Blog – Page 82 – Where is Phil now?

Kota Kinabalu

Day 24, Friday 20 January 2012, Kota Kinabalu

I had an ok sleep, for the first time in a few nights the room was quite, no snorers and no squeaky beds. It seems Lucy is quite a grump ! and the ‘free’ breakfast is restricted to 1 cup of instant coffee, 2 bananas and 4 slices of toast. While I don’t normally eat 4 slices of toast I do like more than 1 cup of coffee of a morning ! Also discovered wifi is not available till 8.00 am and the showers are not only cold (not unusual, and i can live with it), but they are just not nice showers. The hostel has the potential to be awesome, I like the decor, but frankly she is a bit bitchy ! Plus it was full of some very unsociable northern Europeans ! J and I got our money back and moved out.

We ended up down the road at the Akinabalu youth hostel which was also recommended to me by Lizzie and Dave, should had listened to them in the first place, Akinabalu is waaaaaaay better. Much nicer atmosphere and i hadn’t even walked in the door when I ran into my first kiwi since I left home, chat city in this place, so different to Lucy!

J and I have decided we are going to head down to Semporna tomorrow on a 9 hour bus ride and try and get some diving in.

I am so glad we moved out of Lucys, while I liked the physical space, the atmosphere was just all wrong and after the relaxed and comfortable feel to the hostel in Miri I was having some doubts as to whether I could carry on if this was a ‘typical’ hostel environment. I am not sure what I am expecting from hostels, I guess a lot of people travelling are not travelling to meet people and share experiences, but I need those experiences to guide me on my travels as real information is hard to get. Anyway…….

Spent a fairly unproductive day in Kota Kinabalu, J and I went for a walk around town for a while and then settled for a hugely expensive (by local standards) Italian restaurant for lunch – lasagne, ice cream, chocolate – pig out for $20. Much needed respite from noodles and rice, and for me, meat that was not chicken and fish. KK was pretty much totally destroyed by the Allies (twice) and the Japanese during the war so it is quite a modern town and i guess lacking in some sort of character that has made things interesting in Borneo. It has the same highlights as other towns, like markets and boats, but very little to make it stand out. It is a fish town though

The Atkinson Tower from 1905 is one of the few strutures to survive the allied bombing during WWII.

I went back to the hostel for a lie down and an enjoyable Skype session with a friend in Auckland. I have decided that after Borneo in a couple of weeks time I am going to take some time out on a beach for a few days and recharge – take a holiday from holidaying.

With little else to do I wandered down to the night market in the very early evening, got soaked in a downpour and went back to the hostel to internet and suck down a whisky or two.

Not too many, up at 6.00 tomorrow for the bus trip !

Tonights post is bought to your courtesy of Grants Whisky and Therapy? from the awesomely good 1994 album Troublegum, Nowhere. Somedays this is how I feel.

Brunei – Sabah, a day of travel

Day 23, Thursday 19 January 2012, Bandar Seri Begawan (Brunei) / Pulau Labuan / Kota Kinabalu (Sabah, Malaysia)

Woke at 3.30 am to the loud, proud and constant snoring of the third person in our four bed bunk room, surprisingly up until that point I had slept OK. We were up at 6.00 a quick, cold shower in the rather dodgy bathroom and then a walk down to the bus station to find a bus to the ferry terminal to get the 8.45 ferry to Pulau Lubuan, which is a Malaysian island. From there we get another ferry to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, which is our final destination for the day. It appears we missed the express bus, though it was a bit hard to tell as no timetables were in existence ! We decided to get one of the local buses for the princely sum of $1 for the 25km journey (Eat that Auckland Council !) The bus took 50 minutes to get to Maura , where we were directed to get on another bus that went to the ferry terminal, this bus was possibly the slowest in SE Asia and seemed to take every possible back street in Mauru. We were getting a bit tense as it was now 8.30 and we had no idea of the immigration and ticketing process at the ferry. If we missed this one then we may not make the final ferry from Pulau Labuan and be stuck there for the night, which doesn’t sound appealing ! Once we made it to the terminal it turned out our taxi driver was wrong and the ferry was at 9.15, whew !!

The ferry was a standard small car ferry, similar to the one that travels to Waiheke, unlike the sleek speed machines I caught in Sarawak. Before we started the staff put an Islamic prayer on the DVD, hopefully that was not a sign of the state of the vessel ! we had a quite and uneventful hour fifteen trip across to Pulau Labuan in Sabah, Malaysia.

J – my French travel buddy for a few days.

Sea Gypsies

We had a two hour wait until the ferry to Kota Kinabalu (KK) so had lunch and a walk around the shopping area. The island of Pulau Labuan is entirely duty free so I could not help myself and bought a 500m bottle of Grants whisky for about $ 8NZD. There was a great range of single malts and ridiculously low prices, but seeing as I had little space and was not planning on carting booze around I went for the smallest bottle I could find.

The ferry to KK left at 1 oclock for the 3 hour trip and was one of the sleek racing machines where you had to stay in the cabin. The movie that was played was Titanic 2 !!!! Inspirational stuff…

Another uneventful (thank goodness) ferry ride, a boring run as the windows were too high to see out of without really straining the neck so I just put the head phones on and completed three days of blog entries till the battery expired in my laptop.

We arrived in KK at 4.15 and thanks to the Canadians I met at Mulu, had a map of the town and could find our chosen hostel, Lucy’s Homestay where we checked in to a dorm for two nights. First impressions? KK looks nice, cleanest place I have been to in Malaysia…

Mooched around the hostel for a couple of hours then went out looking for some food. We wandered the night market for an hour so, definitely the biggest market I have been to so far, lots of pairs of $10 Nike and Adidas running shoes – this is the first experience of knock off on a reasonable scale.

We found a seafood hawker market down by the wharves and selected a fish for dinner, which was BBQ’d and served with rice and vege. Extremely fresh – very nice.

Had my first child beggar experience at dinner, that it was a very half hearted effort, a young girl walking past tables with her hand out. Sad.

A great day in Brunei.

Day 22, Wednesday 18 January 2012 – Miri / Bandar Seri Begawan (Brunei)

J is also going to Brunei today so Mrs Lee from the hostel organised a private car to take us for 60rm each. The car takes us through the border and will drop us off at our accommodation. While this cost is quite high it is an easy way to get from the border to Bander Seri Begawan (BSB) the capital of Brunei, plus it gets around the uncertainty of bus timetables – or lack thereof. I have found that all the inter-city buses are at bus terminals are away from the town centres. This means having to get a local bus to the terminal, though these are very cheap when you are new in town with no map and no plan, it can be difficult to work out how to get the bus to where you want to do. Just another thing to get used to I guess.

No great rush this morning as the car wasn’t arriving till 9.00 so did some more photo uploading and a blog post, after a few days away from the laptop there is a bit of work in updating the blog.

Mr Foo picked up on time and we left Miri, I enjoyed my stay at the hostel, met some good people, had some good experiences and learned a lot more about travelling, hostel life and eating. Mr Foo seems to be a courier as well as a people transporter as we made our way around a variety of back streets in Miri picking up parcels he would later deliver in BSB. He also spent about two of the three hour trip on the phone, seemingly making deals. It was a slow journey, the roads are not the best and until we hit the outskirts of BSB (when we were doing 130km) we bounced along at a fairly solid 80. There is not a lot of interesting things to see on the journey either..

Crossing into Brunei I am not sure what I was expecting of Brunei, as it is an oil rich, strictly Islamic nation (alcohol is banned in the country) , I had visions of splendour in the desert. It is nothing like that ! it is just like the rest of Borneo, jungle, palm oil plantations and a mix of poor and expensive housing. The capital BSB (pop, 300,000) had some huge buildings and was mostly tidy, the CBD was small – even Auckland is bigger! The Sultan and his family have built some huge buildings though, palaces and mosques that cost significant millions.

Oil and petrol are Brunei’s main source of wealth and unlike NZ it’s primary product is sold very cheaply to the local population. In fact gas is cheaper than water , 1 litre of gas is 53 cents, 1 litre of water is $2 !!!!! There is a catch, you can only put cheap petrol in a Brunei registered car, which Mr Foo had. I am not sure of the price to non-locals.

As we arrived in BSB the heavens opened for a heavy downpour of rain, I didn’t see any lightening but the thunder was terrifically loud. As we arrived at our chosen hostel then rain magically stopped. Mr Foo dropped us off at the Youth Hostel, the cheapest place in town, according to “the book” the others are no better, just more expensive. We hung around reception for a while and a guy came out and told us it was full with a local football team staying for 3 months, we were just about to leave when two French guys who J had met earlier in his trip checked out. We managed to grab their bunks – score ! The hostel is the local YMCA and had lot of box like dorms with two bunks in a room. As the rooms were not made up (i don’t think they ever are) we dumped the packs and went exploring.

Not a lot of power points either!

Just down the road is the Tamu Kianggeh (Kianggeh market) where we had lunch of noodles and vegetables and a can of sugar cane juice for the sum of $2.After lunch we got ourselves a water taxi for a tour of the water villages on the far side of the Brunei river. Kampung Ayer is made up of a number of separate water villages. The villages have been there for a long time and life is quite well established with a number of schools, shops, a mosque and a large number of water bus stops. As the houses are subject to consistent tidal movement and the effects of water they eventually become uninhabitable so new villages are always being built. Our boatman owned a house in one of the new villages, it cost him $168,000. The water village was quite fascinating and I enjoyed the trip.

After a petrol stop our driver asked us if we wanted to go and see if we could find proboscis monkeys in the mangroves just out of town for an extra $10 each, we agreed, though with a small sense of doubt as to whether this was a tourist rip-off. I should have put such doubts aside after 20 minutes of motoring up the Brunei river, J spotted a small crocodile in the mangroves.And a bit further up we found some monkeys . Awesome, wild proboscis monkeys, I snapped some shots but did not get anything good, they move fast ! I am loving seeing all these real wild animals.I had been really struggling with camera today, and found out after we had seen the monkeys that I had somehow set it to 4 times digital zoom, once I removed that setting things were back to normal. The GF1 is a small camera and I find I hit the buttons with my hands quite a lot when using the viewfinder in manual mode. Frustrating sometimes.

After the monkey trip we boated back to town and profusely thanked our boatman for a great couple of hours on the river, an unexpected highlight of the trip. We went back to the hostel and changed into long pants to go and check out the two big mosques in BSB. Sadly the guide book was wrong and we missed the visitor time by a few minutes! We had a good walk around the Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque mosque.

Then caught a local bus to the Jame`Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosquemosque which is a couple of kms away. This was my first local bus experience, and possibly J’s to as well, I haven’t asked. The bus dropped us off outside the mosque as the sun was setting.As we were wrapping up our walk and were wondering how we were going to back to town a taxi pulled up to drop off a fair so we jumped in and got a ride to the night market to look for some food. Our taxi driver was a wealth of information about buses and ferries for tomorrow which was gratefully received (and as it turned out completely wrong !). the night market was Ok, but there was no food that really caught the eye so we walked back over to the Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque mosque to get some photos of it all lit up.We found a hawker stall down by the river that sold very nice chicken satay and sticky rice for the princely sum of $4 including a cup of lemon tea, awesome…. after dinner we walked back to the hostel, finally checked in, grabbed some sheets and went to bed, A good day, I really liked BSB.One thing I can say about the people of BSB, they are the friendliest people, lots of people waved from boats and cars, most people on the street said hello as we passed, and no, no-one appeared to be trying to sell us anything !

More photos here http://www.flickr.com/photos/philternz/sets/72157628946889737/

Yay – 3 weeks done, shopping time!

Day 21, Tuesday 17 January 2012 – Miri

Today I have been travelling for my minimum time of 3 weeks !

When I arrived back in town I planned on spending one night in Miri and then heading to Brunei, however I heard yesterday that the pre-festival to Chinese NY starts tonight in Miri with Lion and Dragon dancing etc so I decided to stay another night, I also wanted to do some shopping and send some stuff home.

After finding the day pack that came with the back pack was useless for anything but a short day out I decided to buy another day bag, especially one with the capability to carry 1.5 litre water bottles on the outside. Yesterday I also discovered that light weight tan shorts show sweat really really badly – luckily I wore my grey ones up the pinnacles or the others may have thought I was really scared on the climb ! so I wanted to get a couple of pairs of shorts as well. I managed to get everything in a local department store that was having its CNY sales – bargain ! As you may see in some later photos the shorts are not normal Phil shorts and will clash badly with some of my shirts, travelling is so good.

Now I had a new large day bag I decided to also ditch the messenger bag I had been using for day to day so I chucked a pair of (not so clean) shorts, my really smelly macpac daybag, my nice headphones (too large) into the messenger bag, wrapped it in brown paper from the hostel and posted it all too mum ! Cost – $12… Mum – can you please wash the shorts and the day bag ?

I spent the afternoon, literally chilling in the airconned hostel, drank gallons of water to get my hydration back up to a reasonable level and caught up on some emails and facebook. I also spent a frustrating couple of hours trying to decipher information from Lonely Planet plus various internet forums and web sites to try and organise some diving in Sabah and then plan the next week around it. I pretty much got nowhere, but did fire off a couple of emails to some dive places. I have decided to wait until I get to Kota Kinabalu (KK) and see if I can get info from other travellers. I want to dive at Sipidan, which is one of the worlds top dive sites. It is controlled by the Malaysian Government and only 120 people can dive there a day. All the dive operators have an allocation of heads and can therefore charge what they like. Most will only allow a Sipidan dive if it is wrapped up in a multi day package deal that includes dives at other sites. This suits me Ok, I just don’t want to have to pay $1700 NZD for the privilege, which was the first quote I got back, though this was from a resort, so at the higher end.

My French friend, J came back from a day trip and we decided to go check out the festival opening and get some food in the market. The market was bustling and full of the normal Chinese tat (toys, shoes, plastic crap) as well as tons of food. We had noodles and chicken and I had a bright purple yam drink, which must have contained a kilo of sugar.

Purple yam drink, it may have been the ice !

Snake oil salesman…

yum

The festival was very crowded, lots of small people singing horrendously to piped music, very testing on the ears, after using his French-English phrase book, J described it as shrill – very apt. The lion and dragon dances were great, we had a good spot for the lion dance, but very hard to photograph, we were too far away for the dragon. Sorry photos a bit wobbly….

As we started to walk back I had sudden urge to take a VERY fast walk back to the hostel with a very unhappy bowel – just made it, and felt fine after, whew !

Back to Miri

Day 20, Monday 16 January 2012 – Mulu / Miri

I forgot to mention that when I got back the national park hostel I discovered it was almost full with another group of Australian World Challenge teenagers and this time they were mainly boys. Awful awful, so loud !

After breakfast of egg on toast with a guy I met at camp 5 I decided I would have an easy morning to let the legs recover before getting the bus to the airport for the 2.55 flight back to Miri. I wanted to find Skylar and Alexandra so I could get a copy of their photos and do a backup to memory stick for them. However it appeared they were not in the main hostel so I expected I would find them at the airport later.

I took the walk to the Moon milk cave as this could be done without a guide and was an easy walk. At the start I ran into the teachers with the teenagers who said they were also doing it, this gave me an additional burst of energy and I power walked the 2 or so kms to the start of the steps. Steps, what steps, my legs cannot do steps ! Just under 400 steps (yes I counted them) later, drenched in sweat and barely able to move I reached the cave – to find the lights were not working ! I had my torch (thanks Aiden) so was able to see but I was hoping to spend thirty minutes with the camera and tripod taking photos in peace before the horrible hoard arrived. The cave was just too dark to do that sadly. Nice cave though.

I left the cave area when the hoard showed up and took a leisurely walk back to the camp, taking some photos of butterflies on the way. The butterflies are large, colourful and of such a wide variety here. excuse the crap photo, but they would not keep still.

Also found this amazingly spiky palm tree, those thorns are very sharp and very strong.

I packed up my stuff and went to find the bus to the airport, where I finally caught up with S and A. As we had such little time and they had so many photos we had a mad session trying to copy photos from the Pinnacles to my laptop and then all their photos to their memory sticks. Sadly we just ran out of time, even though we were copying as the bags went through x-ray, walking to the plane and until we HAD to shut the laptop down as we taxied. So I got what I could and the girls have said they will email me some when they get home.

We had a bouncy flight back to Miri where the girls and I said our farewells as they flew on to Kota Kinabalu. I went back to the Dillenia Hostel and booked myself into a dorm room, time to get into the cheaper method of travelling! There were three of us in the dorm and I got “talking” to a French guy named J, his English was significantly better then my French, but we were not able to have major conversations. There were a few others at the hostel, mainly couples and all unsociable, possibly due to language, who knows, some didn’t even say hello.

As the sun set I went out for a walk and headed down to the river front to try and get a sunset photo.

I then wandered back into the centre of town to grab a light meal from Ming Cafe as I had eaten there before, I ran into J so we ate together and hung for a bit. Back at the hostel I blogged and emailed and went to bed. In a very squeaky bunk, I pitied my roomies.

I love this T-shirt, it has two probable meanings, as i did not do one of them I had no need for the second 🙂

The Pinnacles (or not in my case)

Day 18/19, Sat/Sun, 14/15 Jan 2012 – Mulu /Camp 5 /Pinnacles /Mulu

Hopefully I will get all the facts right as I am catching up with the blogs today (3 days later), this is my first multi day post. Firstly I will start with two confessions, just to get them out of the way nice and early;

Firstly, I did not finish the Pinnacles (yes I know yesterday I said I wasn’t going to do it !) I chickened out, failed to take concrete pills, whatever it was – I quit when it got scary.
Secondly, the battery in my camera went flat on the boat ride to the walk to Camp 5…. I have some photos but not many.

So, if you have arrived at this blog post via some search engine and are looking for a triumphant tale (with pictures) of the Pinnacles climb, then this is not the read for you!

Saturday

Up earlyish after a good sleep, surprisingly cool considering the heat of the day, I even pulled the blanket over me in the early hours for some warmth.

I met the English guy from last night for breakfast, I have totally forgotten his name – hopeless! We were planning on doing the second cave tour together after breakfast and then planning the rest of the day. While I was sucking down my third coffee the two girls who arrived in the dorm late last night, due to the night walk, sat down at the table next to us, so I went and asked them what they thought of the walk and if it was worth the $$. in return they asked me if I wanted to do a 2 day 1 night Pinnacles trek, leaving in 30 minutes as they had to have a third person or they couldn’t go. I said yes, then rushed to pack….

My daypack is too small !!! I had to take a mandatory 3 litres of water plus clothes, first aid kit, food etc etc. I had to make a few hard decisions to fit things in and grabbed the small light camera rather than the GF1, sadly I did not check the battery! There was also no food choice at the park and no shops nearby either, so food for 2 days of walking was 3 packs of 2 minute noodles, a bag of peanuts and 2 small packets of biscuits ! I just think of all the stress I went through with pre-run meal planning and shake my head…

I met Skylar and Alexandra (S and A) out the front of the park, paid our guide (Oondy – that was how his name sounded) and off we went up the Melinau River in one of the outboard powered canoes. S and A are both in their early twenties and are on holiday from teaching English in what sounds like a rather remote part of NW China. They were only marginally better prepared than me for this trip ! But they were good fun, interesting and I really enjoyed their company.

The boat man and our meagre day bags

The first part of the journey took in the remaining two of the big four caves, Wind Cave and Clearwater. Wind cave was very cool, some awesome formations inside and one I would have liked to have spent more time photographing – however, my camera expired just after the entrance ! No tripods were allowed anyway so it would all have been via flash which would ahve been less fun.

All other photos came from Alexandra’s camera. Unfortunately we did not have time to do a proper download so I only got some of the later shots.

Clearwater cave is equally as awesome, this cave system goes for over a hundred kilometres and apparently there are some massive chambers, again I would have loved to have had some time in here, especially with a tripod. The trips through the caves were fairly quick as we were on a mission ! after a quick lunch of fried noodles that we bought before jumping in the canoe we were off up river. The trip took another fifteen or so minutes before we parked up in the jungle at the trail head. This section of the jungle is pure primary rain forest – so cool !!

The eight km walk took us just under three hours, we stopped to look at a host of interesting bugs and plants on the way and the guide knew a lot about the jungle and its inhabitants. We arrived in Camp 5 mid afternoon and pretty much went straight into the river for a swim to cool down. Unlike the larger rivers I have seen the Melinau is crystal clear – just don’t drink it ! Camp 5 is surrounded by towering limestone peaks on three sides and the river and jungle on the other. The camp has been there for a number of years and has 4 bunk areas, a kitchen and a toilet block (with proper loos!).

There were about a dozen other people staying there, some having completed the Pinnacles that day were nursing sore legs and stories of hardship and sweating more than they have ever sweated in their lives ! After an early dinner, during which a gecko fell from the ceiling and landed in a plate of vege – to much hilarity, we were chatting with some of the other walkers when one of the guides brought in a small bird of paradise he had caught with his hands, it was a stunningly beautiful bird ! He gave it to S to hold who promptly, shrieked, let it go and it flew away. Soon after that it was into “bed” under a mossie net for a totally sleepless night. Apart from another inspiringly heavy rainstorm, we had rats (or something) rattling around outside in the middle of the night.

Sunday

Up at five am for a breakfast of two minute noodles and water to drink (no coffee, yikes !).

Just after 6 we – S, A, our guide and another party of two and a guide set off under torch light and into the jungle. The trail is marked in 100 metre sections and basically has 200 metres of flat and then almost straight up. It is roughly 900 vertical metres in 2k, for those who cannot work it out it is STEEP ! not only is it steep it is also rooty, rocky and slippery. If you take the steepest, rootiest bit of the waitak’s on a wet day, change the clay to rock, some of them razor sharp, quadruple the number of roots, make it 10 times as long and add 100% humidity, this is what the Pinnacles walking section is like. There is no respite – at all. The whole trail is only 2400m’s long yet has 1175m of vertical gain, fit walkers are expected to take 7-8 hours – to cover 2.4k !!!! At the end of the 2.4k is a series of sharp limestone pinnacles pointing to the sky, some (apparently !) are very tall.

I was pouring sweat by 6.30 am and it was still close to dark ! I am so glad for all the bush running I have done in the past year as it really paid off on this section of the walk, it was hard but I was pretty Ok when we got to the climbing section after 2 half hours. On the way up at one of drink stops we saw a small group of red leaf monkeys playing in the tree tops, very cool, almost worth the trip !

On the “climbing” section I managed the first 2 ladder sections and 3 of the rope sections before realising I was finding it harder and harder to go on. I wasn’t freaking out or anything but after talking to the guide, who said it got harder as it went on, I decided to stop while the going was good and before I slowed the others down on the descents. Looking back I am pretty sure I could have made it and been fine, but I am in Borneo, an accident out in the jungle here is not something I want to ponder for too long. I know I made the right call, and am disappointed in myself a bit, but at least I made it part way up and conquered a wee bit of my fear of heights.

Oondy, our guide at the section I decided not to do (that is not a blood splat btw 🙂 )

Me deciding to bail while Skylar starts up

After I pulled out the guides told me to head back down to Camp 5, with health and safety in mind I descended down the 3 rope and 2 ladder sections on my own and unwatched, then back down the mountain. I took a number of breaks on the way down, mainly because I was in no rush, the view was restricted for most of the journey, so not a lot to see. If I exclude the break times it took me 3 hours to cover the approximate 2km’s. The descent was far harder than the ascent, both the rocks and the roots were very slippery and I had a few twitchy moments on the walk, falling over meant the likelihood of a nasty cut on the rocks. I got back to Camp 5 with no issues just before 12.00 and went straight to the river to cool down, all my clothes were already drenched so I did not bother getting out of anything but my shoes and socks.

The others all arrived back an hour and a half later, as S and A and I were only on a one nighter after a breather for them we and our guide started making our way back along the 8km trail (flat, thank God) to the boat.

About a km into the walk I saw a flash of movement on the edge of the track and saw a 2 metre snake slither off into the undergrowth, thankfully in the opposite direction to me. I said a bad word very loudly ! After discussing it with the guide later he said it was probably a cobra….

My first snake is finally done ! I have been waiting and waiting to see one to get the inevitable out of the way. Nice that it was a decent sized one, and even nicer that it heard me first and chose to go the other way.

We knocked the walk to the boat off on in just under 2 hours, which gave me about 8 hours on my feet today, considering my diet of noodles and biscuits I felt pretty good, though once back in the park I didn’t do much more than eat and lie down !

I am disappointed in myself for not finishing it off, however, I enjoyed the day, it was hard, but fun. I AM pissed off that I have no pictures, though.

Mulu Caves

Day 17 – Friday 13 Jan 2012 – Miri – Mulu.

I have been away from the internet for a few days so am having to play catch-up on what was a very regular posting regime.

My last night in Miri was marred by a total lack of sleep. It was a noisy night outside, lots of street noise and a prolonged thunder storm which featured the heaviest rain I have heard. Thankfully the downpour was only short lived, but the mosque was its reliable self and kicked off its morning call to prayer at 4.50 AM.

After breakfast I shared a taxi to Miri airport at 7.00 AM with the Swiss guys from the other night, which got me there far too early, but at least it was cheaper and I was only going to hang about the hostel anyway. The plane was virtually empty and the flight only lasts thirty minutes and was pretty smooth. There was a lot of high cloud but we stayed below it so there was a good view of a devastated landscape most of the way. There is a lot of palm oil plantations in Borneo, though fortunately as we approached the park the natural forest seemed to be prevailing. There were a few very cool windy rivers on the way, I cannot believe how some of them snake around so much, especially compared to rivers like the Waikato that run quite straight in comparison. (photos from plane not worth posting !)

I got to the park later morning, checked in and staked my bed in the dorm room. I am in a space with five beds, three of which were subsequently taken by some young Canadians who were on the flight and the final one by Skylar (you will meet her tomorrow).

I was considering doing the Pinnacles walk, but have decided against it, I am not enjoying the heat and I have not allowed myself the required amount of time in the park to do the walk, everything I read suggested it is a two day activity, but the park stipulate two nights and three days. It is also quite expensive, so I will save the bucks and aim to do Mt Kinabalu in a week or so. I will do some of the smaller walks here instead.

In the afternoon I took the first of the guided cave walks, for the four big caves you have to go with a guide, which you naturally have to pay for! The four caves are split into two walks, one done in the morning and the other the afternoon. Our group had about fifteen members which was larger than I would have liked but we had a fairly leisurely time so it kinda worked out OK. The walk to the caves took about 45 minutes, we saw very little wildlife and I assuming that is due to the number of people in the group.

A stick insect, about the only thing I saw, but very cool.

Langs cave is the smallest of the four caves in park but had fantastic stalagmites and stalactites, as the group was so big it was nice and slow so I lingered at the back and used the tiny tripod I had brought with me (no tripods allowed !) . The guide was OK, but I missed a lot of the commentary as i was at the back of the group the whole day.

Deer cave is the biggest cave passage by volume in the world, and I am going to say it is huge !!! the cave houses around three million bats and the smell is pretty overpowering. The walk through the other cave was quite impressive, different again to the caves i have seen so far.

After the cave we all went along to the bat viewing area to await the bat exodus which occurs almost every night between 4.30 and 6.00. After a boring almost hour and a half the guide came running down to the area calling “the bats are coming, the bats are coming”. We asked how they knew this was about to happen, I was thinking they could tell by the action of the birds or a strange sound or some other method passed down through the generations, but no, they have a camera in the cave !

Over an hour long period the bats (all 3 or so million) fly out of the cave in waves of a few thousand at a time, they swirl in long spirals into the forest to look for food, between each wave there is a gap of a few minutes. Circling above and diving and hunting the bats on the edges are a few bat hawks looking for their nightly feed. It was I am going to say an awesomely awesome site !

After the bats it was a quick walk along the path in the ever increasing gloom back to the lodge. I had dinner with an English guy I got talking to late in the wait for the bats and then an early night and a great (though medicated) sleep.

This is my first night in a dorm !!

http://www.mulupark.com/htm/cave_activities/index.htm#langs

A slow day in Miri

Day 16 – Thursday 12 Jan 2012 – Miri.

Firstly, thanks for the emails, Facebook messages and comments and likes on the blog, I love them, so please keep them coming 🙂 Though replies maybe slow over the next few days.

Final day in Miri ! Lizzie and Dave thought their flight to Bario was tomorrow, but they found out this morning they were wrong and then had to make a quick dash to the airport. I enjoyed their company and wish them well for the rest of their travels. If we manage to catch up in Myanmar it would be great. Lizzie left half a bar of chocolate in the fridge, it didn’t make it through the night…

This morning the hostel had the pleasure of greeting a dozen or so Australian school girls and their guardians who arrived for the night as part of a month long cultural trip. When I wasn’t out I pretty much stayed in my room as they, and their guardians, will drive me insane ! (I have music playing (Jakob), the door closed and I can still hear them.)

I had a good chat with Aiden and mum on the phone before heading out, good to hear their voices, and hopefully chatting with family will be a regular thing (Meliesha, Dom – you can message me you know !)

I went for a walk through town again with the vague idea of doing some shopping and maybe picking up a t-shirt and a small souvenir. I stopped for a very nice ais kacang (shaved ice, red beans and coconut milk in this case) and got talking to a charming English anthropology Phd student, Rachael. She has spent a year living with the Penan people in the Kelabit Highlands and has another six months to go. It was a fascinating conversation and I learnt a lot over the two or so hours we chatted.

Me and my ais kacang, starting to look tanned.

That pretty much used all my available time so I went back to the hostel with a couple of cans of Carlsberg and mooched for a couple of hours before packing for Mulu and an early night. I know drinking beer on your own is not a good sign, is drinking beer alone in bed worse ?, but I was writing this:)

I leave here at 7.00 Am in a taxi to the airport with the two Swiss guys from the other night. I am catching a thirty minute flight with MASwings to Mulu National Park, which I am really looking forward to, the park, not the flight !

I have four days in Mulu, there is limited internet access so I may be off line for a few days before I return for a final night at the Dillenia and then on to Brunei. I have had a good time in this hostel – till the big group arrived anyway! It comes recommended to other travellers. I have taken the brave step of booking a dorm when I return as well !

I have been keeping a lost and tossed list, so after just over two weeks…

Lost

Power plug adapter, left in first hotel.
Sunglasses bag, somewhere in Miri

Tossed

Mirror, smashed on the flight to Singapore.
Camping washing line with pegs, hopeless ! got some string from Alex.
Portable water bottle (sorry sis), water comes in bottles !
Book I bought in Auckland airport with all the NZ coins I had – left in hostel library today.
New razor blades I bought in Kuching, by mistake in Kapit about $30NZ worth.
Old NZ razor as I could not get blades for it here, bought a new one and the above blades.

My bag is lighter already !

I amazed at the amount of reflexology clinics there are in town, those oil rig workers must spend an awful amount of time on their feet. Like this one in the downtown bar area. It must pay very well as a Hilux like this would cost upward of of $50kNZD here.

Laughed at this sign yesterday..

Niah Caves

Day 15 – Wednesday 11 Jan 2012 – Miri – Niah Caves

Mrs Lee, who runs the hostel, organised a car for myself and the English guy and girl (Dave and Lizzie) to go to Niah Caves, which are about 110km from Miri. It is possible to get a variety of public transport to the caves and a number of people do this, but for me this was the easiest option not much more expensive than the more complicated bus option, plus the driver waited for us so we had a guaranteed lift back to town.

The Niah Caves are in a small national park and in 1958 Tom Harrison discovered a human skull that has been dated back to 40,000 years ago, along with igns that the cave system was used for human habitation up until quite recently. The human remains were known as “Borneo Man” and are the oldest human remains found in SE Asia.

The caves are primarily populated by thousands of bats and a small bird, the switflet. The swiflet make their nests from their own saliva and these nests are prized in China as the source for birds nest soup. For many years the local iban people have collected the nests and bat guano (for fertiliser) for sale. Throughout the cave system there are massive ironwood and bamboo poles used by the collectors, who will climb high up the caves to knock the nests down to the ground were they are collected.

From the park office you take a boat across the river and then take a two kilometre walk through the bush on a very slippery raised boardwalk to the first of the caves, the Trader Cave.

The Trader cave is more of a large overhang that for was used as a market – mainly the trading and selling of birds nests and guano. The cave was pretty cool…

remains of some of the traders stalls.

This shows the scale of the cave

From the Traders Cave there is a short walk to the Great Cave, the entrance is 60m high and 250m wide…. Impressive ! to the side of the great cave is the original excavation site.

There was some great stalegtites ! I am not sure what this buiding is for, no signs! possibly used by archeologists ? place for visitors to rest without being poo’ed on from above.

The cave is huge, a boardwalk allows you to wander through the system and I took a number of photos. I was not supposed to take the tripod in but I did and snapped a few shots, most of which were rubbish ! need to practise taking photos in the dark with this camera !

In the middle of the cave we found some birds nest collectors, they were slightly too far away to get a decent pic, so this is it.

After the Great cave there is a short walk to the painted cave. The painted cave contains a fenced off wall where some old cave paintings were discovered. There is no information on when these were found, or how old they are. It is fairly typical of Borneo to not have a lot of info about things, the museums have been the same, there will be a long of masks on a wall, with a sign saying Iban masks, but no info about what they all mean !)

From the painted cave you walk back they way you came to the park entrance. We met a couple of people in the park, but it was largely deserted which was awesome ! It meant we could take our time walking through, stopping to take photos without blocking the paths. I can see why tripods are not allowed, on a busy day they would be one heck of a hazard.

I really enjoyed the caves, though very humid (I was dripping as usual ) and a nice pong of bat shit ! We had a lunch of rice, okra and fern roots at the park and then went back to the hostel for expensive beers.

There are more photos on Flickr as it is too time consuming to add lots to WordPress !

A good day, probably the best one so far !

Miri

Day 14 – Tuesday 10 2012 – Miri

Another fairly late night with loud karaoke bars nearby (as I found out later, one was actually downstairs), they love their karaoke bars here. I was then awoken at 4:50 by the call for prayer from the local mosque. Oh well, sleep is over-rated and think I am going to have to get used to that !

I was up early for coffees and breakie with the other guests, most who are moving on today, it was nice to eat fresh fruit and toast for a change.

I had planned a day in Miri, so left the hostel after 9.00 to get out for a walk before the worst of the heat of the early afternoon. It was still hot and humid though ! Miri is a fairly new town compared to some of the others I have visited, so the old town areas were not that interesting, and there was not a whole lot else to look at really. I wandered around for a couple of hours and then went to a local food court for lunch.

After lunch I wandered up to the Petroleum Museum, the museum is about a 2km walk up a hill and it was pretty tough in the heat, lots of people driving past in cars gave me funny looks as they drove on by. If this had been Auckland I would have run up there in minutes, but this was a bit of a mission.

I think Vicki is the only person I know who would have appreciated the museum for its sake, I enjoyed it for the air conditioning and the view of the town was OK.

For Vicki !

One of the walking tour highlights 🙂

I arrived back in the hostel in the early afternoon to cool down and chill for the rest of the day. It was a quiet hour on my own before the new round of travellers arrived. I soon get chatting to an English guy and girl travelling together and an American guy living in Japan. The poms were planning on visiting Niah Caves tomorrow which is what I want to do as well so we will all go together in a car organised by Mrs Lee who runs the hostel. This will be cheaper and easier than us all using the bus, assuming one actually runs.

I hung around the hostel for the rest of the afternoon catching up on some emails and blog reading while the others had a late lunch. When they came back we sat around and chatted over a beer with a couple of Swiss guys who had just arrived. The six of us went of dinner to Mings Seafood Cafe and I ate the most food since new year – fantastic, BBQ’d fish, calamari, okra, native ferns and bamboo clams ( a long thin shellfish). It was a good night, moderately expensive as beer is a horrendous price in Miri. We bought another big bottle of beer each and went back to the hostel to chat till quite late. It was a good night.

I regret not taking my camera (or even my phone) for dinner as the food porn was great!

Miri is the border town with Brunei, Brunei being completely alcohol free, everyone comes to Miri to drink – and they know how to make a buck here The beer in Kapit was half the price and Kapit was 200km up a river.