Selamut Pagi from the city of Kuching, in the State of Sarawak in the Malaysian portion of the island of Borneo, on the South China Sea and pretty much on the Equator!
Parting memories of urban Vietnam: the plethora of motor bikes (4,000,000 registered in Ha Noi alone) that made crossing any street a challenge, let alone when they pulled up on the sidewalks in front of you to view a window display, food cart selections or drove right by you as you were walking on the sidewalk; the life-affirming energy in both Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City amid material poverty, where rural life is played out on the urban streets...families laughing, talking and dining on the sidewalks, female street vendors attempting to eke out a living to send money home to their villages where their children live and the husband is tending to livestock and/or agriculture. At times the sidewalks are impassable with all these activities and we wandered perilously in the street.
More personal memories will be of 90 minute massages which started with a body scrub consisting of coffee, salt, coconut, banana and hibiscus; a parable on the wall in the Women's Museum about a husband and wife being like “inseparable chop sticks” and the 5-7 miles a day we walked.
Our short time in the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur (KL), population 1.6 million, allowed for 1 full 8 hour day of meandering, using combinations of monorail, GO KL free bus and our feet (again!). Our walking challenge here was different than in Vietnam: driving is on the left so crossing streets required a different perspective, especially since there were more cars here and hardly any motor bikes, representative of a higher standard of living than in Vietnam. We did learn that the same car in Malaysia cost about double what we would pay in the U.S.
We spent a few hours at the Perdana Botanical Gardens, focusing on the hibiscus and orchid gardens. We did watch a group of monkeys and their babies, scurrying across the rooftop of a park building, then moved on when they started throwing nuts and fruit at us! The old part of KL had the contrast between old decaying colonial edifices and modern high rises, capped off by the Twin Towers. In the old town's Central Market, we played tourist at a spa tub operation filled with fish which nibbled at and ate the dry skin on our legs and feet...we were hysterical with laughter from the tickling sensation! Finally, other tourists joined in for a rollicking good time. We also rode to the observation level of the KL Tower to view the whole of KL from 286 meters elevation. Night dining was at one of the 50 or so food hawker stalls near our hotel, great and cheap Malaysian food under the sky in this closed off street.
Leaving KL, we flew to our first point of entry on the western coast of Borneo, at Mulu, and spent 2 nights there. Our days were spent trekking through lush jungle on elevated boardwalks, small stone paths or on the spongy forest floor. Our first day we did a guided night walk, overwhelmed with the cacophony of sounds produced by fauna we could not see: the high pitched sounds of cicadas as the main background, overlaid with the distinct sounds of frogs, birds, and insects rubbing their legs/wings. Our guide, with her “torch” was able to show us geckos, bats, snails, centipedes and millipedes, and lastly, “stick” and “leaf” insects and spiders whose appearances mirrored their host flora and took us several minutes to actually finally “see” them, even from 6 inches distance with the light directly on them!!. In the daylight, we still had a hard time due to how camouflaged they were against the flora, e.g., a stick insect looked exactly like a small twig.
Our only full day at Mulu started with 2 hours enjoying a guided canopy walk 25-35 meters above the forest floor, spanning 480 meters and comprised of 15 different bridges-each tethered to 2 sturdy rain forest trees and made of rope and steel cable, with 1 foot wide, creaky wood slats for walking, with only 2 people at a time allowed on the bridge. The beauty of the waterways below, the sunlight streaming spottily through to the ground, the flora (orchids, ferns, vines, lianas) and fauna (pygmy squirrels, a bright green viper snake and butterflies) viewed at our level were so wondrous that one failed to think of how high up or how flimsy this “Galloping Gertie” structure seemed to be. On the return to camp, we hiked up to Paku Waterfall on our own, taking a break from the humidity with a refreshing dip in the pool and under the waterfall.
The balance of this visit was spent exploring 5 different “show” caves, which are different from cavers' “adventure” caves, in that they have subtle lighting, stairs and boardwalks. Mulu has some of the largest cave chambers and systems in the world. The beauty of the formations inside these was extraordinary to behold. Our guide told us that it takes 100 years to add 4-6 centimeters to a stalagmite. Once the stalactite and the attendant stalagmite are connected, it becomes a column. One evolving “column-to-be” had about 6 inches to go, which represented another 200 years!!! We thought about the old saying in a retail store, “If you break it, you buy it”! We don't have 200 years to give, so hands off!!
Aside from the formations, other takeaways were the length of Clearwater Cave (175 kilometers long, 9th in the world, and 350 meters in height). Along with the beauty was the acrid and fetid smells including ammonia from bat guano. Probably most disgusting was our guide pointing out cockroaches feasting on the guano. The daily addition to the guano amounts to 140,000 pounds a day from the droppings of food eaten each day by the 3 million bats that fly out of Deer Cave each evening at dusk, which we bore witness to at the end of this tour! We were also warned that one could easily drown in the guano if you fell in. The thought of cockroaches and sinking down in bat doo-doo certainly kept us sure-footed!
In reaching 3 of the caves, we motored up the Melinau River in a wooden long boat for an hour with a tillerman and a poleman at the bow. We took in the daily activities of the Penan villagers using the river for washing themselves, their motor bikes, their clothing, and filling bags with river stones for use in building foundations for more housing structures in their village of Batu Bundang, where we later walked throughout their small market and bought some locally-made crafts and listened to 2 villagers playing bamboo nasal flutes (with their noses of course).
Our experience at Mulu was made more special by the commitment of the guides, most of whom were born and raised in the rain forest and referred to this place as home...it provides them with all that they could ever need to sustain their life. In addition to the staff, we were once again made aware of how insulated we are with not having language skills beyond English and some Spanish. Most everyone, staff and visitors, spoke at least 3 languages.
We next moved northward to Kuching, the capital of the state of Sarawak, with a population of 600,000, also known as the City of Cats, with goofy-looking (in our opinion) cat statues at various intersections throughout the city. This has been a major trading town for centuries with a rich cultural and political history. Our stay there was highlighted by touring 3 museums, conveniently dodging torrential downpours in doing so. Sarawak is rich in its diversity, with 23% of the 2.5 million being Chinese and 50% comprised of 3 of its 43 indigenous groups: Iban, Malay and Penan. We also learned about the various ruling systems since the 1800's, e.g., sultanates, colonization, ending with the 1963 independence of all Malaysia. We had a memorable 3 minute crossing of the Sarawak River in a water taxi, including a 45 minute tropical rain deluge where we huddled with locals inside an unmanned water taxi, drenched and laughing (no language skills needed here).
Our adventure continues to the northwestern corner of Borneo and the city of Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah, to hook up with Wildland Adventures for an 11 day experience, “Untamed Borneo”, meeting up with Jeff, our group leader, and friends Kurt, Joanie, Phil & Marilyn.
Stay tuned, Stan & Maggie