Organized Tours in Borneo

My journey into Sabah, on the island of Borneo, was a long one. I woke at 3:30am in Kuta, Bali and flew to Singapore. I had to convince the security guards to let me into the airport. No one had told me you need your ticket conformation to get in. I watched the sunrise over Bali from the plane. I could see the volcano mountains on Bali and Rinjani on Lombok. (I climbed that bastard!) Once in Singapore, to took the train into the city and camped out at Lau Pa Sat Food Market for 5 hours. When I arrived, the place was almost empty, but as lunch time rolled around, all of the worker from the financial district descended for their feeding time. The place was packed! The variety of food sold in the market was fascinating: Indian, Korean, Malay, Chinese, Western, rice, soup, kebabs, noodles, the list is endless. It got so full that a lady asked if she could share my table with me. She was a lovely Indian lady and we talked about my travels through India and what I'd thought of the country. She mentioned that her husband was a novelist and that he'd recently published his first novel, that it was set in India and would I be interested in reading it. I said 'sure' and she went back to her office to get a copy. (A week later I started the book on a long bus ride but didn't make it through the first 100 pages. You know what listening to an Indian speak English as a second language is like? This book was like reading that conversation. I left it in Kota Kinabalu (KK), maybe someone with more patience than me will pick it up.) Eventually, I ate my own lunch in the market and then headed across the causeway, into Malaysia. My flight from Johor Bahru was delayed by three hours, due to inclement weather in (KK). By the time I arrived in KK at 2:30am, I'd been travelling in 3 countries in the past 24hours. Suffice to say, I was exhausted. Thank goodness for the kindness of CouchSurfers. My host, Solene, met me at the airport (despite the ridiculous hour) and we headed to her apartment in Beverly Hills. :) During the day that I spent in KK I went snorkeling on and walked the circumference of Mamutik Island, had fresh fish dinner with two other CS'ers (a local from KK and a traveller from Charlotte, NC), we had shesha on the pier and finished the evening with pedicures and foot scrubs! The next morning I headed to the bus station for my 7 hour bus to Sepilok, home of the infamous Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. The morning I went to the Centre was overcast and rainy, the boardwalk was stuffed with shutter happy tourists and only two orangutangs came to the feeding platforms. While they were fascinating to watch, I can't say I'd go back again, or recommend it to someone else. All was not lost though, my guesthouse was able to arrange a river/jungle tour for me! The bus picked us up in Sandakan and away we sped, to the Kinabatagan River and it's surrounding jungle! It was a wonderful 3 day/2 night adventure. We went on 2 morning and 2 afternoon river cruises, 2 night walks in the jungle and an afternoon jungle walk to an oxbow lake. We saw wild orangutangs up close, hanging out in a fig tree, munching away at his breakfast. There were Probiscuis Monkeys with their long wagging noses, macaques, snakes, an alligator and countless hornbills and other birds. On the night walks we saw sleeping Kingfishers and two small jungle cats! And on the afternoon jungle walk, we became covered in MUD! The lodge had gumboots you could rent, $3.50 for the three days, but I opted to go in my trainers and deal with the consequences. :) By the end, my shoes looked like they were made of mud. Thankfully they dried out in time for me to climb Kinabalu!

Once again I was climbing in the dark with a faulty flashlight, not enough warm clothing and the end was not in sight. At least I wasn't hungry this time! :D The climb up Kinabalu was tough, at 4,095 meters, the summit is COLD and shrouded in a cloud when we were there, so it was wet as well and there was no chance of watching the sunrise. Pity, as that's why we were up there at such a god awful time of day. Still, at least we made it! One of the most impressive parts of the hike was knowing that everything in the lodge and the materials for the lodge itself, are all brought up on foot! Now I understand why food and accommodation on the mountain is so expensive. And the food was fabulous! We had four buffet meals, each with a large selection of dishes. Crazy. Although I signed up for the hike on my own, I met a fellow Canadian, two Italians and a Frenchman to share the cost of a guide and hike with. We had a good time together and we were the first ones down the mountain on the second day! We were pretty proud of ourselves.

I spent my last few days in KK, recovering from the hike and catching up on Internets, journal writing, sleep, and just relaxing. Today I boarded a plane for Penang, but we were diverted to the island of Langkawi first, because the weather in Penang was not conducive to landing a plan. While the plane re-fueled we weren't allowed to de-board. :( They received news that the weather had improved in Penang, so we took off and landed safely at our intended destination. And here I was think I'd gotten a free ride to Langkawi. Oh well. I'm in Penang for a few days and then I'm boarding a train for Bangkok! Twenty-two hours on a train, it should be interesting....

Bali: The Last Adventure

After a day of recovery in Kuta, I met Cera at the airport and thus started 7 days of crazy fun! We relaxed in Kuta for one night and the next day picked up a Jeep Suzuki and went to explore Bali by car. To rent a car in Bali you only need to provide your passport number, the name of the hotel you stayed at the night before and your intended return date. That's it. No insurance policy, no license check, no nothing. It was easy. And for only $15USD a day too! I let Cera do all the driving. I don't like driving at home, let alone in a stick-shift, in a foreign country where they drive on the other side of the road, and while it isn't the nightmare chaos of India, it's not exactly Western structure either. There was a falling apart road map in the glove compartment and between that and my limited prior knowledge of Bali we managed to make it out of the city in one piece! Once out on the coastal highway, the going was easy, the views of the ocean fantastic and the music on the radio, well it was the latest club music! We had a good drive to your first town, Padang Bai, a small fishing town. After checking in, we went to find Blue Lagoon, and hopefully go snorkeling. We took the wrong turn at the fork in the road, but we found a cool water shrine on the cliff. :) After attempting to walking through the bush over to the lagoon, we admitted defeat and went back to the road. We found the lagoon, but the tide was way out and the water was too choppy to snorkel, so we clambered over the rocks, searched for shells and urchins and coral and anything else interesting. That evening we had lunch at a food stall set up in front of the bus station. We sat down and looked around expectantly. They guy behind the counter said, “What do you want?” “What do you have”?” “Chicken or catfish” Cera and I exchange a look, “We'll take the catfish!” 10 minutes later we had our meal: whole, fresh, fried catfish in a sweet chili sauce with rice and a few veggies. It was delightful. I wonder what the shop-owners thought of these two white girls eating at the local food stand. For desert we headed over to the neighbouring stand and ordered two pancake like concoctions sprinkled with chocolate pieces and drizzled with sweet milk. The whole ensemble (dinner and dessert) cost less that $10 for the two of us. :) The following morning we went back to Blue Lagoon, at proper high tide. The beach was transformed. When the tide comes in, it comes ALL the way in, and the bay was full of small bobbing boats, their passengers exploring the surrounding coal vie scuba or diving gear. We had a fantastic time looking down at the coral we'd been walking on the previous evening. There were so many different types of fish and coral! It was beautiful!! After we'd had our fill we packed up and headed into town for lunch. As we were waiting for our meal, three mahi-mahi were delivered to the eatery and the proprietor and his helper cut them up, sitting on the side of the road. It was fascinating to watch. The fish were spectacular shades of blue, green and grey. And the contrast of their bright red blood made quite the picture. We spent the rest of the day driving up, up, up the volcano, to the crater lake. Cera did and amazing job navigating the narrow, windy, sharp curved road. We did have to stop a few times to give both our hearts a breather though. :P Some of those lorries come barrelling around the corner, half in your lane and it scares the living day-lights outta you. One of our stops was along the crater rim, to take photos of the lake below. There was a gang of ladies there, waiting to pounce on the tourists and try their hardest to get them to buy something. Cera bought some postcards and a frangipani clip from one lady, causing all the rest to INSIST that she had to buy something from them too! We escaped into the jeep and rode away as fast as possible. :P Not too much further on down the road, we were stopped by ladies standing in the middle of the road, waving their arms, waiting for unsuspecting tourists to stop and enquire about what was going on. We rolled down the window and one lady shoved a bag of flower offerings and intense sticks into the vehicle, she attached a few decorations onto the window shield, gave us further offerings for the dashboard, stuck rice on our forehead and tied a ceremonial hat on our head. She then said a blessing for both us and the vehicle, wishing us husbands, kids and safe travels. After all of this, she demanded payment of $20. We gave her $10 and sped away. Besides a few stares and thumbs up at our newly acquired decoration, we arrived at the hotel without further incident. :) The excitement of the day was not over yet though. Soon after arriving, Cera wanted to rinse the sand off her toes, to prevent infection. She set her foot on the sink, and it came crashing off the wall making a stupendous clatter!! We both stood in shock for a few seconds before going to inform the owner. They very calmly observed the damage and moved us to a new room. We set off for town before we could inflict cause any more catastrophes in our room! We thought we'd take a nice stroll into town for dinner and make it back before total darkness. We walked and admired the scenery and marvelled at the volcano and were followed by a cute puppy and stopped to take photos and avoided being run over by the ginormous lorries and walked some more. Eventually though, dusk was falling quickly and we still had no idea how far away 'town' was. We decided it would be better to turn back now and get the jeep than continue on and risk having to walk home in the dark. We made the right choice! Town was still quite a ways further on, and our food took AGES to arrive, so by the time we left it was pitch dark outside, and we were cold and tired, not in the mood to walk back. Good thing we had the jeep. :) In the morning we decided to make an attempt at climbing the volcano. The guide book said the locals would try and convince you of the necessity of a guide, but that you could do the climb on your own and there was a parking area only 45min-1hr. from the top. We set off. The locals were very helpful in pointing us in the right direction, but not as far as the parking lot. As the book had said, they insisted we needed a guide and refused to show us the way unless we hired one of them. We declined and decided to have a different adventure: Can we drive around the mountain? What else are you to do when you have your own set of wheels?! :D We were the only car on the road (besides lorries and motos) and so we got quite a few stares and thumbs up. Two white girls driving a jeep in the middle of rural Bali! The road wound all the way around the mountain, through young forests, lava beds, and small villages and we saw a few mining excavations. That explains all the lorries. The last 5km UP the crater rim were the best, steep, narrow, hair-pin turns and switchbacks that were no longer than 2 lorries. We managed to pull up behind a lorry and so didn't have to worry about running into anyone on their way down. :) The road to Ubud passed by with only one small incident, we were stopped at a police check. The requested to see Cera's international drivers license (which she'd left in Mumbai, not thinking she'd be driving in Bali). We succeeded in evading any sticking situations with the payment of a small 'fine,' $20. Ubud was shoppers paradise for Cera, as I thought it might be. It is the handicrafts capital of Bali. I did a bit of shopping myself and afterwards we enjoyed a lovely dinner at a Cuban restaurant, complete with a band playing Latino music! We spent the next day taking photos of the ever amusing monkeys in the Monkey Forest (one of them STOLE my water bottle! I had to get a park warden to use his slingshot to get it back) and adventuring up a small river, wading up to our waists before deciding we should probably turn back and head for Kuta. The drive to Kuta was a long, hot, traffic-ridden afternoon. Somehow we entered Kuta from the north (as I'd planned) but then ended up around the air port (south of Kuta) without ever seeing Kuta. I have no idea what happened and at one point our destination was only a few hundred meters away, but due to one way roads it took us another 30min. to get there. :P We dropped the car off, met up with Rosie and went to watch one final sunset over Kuta Beach. That evening, Rosie and I decided to go out one last time together. It wasn't the same without the other two (Beth and Sierra) who'd been with us for the last two nights our in Kuta. Nevertheless, we had a good night out and Rosie managed to wake up at the crack of dawn to catch her plane home. Cera and I woke at a more reasonable hour and went to find a shop that had caught her eye. She ended up buying one of the baskets they had, requiring us to go search for a piece of luggage big enough to hold said basket! You know you've been a proper tourist when you have to buy luggage to take all the stuff you've acquired on your holiday home! That afternoon, after I'd sent Cera on her way, I was walking along the beach and realized I was on my own for the first time in 5.5 months, without any plans to meet up with friends at any point in the future. It was a rather lonely thought, but I tried not to dwell on it for too long. I spent my last day and a half in Kuta meandering through town, reading on the beach, eating pastries and watching films. A nice break from all the crazy travels I'd been doing recently. Next stop: Borneo!  

Photos from the Volcano

The map of our trail

Porters getting their loads ready

LUNCH!!

How they haul their load up the mountain I will never know

Me and my VERY handy walking stick

The Beast aka Mount Rinjani

THE TOP!

Three thousand, seven hundred and seventy-six meters

It was dark. I didn't have a flashlight. The guide in front of me did, but he was bounding on ahead. I was cold, I couldn't feel my toes, I was sweating, I was tired, I was hungry. The wind was atrocious. How they expected you to climb 1,100m on tea and a few biscuit crackers is beyond me. And that had been 2 hours ago. And we still had another hour and a half to go. Every step forward hurt like a mother f... and the looming summit never seemed to get any closer, even though we'd been climbing for an hour and a half. The last hour was the worst, a never ending incline of loose rock where each step had to be placed just so, otherwise you ended up on all fours, 3 feet below where you fell. It was the longest morning ever. BUT. I MADE IT! Four out of the eleven in our group had chosen to conquer the summit and all four of us made it. We were SO proud of ourselves. And the view from the top was totally worth every agonizing step. The sunrise, the clouds, the shadow of the mountain, the coastline, the smaller cone in the crater lake, the whole island of Lombok was laid out below us. 3,776m is a LONG way up. And I made it.

I first heard of Rinjani when I met up with Beth and Sierra in Bali. They had been in Indonesia for two weeks already and they Rinjani was one of their adventures. They said it was hell, but they were glad they did it. That's all the encouragement I needed to decided to do it myself. :) They filled me in on all the useful things to know before going; take snacks, buy a pair of shoes and you'll need warm clothes. Take a flashlight, don't take your water-bottle, the porters carry water for you, remember your swimsuit for the hot-springs. Without this advice I would've been screwed.

I can't say that I would do the trek again, but I'm certainly glad I did it this one time. In two weeks I plan on climbing Mount Kinabalu the highest peak in SE Asia. I've heard it's an easier climb than Rinjani though, so I'm all set. :)

I was picked up from my home-stay at 5am for a 2-hour journey to Senaru, where we were fed breakfast (banana pancakes and tea), where our bags would stay for the three days we were on the mountain and where I met the rest of the group I'd be travelling with. We were 11 in total: 1 couple from Germany, 2 girls from Sweden, a single guy and a couple from Holland, 3 friends from Singapore. I was the only native English speaker. Lucky for me everyone else learned English in school. :) We loaded into the back of a pick-up and drove to the trail head where we had to check in with the National Park. I found it ironic that while the local porters and guides who took us up the mountain had absolutely no regard for clean camping, the tags we were given to wear on our bags urge you to 'take only photos, leave only footprints, use only the air.' The trails were strewn with candy wrappers and cigarette butts (the guides and porters lite up like smokestacks any chance they had), the campsites were littered with toilet paper, ramen noodle packages egg shells, banana peels, empty water bottles, etc. It was sad.

The first day we started at 601m and climbed to 2641m in 7 hours. We stopped every 40 mins. or so for water and a break. The lunch break took an hour. I guess when you have someone else cooking your meals and carrying your tent you can't complain about how long it takes to get lunch ready. :P

Camp that night was at 2,641m. We were above the clouds and the view was spectacular. We could see Mount Agung (3,142m) on Bali, and the Gili Islands, of the Northwest side of Lombok. While the porter set up camp I climbed up to the rim for my first proper look at the volcano. It's big, and intimidating, and a long way away and it's going to take a whole lotta determination and stubbornness to get me up it. :P It get cold quickly after the sun goes down so we only stay out late enough to watch the stars come out (there's SO many and I saw the Big Dipper, I didn't know you could see if from the Southern Hemisphere) and then we head to bed. As there an uneven amount of people, I'm in a tent on my own, which is ok, but I froze me ass off. It may have been a combination of only 1 person in the tent+inadequate sleeping attire+a not very warm sleeping bag + the freezing temperature outside. :P

On the second day we descended to the crater lake and some hot springs. They were gorgeous. It looked like something out of Lord of the Rings; lush green valley, tumbling waterfalls, boulder strewn river bed, white puffy clouds above and not an ATM is sight. Glorious!

The hike back up the other side of the rim was not fun. Back up 700m, through the clouds, scrambling up the scree and volcanic rock. The trail is without switch-backs, so most of the UP, is just that, UP, no going back and forth, back and forth. I spent about an hour hiking on my own. I passed a marker that said '11.5km. 10-15mins later I passed another maker, this one said '11km.' I was slightly worried that I'd turned myself around and was heading the wrong way. As the porters, guides and local hikers (and probably many of the tourists as well) have no regard for staying on one path, there are many trails carved into the mountain, as old ones become too steep or all of the rocks have eroded away, turning that trail into a slide. Not to worry though, soon enough I heard people behind me, some of the porters and a girl from my group had caught up with me, I wasn't lost. :)

We arrived at that nights camp in the early afternoon, so we had a few hours to kill before dinner and bedtime. I walked down to a fresh water source to wash out my socks, they had been black, but were now brown with dust and dirt. I only had the one pair and I needed them to be clean for the ascent to the summit.

Finally, the last day, the day we summit Mount Rinjai. Only 4 of the 11 out of our group decided to go up. We left at 3am, after a breakfast of tea and biscuits/crackers (how they expected us to make it up to the top on just that I have no idea. I'm SO thankful Beth and Sierra told be to take snacks. I would've passed out from hunger otherwise). As it says at the beginning of this post, we all made it. Despite the cold and the pain and the dark and the wind and the never ending climb up. :)

On the trek back down, I spent my share of time on my ass. Sliding down sand/rock isn't nearly as enjoyable as sliding down snow. :( The porters had breakfast ready for us back at camp, deep fried bananas, toast, egg omelet and coffee. After fending off the cheeky monkeys who waited eagerly for our attention to leave our meal so they could snatch it out of our hands, we downed the food, trying to restore our caloric balance.

On the hike out, after slipping and nearly rolling down the hill too many times for my comfort, I took my shoes off and did most of the rest of the hike barefoot, having more traction that way than with my sandals. After our stop for lunch, I decided to run/race walk the rest of the way and see how fast I could make it out. Apparently I hadn't pushed myself hard enough going up the mountain and I had energy left to run out. I think I'm a little crazy. As I was the only one crazy enough to do this, I was on my own for most of the way out. The landscape was so different than on the hike in. Most of the trail passed over undulating grassland, not the jungle forest that we passed on the way up two days previously.

While we waited for the buses that would take us back to Senaru (where our bags were), the porters where quick to pop into the local shop to stock up on cigarettes, not water or snacks, fags. I don't know how they make it up the mountain twice a week, smoking the way they do.

So, I made it. And now I'm back on Bali, in Kuta, waiting for Cera to arrive tomorrow. Only one more week here and them I'm going to Malaysian Borneo!!