Working backwards, Cameron Highlands, Pengang, Langkawi, Kuala Lumpur, Geddis, Lumbok, Bali, Flores, Komodo, Lombok, Bali, Kalimantan, yup, I have a lot to catch up on , maybe someday, maybe not.
Cameron Highland to Tena Negara
A van picked my up at my choice of accommodations, a group of bamboo cabins near the city of Tanah Rata, we picked up a couple of other groups of passengers and headed out to Taman Negara. After a bus ride of a few hours we we deposited at a station beside a river and told to deposit our bags. The end wall was covered with enormous posters of activities and tours offered by a tour company. With no further direction I took a seat when one became available and filled out a slip for admission to the park (1 ringitt) and a permit for photography (5 ringgit). There are reportedly spot checks throughout the park and the penalty for not having a permit is 100,000 ringgit and two years in jail. I went to the park office across the street, passed my application and six ringgit over the counter and waited while my information was entered into a computer and printed off in quadruplicate. A lot of paperwork for thirty cents. I placed my permits in a waterproof pouch in which I keep my passport, the pouch is tied to my computer bag, I don’t know how many times I would have lost it were it not tied.
I sat in the restaurant and ordered a dish of chicken and fried noodles. Everywhere, it’s fried noodles or fried rice or rice. Starch and oil. Twenty minutes later, nobody else was being served and I still had no meal. The waiter indicated it was on the way. Ten minutes later I was told it would be another five minutes, the restaurant was empty except for one couple. Another ten minutes and nearing departure time for my boat I left, and bought some crap food at the market across the street, biscuits (alternative form of highly processed flour and oil) and a snickers.
The long narrow boat had eight or so seats and we sat two to a seat on the floor, there was a backrest but little room for the old legs. We travelled upstream on the muddy river for several hours. There was no sign of human activity for the whole of the trip, no other boats, no houses on the bank, no fishermen, it was a bit strange. Eventually there were a dozen or so floating restaurants, covered wooden decks floating on plastic drums. A man approached the boat and barked orders, “We will take your bags, take a seat and wait for instructions.” What? We were in a combination restaurant and tourist agency and this guy was giving orders like an army sergeant. Three Germans headed out, up the bank and the asshole snarled, “It happens all the time, we try to to help people out and they leave without instructions, they will be lost and return in ten minutes and I won’t be here.” After a sales pitch of all of his overpriced tours he stated that up the hill the hotels were to the left and right. Well, it didn’t seem as though his wonderful help was really necessary. I vowed to not eat there, nor utilize them for anything.
Up the hill I found a nice enough hotel, but they didn’t accept payment through Agodo. I have a finite supply of cash having acquired a the equivalent of $1,300 several weeks ago in Bali. I have a replacement ATM card en route to Kuala Lumpur, but am paying for my rooms, when possible, by booking through Agoda.com and paying with Paypal. So far that was only possible a couple of nights in Kuala Lumpur. I located a hotel on my phone through the agoda sight and walked up the hill to a functional but soulless hotel, booked there, received the key to room 330 and promptly used it to enter room 303 to the consternation of the occupants thereof. By this time the day was gone, so I just grabbed dinner and briefly strolled around.
Thursday, December 11
Canopy Walk
A tour company offered a canopy walk tour, but it left at nine and it was past nine and they only had one tour a day. This was fortuitous as for one ringgit one could hop a water taxi across the muddy river, stroll through a two hundred cabin pretty resort nestled under tall trees beside the river. Beside the stairs was a trolley car on tracks used for transporting luggage and presumably resort supplies up the hill. This would have been a far preferable place to stay, but they didn’t take agoda. Besides, it was part of the national park and strolling the grounds was permissible for the public.
After passing all of the cabins I found the trail to the canopy, which seems excessive for its purpose, plastic synthetic wood planks made up the walkway and five centimeter square, black painted steel guard rails prevented one from falling off the walkway to the forest floor, a moderate step down. The hanging walkway was erected for research purposes in order to study the canopy flora and fauna. The majority of life in the rainforest is in the canopy. Unfortunately there was little to see here. I have walked the hanging bridges near Arenal Volcano on the outskirts of Fortuna, Costa Rica many times in the last eight years and every time but one saw colorful birds in great abundance, skinks and walking sticks, monitors, agouti, capybara, hawks, parrots, macaws, eyelash vipers, frogs and tarantulas. The views are impressive and pass over rivers and beside waterfalls, orchids cling to every branch. This was little more than walking on a narrow plank with web sides. Oh, well.
I walked off, unguided through trails, but it was hot, humid and particularly uninspiring. The only wildlife in evidence was the occasional monitor and some lizards and the view was was limited. My hiking shoes are shot, in the prior few days, trekking in the Cameron Highlands, the sole on the ball diminished to tissue thinness and the sole became detached from the toe on the right shoe, catching with a flap on roots, stairs and stones. It wasn’t worth the trouble and I walked back, caught a boat back across the river and lunched, a vegetable sandwich for three ringgit and a bowl of TomYam, a spicy thai soup with a red broth, veggies and usually some sore of meat, this was combination chicken and beef, seafood was unavailable.
The Urang Asli
There was a tour to shoot the rapids of the river and another to visit an Urang Asli village. Urang means person or man in Malay and Indonesia. Asli is Malay for original. Urang hutan is man of the jungle and is anglicized as urangutan.
I was requested to show up at a quarter to three and we waited until well past three for an Indian couple who didn’t count punctuality or consideration for their fellow man among what virtues they had. I was asked to take the rear most seat, ahead of me a guy from Sweden and a girl from Netherlands and the rest of the boat was occupied by people from India and Malaysia. The river was shallow, swift and muddy brown. In a short while we encountered the rapids and received the promised dousing repeatedly, those near the rear were far more wet than those in the bow. Water accumulated beneath the floor boards and soon rose above them. When the water was not sufficiently tumultuous the driver rocked it with successive alternating thrusts on the tiller handle of the outboard.
We pulled up to a bank and disembarked. Bjorn and Cess were going to wait at the boat, not having paid for the village tour. I had come to the realization that the thing was a scam. The rapids tour was a necessary path of transit to the village and suggested to the two that they had bought the village tour and not the rapids ride. They readily accepted my logic.
We ascended the bank to a small collection of ramshackle wooden huts with thatched roofs. They were the most basic of accommodations, devoid of furnishings of any sort, just a wooden floor with no evidence of even a room for cooking. With no evidence of even a latrine
A short while later our group gathered on benches mourned a sand floor beneath a simple thatched for and our guide began to explain the lifestyle of the people.
There a several communities that live in an around the park. They are allowed to hunt using traditional hunting methods of blowguns. The penalty for using a gun is severe and would probably be counter productive anyway as the sound would disperse the game. The people hunt monkeys primarily but also deer. For some reason, the easily hunted monitors are not a target, although I can attest the meat is far superior to monkey, at least to my palate.
The wedding rituals are pretty boring, but I will briefly relate them anyway as I am on a bus with nothing else to do. The guys go to another village, choose a girl and they sleep together for one night, but don’t have sex (yeah, right). In the morning the girl can reject the guy and he has to look for another girl. There was no mention of a guy rejecting a girl. After the families consult, if everyone agrees they are declared married. The consequence of absence of other forms of entertainment results in great fecundity, with families of seven children common and up to sixteen to a single woman.
After age twelve or so the girls are housed in a female dormitory until they are wed off. Why they are separated from the family, I don’t know.
The tribes grow rubber trees and sell the latex, but there is a hitch. Rubber trees take seven years to become productive and the whole village moves before sundown to a new location upon the death of a village member, the deceased being secured in the branches of a tree ten to twenty meters above the ground.
Our guide stated that these people had been offered proper housing by our guide no less, but prefer the huts as they are a tourist draw, the village is recompensed five ringgits for each tourist that visits. We were also told that the tribe is nomadic, that they deplete their hunting grounds, taking in conjunction with the statement that they move with each death, I find the claim a bit self serving and dubious.
Blow Guns
Glued barrel
The blow guns are unlike any I have ever seen. A piece of bamboo just shy of two meters must be located. A rare specimen of s special type of bamboo is located after a search of one to three days. A barrel is sought out which typically takes five to seven days. The barrel must be smooth and straight and of an appropriate diameter. This type of bamboo never has segment long enough, so a couple are used and are secured together by being butted with a matte secured with glue. The barrel is inserted into the protective outer shell and a knob is formed on one end with the resin from the tanjung tree. The other end of the barrel is capped with something akin to a shotgun choke. This piece receives an inscribed ring with each kill, and can be detached to serve as a whistle that is less disturbing to the prey than human voices.
Darts
The darts a made from splinters of wood, but I can’t recall the name of the tree and sharpened to a
Finished dart. The shaft is from one kind of tree, the poison is the sap of the Ipoh tree and the the balance on the end is from the very light wood of a third tree.
point TODO (how). A balance is made from the soft light woody root of still another tree and glued to the shaft with tanjung tree resin. The tip of the dart is treated with sap from the ipoh tree. Darts are carried in a quiver made of bamboo. A green material made from leaves is inserted into the barrel as wadding after the dart is inserted.
Hunting
Groups of four or five go out in search of monkeys at night. The hunter approaches the tree and shoots near straight up as this provides the greatest accuracy, the drop is primarily in speed, not in height. The dart generally breaks off at the skin and the animal runs off to die. Three or four people track the monkey which is dead within the hour.
Game
Porcupine and monkeys are the primary game, a deer is occasionally taken. We were told that lizards are not eaten, despite the fact that the monitors are plentiful and fairly large.
Pay for Trip
I hadn’t paid for my combo tour yet, when I returned to the office I stated that this was no combo tour, we went to see the Urang Asli and returned. The tour operator protested that we did shoot the rapids which is a separate tour such as the one the Swedish guy and Dutch girl went on. I protested that all I had was the Urang Asli tour and that it was not possible to see without shooting the rapids. He stated that shooting the rapids was a necessary tour to see the village. I don’t know, it doesn’t appear to be marketed as such. We split the difference. There being better trekking elsewhere, I bought a ticket to Kuala Lumpur and headed out to dinner and back to the hotel
I intended to stay but a night in Tawau. It was intended just to be a layover on my way to Tarakan. I arrived, got a room and booked a flight.
The next day I popped a few immodium and went to the airport and was advised that I needed a visa for Indonesia. I was in Indonesia in May and no visa was required. It turns out that visa requirements vary based on the port of entry. Strange. The airline rebooked my flight and I killed Sunday cleaning up pictures.
Yesterday, Monday, I went down to the Indonesian Consulate to get a visa. There were about 40 people sitting around who had been there for hours. I will cut this short, I got my application form and then discovered that I also needed to have a ticket out. I went to the ferry dock to buy a ticket I would not use from Indonesia back to Malaysia but was advised that they are only sold in Malaysia. Great. Next stop a travel agency who booked a flight for me from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur for no cost, they would just cancel the flight in a few hours. They wouldn’t take any money at all for their services. Awesome.
Back at the consulate, i presented my form, paid my fees, got my picture taken and received a visa within half an hour. By now it was almost noon and there were no lines. Back to the ferry dock/fish market.
I asked a boy with a “Superman is Dead” hat if I could take his picture. He proudly posed. A friend of his solicited one ringgit, I gave them each a piece of gum. They followed me around the market as I took pictures of massive ray heads, half a tuna cleanly cut its tail skyward and other miscellany and oddities. Every vendor was very friendly and wanted to know where I was from, they guessed Spain, Germany, England, Canada and other large countries populated by white people. I hadn’t seen a caucasian in days. I took out my phone to show a map indicating where Panama was and one of the guys saw a picture of a large breasted, young, beautiful Philippino girl I had been dating. I was now a rock star. Everybody wanted me to take a picture of them or their produce. We all ended up smiling and laughing, knuckle punching, fisting, thumbs upping or waving for the next two hours.
The boat ride from Tawau, Malaysia to Toraken, Indonesia was about three hours and cost 130 ringgit. Visa on arrival is good for 30 days and was $25 in May, is now $35. A sixty day visa, which must be acquired before entry costs $50.
Tuesday, September 30
The airline wanted $100 to change the date of my flight forward one day. The full fare was $69. They also wanted me at the airport at 7:30 in the morning, three hours before departure at an airport with around three gates. I decided just to take the ferry. The fare is 130 ringgit, must be purchased before 11 and the ferry leaves at 11:30.
I went up top and hung out with random people for a while. This was the luggage deck, the airconditioned cabin with spacious seats was below. I was offered cigarettes, water, rice, fish, sticky rice with fish, soy milk, water, coffee candy, people asked to pose with me for pictures. No communication in English but a lot of laughs.
We pulled into Tarakan and I exited through the fore hatch walked the length of the boat on a narrow passage jumped a meter over water while holding three bags filled with $3,000 worth of electronics and up to the dock where suspiciously aggressive motorbike people offered to take me to a hotel. I walked several hundred meters down the dock toward shore, cleared immigration and customs and walked out front. Some guy offered to take me to a hotel that was only 100,000 a night for 50,000 riyad. The hotel was obviously a dump and there is no way a ride could possibly cost $5 in a town of this size. I walked a bit and enquired and found a small hotel near the pier. I was leaving first thing in the morning, so damn near anything would do, but this place had no internet, which was required for research on how to continue this trip and the room was un-air-conditioned and musty.
The owner was kind enough to give me a bottle of water and direct me to the Dynasty Hotel and pay my cab fare as I didn’t have any Indonesian money. To no surprise the fare amounted to 7,000 ryad, about $0.70. The hotel was nice, the room was large and comfortable and internet worked great. I found a guy who spoke English who tried to arrange a package dive tour through his friend for two million ryad. I wasn’t going to sign up with an unknown entity without checking out references on the web or seeing the boat and gear and besides his boat didn’t leave until Friday and I wanted to get out of here. He took my refusal graciously and told me to take a ferry in the morning to Tanjung Selor and from there take a minibus towards Tanjung Redeb and to tell the driver I wanted to be let off at Tanjung Batu on the way. Without telling him, he wouldn’t stop. From Tanjung Batu buy a ticket on the ferry to Maratua Island. This all sounded pretty straight forward.
Next order of business, get internet on the phone. Gotta have internet, I book hotels, check flights, give directions to taxis and of course post stuff on CrackBook. That was mindless 120,000 riyad later ($12) I had a SIM and a 4 GB.
Next order of business? Eat. I was directed “Rumah Makaw Derawan” to eat. Now keep in mind that this was done without speaking a word of English. I drew a picture of a fish and pantomimed eating. The clerk wrote down this name, pointed down the street and raised two fingers. So it was “two far”. Wasn’t two blocks. Wasn’t two hundred meters. It turned out to be two kilometers. The food was awesome, the staff was great, everybody had a good time as we amused each other. A dish of fish, a dish of shrimp, a dish of veggies and meat, a bowl of rice I didn’t eat and three iced coffees came to 130,000 riyad ($13).
On the way back I walked past a Power Distribution Unit and Telecom Patch Panel in a small room on the main street with the outside door wide open and no one around.
Malaysia Airlines has had enough trouble without inviting more, first MH370 disappeared in April, MH17 was shot down during an injudicious fly over a region in conflict. They recently had the GPS go out during a flight, necessitating a return to the departure point. There are reports of flights with just one or two passengers.
MalaysiaAirlines.com requires an area code and a phone number. They don’t ask for the country code. It wants a three digit area code. I have no idea how I am supposed to enter my Malay phone number, so I just typed in 600 for the area code as 60 is the country code and 0 is the first digit of the phone number. At least MASwings asks for a country code with a pull down and a phone number.
However, neither site would process my credit card, although my bank was never contacted, they were having technical difficulties.
Can’t book online due to two broken sites that can’t process payments, meet with surly representative at airport. Malaysia Airlines, you are your own worst enemy.
I set off to the airport and entered the ticketing room and took a queue number, number 65. When I noticed that the next man to walk up was holding ticket #70, I objected that the numbers were not being served in order. I was told that my number had been passed. There is no overhead display and the woman was calling out numbers in Malay. I got a new number, she took walkins without numbers while I sat there and waited. I protested, she told me to wait until they called my number and then took another walkin.
Finally I booked a flight and took a taxi back to my hotel. If Malaysia Airlines fails, it will of their own doing.
Just twenty kilometers out of Kuching, Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia is Semenggoh Wildlife Park. There are tours, but really? It’s easy. From my hotel I walked one kilometer, hopped on an air conditioned bus, paid three ringgit, (3.17 to the dollar) and rode on the bus for 45 minutes. The tours will spare you the 1.3 kilometer walk from the entrance to the rehabilitation center. I like walking.
Admission is ten ringgit for foreigners and five ringgit for Malays. I had caught the one o’clock bus. Feeding time is 3:00. There wasn’t much hope of seeing anything, the orangutans had not been to the feeding station for weeks as the fruit are ripe. The tour vans passed me and everybody on my bus charged toward the feeding station. I ambled and looked around. It sure doesn’t take an hour to walk less than a mile. I saw some branches rustling on a windless day. I stopped and gazed, put on my telephoto lens and spotted some red fur in the distance. In a short while a full female orangatan with baby came into view. I started taking pictures. The next tour van that came in saw me and the guide came out to look. He called everybody out of the van and called the office to let them know that rehabilated orangtans had been spotted. All the vans at the feeding station drove back and everybody that was on my bus started running towards me. More orangutans appeared. Finally there were somewhere between five and seven.
I felt no need to proceed to the feeding station. The apes approached closer and closer and three of them crossed the road. I would call this day a success. Tomorrow I go to look for probiscus monkeys.
A quick walk back to the river front market and I met the soup girl I had met last night. I convinced her to go on a sunset tour with me. It was but an hour. Fifteen minutes downstream, return and fifteen minutes upstream, then she had to work. Picture Kuching at night and sunset. I was going to create some links, but it is going to take forever for those pictures to upload.
As always, all of my travel pictures can be found on picasaweb.
After passing all of the cabins I found the trail to the canopy, which seems excessive for its purpose, plastic synthetic wood planks made up the walkway and five centimeter square, black painted steel guard rails prevented one from falling off the walkway to the forest floor, a moderate step down. The hanging walkway was erected for research purposes in order to study the canopy flora and fauna. The majority of life in the rainforest is in the canopy. Unfortunately there was little to see here. I have walked the hanging bridges near Arenal Volcano on the outskirts of Fortuna, Costa Rica many times in the last eight years and every time but one saw colorful birds in great abundance, skinks and walking sticks, monitors, agouti, capybara, hawks, parrots, 
macaws, eyelash vipers, frogs and tarantulas. The views are impressive and pass over rivers and beside waterfalls, orchids cling to every branch. This was little more than walking on a narrow plank with web sides. Oh, well.
Jonathan Allen LaFleur