Borneo

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BORNEO
This place is definitely on the extreme side, one of the frontiers of the world. It has more people and habitation than Greenland or certainly Antarctica, but it's still a frontier. Thick jungles still exist on the third largest island in the world, but over the recent past, and as I write, these are of course disappearing (see my rant about that below).

I only visited for a couple weeks in July of 2009, but since I took the (cheap) local flights to get around, I actually saw quite a lot of Malaysian Borneo. Indonesian Borneo is vaster, less developed, but more difficult to travel in, with consequent higher expenses. Sarawak and Sabah can be a little spendy for a budget traveler to really check out, but you can pick and choose which excursions you take, and meantime just spending time in the towns and villages is cheap.

Flying into Kuching, Sarawak, from Singapore (my favorite SE Asian city) on Air Asia (cheap & quick), I landed with a bit of culture shock. Things are different in Borneo from mainland Malaysia, and certainly differ greatly from Singapore. Kuching, “cat city”, has a frontier feel to it, and lies along a river where the population loves to hang out. It's a cool town to spend a couple days in for sure. But I was in Borneo like most to see nature. So I traveled up to Mulu National Park. This was not cheap, but I negotiated a good deal on a package with an outfit out of Miri, so it was not bad, about $400 for everything for 4 nights/5 days.

And was it ever worth it! An amazing place. The most stupendous caves I've ever seen. I feel ruined for caves now. There are great wooden walkways through the jungle, great indigenous villages, a long canopy walkway, and did I mention caves? Although most tourists stick to the lighted caves with suspended walkways, which are spectacular, it's also possible to take rough tours with a caving ranger, complete with hardhat and headlamp. Really gives you a taste for spelunking.

I took one of these trips, to “Racer Cave”. It was fun, and involved upper-body strength to pull yourself up on ropes. I got separated from the small group I was with, on the return to the light (don't ask me how), and I actually got turned around (as I prefer to phrase getting lost). I didn't panic though, and found some natural light, following it out to what I thought was safety. But I ended up at a cave entrance some 50 feet above the forest floor. If I was a monkey or a spider I would have been fine, but as it was, I had to plunge back into the cave and find the right entrance. I found the group just leaving, as they had assumed I was ahead of them on the trail back to the headquarters. Whew!

But the thing I can especially recommend at Mulu is going to Camp 5, where you can hike up to the Pinnacles, or on the “Headhunters Trail” into Sabah. The Camp is a collection of wooden buildings with dorms and a kitchen. You get to it by taking a boat up the river (can you say heart of darkness?) and then hiking further up the river to the Camp. This can be spendy with a boat & guide unless you have either a group of people, and/or you've negotiated a package beforehand. It's located along an absolutely gorgeous river, complete with awesome swimming hole. In bright clearings, it's surrounded by jungle and soaring mountains. Hiking up the extremely steep (but pretty short) Pinnacles Trail is a challenge. I actually did it in about 2 ½ hours (I was feelin' frisky) which the rangers said was a record (they even posted it on the bulletin board!). Made me think of doing Mt. Kinabalu, THE mountain to trek in SE Asia it seems. But it wasn't in the plan. The Pinnacles are just limestone karst spires, very cool but you do the trail for the view and challenge of it.

Most of the guides and rangers really know their stuff there in Mulu. I met a geologist who was guiding (not me unfortunately) and who was a font of info. Anyhow, don't miss Camp 5 if you go to Mulu. One thing, it often is booked up. Try to reserve it, but know that it is often actually not full. There's room, the guiding services just overbook it then can't come up with people. If you have a tent that's a nice backup.

I also visited Kota Kinabalu, in Sabah, the only real city in Borneo. It's small though, with a nice walkway (malecon) along the water. From there I went to Tawau, in eastern Sabah. Here I went diving on Sipadan Island, an extra pristine reef (unfortunately getting tougher to find these days). I stayed on a converted offshore oil platform, now a diving hotel. Sunning on the helicopter deck, taking the crew elevator down to dive around the rig anytime you want, sleeping in crew cabins. Very cool, and not that expensive. Met a very nice Fillipina girl here. She comes from a family of 12 (I think that's the right number), and is very sweet and Catholic. If I was younger and wanted a passel of kids...

I visited a few other places in Sabah, and wound up the trip at Danum Valley Conservation Area. You need to contact these people ahead of time, to reserve a ride to the place (from Lahad Datu where their office is), plus lodging. It's a little spendy, about $30/nt for a dorm, plus about $40/day for food, but I so wish I had had more time there. Without a doubt the most pristine rainforest I've ever been to. The place has a restaurant overlooking the jungle where you can sit cozily in a chair sipping a drink and watch wild orangutans, gorgeous birds, gibbons and more, all the while getting nary a leech! Or you can hike through pristine areas, and hear and see many creatures. I love the sound of gibbons. The skies opened up on me during a day-long hike, then just as the rain lessened, leeches started dropping out of the trees onto me. This was the first time for me with leeches, and let's just say I experienced them in very intimate places. I got back to the Center sodden, tired, leaking watery blood, and very happy.
One sad thing is on the way to Danum Valley, one sees log trucks loaded with enormous hardwood trees, often just three (or even one!) trunk for each truck. The area around Danum Valley is rapidly being logged. I just pray (probably naively) that the area is not suitable for oil palms, and that the companies will replant.

PALM OIL RANT
In the past, forests were cleared for a few obvious purposes, such as logging and ranching/farming. This can change things of course, and in the case of farming or even ranching, the poor rainforest soils can degrade to the point that regrowth may not occur on a reasonable human timescale. But if a timber company simply takes trees, and the land is left alone (or replanted), no harm-no foul. In the tropical place called Borneo, things grow very quickly, and even an old growth forest can re-establish itself in relatively short order, as nature goes Although rare organisms may be killed off by logging, as long as it's kept patchy, or diffuse, the impact is minimal.

But now, in the vast Bornean lowlands, forests are cleared not only to make a quick buck on the trees, but to give the land over to growing oil palm trees. This type of monoculture takes that diverse habitat out of circulation, and species disappear. Huge swaths have already been converted, and are busy supplying the west's enormous appetite for palm oil (we buy it up every day in hundreds of products in our grocery stores). And now the business is developing strains of oil palm to handle higher country, and logging in formerly pristine places of the interior is unfortunately not really the (actually sustainable) practice of logging as we know it, but simply clearing trees to be able to get a palm oil plantation started. The government trades their natural heritage away, at the same time taking food out of the rural population's mouths, because the enormous one-time profit from the giant hardwoods allows corrupt officials to live the priveleged life.

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