Malaysia
Facts:-
Part 1 - Borneo (Sabah & Sarawak) plus Kuala Lumpur and train north
Day 358 - Sunday 2nd July 2006 - Arriving in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah
After an uneventful 3-hour flight, we arrived at Kota Kinabalu airport. It seemed a very small terminal, which took us a bit by surprise as the LP had told us that there would be an ATM and minivans to take us to the centre of town. We found neither! So, we were standing around, wondering what we could do without any Malaysian Ringgit (RM). Luckily for us, a friendly hostel owner, Vincent, came to our rescue. He had approached us to get us to stay in his hostel, but it only offered dorm rooms and we really wanted a private room. However, we explained our problem and he very kindly offered to lend us 20RM to help us get into town! We were really very impressed by his generosity, but accepted his money gratefully and set off on the apparently 10-minute walk to the main road where we hoped to be able to catch a bus.
It was already dark and we were not really sure if, or when, a bus would come (or even, for that matter, if we were waiting on the right side of the road). However, after about 20 minutes a pick-up pulled over and a man got out with his two young kids who needed to wee! Once they had done that, he asked where we were headed and offered us a lift into town. He introduced himself as Eddy and we had a bit of a chat. He comiserated with us on England's poor performances at the World Cup, before dropping us right in the centre of town. He even pointed out where the budget hotels and hostels were located. Again, we were very grateful and astounded at the generosity shown to us by 2 locals in just a short time in Sabah.
The first couple of hostels we tried were full or only had dorms available, but then we came across the New Horizon Travellers Lodge. It was brand new - so new in fact that we were only their second guests! They also only had dorm rooms but, as they were so new and weren't yet busy, we were offerred a spotless dorm all to ourselves. The bathrooms were shared, but were sparklingly clean, so we felt quite lucky to have found it. Having dumped our bags, we went straight out to look for somewhere to eat. So far, everyone here had been speaking English so well, we almost forgot that we were in Malaysia until we struggled to order some food. In the end we managed, Ian getting some noodles and Nikki, fried rice. Neither dish was very exciting but we were glad of some food.
We then went to find the Tropicana Backpackers, where we returned the borrowed money to Vincent, bought a couple of beers and had a chat about available tours / excursions in Sabah. Then, since it was Nikki's dad's birthday, we searched for a international phone for a while so she could call to say "Happy Birthday". After a bit of searching we realised that we had to buy a phone card but ours didn't seem to work (fortunately, Ian managed to get our money back). But then we remembered we had charged-up a Trailfinders-affiliated phone card months ago, so Nikki was able to phone home after all.
Day 359 - Monday 3rd July 2006 - Kota Kinabalu
We enjoyed our complimentary breakfast of roti and dahl, served at the 24-hour restaurant next door to the hostel. Then we headed to the Sutera Sanctuary Lodges office to investigate the availability of accommodation for the climb up Mount Kinabalu. We had heard there was a good chance that they would be fully booked, so we were pleased when, at first, we thought there were spaces for us in 10-days' time, but it turned out that those places were being booked out by another assistant in the office as we spoke. So, although we were told to come back and check for cancellations, it looked like we might not be able to do the climb after all.
Disappointed, we decided to check out a few options for diving near Sipadan Island (the far south of Sabah). The first agent we tried, Sabah Divers, were moderately helpful, but reluctant to confirm the availability of pretty much anything, particularly of the dive permits for Sipadan Island itself. But we did get a quotation for a 3-day trip to the Seaventures Dive Resort. As we were leaving the building, we noticed that Seaventures themselves had an office on the 4th floor, so we headed up there. Here, the much friendlier Lynda was very helpful and when we saw on her occupancy chart how few guests they had over the next few days, she offered us a 3 or 4-day trip, starting the following day. This would mean us flying south in the morning (which in any case seemed preferable to a 10-hour bus trip! - and actually not that much more expensive), so we headed back to the hostel, where Sean and Phergie (the hostel's extremely friendly owners) were very helpful, allowing us to use their internet connection and phone.
We wanted to book everything up straight away, but we bumped into Lynda heading out for lunch, so we went for lunch ourselves, finding our way to Sri Delima, which was a bit more expensive than our usual haunts, but served us some really good dishes. Back at the Seaventures office, we booked a 4-day trip and a 1-way flight. But we still had to get hold of enough cash to pay for it. So we spent more than an hour wandering around the town to find the best rates on travellers cheques (before using the bank Lynda had suggested!) and then waiting for ages while the transaction was processed. Unfortunately, the exchange rate available was about 5% worse than we had used to work out how much we could justify to spend on the dive trip - oh well... Eventually we had our flight tickets and a booking confirmation.
Nikki felt she had a cold coming on, which would be terrible timing given the dive trip we had just booked, so we headed back to the hostel and she rested, while Ian chatted to Sean and Phergie and used the hostel computer to edit our photos and free-up some space on our camera for the dive trip. When we headed out for dinner, we went to the Kompleks Sedco, where outdoor seafood stalls allowed you to choose your dish from a large number of live seafood swimmimg around in hundreds of different tanks. We sat down at one of these stalls and Ian wandered over to choose some prawns. We also tucked into some chicken satay starters (seemingly from a different stall - but this wasn't clear!) and both ended up with dry, deep-fried dishes (garlic chicken and prawns), which were, unfortunately, a bit on the dull side. Before heading back to the hostel, we managed to burn a couple of photo CDs too.
Day 360 - Tuesday 4th July 2006 - Seaventures diving near Sipadan Island - Day 1
With our alarm waking us at 4:45am, we were in a taxi and on our way to the airport by 5am. Our Malaysian Airline flight left at 6:10am and until then there was nothing to do at the airport except wait. The flight turned out to be also empty and after less than an hour we had arrived in Tawau.
We were last out of the terminal, where a minivan was waiting for us and we were soon on our way to Semporna - we didn't even have to carry our bags! Ian slept some of the way, but we soon met Nigel and Pixie (a retired couple from England and Australia), who were to be our diving companions for the next few days, and were transferred onto a boat and headed to the Seaventures Dive Resort, just off the coast of Mabul Island. The resort was actually an old oil-rig accommodation platform, which had been brought here from somewhere near Singapore about 10 years ago.
Once we had arrived at the resort, enjoyed our welcome drink and met the crew, we checked in - given we were on an "oil-rig" - our room wasn't too bad. It had a double bed, an ensuite bathroom and, best of all, a fabulous view to Mabul Island itself. We got ourselves settled and then headed back down to tuck into a late breakfast.
We were soon getting ourselves ready for our orientation dive, directly below the platform on the "House Reef". The equipment lift took us right down into the water and we were soon on the sandy sea floor exploring the artificial reef. We quickly saw a red firefish and a spotted moray eel. Then Mando, our dive master, pointed out a crocodile fish and a absolutely miniscule pygmy seahorse on a fan coral - however, the seahorse was so small we weren't actually sure if we had seen it. Ian decided to take a photo anyway hoping we would be able to zoom in on the seahorse later! Heading back, we also saw a juvenile spotted sweetlips, which was incredibly pretty and another spotted moray eel.
After the dive, neither of us felt particularly orientated - we had been enjoying the marine life too much! This was a bit of a worry, as we had "unlimited" dives on the House Reef included in our package. However, we soon found out that the divemasters always accompanied divers anyway.
We ate lunch on the deck and were properly introduced to Nigel and Pixie. We learnt that they had settled in Phuket 3 years ago after 17 (!) years sailing around the world (3 times!).
Nikki hadn't been feeling too well earlier and now she felt worse, so headed to bed and decided to rest for the remainder of the day, hoping to be in a fit state to dive for the rest of our stay. Meanwhile, Ian got himslef ready for another dive at Paradise 1 (just off the nearby Paradise Resort), just a couple of minutes by boat away near Mabul Island. Here the visibility wasn't great as the sandy sea bed was being churned up, but he saw some enourmous turtles and clown anemone fish.
He was back diving a couple of hours later (at Lobster Wall), but managed to leave the camera on the boat! and so failed to get photos of the snake eel that was spotted sticking its head vertically out of the sand.
At 7pm we tucked into more buffet food on the sun deck, we listened to some of Nigel and Pixie's diving stories (they had often just dived off their boat in all sorts of exotic places) but we were very tired (especially Nikki) and so went to bed early.
Day 361 - Wednesday 5th July 2006 - Seaventures diving near Sipadan Island - Day 2
We had hoped for a lie-in, but breakfast was at 7am and we were on a boat to Sipadan Island at 7:30am (actually, by the time we were all ready it was more like 8am!). Nikki was feeling a little better, but was worried about whether her blocked ears would stop her equalising when descending. The 30-minute or so crossing was smooth and once Patrick, our divemaster today, had handed over confirmation of our diving permits (getting these was apparently very difficult - we had managed to get one each for each of the next three days) to a grumpy official on the island itself we headed to South Point to dive.
As soon as we started the dive we were impressed with our surroundings. There were turtles and exotic fish all around us. We dived 5 metres down to a shelf and then along to a steep drop-off into the blue. We continued down this wall, spotted a cuttlefish (although we didn't know what it was at the time - and were surprised at how well camouflaged it was!). We saw far too many fish to mention (or even really recognise) but we did note some white-tip reef sharks, a grey shark, giant mantis shrimp, a nudibranch, spotted sweetlips and, just as we were finishing the dive, a large school of trevally, with a giant trevally and a giant napoleon wrasse - each about 6 feet long! - amongst them.
Back out of the water, we headed to the shore for our surface interval and enjoyed some Milo and sandwiches, whilst being watched by the army - the whole island was now an army base and all the dive operators had been forced to relocate - as the island was an important frontier territory between Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Of course, there had also been too many divers here in years gone by, but now (since April) the permitting system was trying to limit numbers (apparently to 120 a day).
For the next dive, the boat only took us a few metres from the beach and we were soon in the water for our second dive of the day. We made our way down to the entrance to a cave / cavern, which Ian (one of the resident dive instructors and Eela from Finland were diving (inside are skeletons of turtles and various fish that had got dis-oriebntated and starved. The rest of us continued along to the "Drop Off", where we saw more white-tip sharks, lots more green turtles and a couple of red firefish that kept nice a still for a photo! But while trying to look after Nikki the night before, Ian had forgotten to recharge the camera battery, so it soon ran out of power :-(. Ian was also struggling with his mask. It fogged up almost continuously - a great shame on such a great dive! On our way back to the surface, we continued to see loads of fish all around - the visibility was excellent and at about 5 metres, we had some of the best possible views of the underwater life and so we all made a long safety stop.
Exhilarated, we headed back to the rig for lunch (buffet again!) before heading back out (this time only as far at Mabul Island, to "Froggy Lair". Here another artificial reef had been built - here it was actually a "construction" - with single and double storey wooden frames on the sea bed. These structures were full of fish life. We saw giant grouper (about 6 feet long), frog fish - we had been told about these earlier and were disappointed that they didn't look anything like a frog (Ian had actually stopped by it, taken a quick snap and then swum on, but Patrick brought us all back to have a closer look!). But given the sandy bottom, once again the dive visibility wasn't so great.
Back on the rig, Nikki was exhausted, so went to bed. But Ian got himself ready for a night dive. He dived the "House Reef" again, with Patrick and Kynneth (from Singapore). There was a bit of a current, which made keeping close together without getting in each others way difficult, but they saw a few interesting creatures, including a giant nudibranch (at at least 20cm long), a firefish, a couple of large green wrasse and several colourful anemonies that were feeding now it was dark.
Back on the rig, we headed to dinner together, it was a bit late, but as there were so few guests there was enough food left for us. We chatted to Ian, the other instructor, James (also from the UK) and Nigel and Pixie related more of thier stories.
Day 362 - Thursday 6th July 2006 - Seaventures diving near Sipadan Island - Day 3
We were up early again. However, the weather looked poor, so our departure was postponed until 8am. Today the crossing was very rough, taking 45 minutes of near continual bumping over and into waves. The first dive site was "Barracuda Point", where we managed to squeeze our way through the throngs of turtles just below the surface - Ian was also surprised by the coral shelf which cut his wrist as he was too busy looking at the turtles. He then had trouble equalising, but whilst staying at 5-10 metres down, probably had an even better view than everyone else at 25m under!
At our maximum depth, we saw a school of barracuda and white-tip reef sharks. But Ian's mask fogged up again, so he couldn't enjoy the dive as much as he should. Nikki even took over camera duties! There were fish everywhere again - we also saw shrimp, loads more green turtles, a moray eel and nearer the surface a trigger fish even attacked Ian's fin - at first he couldn't work out what he was kicking!
After a surface interval stop on shore again, our second dive was at "White-Tip Avenue". Here there were loads more turtles, different types of clown fish, batfish and many others. Ian's masked fogged again, but not so much this time! Our ride home was a little less bumpy, which was a relief. Lunch was soup and buffet again, before a short trip to Kapalai Island (there is actually no land above sea level here - it's just a sand bar with loads of houses on stilts!). We saw a blennie poking out of a coral, a porcelain crab, little shrimps, Clark's anemone fish, a cuttlefish, several blue and white nubibranches, a giant grouper sitting on the sand, and a giant moray eel, but with a sandy bottom again, this sight had average visibility.
Back at the rig we both had a snooze, before editing some of our photos on the computer and heading for dinner. After eating, the crew had an initiation ceremony for a new divemaster (the snorkel test - where beer and other drinks are poured down a snorkel for him to drink - he didn't do too well!). But Ian enjoyed a couple of beers and some Philippine rum with the crew before heading to bed.
Day 363 - Friday 7th July 2006 - Seaventures diving near Sipadan Island - Day 4
We woke to thunder and lightning and plenty of rain. so, we decided to stay in bed a little longer - surely we'd not be heading out diving as early as normal - we thought that it wouldn't even be possible to eat breakfast on the deck as usual. However, after a while, we were roused by a knock on the door and we headed down for breakfast which was being served inside today.
It was still very grey with lightning still hitting the sea (the rig had already had 3 strikes), but we set off at 8:30am. Pixie had painful ears, so stayed behind and we wondered how safe it really was out on the water in this kind of weather (after all there was loads of metal all around us!). The sea itself was a bit choppy, but nowhere near as bad as yesterday. It was no surprise that we ended up diving on the sheltered side of Sipadan Island taday. Our first dive was at "Turtle Patch", once again a wall dive and once again there were loads of green turtles around - Nikki even posed with one. Even though the current and storm had disturbed the surface of the sea, the visibility was pretty good. As we headed up, we got a glimpse of 2 mating turtles. During our 3m safety stop we saw loads of fish all around us, including a school of batfish and a Napoleon wrasse.
During our surface interval stop on shore, we sheltered from the wind and rain a drank some much needed hot Milo together with eating some "swiss roll" look alike (if not taste-alike!). Then it was back out to dive "Big Reef". There we saw a light blue nudibranch, a moray eel, clown fish and as we headed into shallower water, a turtle with 2 cleaner fish resting on its shell. Once again, for our final dive at Sipadan, there were lots of fish all around us in the shallows. But here, we also saw a white-tip reef shark, resting nearby - no one paid much attention to the turtle next to it!
We headed back to the rig for a late lunch, after which we filled in our dive log books with all our stamps and divemaster signatures. We were a little late now and packed our bags before getting a boat back to the mainland. Mando had recommended the City Inn as a decent and cheap place to stay, so we headed there. The guys responsible for our transfer wouldn't let us walk there - we were waiting ages for a minibus transfer, but eventually when we insisted on walking, they paid for a shared taxi!
Once checked in, we headed out to investigate bus departures for the following day. Eventually (at the third place we tried) we were told of a bus at 7am. En route, Ian even managed to get his swim shorts repared - for 1RM (he had been wandering around for the last few days with an increasingly big hole in one of the seams!). We relaxed in our room for the rest of the afternoon - Ian watched a Wesley Snipes film, which surprisingly didn't send him to sleep.
We only went a few doors down the road for dinner, where Ian chose a seafood curry from the ready made selection (it looked very much like the meal from the night before which had been so good) and Nikki went for fried rice with chicken - she thought this might be a safer option but actually she had to be quite careful as it was full of chicken-bone fragments. Back in the hotel, we played cards for a while before heading to bed.
Day 364 - Saturday 8th July 2006 - on to Sepilok
With another early start we were at the bus station by 6:45am, but we could clearly see from the advert on the back of the bus that our ride to Sepilok didn't leave until 7:45am! At least we wouldn't miss it! We loaded our bags on and went for breakfast at the nearby Family Café. Ian had roti with dahl and Nikki an egg roti, we shared a banana roti too, seeing as there was time to spare.
There wasn't much room for our legs on the bus, but at least we left on time! We had a quick chat to Joo and Marijka, from the Netherlands, who were hoping to do a jungle trip in the next few days - perhaps we would see them later. It was a really bumpy ride, the driver swinging us around the corners and overtaking anything he could. This meant that despite a 20-minute lunch stop we were dropped at the junction to Sepilok after only 4½ hours. We started walking - the LP said it was only a couple of kilometres - but almost immediately a guy pulled over to encourage us to go to the Sepilok Jungle Resort. He had a full pick-up, so as we waited for him to return, we checked out another place, which turned out to be out of our budget.
At the Sepilok Jungle Resort, we were soon shown to the second reception area (clearly the budget area!) where we took a basic double room. We ate a lunch in the attached Banana Café before walking the 5 minutes or so to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. We had thought we might pop in both now and the following morning, but at 30RM (about $8US) entry each per day we decieded to wait until the morning.
Instead, we relaxed for the rest of the afternoon, reading and snoozing outside and then, once harrassed by too many mosquitos, in our room. With no real choice, we ate dinner back at the Banana Café, which served us decent meals (although Ian's large portion was smaller than Nikki's medium one!)
Day 365 - Sunday 9th July 2006 - Sepliok Orangutan Rehabilitaion Centre
After our inclusive breakfast of cold toast and coffee, we packed and headed back to Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre in time for the 8:30am video show. They showed a UK documentary filmed at the centre, and although we thought we had seen it some years before on TV at home, it was an interesting introduction to the day.
Then, just after 9am, we headed along a boardwalk into the forest along with all the other tourists. We were lucky, however, when after only a couple of minutes we saw a reasonably large male orangutan in a tree just above us. He even came down onto the boardwalk and walked along it and the handrail just ahead of us for a while. Then, he crossed near where Nikki was standing and headed up another tree.
Soon after, we arrived at the feeding platform itself. We could already see that several other orangutans were in the area. There were varous platforms and ropes between the trees just a few yards from the viewing area, which was alrady busy, perhaps with as many as 100 tourists. We joined the crowd and started taking photos as the orangutans played. The staff here provide a small amount of food twice a day for the rehabilitating orang-utans, so that they can visit and get an easy meal if they want (and the tourists will keep coming and money will be raise). Apparently, several of the rehabilitated orangutans have suffuicently re-adapted to the wild that they spend all their time in the forest. But several of the orangutans are small or less adventurous and came back to feed frequently. Just before the food was delivered, a long-tailed macaque arrived too and made a good effort of stealing some of the bamboo or sugar cane that was set down on the platform.
Although most of the orangutans we saw were young, a slightly older female also turned up and the male we had seen earlier spent almost the whole time we were there trying to mate with here - we're not even sure she got to eat anything! Soon, another male arrived. But, the dominant male clearly didn't like him around and chased him off every time he approached the feeding platform. Instead, this slightly smaller male simply hung out on one of the access ropes, just a short way from the platform, quite near us, and stole food from the smallest orang-utans as they retruned from the platform. It was funny to see being repeated time and again. By now, it was very hot, even under the forest canopy and most of the orangutans were sheltering in the shade on the platform or near other trees, but occasionally they would swing by us on the same bit of rope and sometimes stop and pose for photographs in the sun. - although on these occasions they usually had turned their back turned to the sun (and us!).
As usual at these sort of places, we were amongst the last to leave. We headed back to the visitors' centre and registered ourselves for a walk to a nearby birding tower. 45 minutes and a couple of leeches later, we arrived at this tower, which clearly had been pretty small, and in any case, now, was half demolished, seemingly by a falling tree. We didn't see many birds either.
Thanks very much to Joan Robertson for "sponsoring" this part of our trip!
Back at the entrance to the centre, we were picked up in a very small taxi, crammed ourselves in with 2 other tourists, picked up our backpacks (somehow they also fitted in!) and were taken a short distance up the road. We had booked ourselves on a 3-day trip into the jungle proper with Uncle Tan and were waiting at their chaotic operations base for what turned out to be a couple of hours while we had some lunch. We (there were almost 20 of us in total) finaly set off in a couple of minibuses and headed back along the raod to Semporna - we both managed a bit of a snooze. After an hour or so, we transferred to several small boats and were soon spotting wildlife in the trees along the Kinabatangan river banks. It was another hour on the river, and before we reached the camp we had seen some proboscis monkeys, long-tailed macaques, pygmy-tailed macaques and a monitor lizard.
From the jetty to the camp we had to negotiate a short, but very muddy trail, which was to become very familiar (!) before we reached the camp itself. We settled into our hut, which we were to share with Joo and Marijka (from our bus ride he previous day). We chatted to some of our fellow guests in the dining area - it turned out that out of 15 of us who were staying for the 3-day trip, 9 were Dutch! We then had our introductory briefing from our guides who outlined our itinery for the rest of our stay. Then it was time for dinner.
During dinner, bats were swooping all around us, which got us in the mood for a night boat safari. Nikki had a bit of a fright as we were getting ready back in our hut as she managed to tread on a frog, barefoot - fortunately it seemed to survive unharmed!
We headed out at 9pm and the moon and stars provided some illumination, although the boats were also armed with large flashlights. Our guides spotted a few baby crocodiles, a very small blue-eared kingfisher and bigger stork-billed kingfisher as well as a frog, which was kidnapped, so we could have a closer look - it soon made a run for it and jumped over the side of the boat! By the time we were back at camp, we were completely exhausted, so made use of the limited bathroom facilities and headed straight to bed.
Day 366 - Monday 10th July 2006 - Uncle Tan's Jungle Camp - 1-year on the road!
We had an early morning wake-up call at 6am and after a coffee and biscuit, made our way to the jetty for our morning safari boat trip. We soon saw more proboscis monkeys and long-tailed macaques and also some hornbills perched on top of tall trees, a few eagles and some kingfishers too, but sadly not orangutans or the 4m long crocodile one of the other boats saw :-(.
Back at the camp for breakfast of eggs, bread and noodles, it was soon 10am and time for our morning jungle trek. It was very muddy and slow going in places, our guide pointed out a few frogs and a couple of orangutan nests, but, being the heat of the day already, not much else. After more chicken and rice for lunch, we tried to snooze in a couple of hammocks, but they were not comfy enough and there were too many flies around, so we retreated to the safety of our mosquito net in our hut. We were woken briefly by a big thunderstorm raging outside, but managed to nod off again. We got up for an afternoon tea of fried bananas (not much else would have got Ian up!) and coffee. We watched a large monitor lizard come very close to the camp but it soon scuttled away when we got our cameras out.
We then headed out for the afternoon boat ride. Again we saw lots of monkeys as the day became cooler and they became more active and Ian finally worked out one of the functions on his new camera, so he could take better photographs in low light! We also saw hornbills and kingfishers and the sunlight lasted well right until we were back at camp. By this time, lots of new arrivals had descended on camp (22 today) and the camp was full. Dinner was the same as the previous day, except there was also a nice soup to try.
Tonight, we headed out on a night trek, of course it was still very muddy underfoot, but we didn't go far, just looping around the camp. But we saw at least 4 species of frog (brown bullfrog, white-lipped tree frog, frilled tree frog and dark-eared tree frog), a large tarantula (which was a newly discovered species found only here and named after the Uncle Tan camp only a month before!). Our guide spent ages trying to give us a view of a scorpion, that was keen to hide in a rotten log - we only got to see its head, meanwhile Ian spotted a couple of more small frogs hiding nearby.
Back at camp, we stayed up for a while, celebrating 1-year on the road over a couple of Bali Hai beers.
Day 367 - Tuesday 11th July 2006 - Uncle Tan's Jungle Camp and on to Sandakan
After another 6am wake-up call it was back to the boat and, this time, downstream to look for some wild orangutans. We saw a few each of the 3 most common monkey species (proboscis, long-tailed macaque and silver leaf monkey) and a few birds, but mot much else, despite going a long way down river. Back at breakfast, we were almost immediately interrupted by the news that an orangutan was resting in a tree just by the trail to the jetty. We all headed down there and waited to catch a glimpse. We spent over half an hour standing there in the mud, watching the upper branches of a tree or two move around as the orang-utans moved, we could clearly hear them too (it was apparantly a mother and baby), but we didn't get even the smallest glimpse.
We had to finish breakfast and pack quickly so as not to hold up the boat departure back. En route, we saw more hornbills, including a tree quite close to us, seeming full of them. Then it was time for a minibus journey back to the operations base, during which, somehow we managed to snooze, despite our discomfort. After lunch here again, we caught a local bus into Sandakan (where we caught up with Joo and Marijka again!). In the town, they showed us to the Mayfair hotel, where they had a reservation, but it was fully booked, so we had to find somewhere else. We had soon checked into the nearby Malaysia Hotel and were straight in the shower, scrubbing off all our jungle mud and grime!
We decided to try once again to make a booking for the climb up Mount Kinabalu and were surprised to find a space in the hostel on the mountain for a couple of days' time, which we booked. We popped into the tourist information office in town too, just to find out the times of bus departures to Mount Kinabalu. There we came across the friendliest tourist information woman ever! Not only that but she had all the information that we could want, and more. She gave us lots of tips for the rest of our time in Sabah, including a couple of suggestions for places to stay before and after the Mount Kinabalu climb. After an urgent visit to a cashpoint, we found an internet cafe and managed to make a reservation at one of the recommended places near Mount Kinabalu and bought a few goodies and snacks for the climb.
We had our eyes on a curry for dinner - the LP mentioned the Penang Curry House, but we wandered all the streets near where it was shown on the map without sucess. We had settled on heading elsewhere, when we walked straight past it, just along the road from our hotel. We were served good food too, and at bargain prices - a set fish or chicken curry with rice and vegetables and poppadums for 5RM (about $1.60). Ian also had a strange lychee drink, which turned out to be hot and yet tasted mostly of yoghurt!
Day 368 - Wednesday 12th July 2006 - on to Mount Kinabalu
We had an early start today as we had to get to the bus terminal about 4km out of town in time for 7am. We managed to catch a local bus there without any problems and on arriving at the terminal, were immediately surrounded by several bus company touts. It looked like there was no shortage of buses heading our way, so Ian was keen to grab some breakfast first. And, after a couple of bowls of noodle soup, we still made it onto the 7am bus.
We had both just about managed to nod off, when the bus stopped at a roadside restaurant, where we were able to use our "lunch voucher" for another meal (it was already 9:15am after all, it was more of a second breakfast really!) Afterwards, the route continued winding through endless palm oil plantations - it was very sad to see how little forest was actually remaining here. As the bus climbed, we caught our first (and almost cloud-free) glimpse of Mount Kinabalu, towering above us - it looked a long way up!
The bus dropped us right outside the Kinabalu Rose Cabins, where we checked in and admired the great view up to the mountain from our balcony. We decided to get some walking training in, so donned our hiking boots and headed along the road to the park entrance. It was a 2km walk and we enjoyed fabulous views of the mountain peeking out of the clouds all the way.
At the park, we tried to finalise our arrangements for our climb, but were just told to come back in the morning. Despite our 2 breakfasts, we needed some more food, so shared a Mongolian BBQ lunch in the cafeteria before walking a couple of the forest trails near the headquarters. They were quite short and not too strenuous, but there wasn't much other than forest to see. We were both feeling pretty jaded by forests now and decided that we should delay our planned visit to the rain forest at Taman Negara (on the Malasian mainland) until nearer the end of our trip.
We also popped into the "Mountain Garden", but there was almost nothing to see, very few plants were in flower and it certainly wasn't worth the 5RM (only $1.70) extra entrance fee. We returned to the park entrance by another trail, spotting one butterfly and one bird en route! Later, back in our room, we relaxed, enjoying the balcony and the view.
Our package here included dinner but, on sitting down, we were a little concerned that there was no menu. However, we needn't have worried as the food we were served turned out to be very good: soup, 3 asian-stlye dishes with rice and fresh pineapple for dessert. We felt suitably fuelled up for our climb starting in the morning but Nikki had delevoped a headache and we hoped it wasn't due to the altitude (we were only at about 1500m and had another 2500m to climb yet!). Anyway, this resulted in Ian doing all the packing (yet again!)
Day 369 - Thursday 13th July 2006 - climbing Mount Kinabalu - Day 1
We didn't make quite as prompt a start as we had planned, but filled ourselves with toast, omelette for Nikki and really bad noodles for Ian, left one backpack at reception and headed off. Once again, we walked the 2km to the park entrance and, this time, sucessfully paid for our accommodation on the mountain, our hiking permit and insurance. While doing this, we met Paul and Tinika, a retired couple from Melbourne, and agreed to share the cost of a guide with them.
So, all prepared, we caught the shuttle bus up to the start of the climb, Timpohon Gate, with Wilbert, our guide. At the gate, there was a large noticeboard, where the fastest times for the ascent and descent are recorded. We saw that the record was only about 2½hours! Our pace was a little slower! Tinika, particularly was struggling. The route was certainly very steep and we actually averaged more than an hour for each of the first few kilometres. The path was extremely clear, cutting its way through the forest, with distance markers almost every 500m and several rest shelters with benches to stop at. Early on, we passed a waterfall and after a couple of hours decided to tuck into the fried noodles we had bought at entrance gate. Wilbert didn't talk to us at all really, he just lingered beind us.
As we continued up, the trees started to thin and the air started getting colder so we decided not to stop as often and after about 4km we left Paul and Tinika behind and plodded on by ourselves. Soon, we caugh a glimpse of the mountain top and eventually, after about 7 hours (for a 6km climb) we reached Laban Rata, where the main hostel and cafeteria were. After registering, we had another 200m steep climb to reach our hostel (Gunding Langan), where we shared a 4-bed dorm, with a mother and daughter team. They didn't speak to us much, particularly as the mother seemed to be suffering badly with altitude sickness.
So, we were left with the 2 top bunks, which we made use of for a quick snooze. Before it got too late and dark, we headed back down to Laban Rata for dinner. The cafeteria was very expensive and not particularly good. But at least it provided hot food, much needed at 3000m up. It was still only 7pm. so we sat around for a while and played cards before heading back up the slope and to bed by 8:30pm. Our roommates were already asleep.
Day 370 - Friday 14th July 2006 - climbing Mount Kinabalu - Day 2
We think we heard people starting to get up at about 1:30am! But clearly we tried to ignore tham and get some more sleep. Eventually, it was too noisy and we started to get our stuff together at about 2:20am. We were in no rush to leave as we didn't particularly want to be queueing with the masses in the cold and dark on the steep climb ahead of us. In the end, Paul and Tinika left just a bit before us, but we were also on our way before 3am. Immediately, the trail headed steeply uphill. The rocky steps were illuminated by our head torches. Unfortunately, there were still plenty of people heading off at this time, so we still had to queue on certain sections. As we finally emerged from the trees and shrub-line onto the steep granite - on what turned out to be the steepest bit of the climb - most people used a rope to haul themselves up, but Ian managed without. We had expected this steep bit to last longer (perhaps all the way to the top), but it didn't. We remembered what Ben and Nat (Aussies we met on our Inca Trail trip) had said about their attempt to climb here (they had to turn back, due to the slippy underfoot conditions) and could easily imagine that it would be extremely treacherous in the rain. Luckily for us though, it was bone dry.
It took us 80 minutes to reach the checkpoint at 7km (only 800m from our hostel, but 345m higher). There, we had our photo taken and passes checked and again headed off ahead of Paul and Tinika. A little further, we stopped for a chocolate and cheese cracker snack by moonlight and realised that we didn't need our torches any longer, the sky was clear and the stars bright.
The route continued steeply on and as the air got thinner, we needed more frequent rests. Occasionally we would turn our back to the mountain and look back to the lightning in the distance and the street lights of a couple of towns below. The route then became somewhat less steep and there was no need to use the rope, but it was still steep enough to feel it in our calves every step. We plodded on, eating some more chocolate and just before we reached the summit we enjoyed sunrise over to our right. The last 10 minutes of climbing required clambering over boulders, but we soon reached the top at 4,095.2m (apparently the highest point in South East Asia). There were lots of people crowded onto the small summit area, but we managed to pose for a few pictures and sit down for a bit of a rest. Paul and Tinika (and Wilbert) were not far behind either, so we all posed for a group shot too.
By the time we started our descent it was fully light and we enjoyed the views of the surrounding peaks. In many ways the descent was easier than the ascent, but we had to be careful not to slip on the steep bits. We made it back ot the checkpoint and signed out. The steepest bit was just a little further on, Ian didn't choose the best route - he was overtaking some slow hikers holding onto the rope for dear life - Nikki foolishly followed him. Fortunately we made it down without falling - just! (Ian was pleased to have made it the whole way up and down without using the rope at all :-) ).
We were back at the hostel by 8:40am and had a short rest / snooze before packing our backpack and heading back down to the cafeteria at Laban Rata. We sat down for breakfast with Paul and Tinika, but the food was too pricey and too awful, so we sneakily shared a 25RM (about $8.30) buffet meal. Now it was time to embark on the 6km return route to the entrance gate. We had expected that we would be able to go significantly more quickly heading down, rather than up, but that was not to be the case. It was very hard going on our tired legs and especially the last 3km which, although less steep, were very difficult, especially as Nikki's legs had turned to jelly. We stopped at all the rest huts on the route and were even overtaken by Paul and Tinika, who were trying to catch the 3pm bus back to Kota Kinabalu.
In the end it took over 5 hours to reach the gate (Ian had guessed we would take 3 hours or less!). From there we caught the transfer bus back to the restaurant, where we decided to get off and treat ourslevs to a slice of cheesecake and coffee / Milo - we had spotted these treats a couple of days before. We sat on the sunny terrace, enjoying the fact that we weren't walking! But, of course, we were soon walking again - first, back to the headquarters, where we paid for a certificate and took some photographs of the mountain. Then, we hobbled back the final 2km to the Kinabalu Rose Cabins.
Thanks very much to Sarah Evans & Dave Michael for "sponsoring" this part of our trip (the climb)!
After an enjoyable hot shower and an opportuity to rest on our comfortable bed, we tucked into another enjoyable dinner - were now very hungry. But we didn't have the energy or enthusiasm for a celebratory beer so it was straight to bed after a long and exhausting day.
Thanks very much to Janet Berry for "sponsoring" this part of our trip (luxury accommodation at the Rose Cabins)!
Day 371 - Saturday 15th July 2006 - back to Kota Kinabalu
After breakfast, where we both avoided the noodles(!), we packed and headed out to stand on the grassy verge by the highway. There were a couple of other, older couples there too, so we weren't sure if there would be space for us on the first passing bus. As it turned out, we didn't have to wait long and there was space for all of us. We even got the last pair of seats together - after over a year of travelling, we have at least learnt to find a good seat quickly!
We arrived in Kota Kinabalu by about 1pm, but we were only at the new out-of-town bus terminal and needed to catch a transfer bus to the city centre. It took the driver-come-ticket-seller ages to collect all our fares (he had been doing nothing as we all got onto the bus!) and then, of course, we had to make the obligatory re-fuelling stop too. But at least we had a reservation back at the New Horizon Travellers Lodge and Sean and Phergie seemed pleased to see us again (they even had a private room for us again). We were pleased to hear that they had actually been pretty busy while we had been away and already had a few stories to tell about some of their guests!
We managed to put some laundry in for a well needed wash and posted a parcel home from the main post office. We opted for a Malay style restaurant for a late lunch, which served us up a decent curry. Needing to relax, we headed back to the hostel, spent some time typing up this on-line diary and editing our many, many orangutan and monkey photos. We were pretty tried by now and struggled to find anywhere inspiring for dinner, ending up at the VietCafe, which was OK. Then, after some more time spent online, we headed to bed.
Day 372 - Sunday 16th July 2006 - Tambunan Rafflesia Forest Reserve
Ian woke really early and spent a couple of hours continuing to edit our photos. Then, when Nikki was up too, we enjoyed our complimentary roti and dhal breakfast next door and had a quick look around the noisy Sunday market that had sprung up in the street outside overnight - Ian bought a watch, which seemed easier than getting a replacement battery for the one he bought in Ecuador, which had just given up the ghost. In fact he bought exactly the same cheap model, but this time for 10RM (about $3) rather than $8 (he had been pretty pleased with the $8 price tag at the time!).
We found the local bus terminal and realised that there was almost an hour before the next minibus left in our direction, so we explored the market a bit more. Returning to the bus, we realised that we didn't really fit in, having nowhere for our knees to go. Fortunately, however, the bus wasn't full so we found ourselves enough room. We had been hot and sweaty in Kota Kinabalu and thought nothing of heading off dressed in only T-shirt, shorts and sandals. But, the minibus soon headed upwards, winding through the forest, eventually reaching the low clouds - we hoped we wouldn't get too cold!
After about 90 minutes, we arrived at the Tambunan Rafflesia Forest Reserve and wandered up to the visitors' centre. Other than some locals repairing their Jeep in the car park, the place seemed deserted. We started to get a bit concerned, as it was a Sunday and we hadn't been able to get a response before we left when we rang the telephone number we had. Indeed, all the doors were locked, but, as we walked around the outside of the building, we realised that there were some flip flops by the doorway and a notice on a whiteboard, indicating that a Rafflesia was in bloom somewhere (there was a sector reference, but that was clearly no help to us). Perhaps some rangers were around after all.
After a few minutes, we decided to take a stroll into the forest, following a trail from the back of the visitors' centre. We thought, at least we could exercise our aching leg muscles, hopefully aiding their recovery from the Mount Kinabalu descent. Fortunately, the trail didn't appear to diverge and after a few minutes we met a ranger heading back to the centre. He advised us to keep to the trail and another ranger would meet us at the bottom and show us to the rafflesias. This sounded very organised! We soon met some other tourists heading back up too and realised that the stoll might be a little more strenuous than we had expected as the path was becoming increasingly steep.
On we went, soon meeting a second group of tourists and the other ranger. He was a little reluctant to head all the way back down (it would be his fifth trip of the day), but eventually agreed to show us to the flowers. After about 10 more minutes descending, we saw 2 rafflesia pricei in bloom. They were about 35cm across, one being in its 2nd day of bloom, the other in its 5th and last. They were colourful with big white spots on and had a very rubbery texture, more like a fungus really. These flowers actually grow as parasites on the roots of a particular species of creeping plant, which can make it easier for the rangers to find the flower buds, which themselves take about 9 months to develop for only a 5-day flowering period. They were certainly the biggest flowers we had ever seen, although we found out from our guide that this is not the species of rafflesia that smells rotten and grows to 100cm or more across (although that species too is sometimes also found in the Crocker Range (where we were) - just not in such an accessible spot!)
It was a steep route back up and our guide soon left us behind - he could sense heavy rain coming and wanted to keep dry. We continued on slowly, hoping that if necessary, we could hide from the rain in one of the shelters we had passed on the way down. Sure enough, the rain did come. The forest canopy kept us dry enough for a while, but as the storm intensified, we took shelter. Unfortunately, the wooden shelter had several holes in the roof and we had to stand in the middle to maximise the protection it gave us. After half an hour or so, the rain had eased enough to continue on and we were soon back at the visitors' centre. Now, of course, with the rangers back, it was open and we had a quick look around (while Nikki pulled a leech out from between her toes!). To get home, we had to hope that the passing buses were not already full. We joined a Swiss guy waiting and several minbuses passed us without stopping. But, eventually we managed to flag one down and were back in Kota Kinabalu without incident./p>
Thanks very much to Avi & Suzie Sinharay for "sponsoring" this part of our trip!
We relaxed for a while in the hostel's TV lounge and made more use of the hostel computer to edit more photos. Meanwhile Ian was chatting to Sean, who recommended a seafood place for dinner that he and Phergie liked to go to, so we thought we would try it out. It took longer than we had expected to walk to the Ocean Seafood Village, which was a big place. Once again there were lots of tanks with all sorts of seafood inside filling the whole back section of the restaurant. We were shown to our table and managed to order a beer, but quite what we were supposed to do to order some food was anyone's guess. It turned out that we had been forgotten by our waiter and so it was ages before we found someone who would talk us through ordering from the fresh fish selection. However, our new waiter was very keen in telling us the difference between all the different fish (none of which we could afford!) and the different prawns, but we were more interested in what sauce we might be able to order. Anyway, in the end, we ordered the recommended (they would probably have recommended anything) garlic butter sauce for our prawns, together with some vegetable dishes.
The food was pretty good, but not as good as we had hoped for the price tag, but we enjoyed another beer. Unfortunately, when we received the bill, not only were the prices as high as we had been told, but all sorts of extras had been charged (including nibbles and hand wipes!). Clearly we hadn't wanted any of this, so pointed this out and, although in the end the items were not charged, it spoilt the atmosphere for the evening a little. Back at the hostel, we prepared for an early departure in the morning and Nikki realised that she had lost her zip-off hiking trousers in the laundry - there was no time to go back for them now. :-(
Day 373 - Monday 17th July 2006 - Moving on to Sarawak
With another early start and check-out followed by a quick roti canai at the restaurant next to the hostel, we caught a minivan to the airport. We thought we might get taken to somewhere near the airport entrance but instead we just got dumped at the main road, leaving a 5 minute walk. Still, this wasn't a problem and we soon located the Malaysia Airlines office and were able to pay for our flights to Kuching, Sarawak. There were surprisingly few places to sit in the terminal but we soon boarded the plane. We were given a couple of cheesy croissants to supplement our breakfast and after about 1½ hours we landed in Kuching.
We immediately noticed how much newer and shinier this airport was, in comparison to that in Kota Kinabalu, but we still caught an old rusty bus from just outside the airport to the city centre. We managed to secure the last available private room at the B&B Inn (our first choice accommodation from the LP) and, after dropping our bags, we soon headed back into the centre to find some lunch.
At the Briyani restaurant, we had a very tasty lunch of a chicken curry, rice & veg set meal, together with some extra roti. We even managed to squeeze in a banana roti for dessert - yumm! We then queued at tourist information - we managed to get lots of helpful info and booked ourselves some accommodation in Bako National Park for Thursday night. We had read in our LP that it was possible to visit Pulau Satang and stay overnight to see green turtles nesting. The tourist centre had given us details of a couple of travel agencies who ran such tours and so we went to enquire. Unfortunately, though, one company didn't go there at all and the other just for snorkelling day trips (which couldn't be as good as our diving experience in Sipadan). It looks like we'll have to manage without seeing turtles nesting on this trip after all :-(
We then struggled to find an internet café, eventually finding one with only a Linux operating system and no photo editing package. Still, we were able to check our e-mail and type up some online diary. We then returned to our hostel and sat on the rooftop terrace in the last bit of sun, enjoying a couple of Tiger beers (in our Aussie stubby-holders!).
After showering, we decided to try out the open air market for dinner. It actually had a roof so not quite open-air but we quickly selected a stall, It Hng Seafood, which cooked us up some dry chilli prawns, sweet and sour chicken and jungle ferns stir-fried in garlic. It was all excellent (and pretty cheap) and we were sure we would be coming back! The guy who served us our drinks was also very chatty and told us all about his son who was apparently studying in Sheffield. After dinner we wandered back to the hostel along the pretty riverside promenade.
Day 374 - Tuesday 18th July 2006 - Semenggoh Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre
It was yet another early start as we were trying to catch the 7am bus to the Semenggoh Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. Ian somehow managed to lead us to the wrong bus stop but we found the right one in the end and found out that we hadn't missed the 7am bus as there hadn't been one (tourist info needs to update its bus timetables!). But, we were in plenty of time for the 7.40am bus and Ian even had time to fetch us some breakfast snacks from a streetside stall around the corner.
An hour later, we were dropped right outside the gates of the Semenggoh Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, with just enough time to buy our tickets (at 3RM, about $1, incredibly cheap compared with what we had paid at Sepilok in Sabah) and walked for 20 minutes along a entrance road to the centre itself. We had been the only tourists on the bus and so thought that the 9am feeding might be quite quiet. However, lots of tourists arrived by coach and taxi and so it was actually quite busy.
While we were waiting for the trail to the feeding area to be opened, we were lucky to get a good view of a mother and youngster in the trees close by. We watched them for a bit but then the trail opened and we were ushered along. The feeding area was quite different to the one in Sepilok - it was much more jungle-like and the orangutans arrived from all directions, mostly swinging through the trees, and only using the ropes to get to the platform at the end. They also didn't stay long on the platform. Typically, they just grabbed some 'take-aways' and clambered back up into the trees to eat.
There were no big males around, but plenty of mothers with babies and adolescents hung around for a while, every now and then swinging down to the platform for another helping, before heading back to the treetops. We think we saw 8 orangutans in total, watching them for about 45 minutes. We had thought about walking a forest trail, shown on the map, but when we spoke to a ranger, we discovered that these trails were still being constructed and not yet open to the public (at least not without a guide). So we wandered back to the centre itself and had a bit more of a look around. There we saw 4 more orangutans (possible two of the mother and baby pairs we had seen earlier). These guys were using a few ropes to make their way betwen a couple of trees near a grassy area, where we could stand and watch. They even came down (albeit briefly) to a small feeding platform right by us to pick up some bananas which a warden had put out for them (however, they weren't at all interested in the broken coconut shell there too). We watched for quite a while and then had a quick browse at a display outlining the conservation efforts in the park and chatted to one of the wardens who told us that, even though it was a good time of year for tourists to see orangutans (with not so much food available in the forest), we had been lucky to see so many today.
We headed back to the road, deciding to walk one of the forest trails that was open. This led us to a "seed bank" a little further along the road from where our bus had dropped us. There was another bus stop there, so we sat down and sheltered from the heat of the sun. It was about lunch time (well, it was 11am), so we tucked into the take-away noodles we had picked up earlier.
When we had been dropped off, we asked our driver about return bus times and had been told that there should be a return bus at 11 "something", and another at 12 "something", so we just waited. After an hour with no public buses passing (only lots of school buses), we decided to walk back to the bus stop we had arrived at, only then realising that it was only about 300m back along the road. By 12:45pm we decided to take another option and walk across to a busier road, where, apparently there was a regular bus service.
It was very hot going, but after a few minutes, we were lucky enough to be offered a lift in the back of a pick-up. We were taken all the way to a bus stop and, there was no question, it was a much busier road. Nevertheless, it was almost another 30 minutes before a bus came into view - and it was the right colour (and therefore company) to take us back to the city.
Back in Kuching, we tucked into a roti canai lunch at the Jubilee Cafe. We then found an internet cafe, but we couldn't edit our photos, or acceess our web site, so had to find another one.
Later, we went to the Top Spot Food Court for dinner. Which, surprisingly was on the roof of a multi-storey car park, although, despite the location, the food and atmosphere was nice enough. Once again we ate various prawn and vegetable dishes.
Day 375 - Wednesday 19th July 2006 - relaxing in Kuching
We enjoyed a lie-in and ate our complimentary toast breakfast at the hostel. Then we went to use an internet cafe (more photos to edit and online diary to type up). But, after a couple of hours there was a power cut, so we went for lunch in the food court in the basement of the Sarawak Plaza shopping centre, memorable only for its mediocrity. As the power still had not returned to the internet cafe, we tried a different cafe, then went to relax in our room, played a game of Scrabble and had a couple of beers.
For dinner, we headed back to the open air market (to exactly the same stall) and enjoyed another good dinner. Then, we were able to get back onto same machines we had been using previously at the intenet cafe with the power cut earlier, and Nikki was able to retrieve her diary file, so was pleased not to have to re-type it all!
Day 376 - Thursday 20th July 2006 - Bako National Park - Day 1
We grabbed a slice of toast at the hostel and tucked into a couple of steetside snacks on the 8am bus towards Bako National Park. By 9am, we had reached the jetty and 10 of us had boarded a small boat to the park itself. It was a 30-minute ride to the park, along the shore, where we saw the start of the mangrove forest. Almost as soon as we landed, while we were walking to the park headquarters, we saw a troop of silver leaf monkeys, but soon headed on so we could drop our backpacks before exploring further.
We weren't able to check-in yet, but left our bags and set off on one of the many short trails - the Paku trail. This took us back past the silver leaf monkeys, who were still pretty close to the jetty, from where we followed a boardwalk section through the mangroves themselves. We saw a large monitor lizard as it scuttled for cover and then some movement high in the trees a little ahead. Several other tourists were watching what apparently were some proboscis monkeys jumping from tree to tree, but we couldn't confirm this from the view we had.
Off the boardwalk now, there were lots of people on the trail, many of them far too noisy, so we didn't spot any wildlife until we reached a small sandy cove at the end of the trail and, while paddling around a bit, saw a few catfish in the shallows. Wow!
It was really hot in the direct sun, so we sheltered in the shade of a large rock, where we saw a Dutch couple (Timo and Cecile) who had been on the boat with us and chatted to them for a while. On the return leg, almost immediately Nikki spotted a small crab in a green shell (maybe a hermit crab) and we were pleasd to be able to continue back in sufficient isolation from everyone else for the forest to be quiet around us. Despite this, we thought that as the day was now getting hot, we were unlikely to see much wildlife moving around. But then Nikki spotted a male proboscis monkey sitting on a leafless branch, giving us a great view - albeit very briefly as he soon moved off. We watched as he climbed higher and as lots of other people arrived, pointed him out (although he was little more than a speck high in the canopy by now). Before we moved on, we heard several other monkeys moving around, but couldn't get to see any and eventually headed back to the park headquarters, excited to have at least caught an up close glimpse of the rare proboscis monkey - the main attraction of a visit to Bako.
We tucked into a pretty good buffet lunch, although it was difficult to work out the likely price for anything - we think that it was a pretty random process. It was still too early to check-in to our room, so we headed off on another short trail, seemingly, from looking at the map, along the shore. Although the trail was not actually too far from the shore, it turned out to be quite a strenuous climb. At least there was a wooden bench at the top, from where we could enjoy the view back along the beach past the headquarters buildings.
Having descended again, we were at last able to check-in to our cabin, which was a simple, but decent room with a balcony (of course being in the jungle, everything smelt a little damp, but we were used to that!). It turned our that our neighbours for the night were Timo and Cecile. We said "hello" again, but we were tired, so crashed out on our beds for 10 minutes and woke up about an hour later. By now, there wasn't going to be that much sunlight left, so we decided to walk another short trail - the Delima trail (not least because the LP suggested that it was a great place to see proboscis monkeys - especially just before dusk. Getting there was mainly over a boardwalk and after a sign pointing to the Delima trail itself and a few wooden steps down, the trail disappeared and the mangroves started. Ian follwed a few human footprints for a short while, before deciding it was far too muddy and we would only damage the mangroves anyway if we continued, so we headed back.
As we neared the headquarters it began to rain, so we sheltered on our balcony for a while, watching the occasional squirrel scurry up or down a nearby tree. Later, showered and refreshed, we ran to dinner under the cover of our umbrella and enjoyed another decent buffet selection (particularly considering we were in the jungle) and chatted to Timo and Cecile again. After they had headed to bed we played cards for a while and treated ourselves to a beer, but also called it an early night.
Day 377 - Friday 21st July 2006 - Bako National Park - Day 2
Our alarm woke us at 6am, but it was still dark outside, so we didn't leave our cabin until almost 7am. We decided to walk the Paku trail again. We saw a few long-tailed macquaces on the boardwalk, including at least one mother with a young baby, and headed on along the now deserted trail. After all our forest walks trying to spot wildlife, we were used to walking slowly and quietly, usually spotting nothing. In fact, we were just about to turn round and head back when Nikki spotted another male proboscis monkey, high in the trees. He soon moved, but as we waited there we could see that there were others (presumably from the same troop) around. Ian spent a while watching a female with her baby as they moved from tree to tree, but then fell asleep (the monkey - not Ian!) Nikki went a few yards further along the trail to investigate some crashing sounds high above and soon located more of the troop. Mostly, we struggled to get decent views, but they did move around quite a lot, so we occasionally got great views. On one occasion one passed within a few feet of Ian as she miscalculated a jump between trees! In total we think there were about a dozen monkeys in the group and gradually they made their way across the trail and were heading towads the hills.
Eventually we left them alone (we think they had been getting increasingly unhappy with our presence) and returned to the headquarters, only seeing other tourists once we had made it all the way back to the boardwalk. As we passed the jetty a boat was arriving with some more tourists and we were able to "book" four spaces on a boat back that afternoon. We saw the troop of macaques again before we reached the headquarters buildings themselves, but the new guests got too close and one of the big males chased off one of the small girls (the monkey almost looked bigger!)
It was toast and noodles for breakfast, before we packed and checked-out and headed off on one final longer trail (the Lintang Loop trail). But, as we headed off, we heard a noise from the trees near the beach. We thought that it was probably some more macaques, but decided to wander over and check. As Ian approached, we were surprised when a large proboscis monkey jumped between a couple of trees and onto the ground, before running off across the beach to another area of forest. We looked up into the forest for quite a while, but we didn't see him again.
Once the boardwalk section of the Lintang Loop trail had finished, the trail became very steep, and for quite a while! There were lots of wooden staircases and at one point it was less than clear where the trail went, but we chose the correct route, occasionally finding encouraging red blobs of paint that marked the way :-) and carried on climbing, getting very, very sweaty.
Near the top of the climb, there were a couple of lookouts, but there was no sign of any monkeys. Eventually the trail levelled out and emerged from the forest onto a rocky scrub area. We crossed a few dried-up river beds and small streams, seeing some interesting mesh-like patterns in some rocks underfoot. Eventually we were back in the forest and started to look for pitcher plants that were reputedly growing in this area. Nikki soon spotted some (without knowing what she was really looking for! - they just looked like miniature milk jugs). We took a few photos and continued on. We stopped for a healthy lunch of crab flavoured crisps and mocha Oreo-immitation biscuits (well, the headquarters' shop wasn't exactly well stocked!) and walked onto the next junction, where we decided we had just enough time to make a detour to the beach and back before our boat left.
We soon bumped into Timo and Cecile again, who confirmed we would have enough time to reach a lookout over a secluded bay, so we continued on. It certainly was a pretty view from the lookout (down to Besar - i.e. "big" - Beach), and only a brisk 15-minutes away. We rested for a few minutes, but had to get back. We soon spotted a couple of different species of pitcher plant and when we got near the park headquarters again, we saw some more silver leaf monkeys - they wanted to cross the path, but were afraid to get too close to us, so waited at a distance until Ian had snapped some pictures and we had passed by.
Having collected our backpacks, we headed for the beach - the tide was too low for the boats to reach the jetty and fortunately our boatman turned up and had space for us all. Ahead, we could see a big storm brewing, but luckily we were back on land and hiding under a bus shelter before it started to rain.
Back in Kuching, we checked back into the B&B Inn. It wasn't clear whether they had remembered our reservation or not, but after a little delay, we were given a dorm room for our private use anyway. For dinner, we returned to our favourite stall at the open-air market and enjoyed butter prawns, 2 chicken dishes and several vegetable dishes. Once again it was an excellent meal, very filling and only costing about $10. Great!
Day 378 - Saturday 22nd July 2006 - on to Kuala Lumpur
We enjoyed a bit of a lie-in today, scoffed some toast down and went to the internet cafe to spend some time updating this online diary and editing all our monkey photos from Bako. After 3 hours, we were very pleased thet the online version of the diary was only 3 weeks out of date!
We returned to the Bryani cafe for a repeat of our tasty curry lunch of a few days ago and waited for a bit before heading off to wait for the 3pm airport bus. Now, as you can tell, we had had a few problems knowing where (and when) to catch buses in and around Kuching and this last occasion was no exception. Eventually, Ian left Nikki with the bags, hoping the bus wouldn't arrive while he was away. He went to the bus company office to find out that their last bus of the day had left about half an hour before (so much for our timetables). But fortunately, one other company ran to the airport and, at their office, he discovered that they had one more bus that would get us to the airport in time for our flight. So we rushed over there and actually made it to the airport in plenty of time and checked in for our Air Asia flight to Kuala Lumpur, where, once again we had we had to repack stuff into our hand luggage in order to avoid excess baggage fees.
We weren't quite sure which gate our flight was to leave from (our boarding pass showed a gate that didn't exist and the departure board showed another gate). But we decided to sit by the one with all the Air Asia staff buzzing around! This turned out to be a good choice, as when the delayed flight was boarding, we were able to get seats together.
It was another good flight, but we did seem to make a number of wide diversions around the gathering storms before landing at the new low cost carrier terminal in Kuala Lumpur. Actually, the airport is about 75km south of KL and we had expected to have to get the relatively expensive train to the centre. However, with the new budget airlines has come a new budget bus directly to Sentral Station in KL itself. Excellent!
From there, we had our first taste of KL public transport, catching the LRT to Chinatown, where we had quite some difficulty making our way down Petaling Road (a very busy market at this time of night) with our backpacks. We checked out one completely awful place to stay - but the LP hadn't been very encouraging about anyting in our price range. Despite our tiredness, we turned it down and were pleased when we soon found the Lee Mun Guesthouse around the corner. It certainly was basic, but it seemed nice enough and actually cheaper too - and there was a busy-looking chap around, which made the 5th floor location seems a little more secure.
After our big lunch, we had thought we might skip dinner, but we were too hungry, so popped across the road to the Westlake Restaurant for a good chinese meal. Then it was straight to bed, where the paper-thin walls (without tops to join them to the ceiling) didn't keep out much noise. Worse, Nikki wasn't feeling well either.
Day 378 - Sunday 23rd July 2006 - the Lake Gardens, Kuala Lumpur
Despite the noisy night, we woke late and headed out to try and find a laundry. We failed and returned to the hostel for some directions. Eventually we found one and were soon also tucking into some poor noodles for breakfast from a Chinese foodcourt.
Next, we took the LRT to Sentral Station and booked oursleves on the Sleeper train to Hat Yai in Thailand for a couple of days time and then decided to explore a bit. We thought we would walk through the Lake Gardens, which were near the station, but as predicted by the LP, we had trouble finding ways around the city without 4 wheels! But, after crossing a few lanes of speeding traffic, we managed to find a pedestrian sign to the gardens, which we were only too happy to follow!
We were soon in the gardens and walked by the lakeside, treating ourselves to an ice cream in the shade to help us cool off. We continued walking through the gardens, which were quite pretty, but in places were in a terrible mess. As we circled back around towards the city centre, we found the Hibiscus Garden (the hibiscus being the Malaysian national flower) and nearby the Orchid Garden, which was much more impressive, with at least 100 different typs of orchid in bloom.
Despite our basic map, we managed to find our way back to the Central Market where we had lunch in the foodcourt, before checking out an internet cafe, where we still had loads of monkey pictures to edit! But the computers here were very slow and we soon headed back to the hostel to rest instead.
We walked up to Little India for dinner, where Ian had a lovely tandoori chicken and Nikki a passable chicken masala, with unfortunately more bone than chicken :-(
Day 380 - Monday 24th July 2006 - walking tour of Kuala Lumpur
We found some tasty roti for breakfast at Hameed's Restaurant and picked up our laundry - great - clean"ish" clothes! Then it was time to head to the post office, where we wanted to pick up Nikki's last package of medications, which her mum had sent over about a month earlier. However, at the post restante, there was no record of any parcel for Nikki and, as we didn't have any reference number to hand, there was nothing we could do - although they didn't seem to make much effort to check anywhere else! Despondant, not least because the main reason for coming to KL now, had been to collect this parcel, we headed back to the hostel.
As Nikki's current medications were just about to run out, we soon decided that it would be better to be safe than sorry and that we would try and by some tablets over the counter. After all our troubles in the Americas when trying to buy this stuff, we were very relieved when the first pharmacy we tried had everything we wanted, even though they were pretty expensive.
So, now we had some time to explore KL. We chose to follow one of the LP's walking tours, which required tackling some more pedestrian-unfriendly road systems to get to the start! We walked through the impressive Moorish / colonial station and then on to the National Mosque, but with all the palava of the missing package, we had forgotten to bring our sarongs with us, so couldn't go inside. We just had a quick look at the outside of this modern building and then moved on. The walk then took us back past the post office and on to Merdeka Square, the old centre of KL, which now boasts the tallest flag pole in the world (and a sorry looking cricket pitch!). From there we could also admire the supreme court buildings and tried to continue along the LP walking route, which took us through the supreme court gardens. We were quickly turned back and made our way around to another mosque, which of course, we couldn't enter!
We decided to continue on the second LP walking route, but soon realised that it was only taking us past some old and tatty colonial buildings, which didn't inmpress us much, before heading to some more religious buildings, which we wouldn't be able to go in either, so we stopped and went back to the Central Market for lunch.
Afterwards, we spent a little while using the internet again, but it was an extremely smokey and noisy place and so headed to the hostel for a snooze. Later, for dinner, we tried to find a LP-receommedned place for good, cheap Malay curries, but nearly missed it as we couldn't see any restaurant names from the near side of the street. But we did find it and Nikki took the waiter's recommendation of sweet chilli curry chicken which she enjoyed. Ian had a slightly bland chicken curry, but the rotis (including a banana roti for dessert) made for a filling meal.
Day 381 - Tuesday 25th July 2006 - Petronas Towers and leaving KL
We were not up as early as we had planned, but were soon packed and checked-out, leaving our backpacks at the hostel until later. It was back to the Westlake Restaurant for a noodle breakfast on the pavement. Then we took the LRT 4 stops to the Petronas Towers. There, we emerged underground somewhere in an enormous shopping mall. It took us a couple of attempts, but we soon found a way out and could see the towers close-up for the frst time. We hadn't really been expecting to be able to get hold of a ticket to visit the skybridge, as we heard they were all usually taken pretty early in the day, but we weren't prepared for the chaos that we found in the ticket hall. But we were right, there were no more tickets for the day. We weren't that disappointed, really, the sky bridge actually only goes about one third of the way to the top anyway. But we did wander outside and take the obligatory photos from the surrounding water gardens.
We spent a little while browsing the shops in the mall below the towers, including an M&S, no less, but our current sense of value for money wouldn't allow us to part with any of our cash! so we headed down the road to the Malaysian Tourism office to get some more information about visiting Taman Negara. After a little research we both quite liked the idea of visiting Taman Negara from the north, which seemed to be a very infrequently used access point. A brochure we had previously picked up, claimed that it was the oldest part of the forest, with the best chance of seeing wildlife. It was even supposed to be accessible by public transport and served by a hostel and a restaurant at the entrance. But the Tourism office couldn't provide us with even confirmation of these facts, let alone any more details. Oh, well, it had been worth the try.
Our trusty LP (albeit at least 3 years past its publication date!) led us to a food court in the nearby Golden Triangle, but it seemed that the area marked in the LP was now the sight of an enourmous hole, no doubt where the foundations of another tower would soon go. While looking at this across the road to our left, we almost missed the fact that a rather pleasant-looking cafe-style dining area was to our right. Of course, this turned out to be the foodcourt. So we ate our cheap and filling chicken curries alongside tables full of KL city workers.
We walked back to Chinatown (via a few fly-overs!) and, at an internet cafe, we found that Nikki's dad had sent us a parcel reference number. So we returned to the main post office, only to find (after ages tracking the parcel) that it was still apparently in the UK! We returned to the noisy internet cafe to kill another hour, before picking our backpacks up from the hostel and catching the LRT back to Sentral Station. We had a relaxed dinner at the foodcourt there and prepared ourselves for the sleeper train, brushing our teeth in the communal washbasin, oddly positioned in the foodcourt itself, rather than the bathrooms!
We took our time, but were still in plenty of time for the 8:45pm departure. Our beds were already made (we had opted for one upper and one lower bunk, but we were surprised that there was virtually no storage space for our backpacks, which we just had to leave in the aisle (carefully strapped together and locked, of course!). We were also surprised that almost everyone else headed straight to bed, but we stayed awake and played Scrabble, which was a nail-biting game, Ian eventually winning by a single point!
Day 382 - Wednesday 26th July 2006 - getting back to Thailand
We both managed to sleep OK in the end, although the air-conditioning made the carriage actually too cold. Even worse, the bed wasn't long enough for Ian, and he had a stiff neck for ages afterwards.
We were about one hour late arriving in Padang Besar, the border town station at about 10am. At Malaysian immigration, we had predictable problems (we had been stamped out of Sarawak, but not into mainland Malaysia), but the offical just gave up and stamped us out again.
Once through Thai immigration, we headed upstairs to the cafe and ordered roti "arab", which resembled a pizza withouit any toppings more than anything else, but it did come with the usual curry dip, Ian ate two. Meanwhile, the train with all our belongings had left the platform and disappeared. Fortunately, about 40 minutes later, it returned (much shorter) for our continued journey into Thailand...
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