A nice cuppa tea

The last two days of our Malaysian adventure have been spent in the Cameron Highlands in a little town called Tanah Rata (seemingly peaceful by day, Beirut by night).

The highlands are really beautiful. Miles and miles of hairpin bends surrounded by lush tea plantations and lovely hilly vistas where the low clouds graze the horizon and sink down into the curves of the landscape giving it a real atmospheric mood.




The trip was dicey, to say the least. Frequently, we were overtaken by boy racers right into the path of oncoming trucks, motorbikes and dogs. Mostly, I just shut my eyes and hoped for the best. All of them made it past alive (including the dogs who nonchalantly sit in the middle of the road, lazily eyeing the trafic as it nearly runs over their tails).




We visited a couple of the tea plantations and sampled some of their offerings (iced tea for me - black currant, passion fruit and 'orchard burst' - yum).




The plantations are huge; camellia bushes as far as the eye can see. The workers usually live on sight, accommodation is provided, as is a Hindu temple, school and even health centre (Boh Plantation).




The highlands are not just famous for their tea, but also their strawberries which you can pick yourself and buy by the weight (everywhere you look, there are strawberry based souvenirs from hats and umbrellas to slippers and bath mats!). A Cameronian delicacy is strawberry jam and cream scones with a nice cup of tea or a refreshing glass of strawberry juice!




That done, I'm now sat by a hotel pool near KL International Airport where I will stay until I fly home tomorrow night.

The journey has come to an end now, we have successfully managed to negotiate our way around thousands of miles of Malaysia and Borneo by plane, train and automobile... not to mention on foot and by boat, through city, jungle and island! We've travelled through ten different airports, stayed in ten different hotels and visited goodness knows how many cities. It's been a busy trip and one hell of an adventure.

Now, where next?

Location:Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

Desert island bliss

I'm writing this from a desert island with rain hammering down like a million tiny bullets on the tin roof of the cabin. The thunder is so loud that if I closed my eyes I could be forgiven for thinking that there was a war going on outside. Bombs exploding right above my head, rumbling each time for what seems like minutes. The first crack made me jump right out of my seat as the ground underneath me shook and the walls rattled.




What, for the last three days, has been pure turquoise sky with puffy white clouds that never move and crystal clear water the colour of valuable gems is now one big wash of varying shades of slate. But for the thunder, the island is now silent - the villagers are all hiding inside their huts; the children have stopped playing in the water and the men have stopped repairing their boats.




The power is out and so is the Internet so I'm scribbling down my notes trying to ignore the explosions around me. There is no sign of this storm clearing any time soon.




I'm on Mabul, an island an hour away by boat from the mainland. It's a happy, feel good place with a community that works together. The island is tiny, you can easily walk around it in 20 minutes through the little shanty village where the sea gypsies live.




There are children playing everywhere, most of them toothless but each of them happy.




I had one run up and give my leg a hug and another run along side me and hold my hand. The water is their home and they splash in and out of it like fish.




They run, naked, down the beach and launch themselves belly first into the water, laughing all the way.




It's where the turtles come to lay their eggs before heading back out to sea. I'm staying at Scuba Junkie, one of the few dive resorts on the island. They are passionate about the future of our ocean and pay the locals 10 ringgit for every turtle egg they find - an incentive which stops them eating them instead. Each turtle lays around 120 eggs so it's an expensive operation! Those eggs are then transferred to their hatchery and released, when ready, back into the sea.




The money they pay out comes from their own profits, not the government so they are disappointed that not all of the eggs can be saved. But some is better than none and their work pays off for all of the divers and snorkellers who get to see the turtles, fully grown, at every turn - some up to a metre and a half. HUGE.




Scuba Junkie campaigns against a number of other environmental issues including shark finning. In the last thirty years sharks have almost been wiped out, taken only for their fins and then thrown back in the water to die.




They teach the villagers about the importance of keeping the beaches clean and have organised large scale litter picks to get rid of the debris washed up.




Even the cocktails are served in recycled water bottles - though not from the beach, I hope (that's a litre of Mai Tai I'm drinking there - yeah, I know how to live).



They also encourage guests to go and help teach English at the local school on Wednesday evenings. No teaching experience necessary, just a few interesting things to show the children.




There is not a lot to do here (if you don't like water) but a lot certainly gets done!




(Posted, belatedly, from Cameron Highlands)

Location:Mabul, Borneo

Monkeys and other creatures

Not content with a glimpse of a big floppy nose from behind a tree branch, we hired a car yesterday and drove three hours to Kota Kinabatangan for a wildlife river cruise. We hoped to see more proboscis monkeys, more orang-utan, Pygmy elephants and lots of bird life.

When we arrived we were a bit troubled by their apparent lack of other visitors. I.e. we were their only visitors! They only had three bottles of water and a can of coke in the fridge - we bought the lot; we'd left before lunch with nothing to eat or drink and were now ravenous! There was no food either so we'd have to wait until after the trip which was due to finish at 6.30pm.

Actually, it worked to our advantage being the only guests as we ended up on a private tour with a very knowledgable guide. We set off early and straight away saw a tree full of proboscis monkeys.




A dominant male with several wives and tiny babies! This was far more than I could have wished for - especially in the wild! It was a real lucky spotting!




You can easily pick out the dominant male - he's the one with the biggest nose and the fattest belly.




Their big noses look almost stuck on when you get a closer look. They are very comedic!




Immediately after seeing the family of proboscis, we saw a black hornbill sitting in the tree with his mate. You can tell which is the male by the colour of their beak - the male has an all white beak while the female's is all black and... erm... less horny.




In the same group of trees we also saw a lonely red leaf monkey. Normally they live in packs so it was unusual to see one alone like this. The guide said that he was drying off after the heavy rain. He was lying on his front across a branch with his arms and legs dangling off the edge.




After that we spotted more hornbills. Different types this time, a group of bushy crested hornbill (they always live together in groups of up to seven birds where other hornbills live alone or as part of a couple) and an oriental pied hornbill (the one in the photo below).




I asked if we'd see the elephants but the guide said that they were not at this point in the river yet. Shame. I had been really looking forward to seeing them.

On the hunt for orang-utan, we took a turn off down a narrower river towards a palm plantation where the orang-utan can usually be spotted. We saw a huge family of common macaque playing in the trees and the lillies growing at the river edge.




There were some tiny babies in amongst them but they weren't at all scared and came right up to the boat.




We continued up stream past a monkey bridge (a rope across the river with extra ropes hanging off it) which had been put there for the orang-utan as they can't swim. It also prevents the other monkeys from getting eaten by crocodiles as they try to cross the river.




We went as far as we could along the river but didn't see any orang-utan. Just a couple of men fishing. The guide pointed out a load of plastic bottles floating with their bottoms out along the edge of the river. This is where the fisherman have set fishing traps to catch crab and prawn. The bottles are just markers so that they don't lose their traps.




We turned around and made our way back with the hopes that we'd spot something in the trees. Nothing. The orang-utan were not interested in us today. We did spot a nest high in the canopy but the guide said that it had been abandoned - you could tell because it had turned brown already. The orang-utan use lots of green foliage when building their nests so if they were still living there it would be green. He thought they'd been gone for about a week.




Just as we were about to moor up, the guide squealed and nearly jumped out of the boat (he was so enthusiastic about things he must see every day). He'd spotted the most elusive of all of the hornbills - the rhinoceros hornbill - resting in a tree. I just managed to snap this one out of focus photo (it's hard using a big telephoto lens in a rocking boat with a moving subject!) before we were spotted and he flew off. What a perfect end to the day!




Note: if you ever hire a car in Borneo, never ask for a half tank of petrol! Fill that bugger up! On the way back from Kinabatangan, we passed one petrol station which was under construction, one which was dry, one which was closed and then not a single one for three hours until we got back to Sandakan! Luckily, the fuel light never came on but I was nervous, nevertheless!

Watch out for pot holes too - in some places it looked like a volcano had erupted!

Location:Sabah, Borneo, Kota Kinnabatangan

Even the most intrepid explorer deserves a break!

After a week of long and exhausting treks and losing half our body weight in sweat, we have taken a few days to relax.

On the last morning in Gunung Mulu, we took a pleasant boat ride up the river to see the Wind Cave (not where you go for a cure for flatulence, the echoes would be frightening - there is just a wind passage between this and Clear Water) and Ladies Cave (there is a shadow created by a stalagmite which supposedly looks like a lady. I thought it looked like one of the wise men) followed by Clear Water Cave.




On the way we stopped in a Penan village for a handicraft market. The Penan people are a nomadic tribe (or at least 200 of them out of the 10,000 living in Sarawak still are, most are now settled in one place). They are a gentle, softly spoken people with little gender divide. Although there is a headman there is no real hierarchy, just a strong belief in sharing with one another and never taking more than necessary.




The Penan use a complex system of sign language in the jungle; complicated arrangements of twigs and leaves give messages to fellow Penan as to the state of the local hunting and the mood of the person leaving the message.

After visiting the Penan people, we continued along the river to the caves. The inside of the caves was nothing special, especially in comparison to the rock formations in Lang's cave and the millions of bats in Deer cave, the main attraction was a refreshing swim in the ice cold, crystal clear water which flows from an underwater entrance to Clear Water cave.

The water was so cold that even getting up to my hips in it took my breath away! Needless to say, I did not go any further!




In the afternoon we caught a flight to Sandakkan in Sabah. The flight was turbulent and my stomach nearly hit the ceiling on a number of occasions but the bad weather outside resulted in some lovely cloud formations and light shows.




Sandakan is a scruffy and extremely busy little town on the waterfront, there is not a lot to do here other than laze around the pool, which is fine by me for a couple of days - it will give my feet a rest!

Today we visited Agnes Keith's house. Her husband was a government official here for over 20 years and set up the forestry commission. As the only Canadian woman in a British colony and feeling left out of the British ladies community, Agnes began to write articles for US papers about her time here in Borneo. One of the papers collected all her articles and put them together as a book (Land Below the Wind). When she and her family were taken as prisoners of war during the second world war, she wrote notes on anything she could find and then sewed them into her son's toys, hid them in her shoes and buried them in tins in the ground. When they were finally released, years later, they dug up all of those notes to make the book "Three Came Home".

It was really interesting to read all about her life, to stand in her office and look at the type writer on which she wrote some of her best works.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing by the pool. A very well earned break!

Location:Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia

Into the wild

From Kuching we went even deeper into the jungle in Gunung Mulu.

The airport is tiny, the runway is pretty much a car park but as soon as I stepped off the plane I was in love with the place; tiny brightly coloured huts in the foreground and dense green jungle with a hazy backdrop of blue mountains shrouded in low cloud.




We stayed right inside Mulu National Park in a garden bungalow with nothing but the sounds of the jungle to disturb us. Crickets, frogs, birds, geckos and other creatures, each with its own distinctive call.




When we arrived at dusk, we decided to have a little trek to Moonmilk cave. It's one that you can do without a guide and is supposed to be good for bird spotting at that time of day. It was no leisurely stroll. The humidity was unbearable, we were drenched within minutes. Although there were paths all the way, most of it was up steps - hundreds and hundreds of steps! After about an hour we reached the cave and bumped into a couple of other people staying in the park.

We all walked through the cave together and came out the other side to a beautiful sunset burning through the canopy. After taking a few photos, we presumed that the trek would carry on in a loop and take us back to the bungalow so we all continued walking. We took our time, taking photos of all kinds of giant bugs on the way. I saw my first fire flies, twinkling amongst the trees like strings of fairy lights.




After walking for over an hour, we came to yet more stairs and had the sudden feeling of deja vu... Are these not the steps we walked up to get to Moonmilk? Have we just circled back on our selves? No. Worse. In the dark, we'd walked in a straight line in the wrong direction (1.5km) and reached the next set of caves. The walk back was now 3km. The jungle was dark. And hot. We had one small bottle of water left between the four of us. And did I mention the giant bugs? We had no choice but to turn around and double back on ourselves.

When you go into the jungle, you have to let security know where you are going and what time you expect to be back. We were due back an hour ago so I was worried they'd be out looking for us! The trek back was hard, we were all exhausted and pretty hungry. We walked and walked and walked with the sounds of the jungle as our power song. We eventually made it back to camp just before 9pm. What was meant to be a 45 minute walk had turned into a four hour hike!

On the plus side, I discovered glow in the dark berries...or was I hallucinating from dehydration?

No rest for the clinically insane wicked. The next day was more trekking! 3km in the morning for the canopy walk.




At 480 metres long, it's the longest tree canopy in the world. At 30m high, if you look down, your guts will make it back down long before you do!




Walking along each section was ok until the person behind you stepped onto the planks and almost catapulted you out of the canopy! Not for the feint of heart (or weak of bowel)!




After lunch we had a 6km walk to see Deer and Langs caves. The guide was great, he was extremely knowledgable and stopped to show us every weird creepy crawly, strange climbing plant and explain the meaning of each jungle call and what animal made it. I wanted to hold his hand and skip through the jungle, excited to learn about the next bug! He was even able to explain what my glow in the dark berries were (I should see a doctor if that doesn't clear up soon) - they work the same way as fire flies - not by leaving them in direct sunlight all day as I thought, but with bioluminescence. I should have brought him an apple because I was teachers pet by the end! I found the walk more interesting than the caves themselves, although they were pretty impressive!

Langs cave is full of some really interesting rock formations, grown drip by drip over the millennia.




Deer cave is much bigger and was featured on BBC's Planet Earth for the millions of wrinkle lipped bats living inside. The sound inside was deafening and the smell... well, millions of bats produce a lot of guano. A thirty metre high pile of guano to be exact! The smell permeates your clothes and sticks to your nostrils like a pint of spilled milk in a hot car!




At dusk, all of the visitors are ushered down to the observatory to watch the bats fly out in teams like clouds of black smoke for their evening hunt.




It's a very strange thing to watch, you can't make out the shape of a single bat, they just merge into one flowing stream of squeaking silhouette.




The walk back was another dark one, we managed not to get lost. Success!

Location:Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia

The Borneo Adventure begins!

The last few days have been an amazing adventure.

On Saturday we went to the Semenggoh Orang-utan rehabilitation centre. I was so excited to see an endangered species that I almost exploded in a fountain of glitter! There are only 20-27,000 orang-utan left in the wild and 18 of them live here; one big male (you'd think he was the boss but his wife, Delima, definitely wears the trousers in that household!) another younger male, six females and ten youngsters.




The great thing about the centre is that it is enclosed to keep poachers out but the orang-utan are free to come and go as they please so a lot of their time is spent out in the wild. They just come in for feeding times at 9am and 3pm and visitors are allowed in for two hours around both feeding times - the gates are closed the rest of the time. It only costs 3 ringgit to get in (about 60p) - I would have happily paid more for what was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.




We got there in time for their afternoon feed and after waiting for what seemed like forever, there was a sudden rustle in the tree tops as a mum and her baby started to scope out what was on offer. Not long after, another lone orang-utan started to make his way down - swinging through vines and hanging upside down to get a good look at us all. Soon there was another mum and baby and two more juveniles.




The rangers warned us all to be very careful - although they look very docile mums can be very protective when there are children around, and have been known to attack humans for getting too close. They will even attack you for a bottle of water so you have to keep everything out of their sight in your bag. Delima is the most dangerous - far worse than the big male. Her nickname is Hot Momma because of her fiery temper. I got to talk to one of the rangers and he showed me his hands - only nine and a half fingers, others had whole fingers bitten off!




I was surprised how much like human mums they were - giving kisses and cuddles, holding out coconuts for the babies to drink from, teaching them to climb and even telling them off when they got out of hand. One of the babies was getting a bit giddy and showing off to his audience by sitting on a bendy tree branch and catapulting himself on to his mum's head - she let him get away with it a couple of times but then gave him a clip round the ear when she got fed up!




The ranger explained that the babies will stay with their mums until they are about four years old, sometimes eight (depending how much the mum loves them) and will be full grown by 15 years old when they will start to have babies of their own. Delima is an experienced 27 year old mum.




As I was leaving the centre, I couldn't quite believe what I had just seen. I feel so privileged to have seen these beautiful, sensitive creatures in their own habitat instead of behind bars in a zoo. Not many people will get that opportunity, I can only hope that the work of centres like this one will continue to help increase the numbers and the orang-utan manage to fight their way off the endangered list.




Yesterday we went by boat to Bako National Park to see another endangered species - the proboscis (or big nosed) monkey. They are only able to survive in Borneo in what is an ever shrinking environment due to deforestation. There are only 3000 left in the wild and I was lucky enough to see five of them.




They often come down to the beach and forage in the mangrove swamps but we only managed to see them high up in the trees.




They are a truly strange creature - their big floppy nose is not used for smelling, but for amplifying their call to attract a mate. They have developed webbed hands and feet to become the worlds best primate swimmer, allowing them to make a speedy getaway when they see a crocodile - they often dive out of the trees and belly flop strait into the water.




I desperately wanted to get a good look at one and to have seen one on the beach but just seeing them swinging through the canopy and dozing in the trees was an experience in itself.




The island is also home to lots of wild boar, silver monkeys and various rare birds and flowers. There are a number of different treks of varying lengths but walking through the jungle is like doing star jumps in a sauna - pretty horrible!




As we were about to board the return boat, thunder started to rumble in the distance. Half way back, they sky turned black, lit only by flashes of lightning. The rain was so heavy that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, waves were crashing high around us and coming right over the front of the boat, the driver made us come and hide in the back. By the time we got back to the port,we looked like we'd swum back - my boots were full of water and were still wet this morning!

Location:Kuching, Borneo, Malaysia