting accelerator consisting of useful micro-organisms dried on to an inert carrier material (thank you, internet).



Most time was spent waiting for the bugs to grow so I threw myself into the general activities that were going on. Generally that meant construction as the staff were building first an office and then a small but homely guest cabin. I had a go at a diverse range of activities including lots of things you can do with bamboo and chickenwire, humping sacks of sand and stones around to make concrete, laying flat concrete floors and digging holes and trenches for a cess tank and waste water pipes. (I thought the design of the cess tank was flawed, but I guess I will never know how long it lasts before it backs up).



When I unilaterally built a soakaway for the guttering run-off water my efforts were not appreciated (I should have Googled that one first) but it was left in place.



A couple of times we went into the forest to cut down trees with axes and knives and carried them back on our shoulders for various uses. That was tough.



I picked up quite a lot of injuries to go with all the new aches and pains, but I only had to make one visit to the doctor when some of my cuts became infected and my leg swelled up. A few days of intensive antibiotic treatment seemed to do the trick.



There were a good bunch of people working there including one other volunteer with whom I got on really well, and two Indonesian couples who worked from dawn 'till dusk.



As I was just working for food and a bed, I think the owner got the best of the deal. He was happy for me to stay as long as possible anyway.



The homestay is called The Kebun (www.thekebun.com) and is justifiably rated No. 1 on trip advisor. I can recommend it.



I enjoyed the experience and will probably look for further opportunities on future travels.



I finished off the trip with my third all nighter in KL airport this year. What a glutton for punishment.



This time I stopped in the main International airport. Someone wrote on www.sleepinginairports.com that he had found some comfy sofas in the office area, but no such luck for me. I tried unsuccessfully to catch a few winks stretched out on a row of seats outside the Burger King, with Mr Bean on continuous rerun overhead.


Additional photos below
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The town symbol is a swan
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Drying in the sun


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