South East Asia – Page 15 – Where is Phil now?

Off to Sepilok

Day 28, Tuesday 24 Jan 2012, Semporna – Sepilok

It was pouring with rain again when I woke up so decided to stick with my plan from yesterday and move on up to Sepilok on the 7.30 bus. Jay (Jerome) and I said our farewells and he went back to bed. I enjoyed travelling with Jay, nice to have some company for a few days even though his English was not good. I think he appreciated having me listen to the instructions from the dive masters and then repeat to him more slowly, we have swapped emails and he has offered me a bed in Toulouse if I make it there. I now hope to pick up someone else to travel with, though have been disappointed on my first day in Sepilok.

I used the same Dyana bus company to catch the bus to Sandakan, Sepilok is nearby and just off the main road. The bus was full again, but I secured a window seat on the right hand side, for some reason the right hand seats have significantly more leg room ! It makes a huge difference after five hours with no stop.

The bus dropped me at the end of Sepilok Rd and I got a “pirate” (unlicensed) taxi down to the “resort” I chose to stay at. The Sepilok Jungle Resort. It is pretty run down, the staff, of which there seem to be dozens are not the happiest or helpful bunch, service is crap ! I was going to make this a base for some day trips around the place, but everything is expensive, tours, water, beer, food everything and I have little cash. I was told the wi-fi cost 5rm for 30 mins so was not going to use it much, but subsequently found out it is free and unlocked, frustrating.

Anyway, I have had enough of Borneo so have decided to move on, I am going to take the expensive option, (about twice the price of the bus) and fly from Sandakan to Kota Kinabalu and an hour later to Kuala Lumpur. I get to KL a week earlier than planned so will head to Melaka and maybe the Cameron Highlands for a couple of days each, not sure will see what the haps is when I get to KL, maybe I will meet someone to travel with again as I am enjoying things a lot more with company.

Boom boom, diving Semporna, day 2

Day 27, Monday 23 Jan 2012, Semporna

Day two of diving started off with a massive downpour ! fortunately we were waiting for a hungover graduate from the day before school to turn up, which she never did, so we left late and the worst of the rain had subsided so we didn’t get soaked walking to the boat. It was probably good to have a cloudy day as I have a wee bit of sunburn from yesterday.

Today we are diving Mantabuan Island, again about a 45 minute boat road from Semporna town. This island is inside the marine reserve and normally has a resident guard on it to watch for illegal fishing, however the island was in between guards and there had been reports of dynamite fishing on the reef (also known as reef bombing), so Kyle our English dive master took the camera to photograph and damage. There was three divers and three snorkelers today. Mantabuan is surrounded by a reef so we will be doing three boat dives today as our boat is too deep to get to the beach.

Our first dive was on a reef called black coral garden and you could easily see why, the water was clearer here and I think if we had a sunny day the visibility would have been incredible, as it was it was still 15-20 metres (much better than the 1.5 in Lake Pupuke!). About twenty minutes into the dive there was a loud BOOM under water, we all instantly knew what it was, reef bombing ! Kyle made sure we were all calm and we carried on our dive as it was not the close, soon after there was a second BOOM, a bit further away but still a wee bit scary. Kyle, was fairly cool with it all so we trusted him and carried on with the dive. We soon started to come across the odd dead fish and then more and more, culminating in an area that must have had thousands of small fish, all dead, surrounding damaged coral. This was probably the epicentre of the explosions. As we were running low on air we surfaced here. Kyle and Egdar, the Malay snorkel guide were incensed at the reef bombing. Not so much for our safety, though the bombers knew we were down and dint care less, but because of the damage to the reef system. They tried to call the army out but we had no cell reception, but soon after we saw an army patrol vessel and managed to hail them over and point out the offending vessel.

The army went after them, but as their boat was too deep to go through the reef, they had to catch a ride in a local canoe !

The second dive on Sham Sham and the third on The Channel were a lot less exciting than the first, no one was trying to kill anything ! We saw a lot of marine life, three great turtles a couple of snakes, one very close up. We also saw a lot of damage, huge swathes of destroyed coral and I found a dead turtle, its shell had been split, it was so sad. Just as we were wrapping up the dive, a school of 100 or so barracuda swam past, awesome !

Kyle our dive master and Jay

Apart from the obvious the dives were great, good visibility, plenty to look at, both good and bad. Another good day.

A passing storm

I spent an interesting couple of hours chatting with Kyle when we got back on shore, he has been in Semporna for 18 months now and is very passionate about the reefs and the water that surrounds them.

In our dorm are two guys who I met at the Pinnacles walk at Mulu, they did the walk the day before I did. At the local Indian tonight they introduced us to banana roti, my God, they are absolutely delicious ! The roti’s not the two guys, I have not crossed over!

Diving Semporna, day 1

Day 26, Sunday 22 Jan 2012, Semporna

I am going to start by saying today was pretty awesome !

Very warm dorm room in Semporna, but I slept OK, I must be getting the hang of hostel living. Up at 7.00 for what must be one of the better hostel “free” breakfasts, as well as the normal fruit and toast we had boiled eggs, yum. Bread in Borneo – and I am kinda guessing all SE Asia, is white and has as much body as a size zero super model. Unlike NZ, you cannot have a meal based around toast…

The Scuba Junkies shop was full of keen divers and snorkelers when we arrived at 7.45, along with the shop guys, the group going out Sibuan Island had three snorkelers, three dive trainees and Jay and I. It was a 45 minute fast boat to the island and it was beautiful, if the day had been sunny and still you would have said a tropical paradise ! The island is inhabited by twenty families of sea gypsies and they pretty much ignored us when we wandered about between dives taking photos. Our boat

The island is quite narrow.

Soon after we arrived a number of other tour operators turned, including this Malay group, I was surprised the muslim women swam in their clothes and headdress, I guess it is obvious when you think about it, but it must be dangerous !

From what the dive guys said the sea gypsies are primarily of Philippine origin, but have been in local waters for a long time. As they are not Malay they are not allowed to set foot on the mainland so mainly live on stilt houses off shore. About 10 years ago they were allowed to live on some of the small islands and apply for citizenship, so there are a number of families living on the smaller islands.

We did three dives, all on different reefs around the island, one from shore (left shoulder) and two from the boat (Froggies Blvd) and Hawksbill Highway) . The dives were all around fifty minutes and each dive had a slightly different seascape, therefore some variation in sea life. The highlight was the second dive where we saw two turtles up close and quite a large sea snake swimming in the other direction. Seeing turtles swimming was pretty damn cool ! Along with some pretty awesome coral and a few moray eels, we saw an abundance of fish – too many to remember all the varieties we saw, but at least a tropical fish shop worth. We had a Malay dive master with us and he could spot fish and other life amazingly well, far better than the English guy we would have tomorrow.

We dived till about 3.30 and then had a quick ride back to town for a beer or two and a bit of story telling. Saw this awesome bit of transport on the way back.

I went for an late afternoon walk and saw this guy frantically paddling while sucking down a ciggie. I am (not really) amazed at how many people smoke, ciggies are cheap, 20 for NZD$4 and the majority of men and a lot of boys smoke constantly.

The water is foul here, I cannot believe they swim in it, there is a lot of garbage plus all the garbage. I heard that when they built the fixed jetty here, they started at low tide and then carried on. The boys are sitting on top of it at high tide !

Great day, night not so good, the mattress is made from two pieces of shaved paper I think. I can feel every slat.

10 hours on the bus

Day 25, Saturday 21 Jan 2012, KK – Semporna.

Mildly whisky induced sleep and mild whisky induced hangover when I got up at 6.00 to get the bus to Semporna. Jay and I got a taxi to the bus terminal and chose the Dyana Express bus company for no particular reason. We grabbed a takeaway coffee from one of the terminal vendors, takeaways come in a plastic bag and a straw, awesome !

I have just got the photo fro Jay, 3 days later. Note the mis-matched pants and shirt combo. Awesome!

The journey to Semporna took almost 10 hours with only one stop where we could get off on the way. The bus was full and I was jammed into my seat with no legroom, by the time we arrived my back was killing me. It was a very boring journey and for most of it I was not able to take photos, highlights were;

Seeing Mt Kinabalu – majestic ! it is a cool looking mountain.
A cow on the road in the middle of one of the small towns.
A police checkpoint, where they came on the bus and checked everyones ID, one guy from the bus left with them.
About 8 hours of oil palms.

I was glad to get to Semporna ! one of the guests at the hostel last night told us to not get a taxi from the bus terminal as the hostels are a 10 minute walk. It was good advice as we were mobbed with taxi drivers when we got off the bus. In some towns, like KK for instance the inter-city terminal is a 15 minute drive from the centre. I don’t think I am being unfair when I say semporna is a bit of a dump, “run down” was how it was described in one of the guide books.

I was keen to get checked into some accommodation and had settled on Scuba Junkies before I came down, they have dorms in town as well as out on Mabul Island. Sadly the island is booked out so I am staying in the dorm in Semporna. I have also booked 2 days them of diving with as well, though they are booked to mid-feb for Sipidan dives. Jay wants to check out other dive operators first so we may part ways in the AM

Dinner, shower – bed, a non-day !

But diving tomorrow – YES !

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.