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Published: March 12th 2009
The bus pulled in and the driver told us this was our destination. I could see a sign for the ‘rose cabin’ (our hostel of choice) and so we jumped off. The bus slowly chugged round the corner and I looked at the sign again ‘Rose Cabin - 2 kilometres’. Damn. The bus had dropped us off at the Mount Kinabalu national park, rather than the hostel we’d asked the driver to stop at. There followed another walk in the midday sun and with our full backpacks on. You might be wondering at this point why, when the reason we were up here was to see the national park, we’d opted to stay 2 kilometres away? Well, let me have a little rant…
We spoke to a Dutch couple when we arrived at the hostel and they told us how much they had been quoted for 2 beds in a 20(ish)-person dorm in the national park. Have a guess how much it was. Now bear in mind that we’re in Asia (where everything is cheap) and that most private rooms we’d stayed in during our time in Malaysia had been under £10 a night…
£5? £20? £40? £60!? Nope,
they were quoted £80 a night! This might not seem like a lot when looking at prices at home, but this is £80 for a room you have to share with 18 other random (and probably weird) people. For £80 a night we’d previously booked up the Mandarin Oriental, 5-star and voted one of the best hotels in the world, also in Malaysia. This, my friends, is my gripe with the national park. It’s less of a national park and more of a 4-star resort. The restaurants were way out of our budget, we couldn’t afford the accommodation and, to add insult to injury, non-Malaysians had to pay 5 times the entry price of Malaysians (though, thankfully, this still wasn’t too much). Surely, the whole point of a national park is that it protects a beautiful area and whilst doing this, it allows people from all walks of life to see it and enjoy it. The Mulu national park we’d visited only a few days before had done this brilliantly, by having both cheap and expensive accommodation and food. Unfortunately, the Mount Kinabalu national park seemed to be set up simply to make money.
…Anyway, rant over. Most people
who go to Mount Kinabalu, do so for one reason only. To climb it! It’s the highest mountain in Southeast Asia and hundreds of people do the 2 day climb each year. We didn’t have enough time, money or even the correct clothing (it gets cold up top) to do it ourselves, but having heard that an 80 and 5 year old had managed, I wish we’d given it a go. Instead, having checked into the hostel and dumped our bags, we headed on out to the national park to go on one of the longer walks there, in the hope to see it as much as possible (without actually climbing the mountain).
The walk was slightly marred by flies that wouldn’t leave us alone and kept trying to fly into our mouths (what kind of stupid creature does that?!) and it not being signposted that well at the start. However, it was probably that we were told it was a 2 hour walk (by someone at the head office) when in actual fact it was more like a 4 hour walk, that meant we didn’t enjoy it as much as we should have done. Again, we ended up
virtually running parts of it to make sure it didn’t get dark. Still, when we did reach the top we were greeted with lots of little squirrels and loads of low-lying cloud (totally covering the road back down), which made it all worth while. Also on the 2k walk out of the park and back to the hostel we got some great views of the mountain as the sunset, lovely!
The following day we decided to go back to the national park for a nature walk. Having waked over 16 kilometres the previous day, we couldn’t imagine anything better than doing some more walking... Stupidly, we arrived early for the nature walk, then spent too long looking at the visitor centre and ended up being late for it… Afterwards, we headed back out of the national park and sat at a bus stop waiting for a bus to take us to our final destination in Borneo: Sandakan.
At the bus stop were a friendly Chinese couple and I soon got talking to the bloke about the Premier League (which he had a large amount of knowledge on). Of course, with them being Asian, we then had the obligatory
photos taken and swapped e-mail addresses. A few days later we received an e-mail from them with the photos in, a nice little message and an offer for us to stay with them whenever we wanted, if we were ever in their area of China. They did this after we’d only talked for about 20 minutes. Some Asians are great!
Lonely Planet (our guide book) describes Sandakan as “Once boasting the world’s greatest concentration of millionaires, Sandakan is still a fairly prosperous place thanks to bird’s nests, fish and palm oil”. I was expecting somewhere next to the coast that might be a little expensive, but would be a pleasant place to spend the final days we had left in Borneo. Thankfully, Sandakan turned out to not be expensive at all, as it was a total, utter dump. Given the choice again, I’d choose to put hot pokers in my eyes or even see ‘inkheart’ again if it meant I could avoid going there.
Of course that previous statement isn’t actually true, even the prospect of Sandakan couldn’t persuade me to see ‘inkheart’ again.
Though not quite as bad as Bintulu, we had to endure loads more
staring and quizzical looks from the locals as we walked around. I’ve learnt from the trip so far that the easiest way to work out how many tourists stay somewhere, is by counting how many excitable children say “hello!” to you as you walk around. In Sandakan we had almost as many friendly “hello!”s as we’d ever had, only in a small town in Vietnam had we received more. Actually, as Helen has pointed out to me, most of the friendly ‘hello’s we had were followed by requests for money.
By the time we arrived it was getting late so we quickly checked into the ‘London Hotel’ - which smelled a bit funny but had very friendly staff - and went off in search of food, only to find that the night life in Sandakan is akin to that of a funeral procession. Though it was only 7pm it felt like we were walking around at about 3am. Everywhere was shut and boarded up for the night and there weren’t many people around aside from a few that you looked like you should avoid…
Over the next couple of days we:
- Checked into a new hostel
- This one was much improved, gone was the smell and instead we had a huge widescreen TV, cable (including channels showing premiership football), a big room and a massive (free) DVD collection. All for £9 a night. My only gripe with the place was the owner, Mr Lum, who is probably the grumpiest man in the world. Ever
- Visited a war memorial to the Allied soldiers that were forced on ‘death marches’ by the Japanese during world war II. Which was actually very interesting and very well done.
- Watched in disgust as local people on our bus finished drinks and then just threw the rubbish out of the moving bus window.
- Booked up a 2-night river tour. Which we had heard many, many good things about and which we had been told was the best way to see the Borneo wildlife.
- Went to the famous ‘Sepilok Orang-utan Sanctuary’ - the place that most people think of when they hear Borneo.
I can say with some certainty that the sanctuary was the biggest disappointment of the trip so far. We arrived at about 1pm and soon found out that there were only 2 times a
day you could actually go into the park, 10am and 3pm. Therefore we had to wait around for a while. This might have been ok, but there was a power cut and the visitors centre was therefore a bit too dark to look around in. Anyway, having waited we got our tickets and went into the park to see the monkeys. After a short walk we reached a large area where everyone gathered to view the Orang-utans being fed on a platform some 20-30 metres away. This again involved more waiting around until a couple of blokes with buckets of food came out. Soon after this, 2 Orang-utans also appeared and ate the food (one with its back to us) with the two keepers sitting beside them, chatting. Once the food was gone, the keepers and Orang-utans went and we were led out. That was it.
The whole experience was a bit like going to the zoo and turning up for a feeding session. Except for the fact that at a zoo you don’t have to wait ages to get in, there are loads more animals to see and you feel like you’re actually getting something for your money.
Now I’m aware that the sanctuary is a good thing and the focus is on the rehabilitation of orang-utans back into the wild, but for the entry price it all seemed a bit rubbish. At the very least they should provide people with a couple of walking trails around the park so we could try and see them in the wild (I’d heard they do exist but I couldn’t see any evidence of them) or give a little talk about the little guys…
Finally, our last event in Borneo was to go on a 2-day cruise on the Kinabatangan river. People who we’d spoken to told stories of how they seen large groups of proboscis monkeys, orang-utans, snakes, gibbons, deer, hornbills and even groups of pygmy elephants (the smallest elephants in the world). Needless to say, I was looking forward to it.
Helen was also looking forward to it, so much so that the night before we left she managed to snap our key in the hostel door (I can only assume this was in excitement of the imminent trip). She’d managed to snap it particularly well - so that half of it was lodged deep within the
lock and was impossible to get out. For a while Mr Lum’s solution to the problem was for us to stay somewhere else for the night and then come back tomorrow when the locksmith had been. This was no good for us though as it would mean missing our tour (and paying for accommodation in two hotels). Eventually, after an hour of Mr Lum Junior poking around fruitlessly in the lock with us standing around feeling awkward and useless, Mr Lum Senior decided to take the whole handle and lock off the door, which gave us access to the room. But still left us with a massive hole in the door. I guess I should be thankful though, over the whole ordeal Mr Lum didn’t actually get any more grumpy than usual and he even said it wasn’t necessary for us to pay for the damage. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.
We were picked up the next morning for the river cruise and on the way we chatted to a guide. He had some bad news. We’d come at the wrong time of the year, as the river was totally flooded. This meant:
1. They’d be
no trekking through the jungle.
2. The ‘fire ants’ and millipedes that lived on the forest floor would likely try and make their way into the rooms to get away from the water.
3. It would be difficult to see any wildlife, as most monkeys don’t like swimming.
4. They’d be no night walk to see some of the animals at night.
5. There would be “thousands” of leeches.
Great.
After a bit of driving we met up with 2 friendly Scottish ladies who were also booked onto the tour. One of them was called Miri and lived in the town of Miri in Borneo. Now what on earth is the chance of that happening?! How many people in the world are called ‘Miri’? Maybe about 3? Now how many western people live in Miri in Borneo? Again, I’d guess 3. So therefore the chance of someone called Miri living in Miri is…. well… it’s pretty low!
Before we went to the river, we went to a cave in which they harvest birds nests, for birds nest soup (a very expensive delicacy in Asia popular with the Chinese - so precious that they are guarded at night).
Of course these are no normal birds nests, oh no, these are birds nests made from bird saliva and they are at the top of massive (maybe 200ft tall) caves. Therefore the only way to harvest them is to get a ridiculously long rope ladder, climb to the top and take the nest from there. As if this wasn’t bad enough - with deaths from falling being pretty common - the cave was filled with cockroaches, bat poo and poisonous millipedes…. Oh, and just in case anyone is wandering, they harvest the nests after the chicks have gone!
As we walked round we saw a couple of blokes harvesting the nests and, being the tourists we are, we pointed at them and started to take pictures. Upon doing this the two blokes shot down the ropes (with one tripping over at the bottom he was going so fast) and they ran away. Slightly confused we then watched as people started shouting at them, chasing them and then a load of dogs started barking. They were poachers!!! They didn’t get far, were caught by the locals and led away. Apparently they both faced 2 years in jail. We then also
left, pleased in the knowledge that we had helped apprehend two evil poachers. Nope, I haven’t received any medals of bravery from the Malaysian government, but I’m sure they’re on the way.
The 2-day river cruise trip involved 3 (2 hour long) journeys down the river with 2 guides, a driver and about 6-8 of us tourists. Rather than bore you with the details of exactly what we saw on each cruise, I’ll just summarise the animals below:
Cruise 1 - everyone is keenly looking out for animals. We see -
A group of Orang-utans, 2 large monitor lizards, a group of proboscis monkeys, a bright red bird, an Asian bird of paradise (apparently quite rare to see - the guide has only seen 2 in 2 years), a couple of hornbills, an egret and a blue kingfisher.
Cruise 2 - everyone is still looking for animals, though not as keenly as before. We see -
2 mangrove snakes, a baby crocodile, a madison bird, a monitor lizard, a couple of storm stalks and a group of proboscis monkeys.
Cruise 3 - The guides and driver don’t really care by this point and spend most of
the journey chatting. We see -
A few proboscis monkeys and a couple of birds.
Given that the river was flooded I was happy with what we saw, but going by the descriptions given from people who went at different times of the year, we really hadn’t seen that much. And although we had seen a lot of monkeys, they had all been from some distance away.
Aside from actually going down the river, the tour trip just involved sitting around and eating (as all the trekking had been cancelled). Thankfully, it was a nice place to sit around in (we weren’t bothered by fire ants or millipedes) and the food was good. For me a highlight was that one night the lovely Scottish ladies bought Helen and me a couple of glasses of wine as they busily made use of the “buy one get two free” (yes you did read that right) offer the bar had on.
Our time in Borneo was at an end, it had been good but to be honest only the Mulu national park was great. We left the next day slightly disappointed by it all, I certainly didn’t feel like I’d
seen the Borneo I hoped to see or that I’d quite seen enough of the famous wildlife. I’d guess that Borneo just isn’t set up for backpacking and that to see it properly you probably need to spend a bit of money. All the people we spoke to on tours (including an Australian couple on their honeymoon) were having a great time and really enjoying it. I suppose this is because they didn’t have to stay in places like Bintulu and Sandakan and were just hopping around all the lovely expensive national parks…
After a quick flight back to Kuala Lumpur, we got on a bus to our final stop in Malaysia, Melaka. I’d had visions of it being a rather grotty little place with not too much to do, but as my Aunt had recommended going, we did. We were soon glad we did, it was a great town and in fact one of the best we’d been to all trip! We spent most of the day shopping in the small shops and buying t-shirts with monkeys on. We also went to see some nautical related museums there, but aside from the annoying kids at them (shouldn’t you
be at school!!!?), they weren’t too much to write home about.
Our Asian experience was nearly over. After over 3 months of travelling we would soon be heading off to Australia. There was one final place left to visit, Singapore, and I think we were both looking forward to it!
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Ben&Emma
non-member comment
Hiya!
So it looks like all your avid fans have given up and stopped posting messages then, including myself! Sorry it's been a while, I've (Emma) been away training for the last 8 weeks as you know but I'm finally finished and start the job tomorrow. Apparently we're not allowed to mention on websites what the job is, which I find very strange, but I know you both know what I'm talking about! ANYWAY...I've still been trying to read your blogs and I'll try harder now that I'm back home with full web access. Lots of wildlife and amazing scenery to summarise...? Would that be about right?! The photos are fab, the ones of you two are handy in reminding me what you guys look like! Can't believe Asia is coming to an end, Oz next then I think. Run out of money yet? Annoying each other like crazy? You're gonna HATE coming home! I can't wait to see you guys, when are you planning on returning? Not much else to tell you. Ben had a birthday, the weather has turned spring-like all of a sudden, economy collapsing blah blah blah. Well, hope you are both happy, I'm still very jealous but I wish you continued health and fun on your travels. Bye for now, Emma and Ben xxx