Archive for the 'Malaysia' Category
In Miri I had again found a guest house with a proprietor, this time a woman named Joanne, was extremely friendly and helpful in finding tours and things to do. I think people on the backpacker circuit in Borneo have realized that most things are in fact too expensive for your average backpacker to actually do without some solid pre-planning (which no backpacker worth their salt will do), and so have made a real effort to find trips that are similar to the lofty plans of 4 day jungle treks that people such as myself may come to the country with. I told Joanne how much time I had in Miri before I had to leave, as a few days prior I had made plans with Kirsten to meet in Manila on September 1, and she laid out what kinds of activities (day trips really) there were available to me.
For my first full day I got a ride out to Lumbir Hills National Park to hike to several waterfalls. What I was prepared for was some mild to slightly difficult hiking through the hills, nothing worse than I had done previously on the trip in Laos or Nepal, and that’s more or less how the terrain was. The first third or so is to the most accessible falls, surrounded by picnic tables and it even has bathroom facilities. Nearby are some stone steps up the hill into what is the more rustic part of the trail. I spent a good 4 hours walking along this, again stopping at a couple more remote falls, in secluded little glades, trickling into a pool below.
On the way out I was walking along otherwise dry ground when it suddenly felt like I had stepped in a pool of water and the back half of my left foot was soaked. I stopped and looked down at my sandal (kind of Teva-style) to see it covered in blood. I took it off and found the part I wasn’t prepared for: leeches. Taking off my other sandal I counted about a dozen of them between my two feet, they’d been hiding in the little crevasses of the sandal. Now you aren’t supposed to pick them off because their little tooth can get lodged in the skin and become infected, but when you see a bunch of little slimy things sucking the blood out of your feet, the natural instinct is “get these things off of me!”, and I managed to flick them all off. Of course now all the wounds were bleeding nonstop, as they use an anti-coagulant to keep the meal going, but I didn’t have anything with me to stop the bleeding and I was pretty near to the park headquarters, so I just put my sandals back on and kept going, one bloody step after another. I was able to stop the bleeding with a bunch of napkins at a small restaurant near the front office, and when I got back to the hostel I asked nicely if the following day’s activity could please have less leeches.
I was in luck, as that night two separate Dutch couples arrived and both wanted to do the Niah Caves tour the next day. I’d wanted to see the caves as well, but as at least three people are needed to go, as only one person I could have been out of luck. Much of the area surrounding Miri is dotted with massive limestone formations, similar to Vang Vieng or Yangshuo. There are a few caves open to visitors, though the Niah group is the closest and most accessible, particularly as a day trip. The next morning, a van arrived and picked us up.
A plank-walk has been constructed through the jungle right up to and through the caves, making the whole journey an admittedly easy one. Currently, however, a portion of the path is under renovation, as the rickety old wooden foundation is being replaced with sturdy concrete. In it’s current stage, they don’t recommend you walk on part of it, as while the concrete is fully in place, the slats you actually walk aren’t. The concrete runners were wide enough though, and we started to go this route, as it’s much shorter, but we didn’t get far when one of the Dutch guys suddenly stopped. He told us he has really bad vertigo, and although we were only about ten feet up, now that he could see the ground, he could barely walk and was really dizzy. To accommodate him, we turned around and started off through the “muddy path”, the detour that was in place during the construction.
An hour and a half of trudging through ankle-deep mud and getting cut up on low-hanging branches (thankfully, no leeches this time), and we finally reached the first cave. We stopped and had lunch and admired a few faded cave paintings that had been done thousands of years earlier by some of the first inhabitants of the area. After lunch we set back off, thankfully back on a plank-walk the rest of the way, and got to the large cave. The path went right through this cave and out the other side, and fortunately we had brought flashlights with us, as within about 20 feet of entering the cave, we were engulfed in darkness. We had a great time exploring the cave (albeit from the safety of a wooden path with a railing on one side), with the occasional bat or swiftlet flying overhead. Eventually we came to an open area with light coming in through some holes in the ceiling, and a number of bamboo poles hanging down. This is the area where the swiftlet nests are harvested so the Chinese can have their bird’s nest soup. Local men climb up hundreds of feet to the cave ceiling on narrow bamboo ladders, gathering the nests that are worth several hundred dollars an ounce. They obviously find the money worth it, as fatalities and injuries are quite common.
We followed the path out the other side of the cave and suddenly realized that we had come to the other end of the construction area. After walking through the mud, none of us really wanted to turn around and do it again, so slowly we crept along the construction area, with two people helping the vertigo stricken Dutch guy. Even at our painstakingly slow pace, we covered the entire construction in a matter of twenty minutes and were back to where we had split off onto the “muddy path”. We made some jokes about it to the Dutch guy, about how was it really worth it to walk all that way to avoid a few minutes of agony, and while he kind of laughed with us, I could tell he still wished we had taken the other path back.
That night was the celebration day of Malaysian National Independence (like 4th of July in the U.S.), and Miri was selected to be the location of the big party for all of Sarawak. A group of us, including everyone from the caves, decided to head out to the celebration at a nearby arena. A ten minute walk and we were there, and five minutes later we were all pretty underwhelmed and ready to leave. There was a concert going on that was about the same quality as a large scale karaoke, and a few thousand spectators standing around looking bored. As quickly as we’d arrived, we went back to the hostel.
I decided to not do anything in particular for my last day in Borneo. I’ve found in traveling taking a few days of activities followed by a day of rest before a few more active days keeps a good balance. I did go out for a bit that evening with a large group from the hostel, to a large night market that happens only on Fridays, to have some dinner. We had hoped to go out for drinks as well, but were again thwarted by the fact that almost all restaurants are Muslim, and serve no alcohol. We went back to the hostel and had a few drinks at the bar below, but I called it a night early, as the next morning I had a flight too KK and then the Philippines.
Photos
Miri & Around, Malaysia
We arrived in Kota Kinabalu in the early evening and were lucky enough to have a relatively short walk from the bus stop to our guest house. It was already late in the afternoon, so after getting settled in, we went out and had dinner at a nearby barbecue. Upon arriving back at the hostel we met a Canadian couple who’d been staying there for about a week, and they gave us a glowing recommendation of the proprietor, Vincent, and told us to put our plans in his hands if we weren’t sure what to do. It was definitely good advice.
Having no idea what to do exactly (my original plan of trying to find us a 3 or 4 day jungle trek became quickly unrealistic when prices for these types of things in Borneo are around $1000 US!!), we asked Vincent for an idea. He suggested we check out one of the nearby islands for the day, and as Juliana was really looking forward to at least one day of doing nothing at the beach, we accepted the offer. He drove us to the ferry pier and we caught a boat to the island, one of several off the coast near KK and sharing it with us were several hundred Korean and Japanese tourists. I did a bit of snorkeling, navigating through all the Japanese and Koreans floating by in their life jackets and snorkel gear, while Juliana enjoyed her time just laying around in the sand. We caught the last boat to the mainland and Vincent was waiting there to take us back to the hostel.
The next day he suggested we take a tour to see the Proscibis monkeys, leaving in the early afternoon. A couple hours on a minibus got us to the park, where a tour boat took us up and down a river, stopping every time we saw some monkeys in the trees. Unfortunately they were usually a ways off, so you couldn’t really see the big floppy noses that make them unique, but it was still a nice little jungle adventure. The boat took us back to the dock and we had a buffet dinner, returning again to the boat to go firefly watching after dark. We went the other direction this time, again stopping when we saw the fireflies in a tree, which looked almost like Christmas lights flickering in the branches.
Juliana only had one more full day of her trip left, so we wanted to do as much as possible. Again Vincent came through, inviting a Belgian couple that was also staying in the guest house with us to do three things: visit Mt. Kinabalu park, see the Rafelasia flower, and visit the nearby hotsprings. It was a long day so we got started fairly early.
Our first stop was Mt. Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in southeast Asia. Lot’s of people come to this area to climb it in a two day journey, but like a lot of places in Borneo the spots to sleep near the peak were all booked out well ahead of time, and while you could get on a waiting list, that just meant climbing to the top and hoping there was something available, or spending a cold night outside waiting for sunrise. In addition, the day we went was the day of the annual race up and down the mountain, where a bunch of crazy people run up and back again in 3 hours (again, this is a climb normal people do over two full days!). Arriving 11:00am, we were in time to see some of the last finishers of the race cross the line, having started at 7:00am. We did a little walk through the park at the base, trying to find a good view of the mountain but constantly being thwarted by the looming clouds. A quick lunch at a cafe in the park and we were off to see the flower.
One of the largest flowers in the world, the Rafelasia blooms for only about 5 days before dying, and only in a few parts of Asia, during late August. We happened to be in luck to come during a time when they were blooming, and this park had one that had opened about 3 days prior. While not nearly as large as the flowers can get, it was still impressive at about 3 feet across. They also had a couple local jungle cats and a little lemur in cages. The cats looked like cut little house cats with leopard spots, but at one point the cage roof got knocked open just slightly and I’ve never seen a cat move so fast as this one jumped and attached itself to the wire near the opening, trying to escape. Sad to have them caged up like that, but a good reminder that these aren’t cute and cuddly pets.
The final stop was the hot springs, where there was swimming available and a “jungle canopy walk”. We hadn’t brought our swim things, so we decided to just see the canopy. There was a small butterfly house we walked through first, though it had begun to rain slightly and not many of them were out. The line for the canopy walk was long and slow moving, up a narrow stairway to a ledge where a small rope bridge connected with several others through the canopy. Unfortunately, it was raining hard and most of the bridges were under repair, so the wait wasn’t exactly worth it in my opinion. I also couldn’t help but thinking how funny it was to be waiting in line for an attraction that was basically the same thing as the bridges I had to traverse to get across various gorges in Nepal while trekking, but now for novelty value instead.
Early the next morning, the arranged car came and picked Juliana up for a ride to the airport, and I found myself a lone traveler again. I took the day to try and catch up on blogging (didn’t get as far as I would have liked, maybe you noticed…) and for general relaxation. The morning after I was going to take a boat to Brunei for an overnight stop on my way to Miri in the other Bornean state of Sarawak.
Photos
Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
Our trip over to Semporna began at about 3 am, and after a taxi, a bus ride, a flight, and two more buses, we finally arrived and checked into the hotel/dive shop we’d be using.
Juliana was here to do her PADI Advanced course, while I was just here to dive. We’d come to Semporna to dive a nearby island, Sipadan, known as one of the worlds top sites. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize how tightly controlled of a park the site is, and as each dive shop is only allotted 10 spots a day for taking guests, nearly all of the shops in town were booked out at least a month in advance. They put us on a waiting list and told us to hope for the best, and as a last resort would help us check with some of the lesser known dive shops in town to find one that could take us.
We set of early the next morning for our first dive trip, to a nearby island of Mabul. The bottom composition around the island is loose and silty, and known to be the habitat of a large number of unusual creatures. In addition, an abandoned oil rig was moved there and much of the contents were dumped into the ocean below to create something of an artificial reef where there would normally be none.
Juliana went off with an instructor to do her dives for the day while I and the rest of the divers went down with our leader around the site. We did 3 dives over the course of the day, and saw loads of animals I’d never seen before, including frogfish, scorpionfish, crocodile fish, and a huge moray eel at least a foot and a half in diameter gaping ominously out of some coral. We also found a rare stargazer, a fish that buries itself in the mud and sends up a mild electrical charge to stun fish that swim over it to eat, that several of the divemasters back at the shop were jealous to hear we’d seen; some had been diving there for years and never seen one!
The next day we were off to another island, Sibuan, to do three more dives while Juliana finished her course. This island wasn’t quite as unique as Mabul as far as sites go, but the small reef surrounding the island was still beautiful and the water was some of the clearest I’d ever seen. We did manage to spot a couple turtles, another frogfish, some exotic looking crabs and lobsters, and my favorite for the day was the juvenile harlequin sweetlips. While the adult variety looks like just another tropical fish, the tiny young ones are brightly colored and wiggle back and forth in the water like they’re dancing.
That evening I managed to find a dive shop that would take us to Sipadan, and got myself signed up, but they required Juliana to come in and arrange for her own spot. I told her this, but she decided to wait a couple hours before going to the shop, and in that time the boat had filled up for the day. I hated to be selfish, but we were there and I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity. Besides, she said she was tired from all the diving and somebody had to arrange for our bus to Kota Kinabalu the following day.
After three days I finally got to see the actual site of Sipadan, and it lived up to and exceeded it’s reputation. Located much further off of the eastern Borneo coast than the other islands around Semporna, the dives around Sipadan are all at various spots along an underground wall that surrounds the island, where the bottom depth plunges from a couple dozen meters to well over 600. Along the wall are thousands or even millions of brightly colored tropical fish, too many to even keep track of. The site is more famously known for the large number of reef sharks and turtles that congregate along the wall, and I lost count of how many I saw of both. In particular, some of the turtles were huge, one I think must have been larger than a kitchen table.
All too soon my three dives at Sipadan were over and the boat made it’s way back. I’d love to come and dive the island again, though next time make reservations and come in another season; allegedly, there are times when you can see schools of around 50 hammerhead sharks swimming along the wall. Upon arriving back in Semporna, I found Juliana had gotten us bus tickets up to Kota Kinabalu and even managed to get them at a cheaper price than normal, with the help of a guy staying in the same guest house as us. The following morning, we were off.
Semporna, Sipadan, and around, Malaysia
Getting into Malaysia wasn’t too complicated. From Singapore we took a fairly short bus trip just across the border to the city of Johor Baru, and from there another bus which brought us the rest of the way to Kuala Lumpur. The whole process took maybe 5 hours, and which was a good introduction for Juliana to life on the road.
The arrival in KL was a bit disorienting as, instead of stopping at a station, the bus pulled up to the side of the road and dropped everyone off. Fortunately, after checking a few street signs and consulting the guidebook map, I found we were very near the hostel I had booked, so we decided to hoof it. We got checked in to what I would say was one of the nicer hostels I’ve been to, and then went out to find some dinner in the area. We had some local specialties from an outdoor restaurant nearby, satay and “chicken fish”. It really did taste like chicken!
The next day we got up bright and early to get in line to take the elevator up to the sky bridge between the Petronas Towers, now the second tallest buildings in the world (surpassed by Taipei 101 in 2004). Real early. We had to be there by around 7:00 am to get in line for when the doors open at 8:00, as they only let a certain number of people in every day, and turn just as many away. We only had the one morning to go and try, so I wanted to make sure we got in, and we did, after standing in line for about 2 hours.
The elevator ride up to the sky bridge was amazingly fast, taking us to the 41st floor in a matter of seconds. Once there, we were given just a few minutes to walk across the bridge and take in the view of Kuala Lumpur. We snapped a few photos, and then were ushered back into the elevator and taken down just as quick. The whole process was very regimented and on the clock, and it seems like they could just keep the bridge open a little longer each day and not have to rush everyone through, but I guess that’s the way they want to do things.
After our tower visit we made a stop in at a local aquarium located nearby. It was a great new experience seeing fish that I now recognized and could name, after having seen them in the ocean. It made me anxious to go and do some more diving, which was our next stop. Early the next morning (3:00 am) we had to wake up and catch the long bus ride to the airport and catch a 7:00 am flight to Tawau, located on Borneo in the state of Sabah, and make our way to Semporna by bus, the jumping off point for world class diving and Sipadan.
I got a new camera in Singapore and can take photos again!
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia