Category: South East Asia

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.

8 hours on a bus, Sibu – Miri

Day 13 – Monday 09 Jan 2012 – Sibu / Miri

I am going to attempt to start a post and maybe edit yesterdays photos while having my spine pounded and my body shaken as we travel on the Pan-Borneo Highway, typing is very slow !

Last night was the worst of the trip so far, I would have expected Sunday night to be reasonably quiet in Sibu, but there was at least two karaoke bars and a nightclub within hearing distance of my hotel room, it took a while to isolate the sounds over the noise of another heavy downpour and the noise finally stopped about 1:30am. At 5:30 the cafes over the road opened up and a large generator kicked in as well. As I was planning on leaving the hotel at 7.00, there was no point in attempting more sleep so I gave up and went to see if I could breakfast at 6.15. I could ! more eggs on toast.

I got a cab from the hotel to the bus terminal which was a good 10km away. When i arrived at the terminal I was surrounded by touts flogging their bus company but had elected to stick to the main ones and got the 7.30 Bus Asia to Miri.  The price is fixed at 40 ringit for all companies so the choice was made on the state of the bus, I must say the “VIP” buses all looked fine. The ride is supposed to take 7 half hours. There were only three passengers so I took the pack on with me.

The first thirty minutes were fairly smooth on good roads, but once we had passed the far outskirts of Sibu the ride got very rough. After about three hours on the road we stopped to pick up a load of passengers from a competitors broken down bus and all of a sudden we were full. My decision to take the pack on with me backfired as I now had it under my legs for an hour until Bintulu. My neighbour was a nice young Malay man names Faz Wan, who spoke Ok English, so we chatted in a rather stunted fashion for the remainder of his journey to Bintulu where he works.

We lost most of the new passengers at Bintulu and I got my double seat back which was a relief to my legs.  The low lands area we are driving through has been largely deforested, though there is a bit of secondary growth. It was not till after Bintulu that we started passing large palm oil plantations, these were massive, strecthing for tens of kilometres.

Miri is an ‘oil’ town, near the Brunei border and has a population of around 270,000.  We arrived in town just after 4.00 and I got a taxi to a randomly selected hostel, which appeared to be closed. I then tried my second choice, The Dillenia Guest House, which is a bit further out from the centre of town then I wanted as I will be here for four nights. I planned on booking for one night and checking it out first before committing to the full four, but it had a single room available and such a good vibe I took the full four. Hopefully that vibe was the right one !

Once I checked in I went an introduced myself to some of the other guests, it is a small hostel so only a few people and most appear to be checking out tomorrow, and most going up to Brunei and onto Kota Kinabalu like I am.  I went out and had dinner and a beer with a Canadian girl, Jessica, she reminds me a lot of Meliesha and had been staying in NZ since Feb and now returning home. Nice evening, enjoyed having company again.

As an aside, photo editing is fairly basic,  I am just running a few basic steps in Lightroom, contrast, sharpening, noise reduction. I am shooting GF1 and I cannot be bothered converting them first.

Long houses and old heads

Day 12 – Sunday 08 Jan 2012 – Kapit / Sibu

Saturday night in Kapit was a quiet one ! The rain really came down around 8:00 and didn’t let up for hours, this seemed to clean the stragglers from the street, so apart from the sound of rain it was a fairly quiet night. Glad the Fox movie channel was available on th rather small TV.

I was awake around 4am and sort of up around 6.00 when the town started to wake up. I wasn’t meeting Joshua (the Iban guide) until 9.30 so I kind of hung around till 8.30 and then went and hunted down coffee and noodles for breakfast at the cafe I was to meet  Joshua at. He arrived early and we shared a couple of coffees and talked for an hour or so – and he chain smoked the entire time, must have had 6 smokes, all stubbed out on the floor of the cafe.  You are not in NZ any more Phil ! No more tourists had arrived in town so it was not worth him, or definitely me doing an overnight trip up river, he said the market had been badly down for the past two years, his usual market is Europeans. However, he did arrange a trip to one of the local Kapit Longhouses – Sebabai.

The Iban bring in jungle and garden fruits from the longhouses to sell in the market.

Even the visit to Sebabai was expensive, costing me about $100NZ, payment has to be made to the driver, the guide (Joshua), the headman and a wee bit to the warrior chief if you want to see the heads… Normally of course this can be split amongst a group, but I was a group of one.

Joshua met again at the jetty with the longhouse car and a cold can of beer. The longhouse has a number of old Toyota Hiace vans and this one was full and had no aircon and little suspension. Joshua smoked his way to the longhouse.  The trip took about forty five minutes about 50% on sealed road, though the unsealed road I think was in better condition. I was sitting in the middle of the back seat and was unable to photograph two guys on a scooter carrying a foam double mattress!! Even the local girls were laughing.

Sebabai long house sits above a small stream used as the communal wash house.

My chain smoking friend Joshua, crossing the swing bridge to the longhouse.The Iban Sebabai longhouse is one of the few remaining old long houses left, a huge number have been replaced with new concrete ones, some of them look very nice too. At Sebabai they are building a new brick house as well, but will keep the old one for a while longer. The house has some very old ironwood sections but a lot of the roof has been replace with corrugated iron. The long house sleeps 42 families, some quite large. The house is in two rows, with a ‘street’ in the middle. Each house has separate homes and a long common area where people hang out together.

The street in between, the boards were quite dodgy in some places!The still being built new longhouse, with a proper bridge.Sunday morning is market day so the house was fairly quiet when we arrived, but over the couple of hours we were there a large number of people arrived, and a massive amount of kids. Of course these days everyone wears western clothes, lots of football shirts on the boys. The house has fallen off the tourist trail in the last couple of years so some of the younger kids were very fascinated by me.

The common area where I was allowed to go.The young boy could not keep his eyes off me, good to see kids the world over love the same toys.

The house shaman was working on some ceremonial clothing when I arrived (not sure if this is staged, but I enjoyed watching him work) and soon after the house hard man came out. We all shared a couple of glasses of extremely potent rice wine and talked a bit about our families. The shamans sons (like a number of the local young men) work overseas, and are not taking on the shaman role, when he dies the house will not have one.

The Iban men are quite heavily tattooed and a number of the women were displaying some tattoos as well. The tattoos all display individuals memories so the shaman had airplanes as he flew on one on holiday. The Iban people are the only indigenous tribe to tattoo their necks and all the older men had them. Apparently the shaman featured in a Nat Geo article in 2002!

The house hard man, he is the warrior chief of the house, as were his father, grandfather etc asked if I wanted to see the heads his grandfather collected, which of course I did. They hang from the ceiling in the common area but are covered up. When he went to unwrap them a number of the kids, and some parents,  came to look. Apparently this is very rare and some of the younger kids were quite frightened by it ! The heads were very old.

After the heads we talked a bit more and then left so I could get the ferry back to Sibu.

A lot of the men in the house smoked, the hard man was coughing up a lung every five minutes, so I imagine he was not well. The other negative to the longhouse was the amount of rubbish underneath, all cigarette butts, fruit peels, other bits of rubbish get pushed the floor boards, it was a shame to see.  Malaysia (the bits I have seen so far) is quite grubby though.

The ferry ride was uneventful, the Rejang river was up significantly on the day before due to the massive downpour overnight. As we were running down river the trip was 45 minutes faster – it is a fast flowing river.

I went back to the Li Hua hotel and managed to get a single room for $20NZ the night, TV, air and wi-fi. I had another night in.

Tomorrow a 7 half hour bus ride – I hope !

News just in, I am the only tourist in town!

Day 11 – 07 Jan 2012 – Sibu / Kapit

I spent the evening last night in my hotel room as it was all so quiet in Sibu when I was wandering around between 5:30 and 7:00. I watched another movie, blogged and turned the lights off about 10.30. At midnight the local karaoke bar really kicked it up a notch and music was blasting till 1 am, and no I did not go down and join in 🙂

In Sibu I finally started taking health precautions, shower in jandals (thoughtfully provided by the hotel), water from bottles, slept in the sleeping bag liner and insect repellent on exposed skin when I went for my evening walk. I am really going to have to make these things habits and do them without thinking. I have also started a habit of storing my laptop and money belt in the hotel safe and bolting my door at night and have split my cash into different piles and storing them in various bags and pockets.

I had breakfast in the hotel, fried eggs on toast – mmmmm, and then re-packed and made my way back to the docks for the fast boat to Kapit.

The boat is just like a water-borne aircraft, a sealed torpedo. I took a business class seat which gave me a wee bit more room for an extra NZ dollar, over a three hour ride it was worth it. The ferry was full which meant I had to stay in my seat rather than bounce from side to side as the views changed. The ferry also had a list to port which was a real hassle as I was on the starboard side so taking photos was a bit harder to do, and I had to shoot through a rather grubby window as well. The drizzle had stopped by the time we left Sibu and it remained mostly dry throughout the voyage. As the bags were on the roof I had used the pack rain cover I got for my birthday, such useful gifts.

The voyage was uneventful though I did see a small crocodile sitting on a log !!! As the ferries move at a supposed 55km hr I didn’t get a chance to photograph it, damnit. Photos all taken out a window so pretty crap.

Chinese cemetery, Christians escaping persecution in Foochow were the first to colonise the interior in the early 1900s.

Riverboat shop

Long house. The are are a lot of long houses up the river, most have been upgraded into modern concrete buildings, most with satellite dishes on the outside. Some are huge !

Kapit

The unloading of the boat. I had to get my pack of the roof and carry it along the side of the boat, while negotiating people coming the other way. I had visions of me ending up on my back in the river !

I arrived in Kapit at lunch time so found myself a hotel, New Rejang Hotel (the roughest yet) and went in search of some snacks and to see if I could find any other tourists in town. I also got the name of a guide from the hotel reception. All I managed to find is some food….

I rang Lion (Leon) the guide and he is busy today, there were no other obvious tourists on the streets or in the cafes and Kapit is a small town. I think I have blundered badly by coming here on a weekend in the rainy season 😦 there is just nothing happening. The regional office is closed at weekend and apparently you need a permit to go up river – though also apparently no one checks. There were no guides at the jetty so I think I am going to be disappointed today.

I had a good walk around the town centre, visited the market and temple, the old White Rajah era Fort Sylvia was closed (supposed to be open) and had run out of things to do by 2.30. Hotel room, Tsing Tao beer, blogging and dozing was it for a few hours.

Fort Syliva (1880) – note the high tide marks, in 1932 it was 62ft above normal.

Cock fighting is a very popular form of entertainment in Borneo, I haven’t seen or heard it though, but these are fighting cocks for sale.

I headed out for some food and the hope of finding some entertainment at 6:00, however, the town is almost deserted now with most of the shops and a lot of the cafes closed or closing. I was walking past the water front and was hailed by a local man, I went over to say hello and it turned out he is Mr Joshua, the Lonely Planet recommended guide. I talked to him about a longhouse visit and how much money I had. He said unless the last boat brings someone in I am the only real tourist in town ! I am going to meet him for coffee tomorrow morning and he will see what he can do for me, but I cannot afford a trip on my own.

A wee snack – please note I am using the can and not the (very tempting) ice filled glass !

[Edit] – Obviously in honour of my visit to Sarawak, for the second day running I have seen a movie with a NZ actor, on the ferry this morning was Cliff Curtis’s latest movie Columbiana.

Kuching to Sibu

Day 10 – 06 Jan 2012 – Kuching / Sibu

Up early and finished packing my life into my backpack and messenger bag, it just fits, not much room for too much shopping though. The day was overcast and drizzly, but calm enough for a boat trip. Alex dropped me off at the jetty and I was solo and on my way !

The ferry seats about 100 people but there was only a dozen or so on board.  I was so pleased yesterday to read it was air conned, but man, it was absolutely freezing inside, the first thing I did was get my polyprop on. The boat made its way up the Sarawak River which is quite brown from the amount of soil that gets washed into it from the rain, there was a lot of tree and plant material and sadly a fair amount of rubbish floating by.

Out in the open waters of the South China Sea there was a reasonable swell which we ran across for a couple of hours so it was a rolling ride for a while.

Sibu is about 130km up the Rejang River, the river is the main highway into this part of the country and up into the highlands.   Logging was the primary activity up river for many years and this has now (apparently) been restricted somewhat for more sustainable activities. However, there were masses of logs stacked up along the river bank near the mouth of the river and at many stations as we travelled up river.  The rain really started to pour heavily as we neared Sibu and for a while visibility was almost non-existant, though it settled to a mere downpour as we arrived in town.

I chose the Li Hua hotel as recommended by the Lonely Planet, I had to take a twin single room, as that was all that was left. A bit more than I wanted to pay but still cheap, plus it was easy to find and close enough that I did not get soaked. I had to stay the night in town as the boats on to Kapit only go in the morning, the hotel seems Ok, TV and air con, all the key ingredients.

I spent some of the afternoon wandering around town, through the markets and by the port, there in this not a heck of a lot to see so I went back to the hotel for a snooze and watched “the marine 2” with Tem Morrison as the lead bad guy on TV. Yes it was crap.

The market had a stall selling live chickens, ducks and geese, individually wrapped in newspaper, i didn’t see this in Kuching.Wrapping the chicken, she was quite gentle, though practical !

I headed out again about 6.00 for a feed and to see if any of the local bars were open and packed with other tourists. None of the bars in the guide seemed to exist anymore or were closed and I have not seen one other westerner all day ! Hope there are some in Kapit as i do not have enough cash to hire a guide to go further upstream myself.  I bought a couple of beers and went back to my room.

Like Kuching has the big cat, Sibu has the big swan.

Just discovered free wi-fi so blogging time 🙂 and here it is.