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.

Bangkok

We had four nights in Bangkok, which is not enough to do this city justice. The city itself is huge, with sprawling spaghetti overpasses, skyscrapers, shopping malls, street hawkers and the Skytrain, which is excellent. The first day I just went shopping, mainly for other people's computers, as three people bought new ones in Pantip Plaza, five floors of tech heaven. I remain computer-less, as my choice of machine is apparently unavailable here.

Being a tourist in Bangkok seems to result in weird experiences happening quite regularly. Tim, one of our crew, was contacted by a producer from TAN, an English language Thai TV channel, who had seen the truck and was interested in interviewing him for a segment on one of their shows. Tim, being the fine, stand-up bloke that he is, immediately volunteered four of us to do it instead, including me. So the stage was set, the camera crew and interviewer arrived the next day and started filming us and the truck. It turned out quite well as it happens, the questions were well thought out and allowed for decent answers and the volunteers performed well imho.

One question they asked of all of us was, "Where is your favourite place on the truck?" My favourite is the roof seats, and they were quite impressed when we showed them how they worked. It is rather surreal sitting on the roof of the truck in the middle of Bangkok with a cameraman standing at the far end whilst explaining what my definition of the truck is. This is my second TV appearance on this trip, the first was in a rooftop restaurant in Lhasa, but the difference here is that we will get DVDs of the finished show, which should be good for a laugh.

Weird TV show out of the way, experiencing Thai culture was next on the agenda. I visited the Grand Palace, which is the main residence of the Royal family here, making it the equivalent of Buckingham Palace in the UK. Here though, it is more of a complex of buildings than just one. It is, as you would expect, magnificent, with ornate buildings, a museum housing coins and Royal clothes and jewellery, and dress guards on either side of the entrance. What I did not expect were the squads of real, heavily armed guards dotted around the place: clearly here they err on the side of caution. I did want to see the reclining Buddha statue near the Palace, but it was so hot that I gave up and went back to the hotel.

There are a few men on the trip who are, like me, single, and so no trip to Bangkok would be complete without a visit to the red light district to see a ping pong show. Well, I did say that experiencing Thai culture was next!

We tried to find our own ping pong show but ended up in an establishment which was probably the worst strip club in the world. It was indescribably bad, suffice it to say that I did not think it was possible to be so turned off in a room full of naked women. Bangkok has no shortage of strip clubs, however, and it was easy to find a better one. It is not easy to find ping pong though, and we eventually had to admit defeat and ask a tuk-tuk driver to take us to one.

So here we were, watching unusually talented ladies do unusual things with no clothes on. What made it even more odd was the rest of the small crowd watching: all tourists, mainly women, some Japanese businessmen, all clapping politely when the performer did her thing. It must be odd to be talented in this department, there are not many career options open to one with such skills. Perhaps this is for the best.

Pics are Bangkok from one of the many motorway overpasses, a part of the Palace and a detail from a mural inside the Palace. No ping pong pics unfortunately.

Cambodia

We only have six nights in Cambodia, and now, on the last night, I can say that this is nowhere near enough. I will definitely come back here at some point, there is so much of the country we simply haven't had time to see.

However, what we have seen has been great. Our first stop, the capital Phnom Penh, was a surprisingly pleasant city which I really enjoyed. Wat Phnom, the legendary location of the founding of the city is a pretty temple on a small hill populated mainly by beggars and monkeys, and is almost the only touristy bit of the city I saw. This is partly due to the rain, which is torrential when it decides to appear.

We took a tour the next day which visited the decidedly miserable Tuol Sleng genocide museum, and the infamous Killing Fields. The museum is housed in a complex which was a prison during the days of the Khmer Rouge for important prisoners like political enemies and intellectuals. Before this it was a secondary school. It is a strangely sterile place to visit, with no feeling left of the acts which took place there, but this doesn't mean it leaves you unaffected.

The Killing Fields are actually only one of dozens of similar sites dotted across Cambodia, where mass executions took place, this site just happens to be the one nearest Phnom Penh, and the one used for the prisoners in Tuol Sleng. It is now a memorial to the people who died there, with a monument containing the skulls and clothes of the people exhumed from one of the mass graves there. Again, it is grim, and again, it feels unexpectedly inert, as if time has washed the slate clean of the horrors of the past. The tour walks you through the now beautiful and peaceful paths meandering past the unexcavated mass graves, where it is common to see pieces of clothing and bone coming to the surface of the ground. The guide waits until you are standing on them before he points this out.

In comparison to the war related sights I saw in Vietnam, Cambodia seems to have been able to leave the past behind and move on, I feel that Vietnam still hurts from their recent conflict.

From Phnom Penh it was off to Battambang, the second city of Cambodia, although you would be hard-pressed to believe it. It looks and feels like a Wild West town, but perhaps fortunately we only stayed one night here to be able to get the boat to Siem Reap the next day.

The boat was optional, and cost us foreigners $18. I think the locals paid closer to $5. This was to be the way of things in Cambodia. Regardless, the boat trip was pretty cool, the fields were all flooded and it was impossible to see where the river was at times, the pilot had, however, obviously done this many times before. We passed through several floating villages which were amazing to see, some buildings were on stilts to get above the water, whilst others simply floated on the top. The local schools had flights of steps leading to the water's edge, there were floating pigstys and chicken coops and a mobile phone mast on stilts. Some floating houses even had pool tables inside, don't ask me how they got them in there, or how they play pool on a wobbly boat.

Siem Reap is a town which is booming thanks to its proximity to Angkor Wat, and the hordes of tourists that it attracts. The town itself is tourist central, with loads of hotels, restaurants, bars, and high prices. To be fair, if you had just flown in from the UK, you would think that it was all quite cheap, but compared to what it should cost here, Siem Reap is a rip-off.

The complex of temples around Angkor Wat however, is worth every penny, and then some. We only had time to see the small circle, which includes just the most famous temples, but even this was amazing. The highlight was of course the Tomb Raider temple, which I think is called Ta Prohm. Walking through this temple is just like being in a computer game: it is so different to anything else that it is difficult to suspend your disbelief even though it is all real. Also, you can pretty much wander wherever you want, through collapsing doorways, over rubble, up on top of roofs, and no one says anything, just like a computer game.

We have one more night in Siem Reap, and then off to Bangkok for four nights of hedonistic mayhem.

Pics are the Tomb Raider temple, our luxury boat to Siem Reap, some floating houses and the skyline of Phnom Penh.

Beach to Saigon's bustle

After a rather epic minibus journey we arrived at Jungle Beach resort near Nha Trang, where it was dark already so we couldn't see much of the place although I could see that my accommodation was another bamboo hut. The following morning showed us the fantastically beautiful location we were in with a gorgeous beach and warm sea to swim in. It turned out to be a resort for relaxing, and not much else, as we were quite far from anything touristy. This was a nice change for a while, but I get bored of doing nothing and three nights of this was enough for me.

We took the day train to Saigon after the R&R on the beach, this was an experience. Soft class seats, the best on the train, were reminiscent of British Rail in the early Eighties, with torn seat covers, seats that reclined only when they wanted to, and very little luggage space. One good thing was the food on the train: very tasty and quite cheap, a bit of a surprise really.

Saigon was like the chalk to Jungle Beach's cheese, a massively busy metropolis which seemingly never sleeps. I visited the War Remnants museum, which was undeniably one-sided but this could be forgiven since it is the side we never see in the West. It is not a pleasant experience to see this museum, the images inside are brutal and graphic, but it does show vividly the futility of war. The area of the museum which I found most difficult to deal with was the part showing the children born since the end of the war with massively deformed bodies or strange syndromes due to Agent Orange. I found myself edging farther and farther from the displays: I did not want to see this. Only later did I realise that this was the reason for the high number of people I saw in Vietnam with deformities, it just didn't click before.

The next day we visited the Cu Chi tunnels, another remnant from the war. This was quite regimented and touristy but still gave some of the atmosphere of really being there. The guide leads you through paths cleared in the jungle, past bamboo booby traps laid for American soldiers to fall into, B52 bomb craters and finally to the tunnel entrances, where we could visit only the first of three tunnel levels, the lower two being too small for Westerners. The atmosphere was heightened by the presence of the nearby gunnery range: the sound of machine gun fire echoed constantly through the jungle and gave some idea of what it must have been like to fight there.

We got a boat back to Saigon, which went past some of the most expensive housing I have seen in Vietnam, and some of the slums as well, which reminded me a bit of Sao Paulo: the divide between rich and poor is just as great here.

I am writing this on the bus to Cambodia, which is slowly filling up with other people's huge quantities of luggage. Pics are Tim contemplating the train in Nha Trang station, and some slums next to the river in Saigon. Next stop Phnom Penh.

End of Laos, beginning of Vietnam

We got a chance to spend two nights in an eco-lodge deep in Phu Hin Bun National Park: we were supposed to be camping but this proved to be impossible for various reasons. I was not particularly looking forward to this, but how wrong I was.

The place we stayed in was two hours drive from the main road, so it was rural enough already, but then we had to take boats for 40 minutes as well! The boats were small wooden things which seated three plus the pilot, who also had to periodically bail out the water which flooded the bottom of the boat. This adventure out of the way, we arrived, and found our accommodation. This varied in standard somewhat, mine was a bamboo hut containing two hard beds with mosquito nets, a light, and nothing else. Even by the standards of this journey this was very basic accommodation!

The national Park was apparently most known for its huge cave system which the river flowed through, so we all booked on a trip through the caves for the following day. This made the whole journey worthwhile: this cave was vast. It is accessible by boat, and is 7.5km long! It is big enough for a cathedral to fit inside in maybe half a dozen different places, and a church almost everywhere else. It really is astonishing, the sheer size of it is barely believable, the rock formations inside are fantastic and we even met fishermen inside in the dark. If this cave was in Europe it would be a national treasure, famous around the world, but because it is in a remote part of a remote country, it is virtually unknown.

The house speciality of the eco-lodge restaurant where we were staying was whole roast pig, so we had to order it for the last night, it would be rude not to. It was in fact roast piglet rather than pig, and the two piglets needed for our meal made a lot of noise in the morning, which was slightly unnerving to us Westerners used to pre-dead food. In any event, the food was excellent once cooked over an open fire for the whole day.

To get to Hue in Vietnam we went via Savannakhet in Laos, which is a fairly uninteresting town. We had to leave the truck here, because Vietnam wouldn't let it over the border. So we bussed it to Hue, which is a great place to spend a few days. Nothing ever goes completely smoothly though, our bus had a blown tyre on route.

Unfortunately we only had one full day in Hue, which I used to visit the beautiful Imperial palace. It was bombed heavily in the Vietnam war, and so is in the process of being restored, but until all the work is finished it is possible to see the bullet holes and shell damage.

One more bus took us to Hoi An, where I am writing this. I really enjoyed Hoi An, the old town was mostly pleasant to wander around: the two downsides being annoying street sellers and the fierce heat. The highlight however was definitely the nearby beach, where the sea breeze made the heat much more bearable. There were jetskis available for hire there too, they were so good I hired one twice, fell in once and got sunburnt into the bargain!

We're off to a beach resort near Nha Trang now, 11 hours on a minibus. Pics of Denis helping out with the blown tyre on our bus, and the beach at Hoi An.