Borneo

Well, this is the epilogue of the Odyssey Overland 2009 trip, the
official trip finished in Singapore, or more properly Darwin, and
Borneo is an optional extra. So far we've seen some cool things here,
and some rubbish things: I will relate accordingly.

Our first stop was Kuching for one night, just to catch our breath
before heading to Bako National Park by minibus and boat: the park is
inaccessible by road. This park is famous for being one of the few
places left in the world where Proboscis Monkeys still exist in the
wild, there are about 1000 left. I wasn't aware of this initially, as
we set off on a jungle trek to the nearest beach. Just fifteen minutes
later we saw a family of PMs in the trees above us, maybe half a dozen
jumping and swinging past, stopping to eat as they went. They are
quite gentle and reserved for monkeys, no poo throwing here. A short
while later they went on, and so did we. I found out later that it was
quite lucky for us to see them so easily and quickly, and later still
I found out how endangered they are. Very beautiful and unfortunately
very rare creatures.

We carried on walking through the jungle, and my God, it was hot!
There was no wind, and the humidity must have been close to 100%.
After no more than ten minutes my clothes were soaked in sweat and I
was being bitten alive by insects, even with mozzie repellent on. The
problem with mozzie repellent in the jungle is that you sweat so much,
most of it comes off. The only way I found to minimise the bites was
to keep moving, easier said than done when you are exhausted and
dehydrated. Our 800m walk to the beach took an hour, the terrain was
so difficult, and another hour to get back. And my water ran out just
after we started back. Not a good situation, but it was only an hour.
Despite this, it was a good walk because we saw the PMs.

The long-tailed macaques are a totally different kettle of fish
though: aggressive, sneaky thieves. They will run up and take any
unattended food or drink, try to break into your room and they
threaten you if you get too close to them. Typically, they aren't
endangered.

One thing you notice about the jungle is that there are no locals in
it. They all know it is hot and buggy and stay out of it, or chop it
down. Only weird foreigners go into the jungle for a walk. I now
understand exactly why there is a deforestation issue on Borneo: it is
horrible to live in the jungle.

After Bako, we came back to Kuching for two nights, quite nice but
oddly sleepy for a town of its size. There is an old quarter, now the
Chinese district, dating from the colonial days, and a beautiful brand
new government building which elicits resentment from the locals who,
understandably, feel that the money could have been better spent.

Whilst here we went to the Semenggoh orangutan sanctuary, along with
every tourist in the area. Even though it was busy with people, it
also turned out to be busy with orangutans as well, young ones, mums
with their babies and even the notoriously tourist-shy alpha male of
the sanctuary: Ritchie. It was amazing to see so many orangutans in
one place, and they are even more endearing in real life than on TV.
Ritchie was something else though: 140kg, suspicious and in full
control of the situation. He knew that he was the king of all he
surveyed, including all us tourists.

Our next port of call was Bintulu, via Sibu. This involved a very long
day's travel by minibus, boat, local bus, and taxi, and we stayed
there for two nights. Our hotel seemed to cater more for the per hour
clientele than the per night ones, so in retrospect it is maybe not
surprising that our room had cockroaches living in it. We were moved
in the second night to another room, which also had cockroaches, but
this time my bed also had bed bugs. Their bites are really itchy, so
much so that you wake up, and obviously don't want to go back to
sleep. Rubbish.

We did go to Similajau National Park whilst there, and went trekking
through the jungle for 14km. This was actually easier than the 1.6km
we did in Bako NP, as it wasn't so stifling or as buggy in that
jungle. Of course all my clothes were still soaked through, and I
still got bitten a few times. The trek was to Turtle Beach 1, which as
the name suggests, was definitely meant to be full of turtles! We,
however, saw none. A picnic partially made up for the distinct lack of
turtle action.

One of the nights we spent in Bintulu was a Saturday, and it would
have been rude not to partake of the parties. So after watching
Notting Hill on the TV, Denis and I went to some bars. We weren't the
only Westerners in the village but I only saw one other the whole
time. Some of the bars were a bit poor, notably the Paradise Cafe, but
Casablanca Bar and Lounge more than made up for it. This was obviously
the place to be on a Saturday in Bintulu, with an excellent local band
and a happy crowd. Denis had a dance-off with a local dude and showed
the appreciative audience how they roll in Irishland.

Following the highs and lows of Bintulu it was onwards to Niah
National Park. This park has a huge cave system which is home to
millions of bats and swiftlets, and of course, tons of bat and
swiftlet poo. Very cool to walk through the caves and we even came
across some locals harvesting the swiftlet's nests for birds nest
soup. To do this they climb poles to the cave roof, these poles can be
up to maybe 50m high, and they hold 3m long poles with baskets on the
end which they use to poke the nests off the cave walls. Naturally, no
safety equipment of any kind was in evidence. For those who don't
know, swiftlet nests are made entirely from the birds' saliva,
allowed to dry. Whoever first thought about eating them must have been
very hungry and very agile.

We are now going to Brunei, home of the famous sultan, via the town of
Miri. One more stamp in the passport!

Pics are the cave entrance at Niah, Denis appreciating Alex's moves,
Turtle Beach 1 sans turtles but with Debbie, Kuching skyline with town
hall, and as close to an orangutan as my phone's camera can get.

KL, Melaka and Singapore

Because of my extended stay on Koh Samui, I ended up in Kuala Lumpur a few days before the truck. This suited me fine because I was able to spend a week with an old friend who lives there. The thing with visiting people you know is that touristy stuff gets put on the back burner: I saw the Petronas Towers only from the outside and Batu Caves. The caves were impressive, and hot, and I got mugged by a psychotic monkey who took my bag of food. I could tell it was a psycho because the back of its head was missing: it was not a monkey to be messed with. That was pretty much my tourism in KL. I did find some cool bars though, and some nice shops, so my time was obviously not frittered away on trivialities.

After rejoining the truck, minus Abby and Elaine who both went home from KL, we drove the two hours or so to Melaka where we said goodbye to Calypso. I wasn't pleased to see her go, but it did seem like the right time. 29000km or so is probably about right for a journey in a truck.

Melaka was quite pleasant, in a quaint colonial kind of way. It must have been very important in the past judging by how many nations had conquered it at one time or another: it was British, Dutch and Portuguese before Malaysia was formed. There was a rotating circular viewing deck in the city which gave a great view, there was also a big ferris wheel, which seemed to be a small copy of the London Eye, and didn't interest me enough to warrant a visit.

Since Calypso was going home from Melaka, we took the bus to Singapore. Along with half the country, it seemed. The border posts were massive and very busy, especially on the Singapore side, which had this construction more suited to a Terminator movie than a friendly welcome. I'll say it now, I didn't like Singapore. It is clean, pleasant, has plenty of parks and greenery but it is too clinical for my tastes. The trees all seemed to be planted exactly eight metres apart, the grass was cut to the same height, everything needed a rule, regulation or right-angle to exist there. It felt very much like Central London but with more rules: $500 fine for this, $1000 fine for that. And for all these rules it was no cleaner or more agreeable to be there, and many rules were flagrantly and continuously broken by locals anyway. Not my cup of tea.

Because Singapore was so expensive (just as bad as the UK!) we decided to move and spend one night across the border in Johor Bahru. What a difference a bridge makes. JB was grimier, needed a good clean, and had the odd rat visible at night but it had life! Maybe this was due to the impending Deepawali festival, but the whole town was in party mode, with music and markets and fireworks. It was a great change from Singapore, where the whole country seemed to have a broom handle shoved up it's behind.

Well, there are eight of us going to Borneo now, not including Tim and Cheryl, everyone else has gone home or to Oz. Or both.

No pics this time, my sincerest apologies and I consider my knuckles rapped as punishment. Will do better next time.

Koh Samui

After Bangkok we traveled to a small town called Prachuap Khiri Khan, which was pleasant enough but not a big thing. A barbecue was held there by our lovely crew though, very nice overlooking the sea.

The big thing came after PKK, when all of us went off to some island or other for six nights of well earned rest. I went to Koh Samui with four others, mainly because I couldn't think of anything better to do. I wasn't holding up high hopes for Samui, I expected it to be little more than sitting on the beach for five days. But I can now understand why some people come here and never leave, it is a wonderful place to spend time.

Staying on Samui, everything seems to slow down, and blend into everything else, the whole experience of being there is more important than any individual event. If you are thinking that this is a cop out which really means that I did very little on Samui, you would be partly right. Frankly, after five months on a truck being constantly under the feet of twenty-odd people it was great to get some personal space and freedom back. To further my drive for freedom I hired a car on Samui, a large pickup truck with mirrored windows and chrome wheels which was perfect for the island. The woman in the hire place said that it was four wheel drive so I could take it anywhere.

So I took it up a mountain in the middle of the island. There was a sign saying something like, "Restaurant, best view", so I went to see the view. It was about seven km up a dirt track through the forest and anything less than a 4x4 wouldn't have made it. The view was amazing, but I got the impression that it was unusual for someone to actually make the journey up there by themselves. The restaurant lady said that they got 80 or so people there every day because another company took "jungle tours" up there, this must be the normal way to reach this place. On the way back down I took a different track assuming it would be of similar quality to the one on the ascent. Never make assumptions! The route down the other side was of similar quality to those used by off-road experience companies to terrify corporate team builders: it was unbelievable. What was even more unbelievable was just how good my pickup was off-road, it didn't ground or get stuck once. At times the track oscillated between being so steep I was worried the car would tip over, and so variable that you couldn't see where the road went and just had to guess and hope. All the above probably implies that there was a single clear track descending the mountain: this is not true. There were in fact several tracks forming a maze-like network leading who knows where, from which I had to guess which track led off the mountain. This sounds easy, but when you arrive at the third crossroads surrounded by forest where all the roads lead uphill, you begin to worry a bit. Anyway, I got the car back down, with only a scratch to remember its adventure. Well, a long scratch. Which cost me 4000 baht when the hire place saw it. Hmmm.

I liked Koh Samui so much I stayed for an extra week whilst the rest of the group carried on to Malaysia, this proved to be a good choice based upon the stories I heard from others. Good for me, anyway, as I had a chance to relax. Also I met up with three of our group who had left previously: I picked them up from the ferry port and drove them around a bit.

One week later I flew to Kuala Lumpur to stay with my friend V, who I hadn't seen in years. In the process I broke the overland tradition, so my overland trip is now officially from Aberdeen to Koh Samui. Still not a bad journey, right?

Pics are view from my balcony on Samui, view from the top of the mountain and Robin enjoying a foot reflexology massage.