Death defying feats

Sarawak is quite the interesting place. It's got a colorful history of white rajahs and local headhunters, and an interesting mix of Malays, Chinese, Indonesians, indigenous groups, and more.

After flying into the town of Miri we took a bus to a small town near Niah Caves National Park. We were only planning on staying there one night and checking out of our hotel my noon. We ate a really light breakfast (we couldn't find the bakery in town) and walked along the river for 30 minutes to get to the park entrance. These caves were amazing so we decided to spend the whole day there. Out of more than a half-dozen caves I've seen in Asia, and more than a dozen in the world, this was by and far the most incredible. Think 200-foot tall ceilings a football field (or five) long. We would our way through the earth, passing through pitch blackness illuminated by one light, the only sound the constant palpitations of millions of bats flying or perched throughout the caves.

Even more amazing than the caves themselves was the history of these caves and the tradition that lives on today. The nests of swiftlets (birds) are made into a soup which is among the pricier foods in the world. The nests can sell for over US$500 per kg. Wooden poles (visible in the photo, though it hardly does justice to how thin and tall they are, and how precarious they look, often with no footholds except for 20 feet apart) are erected in the caves so nest collectors can scale 60m (200ft) up to the roof and collect the nests two or three times a year.

There is also very limited scaffolding in some places in the roof so collectors can collect more nests on one climb. Many of the poles are placed over large deposits of bat guano to provide padding in the even of a fall but there is still a fatal accident every few years. Walking through the caves and seeing these 50-60m poles hanging from the roof and the few poles that provide aerial walkways - and knowing that people climb up them for such a prized delicacy - was mindblowing.

a few things i've learned about Malaysia, by my beau Daniel

1. "Hello" is the same in English and Malay so everyone likes to say "hello" when you walk by.

2. A 'Country Pub' in Malaysia is not the same as back home. The country pub here was a small room with blacklight paintings on the walls of naked women, Satan, and Donald Duck. Malay karaoke and a strobe light were included free of charge.

3. Everyone likes wrestling. Many of the cafes and street vendors have TVs and it is more likely than not that you will find American (or Canadian) wrestling on several on them.

4. If there's no wrestling on TV at that particular time, you can watch wrestling on DVD.

5. The difference between Business class and Economy class is that Business class gets to watch wrestling in the front part of the boat while those in the Economy class only get to listen to the wrestling over the speakers that even my MP3 player way too loud couldn't drown out.

6. The perceived cleanliness of a hotel room can be determined by the number of sandals left in the room. For example: clean room with clean private bathroom in Semporna = no sandals. Moldy room in Batu Niah with a single red light bulb hanging haphazardly in a broken wall fixture = 4 sandals. Mostly clean room in Kapit but with semi sketchy shared bathroom = 1 sandal.

7. Everyone loves fried rice. If you don't like fried rice, you love fried noodles. If you get tired of fried noodles, you can eat fried rice. If you get sick of fried rice AND fried noodles, at least you can watch wrestling while you force it down.

8. "Gas is so expensive" is why a taxi driver won't drive 4km for less than US$4.

9. "Internet cafe" actually means "Room with many computers and just as many kids playing games and music without headphones and walking around to see what everyone else is doing on their computer".

10. If you ask the bus driver to take you to the "ferry terminal" he will say, "I don't go to the ferry terminal but I will take you to the boat terminal for Kapit." He will then take you to the ferry terminal and tell you you need to go to the boat terminal (300 meters away) where you will then learn that your boat leaves from the ferry terminal and you were in the right place to begin with.

11. Overall, the Malayasian people are very warm and friendly. They are very proud of their country, they are glad that you have chosen to visit their town, they are curious to know where you are from and how long you will be in Malaysia, and they are glad to have met you and proud that they were able to make your stay in their country just a little better. That's the part of Malaysia that will stick with me the most.

Dreamy Sipadan

my photo


stock photo

yeah. we just dived in one of the world's top dive locations. finished my advanced open-water certification and learned that it's best to dive, or to photograph, but not to do them both at the same time, underwater. that said, we got some sweet photos from the experience.

so, arriving here. we get to Semporna and find a hotel that is actually both clean and cheap, a rare find in malaysia. then we find a dive shop - dive junkies - and the adventure begins. six dives, two days, in some mind-numbingly beautiful underwater reefs. our first dive was from an island - 30 meters from shore, it drops straight down to 2000 feet - yikes! "you'll get bored of seeing turtles" we had heard, but it wasn't true. a dozen turtles into the dive, i was still astounded by each one. they move by so slowly! hawksbill and green turtles, white-tipped reef sharks, a few grey reef sharks and i somehow missed a leopard shark.

the eeriest experience was cruising a few meters into a cave, with warning signs and all. turtles get trapped in the caves and drown. a turtle burial ground. it wasn't until being inside the cave, in almost pure darkness, and turning around to see thousands of fish careening by the entrance to the cave, that i realized just how bizarre the act of diving was. everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, and i felt like i was somehow both acting in a motion picture and also watching myself in a motion picture at the same time. bizarre feeling.

i escaped being eaten by a saltwater crocodile (20 feet long!) - it failed to make an appearance - and i avoided the banded sea snakes - seven minutes to live if bitten!

lots of tourists complain that the town - semporna - lacks even a single bar or restaurant catered towards tourists. it's true. i loved it. i took a day off from diving to wander and apparently a bunch of people asked daniel what on earth i could possibly be doing. they all felt semporna was boring - all malay. that was what was lovely about it! all the muslim women, scarves on their heads. men sitting around wasting the day away, drinking coffee with their buddies. women frying up roti (our favorite dish here) in every shop. i wandered around the fish market, said hi to dozens of curious children, avoided the lecherous gaze of the younger men here (this ain't no safe haven for women like other parts of southeast asia), and took in the smells and colors. lovely, lovely town.

Lovely day

After leaving the park we headed back to town where we needed to catch a bus to Semporna. Daniel and I were sitting at the outdoor bus depot when this 8-year old girl came near us and watched us. She was clearly intrigued by us, but she was careful to avoid looking at us directly, and when I smiled to make contact, she blushed and looked away. She was selling sunflower seeds and cigarettes (I know, but thank God women don't smoke in Malaysia, so hopefully it won't trigger a habit). I called her over to us and taught her how to play tic-tac-toe. Then I busted out with a new pack of cards (first use) and Daniel and I taught her to
play go fish. A couple of her friends came over and one of them was brave enough to play a few hands with us. The Malays sat nearby chuckling at the scene. Despite the language barrier, the girls loved the game, and our favorite girl, the 8-year old, got such a kick out of saying "go fish"!

Danum Valley

We went from Sepilok to the Danum Valley Field Center which is set up
as a research station in one of the largest regions of untouched lowland
jungle in the state. It's not open to tourists so I pulled some strings and modified our backgrounds just slightly. Our first night there we're hanging out in the common area and two gentlemen come up to us, including the director of the facility. Eventually a couple other scientists come over and join in on the conversation. One of them was very outspoken about logging and rainforest destruction and he complained that most of the public outcry over rainforest destruction is about the Amazon and that there is very little voice for the rainforests of malaysia. Our conversation was interupted by a bearded pig that was grazing just below the deck on which we were talking. Daniel and I went for a short night hike and saw a pygmy squirrel, some butterflies, some deer and another small mammal that we couldn't identify. During our hike the next day we saw some red leaf monkeys, an incredible horned frog, many specimens of both species of terrestrial leech (tiger and brown), and we heard an elephant huffing behind nearby foliage!

heart of darkness

Bornean Horned Frog (Megophrys nasuta)

We found this under our feet at the Danum Valley Field Centre, a rainforest preserve two hours down a jarring dirt road from the nearest town, Lahad Datu, described as a sort of "wild east" town, with high rates of crime, theft, and an atmosphere of general lawlessness.

Lots of towns in this part of Borneo are reputed to be unsafe and/or unsavory. The town we fly out of, for example, is said to have budget hotels that women should not check into, and our guidebook recommends staying out of the streets at night. I have yet to read that about anywhere else in Southeast Asia on my journeys.

Danum Valley was great, but it was the kind of place only 5 or more days of serious trekking could do justice to. We saw wild Borneo pygmy elephants twice on our drive, wild chickens, bearded pigs, sambar deer, barking deer (it's more like a woman's scream!), red-leaf monkeys, and more. We even heard a wild elephant very close to us in the forest, but thankfully we didn't go to investigate its huffing. We later found out they're quite aggressive and potentially dangerous.

Three leech bites. And that was with leech guards. I am told that for our mileage, I only did .5 leech/miles (3 bites for 6 miles). Not bad for a day in Danum. 2 leech bites/mile is more common :)

6 primate species, 2 days

we just parted from sepilok, the orangutan sanctuary and 43 hectare diptocarp forest. we spent the past two days hiking on trails and watched both feeding times. there were between 8-12 orangs at each one. one of them was eating in public for the first time and didn't quite know how to behave. he came up onto the viewing platform and mingled with all the people there for a while before the ranger was able to chase him off. when we left, he attached himself to the pants of a woman near me, and i had to offer him my water bottle holder and pry his fingers off her terrified leg. i believe she couldn't tell if he wanted to mate her or pickpocket her. he looked as if he were doing both, but i think he was just looking for some company.

at the feeding we saw 2 species of macaques as well. on our hike the next day, we spotted 3 species of primates, all new for me: Borneo gibbon, red leaf monkeys, and proboscis monkeys. yeah!

we went on a night walk with one of the rangers and saw some pretty fascinating wildlife: big insects including a few walking sticks and a praying mantis (that we got to walk all over us), a civit cat and a flying squirrel. but the coolest creature was a green tree viper only a few meters off the trail. close enough to watch in detail but not close enough that it could have jumped over and bitten us (or so we hoped). instead, it contented itself with attacking the leaf we lit up in front of it.

still working out our next week on this side of the island but diving in one of the world's top dive sites - sipadan - is high on the list. whale sharks are supposed to be most common in april and may. hammerheads and others, always. wish us luck. not to be eaten (or even just attached; let's be honest, i'm too skinny to make a good meal) by a shark.

tour, shmour

most of the popular attractions here are accessable only if you sign up
for a tour which is ridiculously expensive (a cheap tour averages about 80 bucks daily). certainly beyond our budget. most one night tours cost our weekly budget. Mt. Kinabalu is the highest peak in SE Asia and one of the most popular attractions in Sabah. we weren't excited about paying lots of dough to climb a peak to see the inside of a cloud, but we still wanted to see some other parts of the park, like the hot springs.

it turned out to be a lovely day. we arrived late in the afternoon and made our way to the butterfly sanctuary, which we got locked into (again). an employee tried to unlock the door but couldn't so he led us through some back trails that got us back to the main area of the park. then we went and did a canopy walk as dusk neared, which i must say was the most unnerving (and tallest!) canopy walk i've ever done. i'm glad i took out travel insurance.

sunset was closing in and we were both starving, but we had read about this bat cave about a mile away that we wanted to get to. it wasn't one of the ones where millions of bats all swarm out at once. and it wasn't so much of a cave as it was a crack in the ground covered by some boulders, but it was still magical to be surrounded by all these bats as they came trickling out into the night. we were the only people there and the bats came so close to us that we could feel the breeze and hear the noises from their wingbeats. at one point, two flew between daniel's head and mine, split just a foot apart. neither of us wanted to leave but we didn't want to negotiate the trail out in the dark.

after a fancy dinner we soaked in the hot sulphur baths until late in the night, outlasting all the young drunk city kids until the only thing left was the sparkling night sky and our own hushed conversation. upon trying to leave the park and get to our hotel, we found the gate locked (again) and had to wait for a car to trigger the mechanized gate to open so we could squeeze out with it.

one of these days we're gonna get stuck somewhere!