Naughty Monkeys and Leaving Borneo

Day 13-14, July 29-30, 2008 – No Malaria

I just landed in Penang which is an Island on the northern west coast of peninsular Malaysia. Though it is dark out, I am immediately struck by the modernity of the island. The guidebooks make it sound like some small, backwater place (maybe where I am going it is… as it is an hour taxi ride from the airport) but all I have seen so far is condos, shopping centers, and hotels. I also think that my driver is none to happy to have me due to the distance he has to cover to haul me to Batu Feringghi (the city where I am staying) and back. More about Penang later though since I just showed up.

Yesterday, I took a daytrip to Bako National Park which is located about an hour from Kuching. That hour is divided into about a half-hour in a car and about a half-hour in a boat as the park is inaccessible by road.

The park is famous for its diverse wildlife including the proboscis monkey, the bearded pig, snakes, and monkeys. I was fortunate to see all of these up close both on the rainforest trek that I took and also just hanging out around the park lodge. I also received what I have been calling the “No Feed Monkey” speech. Everyplace that there are primates of any kind, one gets the “No Feed Monkey” speech. The monkeys are cute but apparently, they can also be rabid and aggressive. Feeding them only makes them more so. I got the impression that, if they were not protected, the park staff would like to do away with the macaques particularly. While on the island, I also got to swim in the South China Sea. The park is beautiful as you can see in the pictures (though they never really do the real sight justice).

Last night, I met my new friends Disney and David out for food and drinks and we eventually met up with several other of Disney’s buddies. One of Disney’s friends was an Iban guy whose family left the long-house lifestyle for the city and he was very interested in my own experience.

These guys also wouldn’t let me pay for a thing. In return, although we did not get to play, I introduced them to the concepts of Cups which I am sure will be making its Malay debut in the very near future.

Today I just walked around to say goodbye to Kuching. I am sad to leave the city. It was a very friendly, welcoming place where I made some good friends and had some incredible were really great. Not only did they invite me out and show me the town, they experiences. If my lifetime travels ever take me back there, I will not be upset by it.

The Jungle

Day 11-12, July 27-28 – No Malaria (I may have some other stuff going on but no malaria)

This is going to be a long, picture filled entry so make sure that you have a few minutes…

I really don’t even know where to begin. I guess I’ll start with my physical condition. I am filthy…no, filthy is too clean. I am putrid. I have mud all over me: river mud, village mud, jungle mud, long-house mud, bed mud (I think). I didn’t know that so many types of mud existed. I also have, what has tentatively been identified as, chicken blood spattered on my pants but from which chicken, I do not know. Throw in a healthy few gallons of sweat and funk and you start to get the picture. Oh, I also haven’t shaved in a week so I have hair on my upper lip and chin of which any eighth grade boy would be proud. Look out ladies…no seriously…look out, get away, I’m disgusting.

You may be wondering why I am so disgusting. I am currently on the way back to Kuching from my jungle adventure. It was quite an incredible experience.

I was picked up yesterday morning by the tour company at my hotel and our first stop was the orangutan preserve near Kuching. The preserve is home base for 24 oranutans that are either permanent residents or being rehabbed to live back out in the jungle on their own. It is situated on the edge of the jungle near Kuching and while it is not huge, the orangutans can roam in or out at free will. Some stay near the preserve. Some decide they don’t need it anymore and just decide to head out on their own. The original residents of the preserve are animals that were either bought off of the black market or from exotic pet dealers and just would not survive in the wild. The rest of the residents are the children and grandchildren of those originals which, upon being ready to live on their own, are taken further inland and released into the wild.

When you sign-up to go to the preserve, you are warned repeatedly that you only have a 50/50 chance of seeing any orangutans because most of them roam distances and aren’t always by observations areas. They do put food out for them twice a day but any individual orangutan only comes to eat every few days so there is no guarantee that they won’t pass up a tasty free meal. Suckers!

We got very lucky and I lost count of the number around us; And when I say around us, I mean all around us. We as tourists are in their habitat so, while an observation area exists, it is not separated from the orangutans and they can be any distance and direction from you including right over your head. I was told not to worry though because the last tourist bit was over two years ago. I think that the orangutans have mixed feelings about being stared at daily. They had reactions that ranged from apathy, curiosity, and mischief. As I was walking into the observation area, I felt raindrops and thought that it started raining. However, it was a young orangutan, unseen by me, that was shaking a tree so the water fell on us and then it laughed. This same one also was breaking off small branches and throwing them at tourists later in the morning. It was a big day for the park rangers, too. One of the females had given birth a few weeks ago and hadn’t come around at all since then. She decided to give us a visit yesterday morning, though, and show off her new baby for the first time. Watching the apes move in the trees and seeing their faces up close was an incredible experience and one that I will not ever forget.

From there, we began the long trek to the Iban long-house. I guess that I should explain who “we” is and also what an “Iban long-house” is. “We” is my tour group. Traveling alone, sometimes you get thrust into funny and bizarre situations. This was no exception. My group consistent of two guides (more on them later) and 11 Germans of which one spoke enough English for me to get any point across. For the past day and a half, I have often felt like I was in some strange Eurotrip film what with all of the constant German muttering and laughing. I was also a big fan of the German cell-phone techno at 6:30 this morning.

My two guides were great, spoke passable to good English, and were incredibly knowledgeable about the jungle. I learned things like how a pitcher plant eats, that Borneo has a lot of cobras but not spitting cobras, and how to properly dig the flesh out of a cobra bite and apply the proper plants as to not die. Let’s hope I never have to use some of this very practical knowledge. I also learned a great deal about the variety of bananas here and how they are named. A sample of a conversation with my guide, Kenny, went something like this.

Kenny: We have banana that is very good to feed the baby. It called the baby banana.

David: Interesting

Kenny: We have banana that is better to eat when it still green. It called green banana

David: Fascinating

Kenny: We have banana that look like horn of rhinoceros. It called horn banana

David: Nice

Kenny: We have banana that is better to eat after it turn black. Do you know what we call that?

David: Black Banana?

Kenny: How you know that?


Seriously, these guys were first class and made the experience much richer. They also have relationships with the Iban villages that were very beneficial.

The Iban are one of the three indigenous tribes of Sarawak and traditionally live in jungle long-houses. Of those that still remain in the jungle (many are drawn to the city), they are spread out in around 5000 long-house communities. About 50 accept tourists into their communities. I should also mention that, until recently, the Iban were a head-hunting tribe. This was officially ended sometime in the 60’s but there are still a few old men that have the significant neck tattoo which indicates a successful decapitation. Crazy! Skulls are still displayed in the long-houses as trophies of past victories over enemies.

A jungle long-house community has one main building that is for living, socializing, and relaxing. Each family in the village has their own “apartment” in this house and the chief lives in the middle. If they need room for another family, they simply build onto the end of the house until they run out of land. Once that happens, they will start a new long-house close to the original. In addition to the long-house, there are buildings for animals, storage, worship (the Iban are Christian), and guests. We stayed in the guest long-house near the river and the roosters.

Getting to the Lemanek River long-houses, where the Iban live, is an adventure by itself. It is approximately 250 kilometers from Kuching and is a several hour trip. On the way, one will pass bustling metropolises like Serian and Lachau. Serian has a huge market which was interesting to walk around. Lachau, however, is the last vestige of civilization before one falls off of the edge of the earth. It consists of a few small shops that survive off of the tour industry’s travel to the Iban.

After a 4 hour bus ride, it is off to the river for a 1.5 hour long-boat ride to our long-house. Skimming along through the jungle passing nothing but the occasional Iban community was very Apocalypse Now. Aside from the boat almost capsizing about 10 times, it was also very relaxing.

Upon arrival at the long-house, we got a tour of the life of the Iban. By any standards, and particularly by American ones, these people live in absolute squalor. It was the first time that I have seen a standard of living so different from what I know that I couldn’t imagine human beings existing like that. The long-houses are not much more than patch-work wood structures with sheet-metal roofs. There is no electricity other than an emergency generator and the interiors have loose plank floors beneath which are some storage and animal pens.

Despite the stark contrast between our lives, the Iban were amazing hosts. They welcomed us into their homes and shared what they had. Granted, I am sure that they are receiving something for their troubles but the effort was second to none and appreciated. I bet that it would be easy to go through the motions for what to them must be just another group of tourists but they made us feel like we were the only guests that ever visited. We got to witness several traditions:

During the first tour, we spent some time in the medicine man’s room, the urgent care clinic of the village, and partook in some of the jungles more exotic fruits and spirits. We had a little plum-like fruit that was so sour that it made biting into a lime seem downright sweet. In the medicine man room, we also drank enough village-brewed rice wine and rice whiskey to kill a horse. This continued for several hours outside of the medicine room, also. The Iban, from a short observation, could all be alcoholics. The sheer amount of rice whiskey consumed by us and our hosts was staggering. The chief was even having a shot this morning before the blowgun demonstration. This stuff is no joke either: Think bad sake but very strong with a little gasoline added for an extra kick.

After dark, we went back to the long-house for some traditional Iban dance. It was interesting to watch the tribe perform such a peaceful dance underneath the skulls of their enemies. After the dances, it was rice-whiskey all around. Some of the tribe, the Germans, and I were probably a little over-served. The highlight was watching the chief get so drunk that he was putting cigarettes out on the wood floor of the wood long-house. Call me crazy but that doesn’t seem like the best idea.

For a most of the evening, the only thing I understood out of the German’s mouths was, “David, whiskey,” before they filled up my cup. At one point, however, I could have sworn that either the Germans miraculously leaned English or I had developed the ability to understand German. Right now, I would swear under oath that I remember having deep philosophical discussions sitting on that long-house floor. I went to bed convinced that we would all be chatting about our evening over breakfast. Unbelievably, I was wrong.

This morning we watched a blow-gun demonstration from the chief and then got to try our skills out on a very intimidating piece of cardboard. I slew my enemy. The morning ended with a cock-fight. You heard me right: cock-fight. Don’t worry, we were told before that they were going to leave the small sharp knives off the rooster’s feet. So I guess that is not where I got the chicken blood on me…


Fast forward a few hours…

As I wait for a new load of laundry to soak in the sink, I am about to add some pictures and post this entry. I have had a few hours to think about my last day and look at some of the pictures. This was a truly remarkable experience. If I wanted to experience different cultures and ways of life, I don’t think that it will get any better than this. I am a lucky guy.

Kuching

Day 10, July 26 – no malaria

Hello from Borneo. I am taking a break from the heat and sweat before dinner so I figured that I would take a few minutes to write an update.

My flight arrived here from Johor Bahru a few minutes late last night. I got a cab voucher and, upon climbing into the cab, experienced my first real language barrier of the trip. I had the name and address of the hotel and showed it to the driver and it took a lot of back and forth (and the old trick we English speakers do of speaking slower and louder when someone doesn’t understand us) and he finally had to call over another driver and have the other driver provide directions. It wasn’t the most encouraging situation arriving in a totally foreign city and not knowing if I was going to get to the correct place.
As a matter of fact, the driver couldn’t find the hotel. We had to stop a few times in the neighborhood and ask directions before we finally found it.

By the time I got to the hotel, it was already midnight local time, I was beat, and ready for a long night sleep.

Today, I explored Kuching. I really like Kuching. It is a very laid back city and I found some Spartan fans. Go Spartans!

The shopkeepers in the markets aren’t in your face and they are very friendly. Actually, everyone is very friendly. It turns out my hotel is right in the center of everything. I walked around Chinatown, along the river, went to the Sarawak museum, and also through the Main Bazaar. The highlight of the day, though, was witnessing a group of very motivated bakers go for a try at the baking the longest cake in Malaysia. They did it. Everyone cheered. It was so exciting. I’ll include a pic of the record breaking cake! Awesome.

Fast forward a few hours….

Tonight, I went out to dinner and had a walking tour of the area with some of the people that work at Borneo Adventures, the tour company I am using here. I’ll tell you what happens when you go out with locals. First, you get tricked into eating a fried chicken’s anus…tasty. Second, you stumble onto the weirdest parade ever. Third, you sit and drink local brew until the group has invented what may be remembered in history as, “Biondi’s Borneo Chair Burning Party.” It’s amazing how a little beer can enter me into local folklore…

I’ll include a pic of my new drinking buddies, Disney, David, and Collin. Also, I’ll include a picture of the Chinese parade that I witnessed. I say “witnessed” instead of “saw” because I feel like I could be called into Malaysian court to testify to the lunacy of the parade. In the US, parades are usually fairly orderly events with streets blocked off and barriers keeping people off of the parade route. In Malaysia, something tells me that permits do not matter very much. The dragon floats were coming down the street and cars were weaving in and out of them. The poor kids dressed like dragons on the street had to have bouncers, I kid you not, in order to make sure they didn’t end up road kill for Buddha. It was pure chaos…and hilarious. I don’t think that you can get the any sense of the insanity from the pictures but trust me, I was laughing the entire time.

I don’t have time now but when I get back to town on Monday, I’ll post a few videos that I have taken and also a few more photos from Kuching.

How to post a comment

Hello Everyone,
I received a few emails saying that people are having problems posting comments so I figured that I would post some simple instructions.

The easiest way to post a comment:
1. At the bottom of my blog entry, click where is says "X comments" (ie, 1, 2,3, etc)
2. In the box on the right under the words "Leave your comment," write your message.
3. Below that, you will see a box that says "word verification" with some random letters above it. Enter those letters in the box
4. Under the words, "Choose and Identity," click the circle next to "anonymous" (Just make sure you sign your message so I know who you are).
5. Click "Publish your Comment."

That's it.

David

Refexology Poster

I had a couple of requests to show the propoganda poster that the shops show in order to try to convince you of the benefit of relexology. Enjoy. I'll be posting a bigger update later today.



David

Leaving Singapore

Day 7-9, July 23-25, 2008 - No Malaria (started taking the Malaria pills yesterday)

Hi everybody,

I am currently sitting in the airport in Johor Bahru, Malaysia waiting to begin the next leg of my adventure. Before I begin to recap the last few days, I wanted to again thank everyone for all of the response that I have received on the blog. It's hard to believe that I'm only a week into a several months trip. Judging by the last week has gone, several stupid things will happen to me at which you can all laugh and I guess that is good for everyone.

Today was my last day in Singapore. I am flying out of Johor Bahru to Kuching, Sarawak which is on the Island of Borneo. Borneo has three countries (or parts of three countries) on it. Sarawak is a state of Malaysia. Most of the island is covered by Indonesia, which encompasses several hundreds islands as a country. The last country on Borneo is Brunei...as in the Sultan of Brunei. Brunei is a small, extremely rich country. The inhabitants of Borneo are predominantly Islamic priding themselves in keeping true to the original teachings of Mohammad and distancing themselves from the violence that is commonly associated with Islam in the West. Also on Borneo are tribes of indigenous people that still live in the jungle in long-houses. If any of you watch Anthony Bordain, you may remember his adventure to a jungle longhouse. Also, Borneo is one of only two places on Earth that is a native habitat for the orangutan. Hopefully, I'll see some while I am there.

I have set up my trip to Borneo through a tour company in Kuching that was recommended by several guide books. They have been extremely helpful, accommodating, and friendly. I asked them to make lodging reservations for me because I didn’t know what would be convenient for both them and me and they put me up in a hotel that they repeatedly assured me will be to my liking. The hotel that I'm staying in during my stay in Kuching is called John's Place. Think about the name of the hotel...John's Place. I hope that it is not so well endorsed because it is the biggest brothel in Sarawak!

The last few days have been busy. On Wednesday, it rained in the morning so I took advantage of the downtime to research some more of the trip and start to book some more lodging. In the afternoon, I went to the Asian Civilizations Museum. I thought it would be good to learn a little bit more about the history and people of the countries I will be visiting. It was a great museum and I think that I was there for most of the afternoon.

Thursday, I started the day by going to the US Embassy to get some more pages added to my passport. Across from the US Embassy is the Singapore Botanical Gardens. Orchids are the national flower of Singapore so they are predominantly featured in the Garden. Singapore really spares no expense to make sure that their country is clean, green, and convenient. The Botanical Gardens were no exception.

The Garden was followed by the Juroong Bird Park. I got to watch a few very cools shows and also see several exhibits. I absolutely loved the park but anything with animals will is usually first with me. For me, animals are like food...my favorite is usually what is right in front of me. One of the best parts of the park was the lori aviary. It is huge and has hundreds of colorful lories. I’ll include some pictures. The best part is that you can feed them so they flock all around you like pidgins in central park…OK, I guess that only I like that…On the way to my next stop, I met a person after my own heart…a kindred spirit. My cab driver, Andy, happened to be from the neighborhood that I was going to tour, Katoong. He was excited that I was going to tour his neighborhood and sample the local cuisine. As the conversation quickly turned to food in general, I quickly felt like we were old war buddies trading stories of bravery and comparing scars…except we were actually two fat guys trading restaurant tips and comparing what we had both eaten in the last week. Andy was so excited that I wanted to try the local specialty, Katoong Laksa, he took me directly to his favorite restaurant, got out of his cab with the engine running, and ordered for me to make sure everything was perfect. So began what I believe will be an obsession for the rest of my time here in SE Asia…Laksa.

Laksa is a noodle dish served in a coconut broth. The Katoong varitey contained shrimp, cilantro, fish, and spices. This dish, much like pizza in the US, is served with variation depending on where you have it. Laksa in Singapore, Kuching, and Penang will all be different. There are even different varieties in Singapore itself. The Katoong laksa, originating from this neighborhood, was so delicious and spicy. When I say spicy, I mean spicy. Of course, I did add some extra chili sauce to it because I like to punish my palate. I was choking and gagging so much through this spicy bowl of goodness that the locals were very amused. I like spicy but this took it to another level. Maybe Katoong laksa will finally grow back the hair on my chest that Kieran pulled out 6 years ago? I was very fond of that hair.

The gorgeous Katoong neighborhood is my kind of place. Everyone was extremely friendly and passionate about their food and drink. This is the only place that I have seen in Singapore with the local neighborhood pub. I have seen several trendy lounges around town but no pubs. Katoong not only has pubs but, from what I can tell, one pub for every 3 residents of the neighborhood! I took a photo above a pub in Katoong which, in my brief experience there, summed up the neighborhood pretty well.

So goes my time in Singapore. I met some great people, saw some beautiful sights, and ate some amazing local dishes. If I can say that about every city I visit, I will say that this trip was successful.

I wanted to thank Irene for all of her hospitality. If you are ever in KC or anywhere else I live, for that matter, you always have a place to stay. Thank you so much.

As they say in Singapore, “See you later.”