FYI : 1USD= 3.8 Malaysian Ringgit
April 3
When we landed in Kuala Lumpur a whole army of health officials was waiting for us to screen if we didn't show any sign of SARS, the deadly lung disease.
We changed our remaining Thai baht at the airport, bought a return ticket to Kuching on Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo, 447 RM pp 2-way) for the next morning and decided to spend the night in an airport hotel. Transport to and back from the city center would cost more and as we flew anyway the next morning this was the most elegant solution. The Concorde Inn is motel-like with a shuttle bus to and from the airport and a pool (160 RM).
Even in the airport and the hotel it's clear that you're in a very different country: a lot of women wear the headscarf, and much more people seem to have a weight problem compared to e.g. Vietnam ...a toll of evolution...? At the ticket counter of Malaysian they were also a marvel of efficiency. In the newspapers we got on the plane the Americans in the war against Iraq are called "invaders", so this is indeed an Islamic country.
April 4
After a swim in the pool (which felt like hot jelly, it's much hotter and more humid here than more to the north) and breakfast we stepped on the flight to Kuching. There again we got a "health alert card" for SARS. We took the bus from the airport to town (1 RM) and stopped off at the tourist information center where we got a lot of very useful documentation.
As hotel we chose Telang Usan (850 RM) and then set off for a walking tour around Kuching. Kuching in Malay means "cat" and there are some very kitsch statues of cats to be found in the city. It's a very nice, agreeable town with many colonial buildings such as the courthouse, the post office... Also a fort and a palace of the "white rajas" are prominent. In the 18th century a British adventurer, Charles Brooke set foot on Borneo soil and immediately gained a lot of power. He declared himself raja and was succeeded by several generations of male Brookes. Everywhere in Borneo you find small forts named after their wives: Fort Margherita, Fort Sylvia...
The waterfront of Kuching is very nicely developed with walkways, parks, fountains, terraces... and there are also some high-rise buildings like the Hilton and several shopping plazas, which gives the place an American feel. Saying that this is how the Americans would re-enact Borneo is not doing justice to the charm of the place, but still it's quite a strange combination.
Clearly the Malaysians don't hold much of a grudge against their colonial past, because some of the street names from that era survive, like Jalan Carpenter, Main Bazaar, Jalan Bishopsgate...
We had dinner in Denis'place, a western-oriented cosy restaurant.
April 5
We spent the morning looking around travel agencies to see if we could hire a car for a few days, but it proved so expensive (150 RM per day plus 500RM drop-off charges) we decided to go inland by public transport.
At 1pm we took the bus to Semenggoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre where animals are taught to survive in the wild. There is feeding 2 times a day for the most famous animals, the urang utans, but you still have to be lucky to see them since they are wild.
We were very lucky and saw 2 mothers with babies and 2 single ones...Hearing them crashing through the canopy and seeing the ease with which they move is amazing.
When we got back we visited the Sunday market (which actually starts on Saturday afternoon). It's huge and packed with people. All sorts of fruit and vegetables, fish and meat, plants, animals etc are sold. We saw a lot of fruit and vegetables that we didn't know yet.
We tried for dinner the steamboat BBQ at the Hornbill's corner caf�, which is basically a do it yourself table BBQ with a pot in the middle to brew your own soup. We did a raid on the fish department and had lots of squids, prawns, clams and fish.
April 6
We took the morning boat to Sibu (express boat 1st class 45 RM). The express boats are powerful boats with an air-con that is absolutely freezing cold and Chinese and western action movies as entertainment.
In Sibu we got off and got on another express boat to Kapit further upriver along the Rejang river. Our plan was to push through to Belaga and see if we could arrange a longhouse visit there. Longhouses are entire villages under one roof. There are as many doors as here are families living and they are home to the different tribes of Borneo. Most of them are fairly westernized (corrugated iron, TV...) and they have a reputation for hospitality. From Kuching you can also book tours to longhouses but these are expensive (400 RM pp 2d/1n) and of course touristy.
On the boat to Kapit (20 RM) there were no more seats available so we spent the journey on the roof with the cargo, until a tropical shower started and we huddled together in the engine room.
Borneo is incredibly hot and humid. The scenery along the river consists mainly of jungle, jungle and jungle bordering the muddy brown rivers. You can see many longhouses - local transport is not done by express boats but by longboats.
In Kapit we spent the night in the New Rejang Inn (45 RM). Kapit has the feel of an outpost, but it's considered by the people living along the river as a "big town" because there are some karaoke bars. There are also several internet cafes but the choice of food is again limited to nasi goring and mee goring...
April 7
We continued our journey upriver by express boat to Belaga. Belaga is an even smaller outpost with 1 main street and only a few hotels. We were met by a guide at the jetty, John Eddy, who tried to sell us one of his tours. The Visitors' Information Centre in Kuching however had given us the name of another guide, Louis Hamdani, so we went looking for him. The first person we asked on a terrace turned out to be him - there are only 3 tourist guides in Belaga, so this was a stroke of luck. We agreed to do a trip with 1 night in the jungle and 1 night in a longhouse for 180 RM pp.
For the rest we spent the afternoon wandering around (there really isn't much else you can do).
April 8
At 9 Louis Hamdani turned up with a friend of his stating that he had an appointment with a doctor the following day he'd forgotten about but that his friend would take us. After 5 weeks in Vietnam we'd become quite allergic to this type of attitude and declined categorically unless he did something about the price, which he refused. So we decided to cancel the whole thing and go looking for a way to get to Bintulu. Belaga is only accessible by plane (2 flights per week), boat (which meant backtracking to Kapit) and 4 WD (privately owned so you have to charter them). We asked in the Malaysia airlines office if they could find someone with a 4 WD for us - the first person who showed up asked 350 RM... In the mean time we got talking with the air traffic controller of Malaysia Airlines who ended up inviting us to a longhouse upriver. We agreed to pay him 120 RM for the fuel, and he would introduce us there. We first bought some gifts (customary) such as rice wine, tobacco and sweets. We left with his boat and stopped along the way at another longhouse. The communal verandah of this longhouse was simply huge. We shared some rice wine in the house of the chief with his family. Then we agreed to a visit to a waterfall where we could swim and walk in the jungle. The banks of the river were thickly coated in mud, so we left our sandals in the boat and continued barefoot. It was quite an experience to clamber up and down on a slippery track (sometimes ankle deep in the mud) to the waterfall...When we got there we jumped in the pool below and of course at that moment it started raining heavily so all our clothes got of course soaking wet ... luckily it's not cold in Borneo. We put on our wet clothes, made our way back to the river and continued towards the longhouse. In the confusion with the thunderstorm and the changing of boast our bag with gifts was left behind, which we only discovered when we got to the longhouse and had nothing to present.
Some of these people, especially the older ones, have real character heads. With their elongated earlobes and the tattoos on arms and feet (nowadays not done by the younger generation) you can still imagine some of them as headhunters on the warpath, even if they're now dressed in shorts and T-shirt.
It turned out that our host didn't actually live in this longhouse (he was married to the chief's daughter but lived in Belaga) so we felt a it like we'd squatted in someone else's home without being properly invited. There was also to be a wedding the next day to which we were invited, but finally we would decide the next day to leave because of the strange situation.
April 9
We went through our backpacks to rustle up some gifts for the people we'd stayed with and we gave them a bag of little shampoos, toothbrushes and some biscuits.
We then left with a local boat to go further upriver (15 RM) to another village. There we stepped into a land cruiser (these seem the local means of transport, 15 RM pp) and drove to a logging camp. From there we continued with another land cruiser all the way to Bintulu (30 RM pp). In Bintulu we had lunch, got money from the ATM and took the bus to Batu Niah, the village located next to Niah National Park, home of the famous caves. There seemed to be some kind of conference going on which meant that all the decent hotel rooms were already gone by the time we arrived... So we stayed in Park View hotel (45 RM) in a spare room.
April 10
We took a boat to the entrance of the park (10 RM for the boat, 10 RM entry). There is a long boardwalk leading through the jungle to the caves. On this boardwalk we saw our first (and only) snake in Borneo: a green whip snake. Walking in the jungle is really like walking in a sauna: within minutes you are totally drenched and the sweat runs off you by the liter.
The first cave you get to is called the Trader cave, because historically trade was done here in birds' nests (harvested in the caves). The next cave is the Great Cave. Near the entry of this cave is an archaeological site where the oldest human remains in Borneo have been found. The cave in itself is indeed huge: there are lots of wooden steps leading up and down in the cave and you definitely need a torch because in places it's pitch black. You have to walk all the way through the Great Cave and then a bit further through the jungle before you come to the Painted Cave. As the name indicates murals can be found here depicting human figures, longboats, animals... The remains of wooden "burial vessels" (the site was also uses later as a burial site) can also be seen.
After the visit to the cave we found out that once again the information on the bus time table was wrong (really very unreliable in Borneo!) so we had to take a taxi to the highway to flag down an express bus to Sibu there. The expres bus is really much more comfortable than the normal bus (there's aircon, for one) and they really don't cost that much more. In Sibu we stayed at the New World Inn (35 RM), and had a western dinner at the Little Roadhouse. Sibu is really a big town with shopping malls and the like.
April 11
We walked around Sibu a bit to take a look at the market and then took a taxi to the bus station. The bus to Kuching costs more than the boat (40 RM vs. 30 RM), it takes longer (7 hrs vs. 5 hrs) and when it turned out that the first bus was only an hour and a half later we took a taxi back to town to get the boat. Entertainment was again action movies, including James Bond. In Kuching we checked in at the Telang Usan hotel and then went for a walk in town. We had dinner in Aroma, a nice place with good wine, food and coffee.
April 12
At Malaysia Airlines we first changed our flight back to KL to a morning flight, and then trailed around the shops to buy a T-shirt, pepper and baskets. A lot of this stuff comes actually from Indonesia I think but it's certainly pricey.
In the afternoon we visited the Sarawak museum, an old colonial building with an interesting ethnographic exhibition with lots of photos and artifacts of the various tribes.
April 13
Our last day in Borneo was spent in Bako National Park. It's a 1-hr bus ride + � hr boat ride to get there but it's definitely worth it. We got there during low tide, so we had to wade ashore, but this way you could see a lot of very small crabs with 1 big claw foraging and then scuttling back in their holes. We chose as trail the Paku trail because it's one of the trails where you have most chance of seeing the very rare probiscus monkey (a monkey with a big nose and potbelly). The trail winds directly through jungle (so immediately you're drenched in sweat). At the end you arrive at a secluded small beach which gives something of a Robinson Crusoe feeling. We put on our swimming gear and spent some time in the water to cool off. When we were ready to head back we met a group who had seen the monkeys underway and they gave us directions. When we got to the spot we were very quiet and had to look for a while before we could see where the occasional sound of crashing in the leaves came from. But when we saw one, we saw immediately a lot more: in total on the trail we saw 5 or 6 probiscus monkeys. A little further we then ran into a big group of long-tailed macaque monkeys who were crossing the trail. And when we got back to Park HQ we saw a third kind of monkey, the silver leaf monkey. When we headed back later towards the jetty we saw another group of 3 probiscus monkeys really close to the HQ, so all in all a very successful day for wildlife watching. I think it must also be nice to stay overnight here and try out different hiking trails to see more of the park.
April 14
Very last minute we booked via a travel agent a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Swiss Inn (102 RM where normal prices are 150 RM) and then drove with a taxi to the airport for our 10.50 flight. In KL we took another taxi to the hotel (we paid 91 RM but this is premier class, according to LP there must be also standard for 65 RM but we only found this out in the hotel).
Swiss Inn is smack in the middle of Chinatown, one of the liveliest pasts of the city. We first tried finding a laundry but I guess the Chinese have evolved past doing laundry because we didn't find any shops. This way of course we did see Chinatown on foot: there are plenty of old shop houses, and the contrast with the high rise buildings of banks etc is very big. The old center of KL consists of Merdeka Square, a grass field (used by the Englich to play cricket) surrounded by a huge Edwardian mansion (the Royal Selangor Club), a village church from the English countryside and a huge building which seems to have been transported from Northern India with lots of little towers (it used to be the siege of the British administration). There are several other very striking buildings in the area, such as the Courthouse and the oldest mosque of KL, Masjied Jamek (which looks like a Disney-version of a mosque). But this old colonial center is now really squeezed in between the office buildings so it gives a lot more American feel then e.g. Bangkok.
In Chinatown there's a night market (a smaller version of the Chiang Mai night market) selling fake clothes, watches, CD's (5 RM), DVD's (7 RM) and the like... Bargaining is definitely in order, but strangely the Malaysians are a lot more difficult to negotiate with than the Thai. It's nearly impossible to offend a Thai (e.g. by bidding a quarter of the asking price), if you do that here they are really offended and don't want to discuss further. It's also strange that if you show very little interest they drop their asking price automatically by 50 % without you having said anything...
April 15
We took the metro to KLCC, the site of the Petronas twin towers, the tallest building sin the world. There's a huge shopping mall below them. We got (free) tickets to go up the sky bridge (41 floor) and then spent the time until our slot in the mall.
Afterwards we took the metro back and walked around little India which is in itself not really that spectacular. It's true that what strikes you in Malaysia is the ethnic diversity (Malay people with the women with a head scarf, Chinese people, Indian people with saris), but it's not really that more clear in little India than elsewhere. Later on we walked to the old railway station (not in use anymore now), another colonial Indian-style relic with lots of turrets. Inside the station there's a hotel, the heritage station hotel, with is definitely past glory.
April 16
This was the last day of our trip. After a taxi to the airport we checked in, spent 13 hours on the plane, transferred in London Heathrow and landed in Brussels at 20.30, exactly 6 months after we'd left...