Iain Plank

Long, long ago when the universe was still young, Manoj and I flew out of KL to head to the deep, dark jungles of Borneo…..

Yes, I know that its taken me a long time to update this but things have been a bit busy. Excuses, excuses….

Where was I ? Oh yes, flying to the deep, dark jungles of Borneo or, to be more exact, the town of Kuching in the Malaysian state of Sarawak located on the northern coast of the island of Borneo.

A bit of history….Although originally under the Sultan of Brunei it was given to the Englishman James Brooke in 1838 in return for helping the Sultan quash an inland rebellion. He duly appointed himself Raja Brooke (as I guess you do in those circumstances) and so began a dynasty of ‘White Rajas’ which lasted until after the second World War.

Although previously nothing really to do with Malaya, in 1963 Sarawak, its neighbour Sabah and Singapore joined with Malaya to create Malaysia. Singapore left only 2 years later and became independent.

The first thing you discover when arriving in Sarawak is that your Malaysian visa is not valid. Turns out that a Sarawak visa is valid for the whole of Malaysia but a Malaysian visa is valid everywhere except Sarawak. Even Malaysians have trouble – Sarawakians (for what of a better term) can work anywhere in Malaysia but non-Sarawakians need a work permit to work in Sarawak !!
You soon get the feeling that Malaysia needs Sarawak, with its timber, oil etc, a lot more than Sarawak needs Malaysia. The people in Sarawak consist
of Malays but also the Dayak or indigenous peoples such as the Iban. The Dayaks are a truly beautiful people full of character and with elegant faces.

So where was I ? Oh yes, still on the plane from KL to Kuching. Kuching is the main town in Sarawak and to be honest one of the nicest places I’ve seen in Asia. Its, green, clean and has a nice riverside area. Every second person seems to be in possession of a garden strimmer to keep the grass tidy. My illusion of the wilds of Borneo were finally shattered but the Holiday and Hilton standing proud on the skyline. Oh well.

Spent a couple of days in Kuching gathering information on what there was to do and see and just getting a feel for the place.

Semengok Re-habilitation Centre
Our first excursion was to the Orang Utan re-habilitation centre in Semengok to the south of Kuching. The centre is positioned on the edge of the rain-forest and tries to re-introduce Orang Utans to the wild (from zoo’s or collections) with good success.

We we’re there in the early morning (hard to believe I know) to see them feed the Orang Utans that are being
re-re-introduced to the wild. The wardens started to put some fruit out for them and calling – nothing happened. Then in different parts of the forest there came a rustling and soon you could see the trees shaking, and the shaking coming progressively nearer !!! It was like being in a real life Jurassic Park – you expected a T-Rex to burst through the forest at any moment !! Instead we started to see the Orang Utans moving from tree to tree in the most beautiful and amazing manner. To move to a new tree they start swinging the tree that they are in from side to side until it swings enough for them to reach the outlying branches of the next tree. They then literally ‘reel’ in the new tree and only let go of the first when they are absolutely sure that it is safe to do so. They came really close, some to only 2 metres away ! We saw about 8 in all including a mother with her baby. Amazing !!

Bako National Park
Following that we went by boat to the Bako National Park. This is a huge park to the NW of Kuching which has lots of jungle treks and natural habitats ranging from Beach, to Mangrove, to swamp, to dry lands, to rainforest. One of our treks was a 7hr trek through all of these habitats which gave us some amazing views, good swimming, pitcher plants and finally something quite special. Near the end of the trek we were in forest and hear a tree rustle. We stopped and waited, binoculars at the ready. I saw something move and focused – a male Proboscis monkey compete with big nose and pot belly !! Borneo is the only place on earth were you can see these animals in the wild. Apparently the big nose and pot belly are irresistible to females – there’s hope for us all !

Piece of trivia for you… Did you know that the Malay name for the Proboscis monkey is “Monyet Belanda” which means Dutchman Monkey ? I’ll say no more.

Niah National Park
Our next stop, after an 11hr bus ride in which we were thrown around like ping pong balls in a bingo machine (Advice: never take the last two seats at the back of a bus) was the Niah National Park which again we approached by boat. Niah is another beautiful place and is famous for its caves, the Great Cave being the second biggest in the world !!
As well as cave paintings they have also found human remains here which date from 40,000 yrs BP (Before Present) and are the oldest in SE Asia.

The caves really are huge and the smell of ammonia from the bat droppings sometimes overpowering. The cave is inhabited by literally millions of bats and swiftlets which, at dawn and dusk simultaneously swap positions creating an amazing spectacle.

The other inhabitants are the fearless nest collectors who will climb up to 100m up a flimsy pole with no harness to collect the swiftlet nests that are used in the famous Bird nest soup.

Sometimes when traveling you experience something special and its usually in the most unexpected places. One of these experiences was when we went to the local Longhouse near the caves. A Longhouse is,
strangely enough, a Long House where many different families live together with a large communal area. This one was rather modern but you still got the general idea. We went prepared with Coffee and Sugar in case we were invited inside (never go empty handed). As we walked through we were met by lots of children and were invited by an old man into his home. He shared with us some rice wine that he had made and we did our best to communicate with him and his family – not easy as we don’t speak Malay and they couldn’t speak English – but we managed and as always the children helped. It doesn’t seem to matter what nationality or race you are children somehow bring everyone together. We stayed for about an hour and took photos which we promised to send to them (and did) and gave them our gifts, including a head scarf that I gave to one of the little girls (you can see her in one of the photos).

As we were leaving the village we are met by a group of young boys. “Hello”, “What’s your name ?”, “Where you from ?” came the usual calls then “Do you play football ?” – “Er, yes” – “Come on then !” and we were
duly whisked off to the local football pitch where we had to be captains and pick teams – it was like being at school again. We played in the sun for about an hour and picked up lots of new Malay expressions which probably meant things like: “Kick it you idiot !”, “Goal Moocher !!”, “Pass it you selfish git” etc Actually they were amazingly nice to each other and if someone did make a mistake it was soon laughed off. We had such a good time and the children were wonderful. We left smiling from ear to ear.

Brunei
After Niah we continued to head east first to the town of Miri and then on to Brunei, the land with the famous Sultan. Our first problem occurred at the border. There were four of us in the taxi, all with British passports. Three of us they let in immediately, Manoj they decided, wasn’t going to enter and so they made life as difficult as possible until they left him no choice but to say “Ok, forget it”. Strange but true. So Manoj went back to Miri and we arranged to meet there a day or so later.

So what to say about Brunei ? It’s probably well up the list of contenders for the worlds most boring country ! Brunei is a small country mainly covered by, as yet, unspoilt rainforest and whose income is pretty much reliant on Oil and Gas. The Sultan of Brunei is the worlds 2nd richest man (he was overtaken recently by Bill Gates) and the country has many positive aspects such as no income tax, contribution free pensions and medical care, housing is subsidized and education from kindergarten through the university level is free – so far so good. It’s also a strict Muslim country, does not allow alcohol and you can, apparently, be arrested and imprisoned if you are a Muslim couple and are seen holding hands !! What’s worse is that they actually have people sad enough to go around and check !

We went immediately to the heart of this throbbing country: Bandar Seri Begawan or BSB for short. BSB is quite a small place with no high buildings and is nice enough although at night it’s a dead as a proverbial – no bars or clubs, and very few nice restaurants. You can see why the Sultan and his wives spend most of their time elsewhere. As with anywhere where there are strict controls there is a thriving underground culture but I was there too short a time to experience this.

One of the biggest surprises was in BSB. In the centre is a nice new shopping centre and a big white and gold Mosque complete with small lake etc – looks really nice – but if you turn 180 degrees you face a ramshackled wooden stilt village with extremely dodgy walkways built on the mud at the edge of the river. Here there is more rubbish that you would believe possible (See photo). It was such a contrast ! On the one side a nice new Mosque and on the other a rubbish tip. I can understand that if a place doesn’t have so much money then the rubbish takes a low priority but you’d think that someone as rich as the Sultan could pay for someone to keep it clean and to educate his people not to make litter. It’s in the middle of his capital city after all.

There is a fun fair in Brunei (hard to believe) which was given by the Sultan to his people. Apparently everything is free !! I say apparently as it’s closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and I happened to be there Monday and Tuesday and couldn’t feel that I could justify staying another 2 days just to spend a few hours on a roller coaster.

Miri
I left Brunei after a day of looking around BSB and headed back to Miri to meet Manoj. Miri is quite a small and, to be honest, seedy town which makes a lot of its money from the Brunei people who stream over the nearby border to have a good time. We also had a good time there and met a band in one of the bars who we got quite friendly with. We were taken by some locals to a club which was quite a laugh and it was amazing how many people came up to us the next day and said ‘hello’ as we walked around town. We finally got a bus, which broke down 3 times, from Miri to Sibu (Ok place) and then a boat back to Kuching.

Back In Kuching
In Kuching we were lucky enough to get to know a group of locals. They were of Dayak origin and it was
fascinating talking to them about their lives and attitudes. They were fiercely proud of their origins and were “Sarawak first, Malaysian second” and even suggested that Sarawak should leave Malaysia and become independent. They resented Malaysia being a Muslim country (however nominally) – Why should they be restricted by certain pro-Muslim (or pro-Malay) laws it was their country too ? An interesting point. I guess that in most western countries we take for granted that there tends to be a baseline of general moral codes for the good of the country, irrespective of religion. If you personally want to live a stricter code then you are free to do so but not at the expense of someone else. The religion is up to the individual but the country is for all. A country that fashions itself on a religion or race has to be careful not to alienate sections of its society.

I appreciate that this opens up a whole can of worms on the subject and so I’ll stop there but it’s an interesting subject to think about.

The Homestay
One of the most rewarding times in Sarawak was taking part in a Homestay project. For us it involved living for a few days with a Malay Muslim family in the small fishing village of Telaga Air. The idea is that you get to a village that never normally sees tourists and experience being within a Malaysian family and helping out. It was really interesting chatting with the father and finding out a bit about life in the village. Our host was a fisherman and so took us out fishing which was good fun and being out at sea trying to out-run the most amazing lightning storm I have ever seen was definitely an experience.

TV
Whilst in Telaga Air we saw some Malaysian TV. Such as the program that only showed the opening credits before going immediately to the adverts, an advert for “Power Jugs” – a chocolate drink holder (?) and an interesting advert encouraging motorcyclists to wear crash helmets. It consisted of the usual crash test dummy wearing a helmet, riding a motorbike and hitting a car. It showed the head where is landed after the accident, nicely intact because it was wearing a crash helmet. Strange thing, was that no-one seemed to mind the fact that the head wasn’t actually attached to the body anymore !! Maybe I’m just being pedantic ?

At the end of the Home stay Manoj and I finally parted company. No problems, just different ideas and timescales.

I could have happily stayed longer in Sarawak, I loved it but I had other things to move on to……