more pictures

I just posted some more pictures besides these two, but for some reason they were added below both the sumatra post and the KL and Melaka post, so you'll have to scroll down to see em. These 2 shots are from the klotok and the orangutan rehabilitation center

On to Sumatra

I was fairly tired from the 4 days of KL where I got up really early each day to go get visa stuff done or go see places and then staying up til 1 and 2 in the morning so that I could skype my mom since KL had good computers and headsets, and then the late partying two nights in a row in melaka and not to mention walking in all that heat and concrete and malls in KL (I forgot to mention before that one of the funniest things in the malls in KL was when you walked through the swimwear section of the department stores. Back home it usually features the faceless models with scantily clad bakinis. Here the models would be completely covered with only the feet exposed and then wearing a swim cap and goggles). So I had a nice rest day in Melaka as it was quite the chill place. The owner, steve, had wireless and a laptop for free and unlimited use so I sat up on the rooftop balcony and did some internetting and then just cruising around on the web which I hadn't done in a while. It was a very hot and humid day in melaka and then rain so the belgian family and mitch the american and I watched a couple movies and I only ventured out during the day to get some keuy teuw goreng, an icecream, and some fruit juice. That night though we all headed out to chinatown for the night fesitivities and good food though.

Took the ferry from Melaka across the straight of Melacca to Dumai Sumatra. Amazing the difference just a tiny little straight can make. In Melaka, you have such a clean and sort of fancy malaysian tourist town for the local malays (think of like breckenridge or telluride for coloradoans). No one pays really any attention to you and most people are driving nice cars. In Dumai you have a dirty city, though not near as bad as kalimantan, where there are a few cars, lots of motorcycles and then the trishaws (human powered bikes with a passenger seat) for public transportation. It's funny b/c Melaka also has trishaws, but they're for touring the tourists. In Melaka a trishaw ride costs the equivalent of 12 US dollars. Here, that same ride would cost 1 dollar, though of course the ones here don't blare jason mraz and akon on their stereo system nor do they have fancy lights covering the bicycle. But the most noticeable difference is how you definitely feel like someone from a different planet. In melaka no one really gave you a second glance except maybe a taxi driver hoping to score some extra money off of you. but here, everyone noticeably stares at you, some with mouths open (not a whole lot of tourists pass through here as most fly to jakarta or medan or take the ferry from georgetown to medan), but I wanted to see melaka first, so that's why I went this way. Everyone shouts the hey mr. that they did in kalimantan. The english here is noticeably better than in kalimantan, though a far cry from that in malaysia still. It just always can amaze me what a huge difference a border or small body of water can make.

KL

From Miri I flew to KL, the huge capital of Malaysia. I arrived in the afternoon and checked into my very well situated guesthouse in the Bukit Bintang (shopping district) neighborhood within 3 minutes walk of the monorail and MRT and 15 minutes walk of most major sites and districts like the golden triangle, KLCC, china town, merdeka square, and little india. The area around Bukit Bintang is very arabian and middle eastern, with a popular street called Ain Arabia. So I explored around there a bit and had a tasty lunch at an Iranian place. The women in this area go much farther than the typical malaysian women who just wear the head scarf, but here they wear the entire black outfit with only their eyes showing. There is also a big chinese hawker street Jln Alor, right next to my place that I checked out as well. After exploring my area I walked towards the Menara KL (KL tower), the 4th highest communication tower in the world. On the way I strolled through a tiny rainforest reserve in the center of KL. At menara KL I rode up to the observation deck at 277 meters or something like that for an awesome view of the city. People had told me the sunset was great up there, so I brought a book and was just waiting for it. Unfortunately the sunset never came as a huge storm rolled in, but that was very cool in itself. The rain and clouds were so thick that at times you couldn't see a thing, but then everynow and then the famous petronas twin towers or some other building was peek through for a second. It was interesting b/c the sky and city looked extra ominous from this bird's eye view and of course it's a bit frightening to be in the city's 2nd highest structure and have lightning crashing all around, though of course they obviously have lightning rods and such. When the rain cleared there was a very good view of the city at night as well. After that I walked to KLCC where the iconic and giant Petronas towers are located. They are twin towers built by a chicago company with an islamic design. Until 2000 something they were the tallest buildings in the world. At night they were quite impressive b/c the outside is all shiny steal and glass and they really light it up, so they stand out even more. They really stand out in KL b/c the city is large but doesn't have a very high density of skyscrapers. I'd say denver has more and overall taller skyscrapers, so the petronas twin towers really stand out.

The next day I got up early to go to the Indonesian embassy to get my 60 day visa for indo. I had my fake return tickets, my proof of sufficient funds, etc. Everything that I thought I had needed according to their website. When I arrived at the embassy, they wouldn't let me in; however, b/c you were required to wear shoes and long pants and a collared shirt. Great, I just had to laugh at that b/c the website made no mention of that and it was the first embassy I had been to where this was a requirement, and of course standard traveller wear in the tropics is sandals, shorts, and a t-shirt. So I went for the long walk back to the hostel to put on some pants and shoes Most of the embassies, aside from a small few are more or less downtown. The indo embassy of course was several km's out and had no mrt connecting it. Of course the walk if you just have to do it a couple of times is not big deal especially since I like walking, but now I was going to have to walk there and back at least 3 times, and KL is a very hot and sweaty city. But oh well. Got my stuff, came back to the embassy, and even talked in my shirt. The thing that cracked me up the most was that there security for the embassy involved not letting people enter who were showing too much flesh, but they had no metal detector, x-ray, or even someone looking through bags. Just very interesting to me that they were more concerned with someone showing their ankles off than any sort of bomb or what not. Completely different than the US fortress embassies I'd visited before where you even had to leave your backpack, after it was x-rayed outside in storage. Once there I filled out all the paperwork and was ready by 12:05. The embassy closes from 1-2:30 for lunch. When I went to hand in my stuff, the woman informed me I would have to come back later as they were closing for lunch. I couldn't believe this as it was only 12:05 (well 12:25 according to the clocks in the embassy), and I mentioned it to her. So I was thinking I'd have to come back again that day, but as I was packing up all my materials, one of the other women decided it was ok for me to hand in my stuff, which took all of 30 seconds to give her my photos, flight copies and passport.
The rest of the day I explored the city and did loads of walking. I walked down to china town and it's famous petaling street and some of its temples. Then I walked on to Merdeka square, which is where they raised there flag for the first time after gaining independence from England 52 years ago this august 31st. So all over the city there were lots of flags flying everywhere so that it looked a lot like the US independence day, especially since there flag is sort of a copy off ours with 13 red and white stripes to symbolize their states and then a blue square, except that instead of stars it has 1 star and a half moon, which I believe is an islamic symbol. But from a distance the flags look identical. Merdeka square has lots of old british buildings and stuff from the colonial era. After that I walked on to little india to get some tasty indian food.
The next day I took a bus 13km out of the city to Batu Niah Caves. They are these giant, though not long, caves with 200 some steps leading up to them where there is an importnant hindu shrine as well as a giant (at least 100feet high) statue of some god on the outside. 100's of thousands of hindus come on pilgrimage here everyyear, and there was quite a lot when I was there. On the return back I stopped off at lake titiwangsa before the city center to walk around it as it has nice views of the whole city skyline and is pretty quiet. Lots of school children were out for lunch and nearly everyone wanted a picture with me. I felt like a movie star with the paparazzi. Getting pretty tired of it by the end of the walk. After getting back to bukit bintang I showered and prepared myself to go back to the indonesian embassy. Another american staying there had had success getting one with his fake tickets from orbits, so I was hoping my doctored united ones would do the same. Got to the embassy...and got the visa! So that was good. After picking it up I strolled along a different route to get to the KLCC area. On the way I passed the highly guarded US embassy with the stars and stripes proudly flying way up high. Kind of felt good to see the real thing, hadn't seen one in a long time. The building was a stylish and fancy building, so I took out my camera to take a picture, but the security quickly came running over to tell me that was not ok. But I asked and they would let me wear shorts inside if I wanted. =)

A sorta ironic thing about the US embassy was that it was a mere 100m from the Iraq embassy. The only thing inbetween them was a small mercedes branch office. I didn't notice any guns pointed at each other though.

After that I went down to KLCC to visit the aquarium, which is supposedly the best one in SE asia. It was definitely pretty cool and the best part was this really long tunnel with a moving walkway if you wanted where all around you reef sharks, tiger sharks, turtles, and manta rays were swimming around. It was really pretty neat.
After that I went out to do one thing that KL is famous for, and that is shopping. Just in the bukit bintang area they had 7 huge malls (one with a roller coaster inside). Really overwhelming really. But there were two things I needed: a lonely planet book for indonesia and size 13 shoes. I figured KL would be my only chance to find big shoes as when I was looking for sandals in the other countries they never had my size. In the end I'm pretty sure that I was looking for the two hardest things in KL to find. I went to 5 big bookstores just like a borders and they were all sold out of the lonely planet. Unfortunately this usually means one thing and that is that a new edition is coming out, but I didn't have time to wait until next month of the new one to come, even though it'd be much more up to date, b/c i wasn't sure if in indonesia I could find it, since kalimantan definitely didn't have any. Luckily earlier I had randomly stepped into a fancy bookstore that had one copy and I had kind of hid it behind the Hawaii lonely planet books right next to it just in case. I didn't want to buy it here b/c the back of the book listed the price as US29 dollars, but they were charging the equivalent of US55, so I had hoped to find a better price later on, but I ended up lucky to get that one. And the shoes...I went into 6 of the malls department stores. the more local brands like power they only had sizes up to 9 or 10 and the shoes like nike, adidas, reebok, they only had up to 11. They malls also had nike, puma, adidass, shops, but they only sold the brand new and best shoes from those companies, so you were looking at 200+ US dollars for a pair of shoes, which to me I couldn't justify. The 7th mall had a pair of asics that were 13's. They fit lenght fine, but I have very wide feet and they were "asian" cut width, so they were very tight. I thought though I'd have to take those, until walking to my guesthouse I happened to pass an outlet store run by indians, who tend to be taller. They had some asics that were 13 and us sizing, so I got them.

On the 21st...Happy Birthday Bro!!! (and also to you Ashlin, if your parents are reading this), I waited in the long, long line to get a ticket to go up to the skybridge of the petronas towers. Got my ticket for 3pm and just kind of hung out and did some errands like mailing a package and such to my parents. I checked out the cool physics based museum they had for petronas which was pretty cool. They also had a big poster of the 10 highest buildings in the world. It amazed me how far advanced the US had been in building. The empire state building, built in 1931 is still in the top 10 and was the highest building until like 1974 when the sears tower in chicago were built, and that was the tallest until the wtc twin towers were built, which must have been in the the 80's (they had not mention of them in this exhibit). But since then all the tallest buildings of been in asia in places like shanghai, dubai, KL, beijing and all in the 2000's.

KL was a pretty cool city. Extremely modern and western, but of course with the asian flair. It was much, much more walkable than like bangkok and easier to explore. And of course cleaner more modern. But it's more of a ritzy type place. Where as bangkok is a backpackers haven with cheap eats, cheap markets and such, KL has nicer places to eat and is more expensive even for the street stalls and it has fancy state of the art malls with designer brands and huge fancy hotels everywhere. The backpacker scene is much quieter. It was crazy to be back in a city where I saw outback steakhouse, baskin robbins, TGIF, the north face, timberland, etc, etc. I decided of all the asian places I've been so far, this one is the best fo Aunt M, b/c although it's not much of a backpackers place, the higher end places to eat and hotels are still much cheaper than back home and the dutchess would enjoy the fancy shopping and fine dining as well.

I took the afternoon bus from KL to Melaka which was supposed to only take a couple hours, but with friday rush hours out of the city, I didn't get into melaka until after 10, so there were no busses running to the city center. Before paying the always too high for westerners taxi fare I decided to head over to the tesco superstore which was just across the street as i had found out at other tescos that they often have free shuttles to and from the city. This shuttle wasn't going anymore either, but I had asked 3 girls at the entrance who had a booth for unicef and they told me they were leaving work in about 30 minutes and heading into town to party, so I should come with them. So I headed off with them. They were all living in KL but were quite a diverse group: Aster (malay portuguese mix), Bivani (indian), and Diana (Boba nonya chinese). We went out to a couple cool bars (especially one called the geographer) with live music and some clubs and stayed out until past 4 in the morning.

Yesterday I explored around Melaka which used to be an extremely important port city and has a colorful colonial past. It was first conquered by an indonesian empire, then by the portuguese, then by the dutch, then by the british, then the japanese, then the british again. So it has lots of buildings with portuguese, british, and dutch styles as well as the typical china town and little india. I actually really liked the town b/c it is much cheaper than KL and I think better food and more character. My guesthouse is a nice and tiny place with a great owner, a nice rooftop deck, a good tv room with lots of movies (we all watched australia yesterday during the heat of the day), and a fun group of people staying there: a retired american who is here for a couple months, a dutch family on holiday, and a british couple. And then as it is the weekend, the town, especially the jonker walk in china town is bustling and full of stuff. At night there are street vendors everywhere, karaoke, and chinese line dancing going on. This is perhaps malaysia's biggest tourists destination, but mainly for malaysians, so they are out in hordes at the night fesitivities. I like it and I like the feel. Reminds me a bit of the summer weekend festivals in estes or boise where it can be more of a local feel to it. Last night, I again met the unicef girls and we went out for some more late night dancing and music. I was supposed to leave today for sumatra but decided to stay one more day b/c I like the hostel and the town so much and b/c I just know right across the strait, the cities aren't so nice at all, so I thought I'd just stay one more day.

Ramadan, the time of fasting for muslims has started here. It's not such a big deal in malaysia b/c of the high chinese population, but I'm a bit worried for indonesia as it's much more islamic and stricter as well. I might be relegated to eating only at after sundown and before sunrise with the rest of them when away from the big cities. so that should be interesting

As I was getting some pictures burned to a dvd in KL, I was able to download some photos as well as steal some from facebook. going from topish to bottomish pictures of the sticks in sungai kinabatangan with the sticks and my first good shower in days from a gutter in sukau that heidi found amusing and facebooked Journey up the rijang batang river in borneo to kapit and then belaga and visiting the traditional longhouses with the dutch gals, the british couple, and the germans. And of course the crazy funeral party and lots of rice wine and tuac and arak. Notice that the last picture in that group of the old woman in a black t-shirt with a fag in her mouth also has a mary jane joint stuck in the hole of her ear for later. Hannah, Andrew and I at the famous brunei mosque. More sticks from the bornean jungle camp from my camera and a cool little frog.
On the klotok river boat in tanjung putin kalimantan borneo with the italians and some of the orangutans and proboscis monkeys we saw there.
Another mosque in brunei by night. Bornean pygmy elephants and macaque in suakau borneo

bats, caves, and spikes

Flew to the little village of Mulu from Miri on a tiny plane the 14th of august, which is basically the only way to get there unless you charter lots of different private boats to take you for the 12 hour trip by boat. Like I had mentioned earlier, I was supposed to be on the morning flight, but the tour operator screwed up and I was only able to get onto the afternoon flight. He assured me this would be ok as the plane would arrive in time to still see all the caves. Unfortunately the plane was delayed though. The flight into Mulu was beautiful looking down on big rainforest covered karst mountains as we landed. When we landed, even though we were late, the tour organizers were disorganized and we wasted some time while they figured things out. But finally we got to go to the park. It's a 3km walk along a boardwalk to get to the two caves. It's normally a nice nature walk with some good information signs to read along the way, but our guide told us to hurry along so we could get to the caves. That wasn't such a big deal as I'd seen lots and lots of jungle so far on this trip. So I moved along quite quickly to make it to the caves. Went into Lang's cave first, which was huge and had some really nice cave formations like stalactites and stalagmites. Went through it pretty quickly, but still get a good appreciation of it. The next cave was Deer cave, which has the largest cave passage in the world. And it was truly impressive. Unbelievable really. It was so huge. As one of the guide's later said, you could fit St. Peter's Basilica in it. And once inside, you could look out of it into the sunlit and beautiful rainforest outside through the huge entrance. Halfway into it, you could turn around and see ole honest abe's profile in the rock against the lit opening, which was pretty cool. I continued further in for a while, but turned around for fear of missing the bat show later on. Turns out I probably wasn't that far from the end anyways Further past the abe viewpoint the cave stayed just as large. Really amazing how much it dwarfed everyone inside. A cool thing about these caves as they were lit up by lights inside, which made you appreciate the caves that much more than just with a weak torch light. After leaving the cave, I walked to the bat observatory area where at dusk millions of bats usually flood out of the cave to hunt for insects or pollen, replaced by swiftlets coming inside. As dusk approached, it started to rain, which was disheartening b/c the guide said that the bats don't come out if it's raining and had been dry for some time (It hadn't rained there in over 2 weeks as they were on a drought), so it was likely that the bats were well fed and wouldn't not come out into the rain. Over half the tourists left, but this was my one shot to see it, so I waited. Eventually the rain turned to just a drizzle and the bats started streaming out in these large groups out of the gigantic cave entrance. It looked a lot like smoke coming out of the entrance. And then after they'd left, they'd still stay together in a long, skinny swarm that moved around in a curvy direction, making them look like a giant black snake in the sky. It was definitely an impressive sight.

That night I met the two other people I'd be climbing and treking with, Hannah (a phD student in Ghent) and David (a post grad plant pathologist in Ghent). That was quite cool for me b/c Ghent is a place I know well having had to go there on 3 separate occassions with sapidyne for work. They were a very cool couple and I liked them a lot. They had a good sense of humor and we laughed and joked a lot, especially about the tour operators, which made it all the more fun. That night we were supposed to have a briefing about the trip, but one other person was supposed to be climbing with us, a chinese guy, and they couldn't find him. They weren't sure whether he was lost in the caves, lost in mulu, or just didn't make the plane flight. Of course this made the belgians and I laugh a bit, in a rather nevrous manner. Turns out there was no chinese guy ever and they were just mixing him up with a malaysian guy. The tour had already been a bit crazy with me not having my flight booked, the disoranization at the airport, not having a guide for the 1st two caves as he told us to run ahead, and then the lost chinese guy. We also laughed about these 3 dutch guys. They really stood out as they were huge, I mean gigantic. Tall and built like chris sherman (!!), which is to say, built like a tank. No, they were probably the biggest and toughest looking guys I had ever seen in person, and in asia amongst short asians and skinny travellers, they really stood out. Partly because of the mist and rain that we walked through when going to view the bats, Hannah and David called them Gorillas in the Mist. They always made for a good laugh and smile though.

The next morning, we boarded little motorized canoes, with the Gorillas, and headed up river on a very scenice and narrow river through the rainforest and between karst cliffs and mountains. We stopped quickly at a new penan settlement, mainly so we could sadly buy their trinkets since these penans were no longer able to be nomadic hunters due to the oil palm plantation nearby. After visting the settlement we went further upstream, again, through beautiful scenery until we docked the boat and hiked a bit to get to the next cave. Cave of the winds. This cave was much prettier than the 1st two caves we had seen, with nice stalagmites and stalactited. And it was also nice b/c we could go more slowly through this one and look at it better and read the information placards. After that cave we went into the smaller young lady cave, and then into the large Clearwater cave. It's one of the longest caves in the world at 151km's long, but it also has gigantic rooms as well. We walked into this for a while until we reached a large river inside. We went into it to get wet and have a drink b/c it supposedly makes you younger.

After the cave, we had lunch, and then went for a swim in the aqua water below the lunch site where water was bubbling out from the cave.

It was quite funny to watch the pool after we had swam b/c the dutch gorillas went in for a swim and they of course wore the tiniest speedos possible and played around and made lots of whooping and loud sounds, so that it sounded like wild animals echoing off the cliffs. Turns out they were swimmers on the dutch national team, and it was quite funny to hear how many other tourists had seen them around borneo or KL just b/c they stood out so much.

After the swim we hopped back in the boat, but this time just hannah and david and I as we had to leave the gorillas in the mist behind as they were on a different tour...we assumed they must be doing the trek we were doing except in one afternoon instead of 3 days, but we always held out hope that we would run into them at camp 5 again. We went further up river, at times having to get out and push the boat as the river was low due to the drought (that ended while we were there). We pulled up on shore and got all ready for the hike, which takes a little bit b/c we dried our feet, put on our leech socks (in my case) or leech gaitors (in there case) and laced up our shoes. The whole time, our new guide, Gibson, just sat and watched. As soon as we were all ready, we walked about 10 feet and were in front of a stream that we had to wade through. So we had to take everything off and go across. Laughing in disbelief that gibson had watched us all get ready only to have a another crossing just seconds away. After that though, it was an easy 8kms to camp 5. Early on gibson told us to go ahead and he fell far behind. So once again, there we were without a guide (not a problem, just funny since it's required and we were paying for one). We walked over half of the 8kms in a torrential downpour and were soaked with sweat and rain by the time we got to camp 5. As soon as I got to camp 5 I jumped into the river and just sat in it, b/c it was rather warm, but still refreshing for an hour or so, talking to this really bubbly woman named helen (who we liked to laugh about too b/c you could always hear helen talking loudly somewhere) from New Zealand who was doing this trek for her birthday. There were about 20 people at the camp, divided into 4 groups of differing economic standings. There were the people there not on a package tour, which is how i'd normally do it, except as a lone traveller it's much more expensive to do it all on your own and not guarenteed you'll meet anyone once there. These guys had a guide, but no cook or anything, so they would eat crackers, cookies, uncooked noodles, and cold canned beans for meals. There was us on the budget trip with decent but simple meals and cold tea and coffee. We had a lot of food though, and I would often slip some of our extra food under the table to the non packaged tour people b/c I could feel there pain as I'd been there before. There was helen's group, a rather large group doing a 4 week packabe tour with intrepid. So they were well taken care of with their personal guide for the trip, plus the mulu guide. Then there was Michael (swedish) and Severna (french) who were dating and living in barcelona that were on more of a luxury tour. We liked them a lot. Michael had been a backpacker in his day, but was taking Severna on her first trekking experience and they were going luxury, and you could tell because Severna was dressed beautifully like she was at some fancy african safari camp or something. They often shared their fancy snacks with us, which was always appreciated. The trip up to the pinnacles that day had been cancelled, so during our briefing that night it was explained that if it was raining in the morning, our trip too would be cancelled. I was quite nervous about this and did not sleep well that night for fear of hearing that rain that had finally ended around 6pm. We also found out that night that Lee, a malaysian guy would be joining us. He had been put on the wrong boat and taken to the wrong place originally by our tour operator, but was now with us.



But we woke up to clear skies. Breakfast for our group was of course late, which could be potentially a problem as you had until 11am to reach this one point on the climb, and if you didn't make it, you had to turn around. We were also told we'd have two guides Augustus and Gibson so that Augustus could go with the fast people and Gibson with the slower people to make sure that if the slow people wouldn't make it, at least the fast people would. Well, once we got on the trail, gibson wasn't there and when we asked Augustus, he just shrugged and said he didn't know. During the briefing they had really scared us that this was some extremely touch climb, etc, etc. It was no doubt steep and went up in elevation 3,500 feet in 2.4kms, but to me it wasn't too difficult. Perhaps like climbing the trough on Longs pk or the gully between meeker and longs, except without high altitude and without scree--roots instead of loose rocks. Everyone seemed to really be struggling and overheating and just having a rough time. I was of course as sweaty as I'd ever been, but was not having trouble, so I eventually just went on ahead of everyone wanting to make it to the top before the weather came in. The last .4km's is extremely steep where there is a fair bit of climbing, or using ropes to get up rocks, or even a bunch of letters. I found this quite fun, but it scared a lot I think. Around 10am I made it to the top of Mt. Api, but I couldn't see the pinnacles as they were shrouded in mist. I was worried that I wouldn't have a chance to see them after coming all that way, but eventually the mist blew by and I got a nice look at them. The pinnacles are this impressive grouping of giant razor sharp limestone needles sticking out of the jungle. We sat and watched the mist roll in and out for a while before heading down, which was by far the worst part. So slippery and steep that you had to concentrate at all times, and even so I slipped down a couple times. You had to grab onto ropes, trees, roots, whatever you could to keep from sliding down. It just took me a little over two hours to go down, but that was long enough, especially after it started to rain. 3 hours after I'd been down, already had my swim at camp 5, but was still awaiting my cold tea and stale biscuits from my tour company as everyone else enjoyed theres, helen, trevor, and the rest of my group still wasn't down. I was getting a bit worried especially after it just started to pour and pour and pour some more. An incredible rain. But eventually they made it back, completely soaked. David had his passport ruined by the rain and poor lee had his camera and cell phone break. A good example as to why I bought a waterproof stuff sack for my valuables. That night was more laughs as we laughed a lot at the expense of gibson who was napping when I came down from the trek as opposed to climbing it with us as he was supposed to. We figure he must have been like a relative of the tour owner or something. Everyone was soaked and tired, but we had all had a good time, except for Michael and Saverna, and to me, it was a rather fun climb, much more technically challenging than most, though actually very similar to what clare and kim and I had done climbing gunung tahan, except that we had huge packs and it was for a much longer trek. It was Saverna's first trek and she struggled quite a lot especially on the downhill, and poor Michael wanted to help he said, but there wasn't anything you can really do. A couple of times Saverna just sat down and said she couldn't go any further. I think it was good for them (and their relationship) that they were going to a fancy beach resort on pulau perhentians for the 2nd week of their vacation.

That night we were all tucked inside our mosquito net, mine which they laugh at b/c it's definitely the ultralight small backpacker version so that I look more like a trapped animal in a cage too small, I was reading when I looked up and there crawling across my net in front of my face was a centipede (the poisonous type) about 8 inches long. I tried to flick it off and it just retreated under my camping mat. I showed everyone (michael, saverna, and the belgians were sharing the shelter with me), and there was a lot of screaming and freaking out. Being to good hero boyfriend, Michael grabbed a sandal and after 3 really hard whacks, the thing still wasn't dead, though some of its guts had splashed around. Finally the 4th one did the trick. Had quite a run in with bugs on this trip. Hannah got bit all over by some sort of fly and one morning when she woke up, her legs were full of huge bumps so that it looked like she had a bad case of the chicken pox. It was of course bee season by the rivers and both david and I got stung a couple times. And then I also got bit by something that made my calf feel like it had a huge knot and turn really red. Never figured out what it was, but it went away after a couple days.

The last day was the easy 8km back to the boat. We had hoped we'd make it back in time to see the caves again, but breakfast was of course late and then when we got to the river, our tour boat was the only one not there, and we had to wait for over an hour by the bee infested riverbed, which also means that the last 10 minutes of our ride we got caught in a soaking downpour when we should have been having lunch at the lodge. haha, oh well, another thing to laugh at our company about.

Mulu was definitely great though. Great rainforest and just impressive caves. So huge! And the other nice thing is it was set up very similar to our national parks back home with good trails and good information signs along the way. I've learned a fair amount about caves before, but the signs were quite informative and I learned some cool new things. I've done lots of cave things and I think Mulu made it into my top 3 cave experiences b/c of its huge scale. The other two would be carlsbad caverns in new mexico with its beautiful cave systems. It's quite large as well, but is by far the prettiest cave system I've seen with all its sparkling formations and well formed stalactites and mites. And the other is the adventure caving weekend on the west slope of Colorado. Doing the crazy cave crawl with bro and seany in glenwood where are clothes were ripped to shreds and we were covered in mud and then the self exploration of the cave system in Eagle which always adds excitement if you're going deep into a cave with no guide.

Flew back to Miri that evening. Stayed a quirky little hostel. The manager woman put in a DVD from Jack Osbourne's Adrenaline Junkie show that was filmed in the rainforest of Bario in the Kelabit Highlands which is also accessed by plane from Miri. I had thought about going to bario, but decided it was time to move on out of borneo as I'd done lots of rainforest things and seen lots of tribal peoples. But anyways, the gist of the show was this group was going on a 6 day trek into the jungle and it's full of them complaining, crying, struggling, getting eaten by leaches, even passing out. The malay woman got quite the kick out of it and was laughing so much. I too thought it was funny b/c they seemed like such wusses and were such complainers and moaners. And since it's a british show it's full of swearing. It reminded me of clare and kim and my 7 day trek in the jungle, except that I think ours was harder, we had to carry all our food, and we didn't have jungle experts nor top of the line jungle gear. So it was extra amusing for me. Check out http://www.itv.com/entertainment/reality/jackosbourneadrenalinejunkie3/episode2/default.html
for a synopsis on it, which is quite funny and puts into perspective our gunung tahan trek.

Flew from Miri to KL the next day, and that's where I am now.

Hanging out with Harry

On wednesday I went to Bako National Park. It's just a short bus ride from Kuching and then a short boat ride from the river to the park HQ's which is on the ocean. Turned out to be one of the better parks I've been to in asia in terms of do it yourself. They had extremely well marked trails with color coding systems and signs telling distance every 100m's. So this meant you could actually go out and explore on your own without a guide. There was still the asian protectiveness present in which you had to write down in front of a ranger exactly where you were going and then sign back in, but that was no problem. I'd much rather do that than have to hire a guide that always assumes you are a lazy out of shape tourist. The park is famous for seeing wildlife like monkeys as well as for containing 14 of borneo's vegetation types. I wasn't too concerned with searching for wildlife or vegetation as I had seen plenty of the species they had there. Instead I wanted get out and get my feet moving as I had been rather sedentary in Kalimantan. The park listed all trails in hours, but thankfully also in km's as I am a better judge of distances by km's than whatever slow person decides on the timing. I had gotten up early to get the first boat to the area and headed off along the main trail. I hiked past the main wildlife trail and the popular beach and kept going to an alright viewpoint of the coast but then onto a nice little waterfall with beautiful refreshing water to swim in. From there I headed onto a beach further on. Had it all to myself, and hung out at the beach for a bit. It had taken me about an hour and 15 mins to get there (there guide said it would take 2.5-3 hours), so I got a good idea of how they measure the time. There was a beach further on, 10km from headquarters that they said could not be done in a out and back in 1 day--you'd have to camp or get a boat to take you back. This sounded perfect to me as I knew no one would be out there and 20km (12.5 miles) roundtrip is pretty easy, even in the high humidity and heat. The beach was pretty with some nice views of the islands off the shore. Of course jumped into the waterfall on the way back and then even had time to go to the viewpoint of a beach inaccessible by cliffs and then down to the popular beach for a quick look. It was a very pretty beach as well with jungle all around and cliffs surrounding it. It was quite busy as it is the main beach they send tourists to since it's close by. On the way back I did even see a couple long-nose monkeys in the mangrove forest. The tide was way out so the boat couldn't dock at the jetty and you had to walk about a km out onto the beach to get it. That was a pretty long walk as it was in the full sun and I was pretty darn exhausted from heat. I had expected to get to wait in the shade by the visitor center and get a cold drink.

Back in Kuching I downed a tasty thing of coconut milk to revive myself and then met Harry. The plan the night before had been to go to his sister's house for dinner, stay at his place, and then the next morning go check out a beach nearby. But when he picked me up, plans had changed. He had a neighbor who works at a fancy resort on dumai beach and had given Harry a good deal on it, so he had booked a room there for us. First we had a snack at an indian restaurant in kuching and then Harry took me to his house for a shower and to hang out for a bit. He had a very nice, modern house. It was full of common things from home like National geographics, western cd's, inspiraitonal calendars, etc. After freshening up there we went out for some beers, and then he took me to one of the most chic restaurants in kuching called the Junk. I ordered some pasta, but Harry changed my order to a big steak, which was very tasty, indeed. Then it was just a 1/2 hour drive to the dumai beach resort, a very nice and fancy place.
The next morning there was a spectacular buffet breakfast (though not as good as the american club brunch, except that it had teh tehrik and roti canai) and we just lounged around the ocean and the pool.
On the way back he called up malaysian airlines to see about a flight from kuching to miri. In kuching they speak a kind of malanglish (think spanglish or singlish) and I could tell that he was tryin to buy a flight for me so I wouldn't have to take the overnight bus, even though this late (the day of), flights are quite expensive. The flight left too early before we could get there, which I think was for the better b/c I would have felt bad about this simple malaysian man paying for a ticket like that. He drove me to the bus station to get my ticket and I went in ahead of him to make sure I could pay for my ticket, but he had already pre-paid for it or something b/c the cashier wouldn't take my money. So yes, Harry was an extremely generous man. I had a good time with him. He's older (late 50's) but very youthful. He sings along to all the new pop songs on the radio adn wanted to know about the clubbing scene in thailand. But just a really, really nice man. He invited me to come back anytime and he'd show me around more, which I appreciated, though I don't think I'll be back to kuching as it's not much of a transport hub and I've been there twice now. He's planning a trip with some friends to Hong Kong for Novemer where they already have a place to stay and he invited me to that. It's intriguing to go, but my travels have taken longer than expected and I don't think I'd want to give up a week of something I really want to do in indonesia or laos or something to go to a very crowded city, plus I'm hoping to have met up with the Conrad and Whitney at that point. But I will of course keep it in mind.

I took the 16 hour night bus from kuching to miri last night and arrived in Miri at 5am as I had hoped b/c I had a flight to mulu at 9:30 and I wanted to drop some of my excess baggage off at the tour company. But it turns out the tour company had not booked my plane ticket when I asked them to a couple weeks ago, so the flight this morning was full. The good news is they got me a ticket for the afternoon. I'll still get to do everything on the tour b/c if you had the morning flight you had what they call free and easy time at the hotel and then lunch before starting the real tour, but it's still a bit frustrating b/c I would have much rather been up at mulu national park which is in the mountains and rainforest then in the oil city of miri waiting around. But the good news is I will get there and Gunung Mulu national park is supposed to be one of the best national parks in all of SE asia, so I'm very excited about it.

The rainforest is burning!

Once at camp leakey, we first took a walk through the rainforest. Along the way we saw several orangutans hanging out in the trees. Once we got back closer to the camp, we came across one of the rehabbed ones, named Phen, who is very habituated. He came right down out of the tree towards us and grabbed Vivi's hand and walked with her back to camp leakey. The rest of the day when we'd come near him he'd get all excited and run up to touch Vivi. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who thought she was good looking. After the walk in the jungle, we went back to the boat for some dinner and then back to camp leakey to watch them feed the rehabbing orangs. They put a bunch of fruit up on this platform and then a bunch of orangutans come up really close.
We were the last ones to leave and when we got back to the administrative building Phen was there waiting for us as well as a female with her baby. So we sat and watched them for a while as they were very close and the baby was quite cute. And of course it was funny to see phen flirting with vivi.
Got on the boat that evening and started downstream. The stars were gorgeous and bright that night, so we lied on our backs and watched the stars as we motored on.
The next day we went to two more feeding stations to watch the orangs, which were great of course. We also did some jungle walking in the area and were lucky to find a couple bornean gibbons swinging around in the trees. After the last feeding station we started motoring slowly back towards kumai. Once again we passed through hundreds of monkeys playing in the treetops as the sun set. Just so fun to watch them all. After the sun set, we had another 2+ hours to go on the boat before getting to kumai. This part of the journey had amazing fireflies on both sides of the river. The trees were covered in them for miles and miles along the river. They looked like trees lit up through Elkhorn Ave. in Estes during Christmas. Quite umbelievable. Upon arriving in Kumai, the other 5 had a car waiting for them to take them to pangkalan bun as they were on a package. Mahjid invited me into his house again for cake as it had been his son's birthday party that day and than took me on his ojek to PB where I met back up with the crew. Once there Mahjid bought us all drinks before a sad farewell. He was such an amazingly nice guy and helped me so much that I wished I could have thanked him better. He also told me the frustrating news that the airline I had booked with IAT hadn't flown it's route in the past 3 days due to a cracked windshield in the plane (these are the type of small flights and routes where they just use one plane and pilot that starts in the morning at point a and stops at several points along the way and then makes the same trip in reverse in the afternoon, so they only have one plane assigned to the routes) and they were awaiting repair, and he wasn't sure if it had been repaired yet. The other airline flying to pontianak, kalstar, was of course full and there was no overland route to pontianak and a ferry takes over 25 hours. So I just hoped for the best.
The next day I was relieved to find out when I got to the airport that the plane was delayed, which meant that it was actually flying. The airport was your typical tiny airport. Just an airstrip in the jungle and relatively little security, which of course makes sense considering the planes are so small. But I found this one a little funnier than others I had been at b/c it did have the x-ray machine where you send everything through, which is standard, and the metal detector you walk through. As a good airline traveller I put my back through and dutifully took out my metal items from my pockets to walk through the metal detector. But the whole time I was sitting in the waiting room I was amused to watch that no one removed anything from their pockets, let alone their packs from their backpack, so the metal detector was constantly ringing, but no one cared. Of course some people couldn't be bothered to walk through the detector and were just coming in through the exit only door. There was a tv in the waiting room and although it was in indonesian I could tell from the camera shots and the words terrisma that they were talking about a foiled terrorism attack at jakarta airport as well as showing old footage of the recent bombing in jakarta. Of course tiny twin otter planes aren't really terrorist targets, so I just found it humorous. It's just like how Hugo joked when Daniel asked if westerners were worried about terrorism in indonesia (after he had explained that 99.99% of indonesians are so saddened and upset by the bombings in bali and jakarta, which I do truly believe). Hugo said, "you just have to know where to go to avoid it. I wouldn't stay at that ritz in jakarta (which has been bombed twice), instead I stay at places like the Hidayah 1 (the dumpy place we stayed at in samarinda), where a bomb might actually do it good". Anyways, as the only whitey on the plane, it apparently meant I was entitled to first class, which meant the front row in the sweltering chose your seat airplane.
We stopped at one other town along the way before reaching pontianak where people were literally waiting on the runway to be picked up, just like at bus stop. The view back down to earth from the airplane was quite sad as we flew over acres and acres of primary rainforest being burned for slash and burn agriculture, namely for oil palms. Pontianak was in a thick haze from all the smoke, which was why the plane had been delayed, and when we landed, it appeared to be snowing as I walked across the runway from all the ash. No one on my flight spoke enough english for me to see if they wanted to share a taxi, so I waited for the kalstar flight where I was able to share a taxi with a malay guy and an italian gal who were the people who coordinated volunteers for help with the orangutan research and they were on the same bus as me going to malaysia for a visa run. Pontianak, which straddles the equator, was your typical dirty polluted kalimantan town made worse by a thick fog from the smoke. Mahjid had a friend in Pontianak who had booked my bus for me so that I wouldn't run into any full busses problems. He had certainly gone all out on the bus he booked. I would have been very happy with just an aircon bus with reclining seats, but this was like an executive first class bus with huge seats, foot rests, blankets (for the always freezing busses), and other luxuries.

It was really good to be back in Kuching after Kalimantan. Very familiar, everyone with great english, and very clean. I had booked a night at the nice hostel where I had watched the tour de france the last time I was here, and the owner was very excited to see me. Oh the American! he exclaimed when I came in. He's a really nice and funny guy. It was very foggy and drizzly and just nasty today. Reminded me of...hmm...let me see...that's right, a caldwell winter term inversion. Nasty! I guess most of it is caused by fires from kalimantan blowing smoke over as well as some natural fires in the area due to an extreme drought. Apparently they're in such an extreme drought here that many of the surrounding towns are absolutely out of water and lots of the guesthouses here aren't allowing showers. Pretty crazy considering we're on a rainforest island and one of the wettest islands on the earth and considering I saw tv reports of taiwan and china completely underwater. The earth's climate appears to be going haywire. Weather is an important factor when you are travelling and wanting to do and see things and it seems that a common theme whereever I go by locals, (who keep in mind don't know who al gore is or anything about climate change) is that things are so different now in the climate. You hear things like this used to be the dry season, and now it's just raining. Or during the rainy season we had no rain. Or we used to have two distince seasons a dry and a wet, and now it's anyone's guess. Anyways, the drought has gotten so bad here that they have started seeding clouds to promote rainfall, thus the drizzle this morning. Hopefully this won't affect my trip to mulu national park. But visibility here right now is close to nil. The weather on this trip has often been quite ironic. Trekking in taman negara rainforest during the dry season where it had just been raining and raining so that there was an excess of leaches, a water logged trail, and impassible river fords. Then onto borneo where the river trip near sepilok almost couldn't happen b/c of the river being too high, then onto kapit and belaga where boats were cancelled b/c the river was too low. Pretty crazy.

Read the borneo post today, which was nice b/c I hadn't seen an english paper in a long time. It was full of stories on the drought and of course H1N1 which is always on everyone's mind here. But there was one article I just had to laugh at its rediculousness. There's a tribe here called the Penan that are nomadic and are regarded as basically the last tribe in borneo to completely keep to their old ways and not be affected by the western world. They still wear their traditional dress, hunt using their old methods, have their nomadic lifestyle, etc. There's only about an estimated 3000 left and they live in an area in the middle of borneo that is all rainforest. Well a big oil palm company is negotiating to buy the area from the government and turn it into oil palms, and they will apparently teach the penans how to be oil palm farmes. Apparently everyone here in the government is applauding the oil palm companies motives. To me this is so tragic as it will obviously wipe out not only a huge tract of rainforest, but a whole way of life. Not to mention the penan will hardly see a dime as most of the money goes to the government and the owners of the oil palm company. My favorite quote by the president of the company is that he believes that this is best for the penans because "by converting them to oil palm farmers, it will be teaching them to live sustainably" Live sustainably? Really? Last time I checked, the penans had been living like this for the past several thousand years. Sounds pretty sustainable to me. And the last time I checked oil palm plantations were good for about 5 rotations before the soil is too infertile to grow anymore, and then the poor penans who have been converted into liking cable tv, cell phones, and other material things will be forced to move to the slum areas of the cities to try and sell fake souvenirs to tourists or charge tourists to take pictures with their long hears or bone noserings.

Just kind of hung out around Kuching today, not doing much. Went to church as I hadn't been in quite a while. On my walk back to the center of town a guy, Harry, in a truck stopped me and asked if I had been the one at church. "We don't ever see tourists at chuch on a weekday" he said. Told him I hadn't been in a while. He wanted to take me out to dinner, so I accepted. He took me to a nice restaurant in the newish part of town, the part with chic restaurants and clubs. He got me a delicious fettucini alfredo and a hot fudge sundae. He's a business man, but helps out with sunday school for high schoolers because he said he gets tired of old people (he appears to be about 50 or 60) because they are so set in their ways and aren't willing to look at things in different ways. He invited me to stay at his house tomorrow, which I think I will and then take me on thursday on a tour to a place along the coast that he likes. He said he wished I would be here longer so that he could show me around more places here, but I have tours and flights booked to mulu and KL, so there's not much I can do about that. He actually studied for a couple years in England and has travelled in europe, southeast asia, and china. I asked him if he had ever been to the states. He hadn't and said he would like to go, but he has reservations because of all the violence in america. It's of course on the news and in the media here all the stuff that goes on in the states. I found this to be quite the interesting statement. Mainly b/c I had I don't know how many people, tell me they didn't think it wise I go to asia b/c it's such a dangerous place, etc, etc. But the truth is that I have found it to be incredibly safe here. I find it feels much safer walking around at night in cities here by myself than I ever did on business trips for sapidyne when I would have to go to boston or new york or dc or san fran. And it's interesting b/c I'll get emails from friends worried about my safety (which I appreciate) but when I go online to cnn.com or the denverpost or the idaho statesman, the top 3 or more stories are always about some sort of murder. But yea, just found it to be an interesting statement considering back home it's always such big talk about whether it's safe to go to these countries and if you look at the us government travel site they have travel warnings for all these places, yet we don't think about the other side how the people here are just as scared to imagine travelling in the US with all the news they hear about our violence and gang stuff and what not.

Tomorrow I'm off to Bako National park which is by the ocean for a day trip. Then on the tour inthe morning with Harry the next day and then a night bus on to Miri for my Gunung Mulu trip.

A jungle river trip from a book (or the movies)

You may wonder, as I did, what a muslim party is like considering they don't drink, and I don't think they dance much either. So I took the invitation and joined Mahjid at his house for the party. A few women were in the kitchen, but other than that it was about 20 muslim men that came. When they entered, they all went immediately to me to shake my hand. Then everyone sat on the floor and there was praying and chanting for about an hour. Then food was brought out and everyone chowed down mostly in silence. Lastly cigarettes were passed around and then everyone left. A pretty quiet and easy going dinner party I'd say.

The next day Mahjid took me around on his motorbike in the morning so I could go to the ATM, buy my plane tickets, and get my health forms stating I didn't have any diseases that could be passed onto the orangutans.

In the afternoon I met up with the other 5 people who would be on the tour with me. Evan (an american in pyschology grad school in carolina) and two separate groups of two italians: Diego and Vivi from Turino and Valentina and Mateo from Florence. I was excited about this group b/c it was good to have an american that I could talk full english with as I hadn't been able to do this since I left bali (turns out I was lucky to b/c after looking at the log books in the national park there had only been 3 americans here in the last 2 months). And I love Italians b/c they just have a great flare and I love how they talk with adding a's to everything and using their hands so much (we-a just-a really miss-a the pizza from-a back at-a home-a), and they are also always so hip and in fashion no matter how deep into the jungle they are. And my intitial excitement was well founded b/c they all turned out to be great and a lot of fun. Mateo and Valentina are starting university this year. Diego is a doctor, who looks exactly like Frank from VT, and Vivi is a beautiful ethologist (studies animal behavior) working on her Ph.D by studying lemur calls in Madagascar. It was actually nice to be with some tourists again as well. All of these guys in my group were on pre-arranged tours, and that seemed to be the common thing here. Tanjung Puting NP is the most popular tourist spot in Kalimantan, but there were really no other toursists in Kumai or Pangkalan bun. This is because they fly into PB and then just get transferred directly to their boat as most people are on package tours bought in Bali or Jakarta (which also explains why airline tickets here can be hard to come from b/c the travel agents all by them up during the high season). Still, with this being the high season at the most popular place, there were only 29 people in the whole national park according to the log book when we were there.

When we'd all become acquainted, we boarded our Klotok, which is a local boat you can sleep on. It's 1 and half stories high with the below deck being only 3 feet tall and the deck just having a shade covering. And it's about 40 some feet long. We were immediately served tea and a delicious lunch and headed off. We left the main river and headed into a smaller tributary. And immediately there were proboscis monkeys everywhere and jumping all around. This whole trip seemed like something that you read about in books written much before my time like, Into the Heart of Borneo of similar stories up the amazon, in which these jungle river trips are very romanitisized, but then you realize when you do it, that it's not like that anymore b/c the forests have been significantly cut or the animals hunted. Or there are the movies where the characters board some boat and they show a 30 second clip of them starting the journey and there are monkeys jumping everywhere, naked village people waving, birds flying overhead, but then you realize that that 30 seconds took several days to get that much footage of animals, and it's all just hollywood. But no, here it was actually like it! like that hollywood portrayal. It was that romantisized jungle river trip I had always dreamed of. There we were on this open aired local boat slowly motoring through a very narrow river with rainforest on both sides and trees hanging over the river. Proboscis monkeys covering the trees, jumping here there and everywhere. Long-tailed macaques peering through the ferns. King fishers and hornbills flying ahead. An occasional hidden house or canoe along the banks. Of course the trip wasn't as full of wildlife as the days of yore back when there were lots of orangutans, elephants, and pygmy rhinos here, but we didn't seem to notice as we watched the monkeys play around in the trees. And of course just like in the movies, we were there sipping on tea and eating while watching all of this. We had more of the budget tour, so we ate on a mat on the floor, compared to some of the other people with chairs and tables, but I think our way was better anyways.

We motored on at a slow pace upstream through the narrow and winding river just watching the monkeys. As it started to get dark we watched the monkeys bed down and then were treated to a gorgeous sunset. We continued to go upriver into the dark, listening to the sounds of the rainforest and eating a delicious meal. After dinner, we all sat out on the bow of the boat and just enjoyed the breeze. At one point we went around a bend in the river and were treated to perhaps the highlight of the day. Right in front of us framed on either side by large trees and reflected in the perfectly still water was the huge orangish-yellow globe of the rising full moon. It was completely stunning. It may have been the most gorgeous moon I have ever seen. The only one that could compete was a full harvest moon rising up over the hills near dakota ridge after a cross country meet at DRHS.

Far upriver, we finally stopped and tied the boat to some trees along the bank. We removed the eating mats from the deck and brought up mattresses and mosquito nets and went to sleep right there on the deck of the boat in the middle of the rainforest, right next to monkeys sleeping in the trees.

Sometime during the night our boat battery died so after waking up with the monkeys to the morning rainforest noises and having a tasty breakfast, we just kind of lounged around on the boat and waited for a boat to pass by that could jump start us. Once we got the battery going again, it was off again to go further upstream, of course watching monkeys and enjoying the reflections of the rainforest in the calm water. Along the way we also saw several crocodiles, mostly small, but one big guy, hanging out in the river.

Later in the morning we arrived at Camp Leakey, an orangutan research center that has been studying orangutans since the 70's and also serves as a rehabilitation center for orphaned organgs and orangs found being sold in the illegal pet trade in thailand and china. The whole national park has a pretty healthy population of oranguatans and in the camp leakey area they have a few completely wild orangutans and then several orangs being rehabbed, which means they are slowly reducing their dependency on the local rice alcohol arak... No, j/k. It means that fruits are put out on a feeding platform once a day. The orangs are free to come for the food, but they also have free range of the whole rainforest and it's fruits, so they don't always show up for the food. So they are wild in the sense that they can come and go as they please and can usually feed themselves fine on the wild fruits; however, they are tame in the sense that they are overly habituated and have little fear of people, and do enjoy the tasty and sweet fruits brought to them from the kumai market.

Well, my bus for kuching from Pontianak, a town in NW kalimantan straddling the equator, leaves in about and hour, so i've got to run and get some food, so I don't miss my bus into malaysia, but i will finish this post later, perhaps in kuching.

pot holes in the travel trail

8-4-09 Both Hugo and I agreed that Kalimantan has been a bit of a disappointment. There is basically no tourist infrastructure set up, which of course makes things difficult. Then the language barrier is huge and even more noticeabe when there is no tourist infrastructure b/c then communication becomes so important. And the slow travel is quite frustrating as well. It's never very good to be travelling much longer than you are seeing or doing things, which is definitely the case here. And we hadn't been doing much, but we were both exhausted from the travelling as this sort of travelling wears on you. Our guidebooks, as any guidebook trying to sell an area do, talks wonderfully about kalimantan, but I wished they would just be honest and say that indonesian borneo can't compare to malaysian borneo, so if you've been to sarawak or sabah, there is no sense going to kalimantan unless you really like hardship and don't want to see any tourists. B/c on top of being tough to travel in, indonesia is much worse at it's environmental protection, so almost all the forest is gone here and you really need lots of time (and by this read weeks, not hours or days) to get to pristine forest. The way to travel here would be to do a private tour. Hugo had seen a thing back in holland for like 17 days that does a good job of seeing kalimantan. But then of course you have private cars and planes and such, so the whole trip costs like 4000 dollars (1/3 of my years budget). Being that this area hardly gets any westerners at all, you get lots of attention in the city. No matter where you are, this can be wearing on you, but here where you can't even talk to them, it's worse. As you walk down the street there is a constant chorus of "Hey Mr." But that's all they can say (in fact it's the same thing they say if it's a woman as well as the frenchies attested to), so you can't talk to the people or anything and get to know them. Actually, when you look at the indonesians more objectively, they are very friendly and smiling lots and quite curious. However being the frustrated travellers that we have been, we're in a more difficult mood that makes it harder to be objective and then of course their bad habits (spitting everywhere, farmer blowing everywhere, throwing trash everywhere, and the worst, smoking non-stop) just bother me. Especially the smoking! The guy across from me right now, in this tiny little room, has smoked at least 4 cigarettes in the 48 minutes my computer says I've been here!! Blowing the smoke right in my face and just smiling like nothing is going on. arghh! In addition to the constant hey mr's, the bemo drivers always pull right up to you and look at you and point into the bemo and just follow you so expectantly. This too gets annoying as you just want to walk in peace and of course we're thinking that if we need a ride, of course we'll hail one, we don't need to be followed everywhere and have traffic stopped just so a bemo can sit there where we are standing and hassle us to get in. Hugo's frustration showed as we were waiting to cross a street to go get some food and a bemo guy just stopped and kept pointing and saying something to get in the bemo. Hugo said something sarcastic that was pretty funny, and I could feel his frustration.

Anyways, though, I was getting ready to move on. I was in a good mood and excited to be moving on. Figuring things would get better at the next place. Plus it's a rainforest, so no bemo drivers, less smoke etc. Hugo let me shower and clean up in his room (he had to stay one more night) and I was looking forward to moving on. Batu our guide said they had non-smoking aircon busses for the 15 hour bus ride to banjarmasin, so I was looking forward to just relaxing, reading, and listening to music on the bus. To get to the bus station you had to take a like 200m boat ride across the river. Batu had said the cost is 5000rp, so as a whitey I was expecting a mark up to say 20,000 or something, but the guys were asking 100,000rp to take me across, which I thought was ridiculous. I don't mind getting ripped off a bit, but that much of a markup to just go 200m across the river. And I was totally willing to pay 20,000, a handsome profit for them. But instead I saw some other indonesians getting in a different boat and jumped on with them, and I just paid the normal fair that way. That's what those guys get for trying to rip me off so bad, nothing. But whatever, onto the bus...
Now let me set this up a bit. It's 5 o'clock and Batu had said several times that the buses to banjarmasin leave every 1/2 hour until 7. But to be safe I went at 5 b/c I know all to well about asian busses and I desperately wanted to get out of the city for several reasons, including that hugo took the last do-able room in the city to stay at. I had asked Batu several times to call to book a seat for me, but he said no need. I had originally tried to fly, but as I mentioned in my earlier blog, the airline, DAS, that used to fly to where I was going was shut down by the government, for probably too many crashes. I got to the terminal and the guys said the dreaded word. "FULL" Great, what was I going to do? I was hoping there was some language barrier going on and that maybe there was a later bus or another company, so I had them call batu's cell phone. Sure enough it was the last bus, but batu said he had arranged to get me a seat. Well, by seat, it means he had gotten me a stool to sit on in the middle of the aisle.

So now picture this. Most people would find any of the following scenarios uncomfortable: 1. Staying up all night for 15 hours after waking up at 6am that previous morning. 2. sitting on a bus, comfortable seat or not, for 15 hours. 3. sitting on a stool without a back for 15 hours (and include an incredibly bumpy road and swervey road). 4. sitting on a non air-con bus in the tropics with just a few small windows at the top of the bus (this really was of no concern to me as this is standard except in malaysia) 5. sitting on a bus with tiny windows for 15 hours with 30 other chain smokers.

One of those would be enough for most people, but I was looking at all of them. I didn't see much of another choice b/c I really wanted to move on, didn't fancy running around the city looking for more accomadation and this appeared to be the only bus until the next day. Plus all my bags were packed and I had been shown my seat. So there I was sitting on this tiny stool with no back, on this cramped smokey, hot bus. And I knew I had to stay awake for the 15 hours b/c how can you fall asleep while sitting on a small stool? Of course I didn't know it at the time, but the 15 hours the book said would turn out to be 19 actual hours. Knowing all of this lay ahead, my mood instantly changed. Anger, frustration, you name it. This is just not what I wanted to happen. And then everyone is just staring at me as we sit there. Normally I could care less, but at this moment it felt so rude. Just staring at me with weird smiles and mouths open. Like how we'd stare maybe if a unicorn walked onto a plane. Amused, amazed, in awe. At that moment I did something completely out of character for me (guess says how frustrated I was), but I raised my voice considerably and said, "ohh, wow, it's a white boy on a bus, never seen that before. let's all stare" Of course I knew no one would understand anyways, so perhaps that's why i did it, and really it just caused everyone to laugh. Usually I'm very kind on busses and tolerate a lot. But not on this bus, not in my state. I guarded my space. Guys behind me tried to put their dirty bare feet on the back of my stool and on my back...they got pushed off, the guy next to me fell asleep and fellt onto my shoulder...he got woken up (yea I know, I was quite terrible and I feel bad, but imagine looking ahead to the most uncomfortable bus ride ever with no sleeping). A guy to my side who had a real seat tried to spread his legs out into the aisle...I regained my territory, and another guy held his cigarette over the aisle when he wasn't taking a drag, and I quickly pushed his hand so his cigarette was over him. I was just boiling with frustration, not at any one person, but just at the whole situation. I couldn't believe a bus company wouldn't just send another bus or something as there were 10 other poor souls like me sitting on stools in the aisle. Especially after a few hours in my back ached, my neck ached, and I was fighting so hard to stay awake so that I wouldn't fall asleep and fall over...and it was only 11pm. I had until 10am to do this. I got some respite when we had a 1.5 hr ferry ride where I could leave the bus and sleep on the designated sleeping floor of the ferry. And actually, luckily, halway into the trip, sometime in the middle of the night a seat opened up after a stop, and I took it, which vastly improved things, though not the increasing blackening of my lungs.
When daylight came, I eagerly awaited reaching benjarmasin so I could get on a flight and head to panglakan bun. But it quickly became apparent when it was 10am (we had left at 6pm) and there was a sign that said another 109km, that this was not a 15 hour bus ride. Now I was thinking I wouldn't make my flight either as I had been told before it left either at 11 or 1. And once the bus arrived at the terminal I would have to take a bemo to this one road and then take an ojek (motorbike) to the airport. About 12:30 though, I saw the airport and signaled for the bus driver to stop (rapping on something metal with coins). I hopped off and started walking for the airport thinking my luck was going to change and I was just going to catch it. I arrived at about 1 to the ticketing counter which said the flight is scheduled to leave at 12:45. Well, it hadn't left yet, so I was still feeling like I would have luck. But the guy at the kalstar desk informed me that the plane was full. In fact it was full for the next 6 days!! This most likely due to the fact that DAS no longer flies and that the other airline that is supposed to fly from there, batavia, had cancelled all its flights. So there I was screwed again. You may wonder about my approach to flying there by showing up the day of to buy the ticket. Well that's kind of how you do it here in indonesia with domestic flights. If you book in advance, it can be hard to re-confirm, and flights are often cancelled. Plus, with the way travel is here, it can be impossible to predict when you will be flying. If I had booked my flight for when I thought I would be leaving when I had first arrived in samarinda, I would have been a day off b/c our guide had postponed the trip by a day. And then as I saw with the bus ride, even though I allowed plenty of time to catch a bus and then plenty of time to get to the airport on time, I still arrived past the scheduled departure time. In truth, the domestic airlines here act more like bus stations anyways. Most people tend to buy the ticket the day of, a few hours before, and then the plane usually makes several stops before going to your destination, dropping passengers off and picking more up, just like a bus. For example if going from benjarmasin to pontianak by a kalstar plane, you stop at 4 places in between, making what should be a 1 hour flight, almost 3.

So there I was with no option to fly and looking at what the book said is a 20 hours (so mostly likely 30hour) smokey, rough bus ride to panglakan bun. I was just standing there in disbelief watching a big group of what appeared to be italian tourists (only the 4th group of westerners I had seen since being in kalimantan: hugo, the frenchies, and the german before that) in a packaged tour wishing I was on that when one of the women collapsed to the floor and a white liquid starting coming out of her mouth like she was puking. None of the indonesians were doing anything and the rest of the italians were just kind of staring in disbelief. She was on her back and what looked like unconscious. From what I can remember from first aid training, it's not good to be puking and on your back as you can suffocate, so I ran over to put her on her side to clear the airway. As soon as I did that she stoop up and laughed. Apparently it was some prank and bet her and her boyfriend had put on the group with yoghurt. I didn't find it so funny. Well in the mean time an indonesian guy and his girlfriend (who actually spoke english) were at the kalstar office. They had apparently booked the flight to panglakan bun earlier, but for some reason the reservation hadn't held. They told me you could go by these van things to get to where I wanted to go. The van is a bit more expensive than a bus, but would be leaving that afternoon (the bus wouldn't be leaving until the next morning) and would be smoke free and more comfortable, so I was all for it. So we took a taxi to where the place was. Turns out you have to pay like 6 times more than a flight to charter your own van, but you could ride in the regular service for not too bad of a price, so that is what I chose to do. Today you take the van for 4 hours to Palangka raya and then i'm staying overnight here, where ever that is. Tomorrow I am supposedly (fingers crossed) getting picked up at my hotel and then going 4 hours to sampit. I change vans there and then go the 6 hours to Panglakan Bun. From where I can take a bus for the short ride to kumai and then a boat to finally get to tanjung puting national park. it better be worth it! I don't even want to think about trying to leave kalimantan right now as that could be a 2 month ordeal (haha...just kidding, or kind of!), but that's what I'm doing next after tanjung puting.

Lately I've been having my strongest feelings of coming home. I really only had really strong feelings that way one other time and that was in Thailand when I got bit by a rat, had a week of terrible weather, and had been having bad luck with things breaking (including my camera and hard drive). Part of it is b/c I have been spending 90% of my time in kalimantan either in smoke filled public transportation or in dumpy hotels and dirty cities, so there's lots of time to think. Hugo and I were talking about this b/c we both felt the same way, but this is the first time I definitely wished I was home and not in kalimantan. A lot of it obviously has to do with how I'm not really seeing anything cool here or doing anything fun, and suffering a lot on travelling, but also a lot b/c it's August and summer back home. A beautiful time of year. Just heard from my bro that he's been cleared to start racing bikes again after his blownout knee, so he's been doing some races through wyoming. And then he's taking his girlfriend (whom I have yet to meet and approve of) on a climbing, biking, sea kayaking trip through washington and beautiful british columbia. And my parents are on vacation in lovely lake city and crested butte, CO probably doing some biking, hiking, and camping. Sherman's doing a roadtrip through the SW, maybe one of my favorite places with it's huge open spaces, tall mountains, and intertwined deserts and forests. Yosh is most likely attending a plethora of summer concerts and playing beer pong with a new partner. And he told me he was going to go tonya harding style and take out the knees of the guy who beat me last year in the boise triathlon, but now he says it would only just leave a bad dent on his bat. My roomies at the house of sin are having waterfights while washing their bikes to keep cool and then jumping in the boise river for tubing and cheyne is leading up an ultimate frisbee team without me. And of course the labor day lake bash edition 3 is likely being planned by the jovial bison, the gibster, and his hairness who can completely clear the wake even with a two day old lucious beard. It's difficult to give meaningful eye contact from across the pacific. It's peach season back home and the buffs are getting ready for their walloping of the rammies this year. If this was how the majority of the travel was, I'd definitely be changing my flight and coming home. But the good news is that I know it won't stay like this. I'll be out of kalimantan soon and good reports are coming back about the rest of indonesia from people I've met along the way

8-6
Well the van did end up picking me up in palangka raya, though it was not near as nice as the first one which was non-smoking and the driver played soft music. The van to sampit was full of smokers and the driver blared crazy indo pop so loud that the car vibrated. In sampit, I saw the bus pull up and it was a non-smoking bus, so instead of taking the van I took the bus. The bus had broken AC and got a flat tire,but i could care less b/c it allowed my lungs to air out a bit. Got into panglakan bun around 8:30 and walked around and found a place to stay. I splurged and got an aircon room(which meant itkept out the smoke from all the smokers in the lobby out as opposed to the fan rooms) and a tv with hbo, which was good b/c I spent a lot of time in the room. The cities here aren't so interesting to explore. In the morning I got up early to see a tour agent for trips to tanjung puting NP. I hired an ojek (motorbike) driver to take me to the tour place, but he couldn't find it. We had a number though and then sent a guy to my losmen (hotel) to talk with me. The guy didn't have much information other than it would cost me 450 us dollars to hire the boat for the 3 day tour, which is out of my price range. But I was hoping he could help me find some other tourists. This is supposedly the biggest tourist attraction in kalimantan, but still no other tourists in this town. He told me his boss would come and talk to me about it. He said in like an hour, so I waited, and waited, and finally by1:30 (the guy had left around 10) I called, frustrated, to see what was going on. This was why it was good I had HBO. The owner told me he could come by tonight, which wasn't acceptable to me b/c I had hoped to have everything arranged in order to leave tomorrow (as I have an arranged tour in malaysian borneo to make it to) for the tour. So we talked on the phone and he said that he had no other tourists to hook me up with as he dealt with private tours of families and groups who booked ahead. hmm...would have loved to know that earlier so that I could have gone to kumai in the morning to look for fellow backpackers there. Well he sent out another one of his employees to talk to me. The guy was nice and drove me the 15km to kumai and introduced me to his friend who was also a tour guide. This guy, mahjic, had a small group coming in to the airport and said I could join them, which meant that price would be in my range. I was lucky to meet him b/c he knew good english and was very nice. He invited me into his house and his wife fed me lychees and lunch. He also called around and booked me a flight to pontianak, which I was worried about getting, as flying is the only way to get there and that's the gateway to kuching, malaysia. He then had a friend in pontianak who booked me a bus ticket for the overnight journey to malaysia. He then took me around kumai to find a place to stay and also to an internet place, where I currently have a watchful eye on a couple of rats running around the room. 2nd time I've seen rats in a building (they're common on the streets in the garbate and sewage areas) today. The other was in the middle of eating mee goreng (fried noodles with egg, which is the meal you eat 3 times a day here, unless you want to go crazy with variety and get nasi goreng (fried rice),I saw a couple rats running along the walls of the kitchen. mmm...mee goreng never tasted so good. Mahjic invited me to a muslim party tonight which I'll be going to b/c, well there is nothing else going on here. Still no tourists in this small town, which is adjacent to the park. Mahjic said it's b/c almost everyone who comes here is on a package or pre-arranged tour and they just getpicked up from the airport and transferred directly to the boat. Ican't say I blame them!