Malaysia Travel Journal
2005 01 04 (Tue) Leaving Indonesia, fly to Kuala Lumpur (KL) Malaysia
I flew to Kuala Lumpur (KL) of Malaysia via Air Asia. This is the first time I fly with this
Airline. The only reason is because
the fare is cheap. Turns out I
experienced something new.
First, they don’t do computer check in. When I asked for an aisle seat
next to the emergency exit, the woman said I could sit anywhere I liked because
it was free seating. Free seating
in an airplane? That is new to
me. And my name on the boarding
pass was hand written.
The plane leaves at 11:30 and I thought I would have a nice meal. Turns out they served nothing. Even you have to buy your own drink. I asked for a cup of tea and they
charged me for 6 RM (about HK12). I
thought tea and water are supposed to be complimentary.
Before landing, they supposed to announce the weather and the time
difference (KL is one hour faster than Surabaya),
and they did not. I bought a bus
ticket after the customs and began to wonder around the airport because I had
more than 1.5 hour to kill. Later,
I lost my patience and decided to refund the ticket and took the express train
instead. The woman in the ticket
office told me the bus leaves in 5 minutes. Then I realized there is a time
difference between Surabaya
and KL. I had to rush down to the
bus terminal. Almost miss the bus.
The airport bus stopped at the Chan Sow Lin station and then changed a
light rail to China
Town. At the LRT station, I saw the
advertisement of Stephen
Chow’s new movie “Kung Fu Hustle”. I am a big fan of Stephen Chow. I must see this one tonight.
The movie was one of his best, filled with laughs and tears. I was very satisfy with his performance. And the price is low (about HK22). Surprisingly, there is not a phone ring
during the movie. It never happened
in Hong Kong and China.
2005 01 05 (Wed) Touring KL, meeting good business friends
Went to the PETRONAS
Twin Towers
(452m) in the early
morning. The building is a very
beautiful architecture. Although it
is not the tallest building in the world, it is still the tallest twin towers
in the world, sits at the Kuala Lumpur City Center (KLCC). The tower was built by an oil company
called National Oil Corporation (PETRONAS) in the mid 90s. That is how it got its name from. Since then, it has become one of
the hottest tourist spot and landmark in KL. The designed was done by a US
architect, Cesar Pelli. The design
came from an Islamic geometric pattern which symbolize unity within unity, harmony,
stability and rationality.
We are allowed to go up to the sky bridge where we can see the whole KL
city. It is free of charge but they
limited the number of people. That
is why I had to go there early. One
of the tour guides told me that during the recent Indonesia earthquake, the building
moved a few inches and they had to close it temporarily.
Lunch with my good business friends, Chris Lawson and Yee
Tack Weng of Ten Cate. I used to sell their products
(geotextile and drainage products) in Hong Kong,
Taiwan and mainland China
when I worked for Company B. We had lunch in a very
nice Japanese restaurant inside Mandarin Hotel. We had very good chat and they ordered a
lot of food. Of course, they paid
for the bill. See, there is free
lunch in this world.
After the lunch, they dropped me off at the Islamic Art Museum. But for some reason, I mistakenly went
into a Police Museum. Since the admission is free, no bother
to tour around. Surprise me, it has
got a lot of information which I am interested in. Make me understand some of the communist
riots during the 1960s.
The Islamic Art Museum is the largest Islamic art museum I have ever
seen. The exhibitions are
magnificent, including jewels, arm & armor, textile, coins, ceramics and
art. One of the interesting
exhibitions is the architecture of the Mosques. It tells about the compositions of a
mosque, what are the differences between the some of the most famous mosques in
the world.
Discovery:
Did you know that among the ten tallest buildings in the world, Hong Kong has three buildings on the list?
Did you know that Taipei
101 is the tallest building in the world (509m)?
2005 01 06 (Thu) Touring
Batu Caves,
and Museums
Batu Caves is about 40-minutes bus ride from KL. It is one of the popular tour spots in
KL. It is a large limestone cave
and it is also a Hindu shrine. You
have to walk 273 steps to reach the temple cave. Every year, there are more than a
million pilgrims come to here, worship their Gods. With an audio guide, you can hear a lot
of Hindu stories.
Met a group of Chinese tourists from mainland China. They were talking how many jewels and
diamonds they bought for the last few days. Wow! They are really rich. I am thinking of tomorrow’s bus ticket
and they are thinking of buying more diamonds and jewels in the coming days.
Lunch at China town,
I went to a Hainan chicken restaurant. They claimed they are still using the
same old recipe since 1938. Of course it tasted very good.
After lunch, I went to the National
Museum. Malaysia is a true culture
diversified country with people from different races: Malay, Chinese, Indian,
aborigines, etc. This museum
display their culture and custom.
Next to the National Museum is the Maritime Archaeology
Museum. Due to the weather, human error, and the
unknown reef, there were many ships sunk at the Strait
of Melaka, west of Malaysia Peninsula. This museum exhibits the things found in
the ship wreck and how they found the wreck ship.
Dinner with Yee Tack Weng and his
family. There is not only the free
lunch, but also free dinner. His
brother in law also came to hear my big dream of travel around the world in 800
days.
2005 01 07 (Fri) Cameron
Highland, Meeting a survivor of the Tsunami
At first I was going
to stay one more day in KL, but the bus company wouldn’t allow me to change the
ticket. So I headed up to Cameron Highlands. This is place for jungle walk and tea
plantations.
The bus takes about
4.5 hours to get to a small quiet town called Tanah Rata. It locates at a hilly, mountainous area
(about 1,500 m) with
deep forest surround it.
Checked in at Father’s Guest House.
A single room for two beds is only RM20 (HK40). Good price but you have to use public
toilets and showers which doesn’t bother me at all. The place is very clean and neat and the
staffs are very friendly. The front
desk girl is an Indian and she looks alike Sandra
Bullock. I called her the Indian Sandra Bullock.
This guest house is
highly recommended by Lonely Planet and Let’s Go. There are a lot of western backpackers
staying here, at least more than 30, the most number I have ever seen since
this trip. Most of them are from UK. I found a very interesting
phenomenon: The westerners coming
to Malaysia are mostly from UK, while the westerners that go to Indonesia are
mostly Dutch. It is probably
because of the colonial thing as Malaysia
used to be ruled by the British and Indonesia
used to be ruled by the Dutch. I am
expecting to meet a lot of French when I visit Vietnam in mid February.
The weather in the
mountainous area is very unpredictable.
It was shiny in the morning but it was pouring in the afternoon. I decided to stay at the guesthouse and
do some reading and writing.
Later, I had a
conversation with a guy sitting opposite to me. He name is Ummit, he is a Indian British
from London. His grandfather moved from India to Kenya,
Africa.
Later his father moved to London. He has some relatives in Kenya and his sisters were born in Kenya.
He told me he was in
Phuket when the tsunami hit Phuket.
Wow, he is the survivor of the tsunami. He was staying at a very small island, Raya Yai
Island, about 12 km south of Phuket. Fortunately, he was staying at the east
side of the Island. The wave did not get through the
mountain. The whole west side was
wiped out. He said the wave was
about 10 m
high. Anything within 500 m
from the beach, and 10 m high
range was gone. Nothing left. All the bungalows, all the restaurants
were all gone. He is such a lucky
man.
The more
unbelievable thing was his parents were traveling in Sri Lanka during the tsunami
hit. They survived too, not even a
scratch. Can you believe that?
The more interesting
about this man is he was a news director in a TV station, same career as my
sister. He studied journalism, same
as my sister. But the difference is
he never talks about his work when he gets back home, versus my sister always
talks about her work when she gets back home. He quit his job and decided to travel
for about a year. So far, it is
about half way of his journey.
2005 01 08 (Sat) Jungle Walk and Visiting the Tea Plantation
Joined a group of 6
people and did the jungle walk. The
trail we went was not in the trail map.
It was in the middle of nowhere.
We had to hire a guide. The
guide, Cali is
an Indian Malaysian, a retired banker who grew up in this area. Other than the strong Indian accent, he
is a very good guide, very experienced and knows a lot of about plants.
The walk was very
comfortable in the first section because there were about half meter thick of
decayed material (leaves and roots) on the trail. When you step on that, it was like
walking on the carpet, very soft, very comfortable. Unlike the mountain hiking.
The guide showed us
a lot of interesting plants. For
instance, ferns, shy leaves, pitcher plant (also called jungle condom, meat
eating plant, insect catcher), lipstick flowers, vine, rattan, some Chinese
herb leaves. We also saw some
termite homes. Cali also explained to us how the termites
build their home. And because the
number of termites is limited, it won’t harm the forest. There are animals around this area like
to eat the termites like the porcupine.
At noon, we reached
a tea plantation. We toured around
the plantation but we were not allowed to tour the plant. We saw how the tea farmers cut the tea
leaves. Yes, they did not pick it. They cut it with big scissors and
sometimes with cutting machines. As
they are going to shedder it and put it into the tea bags, they did not care
about the shape and form of the tea leaves. The tea in this plantation is black tea
and it is not my cup of tea so I did not buy any. Just try a cup at the shop.
At noon, it started
to rain. Sometimes, it was quite
heavy. Even my Gore-tex jacket did
not help at all. I was soaking
wet. Outside it was raining, inside
I was sweating. Despite of the
heavy rain, it was a fun jungle walk and we enjoyed that very much.
2005 01 09 (Sun) Climbing
the Mt. Brinchang,
See the Mossy Forest
Mt. Brinchang (2,032m) is the highest mountain in the Cameron Highlands. Not only it is well known for its
height, but also for the mossy forest.
A group of 7, plus a
guide drove a Land Rover 4 wheel drive to Mt. Brinchang. We have two British girls from Yorkshire, two Swedish girls, and one French couple. The guide, Kumar is a Indian Malaysian,
who grew up in a Chinese community.
He speaks some Cantonese and Chinese too. Quite a surprise to me. Sometimes, his facial expression looked
like Will Smith. So I called him
Kumar Smith. He is big fan of
Land Rover. He could talk non stop
about Land Rover. He said the best
model was 64 to 73 which was made for the British Army. It is powerful and easy to maintain.
We stopped where the
car couldn’t go anymore. Then we
started to walk. The mountain top
was covered with clouds. Only less
than 30% of the days will have the clear sky in here. The slope was quite steep and trail was
very swampy, very muddy. We had to
hold the tree trunk when we walked.
It was more of climbing than walking. All our shoes and our pants were wet and
full of mud. In some area, the mud
was so sticky, almost pulled your shoes off. We didn’t expect this. And the girls were screaming and yelling
when walking on the mud. But we
could not help them much because we could not even take care of ourselves.
The interesting with
this forest is all the trees are covered with green moss. It is everywhere. When you touch the moss, the water comes
out. Moss holds a lot of
water. The hike to the top of the
mountain wasn’t very far, but it took us a very long time. After we finished the trail, we all
agreed it was one of the hardest mountain hikes in our lives.
Later we visited one
of the Orang Asli (the aboriginals) villages. Kumar explained to us how do they live
in their daily life, what kind of herbs they used for medicine and poison. The poison is for the blow pipe dart
when hunting. There are at least
more than ten different poisonous plants in their neighborhood.
One of the British
girls, Claire had already invited me to go visit her home town. She is planning to climb the Mt. Everest
in November, 2005. Wow, I am
interested in that too. I said to
her we should keep in touch because I might be available to do that by then.
Discovery:
Did you know that
there are about 5,000 Land Rover Jeep in Cameron Highlands
area? It is a record of highest
percentage of Land Rover in one area.
2005 01 10 (Mon) Leaving Cameron Highlands,
Heading to Penang
At first I was planning to play a game of golf before going
anywhere. It is very inexpensive
here, about half of the price of Suzhou. However, the whole area was running out
of water since yesterday afternoon.
Couldn’t take shower, couldn’t wash my dirty shoes and pants, couldn’t
brush my teeth…. So I decided to
leave and head to Penang. It was a 6-hours bus ride. It stopped at Ipoh on the way. Ipoh is
known as the “City of Millionaires”. For tourist attractions, there is not
much to see.
Penang is an Island and Georgetown
is its major town. It was the first
British settlement in Malaysia,
even earlier than Melaka and Singapore. It was said that Sun Yat Sen, the
founding father of modern China
planned 1911 revolution in Georgetown, Penang, in one of the Hainanese coffee shop. This, I am not sure about that.
Stayed at Love Lane Inn in
the China town area of Georgetown. Walking at the streets of Georgetown was like going back to the 1960s in Hong Kong. It
was like walking at the Shanghai
Street from Jordan to Mongkok district of
Kowloon. But Shanghai street is liner, only one
street, and here the whole area looked like this. Very “old” feeling. It seems like time hasn’t gone very
quick here. The two-storey
buildings with columns in the front, shops at the ground floor and family live
on the upper floor. Other than
this, there are a lot of beautiful
colonial buildings. You may also find trishaw in this
town.
Although the architectures here give you the old colonial feelings, the
city is not behind the world.
High-speed internet café are everywhere. With about 15 minutes walk, you may find
large modern 6-storey shopping mall and department stores with movie theatres
and food court.
2005 01 11 (Tue) Museum Day
Toured the Penang Museum and Art
Gallery this
morning. The exhibits showed that people from Burma (Myanmar), America, Japan, India, China, Java, Arabia,
Europe, Britain, came over to this place in the 18th and 19th
century. They came here to work, to
trade, to seek for new opportunities and they settled down here. It seemed like they lived quite harmony
in here.
Also went to Fort
Cornwallis. This is the first military and
administrative base of East India Company established by Francis Light.
2005 01 12 (Wed) Touring the Penang
Island
Joined a tour to visit the Penang
Island. Together with me are two British
Japanese and a Dutch. The guide,
Jimmy is the owner of Inn and he is originally from Taiwan. He has been living in Penang
for more than 30 years.
We drove along the coast of Penang Island. We stopped at Fort Cornwallis
which I had visited yesterday. The
fort is managed and run by a private company. Jimmy introduced to us the
daughter of the owner, Needa.
She is a very pretty Malay.
Along the coast we stopped at Burmese
Buddhist Temple
and a Thai Buddhist Temple. What is the difference between
them? Other than the architecture,
I could not tell the difference.
Later we stopped at a fisherman’s village. This place was hit by the Tsunami. Each day, there are tons of garbage
washed to the shore. These people
have to clean it everyday.
We drove up to the mountains to visit the tropical fruit farm. Unfortunately, this is not the right
season, otherwise we could pick our fruit.
Fruits grow here include: Durian, Jack fruit, banana, papaya, plum,
water apple, Kiwi fruit,… Even
Durian, they have 4 different species grow here.
We also stopped at Cheng Ho’s (Zheng He, 鄭和) temple, Snake Temple, Kwung Yin Temple and the last stop was the
Penang Hill. We took a tram up to
the top. It was quite like the Peak
Tram in Hong Kong. However, this one is much longer and we
had to change train in the mid-level.
It took us half an hour to get to the top. From the top, we could have a panoramic
view of the whole Georgetown,
including the bridge to Butterworth.
At night, I took a night bus departed at 21:00 to Kota Bahru where I
will take a train to Gemas at 6:10 in
the morning. This trip is known as
the jungle railway. Sounds cool, right?
2005 01 13 (Thu) The Jungle Railway,
All You See Is Trees, Trees, and Trees
Arrived Kota Bahru at 4:00 in
the morning. There were a few taxi
drivers waiting for the customers.
I chose one of them asked him to take me to the train station at Wakaf
Baharu. There was no one at the
station except me because it was too early. Quite scarely.
About 5:00, there came a few people. I met two Australians ladies and two
Alaskans. The two Alaskans, Neil and Teddy are the second and third Alaskans I
met since I left Alaska
in 1994. The first one I met was in
Petra, Jordan back to November, 2003. Neil is a boat captain who works for the
Department of Fish and Game during the summer time in Valdez (note1). During the winter time, he just goes
traveling. Sometimes, the Alaskan’s
life really makes people jealous, only works 4 months in a year.
The train departed at 6:10.
It was still dark, not much to see.
After the sun came out, you found yourself totally submerged in the
green forest. All you see was the
trees, trees and trees. The only
color you see was light green, green, and dark green. But not a single wild animal you could
see. It became quite boring after a
couple of hours. The train was
quite dirty with cockroaches everywhere.
It supposed to be air-conditioned but for some reason, it didn’t
work. Only a few fans were still
working (not all of them). And you
could not open the windows. It was
hot inside. The windows were very
dirty too and you could hardly take any pictures.
Occasionally, we saw some of the village house. Some of the area was badly hit by the
flood three weeks ago. It was a
20-year flood. Even from the train
we still could see the water mark left behind. It was about 4 meters high in some area.
Arrived Gemas train station at 20:15. Gee, it was more than 13 hours
ride. By the time we got there, it
was dark and no bus was leaving the town.
The taxi driver asked for RM200 to take us to Melaka. I decided to stay here and leave
tomorrow.
Note1:
Valdez is a city in the Prince William Sound, south of Alaska.
It was hit by a tsunami in 1964.
It was the largest earthquake recorded on earth. The tsunami was so huge that it wiped out
the whole city. Later they had to
choose another place to rebuild the city.
In 1991, the worst oil spill disaster was happened in here when the
captain of the Exxon Valdez Oil Tanker was drunk and allowed the tanker to hit
the shallow ground. Even more
than 14 years from now, the numbers of wild life animals still have not gone
back to before. Valdez is the end of the Trans-Alaska Oil
Pipeline.
2005 01 14 (Fri) Heading to Melaka, the Place where Zheng He Landed in 1405
Took a Mercedes bus to Tampin where I could change a bus to Melaka. On the way, there were palm olive
plantations along the road site. It
was so pretty. I had the jungle
railway yesterday, and plantation roadway this morning. And the bus ride was a lot comfortable
than the jungle railway. Well, good
things never last, it took me about an hour to Tampin.
The bus has only more than 5 passengers. However, there are 2 ticket inspectors
came from different stops to our bus to inspect the tickets. How can the bus company afford to run?
Melaka is the place
where the “Three Jeweled eunuch prince” (三寶太監) of Ming Dynasty arrived in 1405, bringing
gifts from Ming emperor. He not
only sailed to Melaka but also sailed to India
and Africa. Recently, there is an ex British navy
officer said that he even went to America, 65 years ahead of
Christopher Columbus. If you are interested, you may read the book “1421 The Year China Discovered
America” written by Gavin Menzies”. This
book was introduced by a mentor of mine from Alaska.
He was the District Chief of USGS Water Resource Division.
2005 01 15
(Sat) Melaka, Museum Day
Melaka
has many museums. And they are very
concentrated around the St. Paul’s
Hill area. They are the Museum of History,
Museum of Literature,
Museum of NMNO
Melaka, Maritime Museum, Baba
Nyonya Heritage
Museum, Museum of Melaka Sultanate
Palace, Museum of Islam Melaka, Museum of Enduring Beauty,
etc. Most of them are not very
large so I was able to visit all of them.
The entrance fee is very cheap, from RM1 to 5.
There
is a guided tour at the Museum
of History every Saturday
and Sunday at 10:30. I was very
fortunate to join one. The guide,
Desmond is very knowledgeable and told me a lot about the history of
Melaka. This museum sits at the
oldest surviving Dutch building in the East called Stathuys. In 1650’s it was built as the Dutch governor’s
house. The Christ Church
next to it was also built by the Dutch in 1753.
The
building was converted it into museum in 1980’s.
When they renovated and repaired the whole building, they found the
drainage system underneath the building.
It was a very clever and sanitary design by the Dutch back to the 17th
century.
Other
than the history of Melaka inside the museum, there is also a gallery of Cheng
Ho (Zheng He, 鄭和).
The record showed he had 7 voyages, to South-East Asia, India and Africa. Each time his fleet varied from 41 to
307 vessels. The number of crew was
about 27,000 to 30,000 each. They
also did a comparison with Columbus and Magellan. Both Columbus and Magellan had about 4
vessels and the crew members were about 100 to 200. I think that is why some people would
think Cheng Ho would able to reach America
and even northern Europe.
Melaka’s
golden era of trade was in the 15th to 16th century. At that time, 84 languages were spoken
and 2,000 vessels were docked daily.
People from Arab-Persian, India, China,
Philippine, Siam
came all the way here to barter trade.
Melaka was once ruled by the Portuguese, and later by the Dutch and
later by the British. From some of
the architectures, we can find some evidence and interesting stories. For instance, there is a St. Paul’s Church. It was a Catholic Church built by the
Portuguese. During the Dutch rule,
the Church was converted into Protestant.
And during the British rule, the British converted into a Ammo storage
house.
Remember
the survivor of the tsunami, Ummit?
I met him again in Melaka. I
was having coffee at the Coffee Bean and he stood in front of me. After I left Cameron
Highlands, I went to Penang,
Kota Bahru, Gemas, Tampin and Melaka while he went to KL and Melaka. What a coincident! I am going to Sinagpore while he will
stay in Melaka for a couple of days and then to Singapore,
then to Bali, Indonesia.
Discovery:
Did you know Admiral Cheng Ho (Zheng He) was born in Kun Yang in Yunnan Province? Did you know he was a Muslim? Interesting? An admiral of Ming Dynasty and did not
believe in Buddhism. Did you know
they had Cheng Ho’s museums in Nanjing, Tai
Cang, and Kunming?
2005 01 16 (Sun) Singapore,
Meeting some Old Friends and New Friends
Woke up very early morning because I couldn’t sleep. The room has too many
mosquitoes. Although I had killed
some of them but still there were more to come. Those mosquitoes did not even afraid of
the bug repellent. I counted there
are more than 50 bits on my arms and legs.
Can you believe that? But
not all are from this guesthouse, some from KL, some from Penang
and some from the bugs in the train of jungle railway. Stay at the cheap places has other price
to pay. I am not just spending
money here, but also donating blood.
Left Melaka and took a bus to Johor Bahru, and from Johor Bahru to Singapore. Going from Johor Bahru to Singapore is like from Lo Wo to Kowloon. You pass the Malaysia
border and cross the river (Strait of Johor) and then enter Singapore territory. The reason I
came to Singapore
is to visit two friends, my
ex-colleague, Francis Cheng and my Japanese friend, Jun.
On arrival of Singapore,
I called my Japanese friend, Jun.
He told me to stay at his place.
Why not? He is an exchange
student from Japan, studying
business management in Singapore
Management University. I met Jun in Stockholm,
Sweden in mid August, 2002
when I traveled in the Scandinavian countries and Europe. At that time, he just finished his
journey from Africa to Europe. He traveled from Egypt, Ethiopia,
Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia,
Botswana, Namibia, South
Africa, Lesotho,
Swaziland and then back to Belgium and Europe. It was quite amazing because at that
time, he could not speak very well English. What he got is just the courage. I really respect for that.
In his
apartment, there are 4 other exchange students: Roan from Mexico, K from Korean, and Satoshi from Japan. Satoshi had lived in the North Carolina, United States for 15 years. He speaks excellent
Japanese and English.
In the afternoon, two of Jun’s friends came from Malaysia to
visit him. They are Taka and
Mayu. They had quitted their jobs
and planned to travel around the world for 3 to 4 years. They started their journey in November,
2004. He even has his own web site
posting diaries everyday, but too bad it is all in Japanese
(http://www.sekai-purapura.com). So
my “around the world in 800 days” travel is really nothing when compare with
their plan.
Dinner with Francis. He took me to a nice
Chinese restaurant in Keppel Club.
It is the oldest golf club in Singapore. Very good food. I really need to come back to Singapore more
often to get some more free food.
2005 01 17 (Mon) Singapore,
School Day
In the morning, I went with Jun to his school, SMU (Singapore Management
University). Surprisingly almost every student has a
note book computer. The whole
school is wireless connected. You
can use internet at anywhere on the campus without hook up your cable.
We also went to the library.
Unfortunately, one of the librarian said the library is for the students
only. I am not allowed to go
in. That is the most ridiculous
thing I have ever heard. University
library supposed to be open to everyone.
I am not talking about borrow books, just looking around should be
alright? I was quite angry. I am going to write a letter of
complaint to their chancellor.
Too bad Jun did not have a class today. Otherwise, I’d sit in his class. I went back to Johor Bahru, Malaysia
in the afternoon and stayed overnight in Johor Bahru.
2005 01 18 (Tue) Kuching, the Capital of Sarawak
Took an early flight from Johor Bahru to Kuching in East
Malaysia. Kuching is
the capital of Sarawak. This time I am still taking the Air
Asia. Since I already knew no food
would be served on the plane, I had prepared some food for the breakfast. However, there is a sign saying no
outside food should be brought to the plane. I had to finish everything before
getting on the plane.
After landing, we still have to pass the immigration. The immigration put another chop on my
passport. I was confused. This is a domestic flight and I had
entered Malaysia
yesterday. Why? I looked at the chop yesterday, it was
for West Malaysia and Sabah and this chop is for Sarawak. There are only two states in Borneo Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak. Even the Malaysian from West had to show
passport and chop to pass the immigration.
Isn’t Sarawak is one of the states of Malaysia? It was like entering another
country. Why?
Kuching is a very nice city with the population of about 500K. It has been voted to be one of the
outstanding healthy city by WHO (World Health Organization). The city has a lot of museums: Sarawak Museum,
Museum of Islam
Sarawak, Chinese
History Museum. Surprisingly, all of them are free of
charge.
The Chinese
History Museum
is a very small museum. It exhibits
the different immigrants from the Southern China. According to the record, the Chinese had
come to Malaysia
(to Kuching, to Melaka) to trade since 10th century. Most of the Chinese are from the
Southern China such as, Hokkien (South Fujian, such as Xiamen),
Cantonese (Guangdong Province), Hakka (Ke Jia), Teochew (Chao zhou),
Hainnanese (Hainan), Foochow (Fu zhou and Fu Ching area), Lui Chew (places
north of Hainan).
2005 01 19 (Wed) Rafflesia,
the Largest Flower in the World
About 75 km west of Kuching is the Gunung Gading
National Park. It is famous for one thing, Rafflesia,
the largest flower in the world.
But before you go there, you have to check whether there is any flower
blooming or not. The flower only
bloom for 3 to 5 days. I found out
yesterday that there is a flower blooming from January 16-20. Lucky me, so I decided to go today.
This flower is very
strange plant. It has no leaf, no
stem and no root. In fact, it is a
parasite plant. It takes about 9
months from a bud to bloom. However
not all the buds will bloom.
Sometimes too much rain or too dry would kill them. Last year, there were about 200 buds in
this park, but only 68 bloomed.
When entered in the
park, you need a guide (he is a park ranger) because the park is so large there
is no way you can find the flower.
The one I saw today is about 60cm
in diameter which is about the average size. Last month, there was a record large
flower bloomed about 101 cm
in diameter.
The flower feels
like a plastic or rubber when you touch it. It smells very bad. Since it had already bloomed for a few
days, the color became darker. A
newly bloom Rafflesia should be red in color. According to the guide, there will be 3
flowers to be bloomed next month.
So far, this flower only grows in the wild, and cannot be domesticated
or translocation.
Interesting People:
The bus driver is a Chinese.
He is the third generation.
His grandfather came from Hainan. He speaks very good Chinese. He said he could also write Chinese
because he had gone to Chinese school for 6 years. He tried to tell me everything about Sarawak.
Everything about Sarawak is very good.
Discovery:
Did you know the founder of Shell Oil company was Marcus Samuel in 1880’s?
He was an Englishman, started his oil business in Mira, Sarawak.
2005 01 20 (Thu) Bako National Park, Chasing the Proboscis Monkey
Bako National Park is famous for its wild life.
In this Park, many wild life such as Silver Leaf Langur (monkey),
Monitor Lizard, Borneo Long Beard Boar, and most important, the Proboscis
Monkey are found.
The park is about 50 km
north east of Kuching. However,
this park can only be reached by boat.
I took a bus for about an hour to a smaller fishing village and then
chartered a boat about 30 minutes to get there. Before we landed, we saw a Long Beard
Boar wondering at the beach. It was
such a ugly creature.
Some of the indigenous people in Sarawak
were headhunters. I am not talking
about the job headhunter. These
guys killed their enemies and chopped their head off for souvenirs in the old
times. One of the reasons was to
show how brave they were and to show they actually did kill someone. A guide said if they had the digital
camera before, they wouldn’t need to chop their head off. Just took some pictures and showed to
their people. Nowadays, these
people speak English and some of them became the tour guide and park rangers.
The Proboscis Monkey is a very strange monkey. It has very long nose. The males have large nose and big
pregnant looking stomach, and the females do not have large stomach and the
long noses. They are herbivorous,
however they cannot eat sugarly fruit.
It will create gas in their body and could kill them. Their stomachs have a lot of bacteria to
breakdown the food and to deactivate many poisons in the plants. According to statistics, there are about
1,000 in the Sarawak State
and about 150 in this
park.
Their living habit is to come out early morning before 6:00 and around
17:00 in the afternoon, running
around in the mangrove forest. I saw almost every animals except the Proboscis Monkey. Next time, I should stay a day or two in
this Park then I would have more chance to see it.
Since I will go up to Sabah in the coming
days, I will still have chance to see them.
2005 01 21 (Fri) Semenggok
Wildlife Center,
Visiting Our Cousins
Semenggok Wildlife Center is the place to visit Orang-utan.
It is the largest tree-dwelling animal. The word Orang-utan is Malay which means
“man of the forest”. It is
classified as Great Ape along with the Gorilla, Chimpanzee and
the Pigmy Chimpanzee or Bonobo. The greater brain
size and intelligence and the lack of a tail which distinguishes them (ape)
from monkeys.
The Orang-utans are running around in this wildlife center and they are
feed at 9:00 and 15:00 daily. And
people are allowed to watch. In
fact, people are here to watch them feeding and eating. The park ranger puts the fruits in a
place and shouts a few times and the Orang-utan will come down from the
forest. We were about 25 meters
away from them.
The Orang-utan is reddish color and adult male is about 1.4 meter tall and weight between 60 to 100 kg.
Female has about half the size.
The adult male has the strength equivalent of 6 men. Orang-utan can make tools. They think and they can solve complex
problems. They have their own
individual personalities. They are
one of our closest cousins.
Thousands of years ago, Orang-utan were found all over Asia, but now
only in Sarawak, Malaysia
and Sumatra, Indonesia. The total number in the wild is about
20,000, and 1,500 in the
zoo. Half of their population
was wiped out in the last ten years.
If the situation does not improve, we will only see them in the zoo or protected sanctuaries
in about 10 years time.
Interesting People:
An Australian girl who has a degree in arts and microbiology, is going
to do some research on HIV drugs in Melbourne
University. She is going to do some human tissue experiments
and will have some discovery by the end of this year. She said the one working next door to
her is a Nobel Prize Winner, the only Nobel Prize Winner and still lives in Australia. Well, we all know that always learn from
the best.
A Finnish whose sister is doing research in Cancer has just published a
paper in Nature. That is
outstanding work for someone who can publish a paper in Nature. I am asking her to send me the title of
the paper.
2005 01 22 (Sat) Cat Museum, Probably the Only Cat Museum
in the World
The word Kuching in Malay means “cat”. The city emblem has two cats on it and
there are some cat statues in one of the roundabouts near the water front. Other than that, there is also a cat
museum. Probably it is the only cat
museum in the world. I am not a cat
fan but I am a museum fan. From the
guide book, it mentioned something about the cat statues, posters and I thought
it may take me 15 minutes to finish that.
Turns out I spent half of my day there because it has got a lot to see.
The cat museum display some interesting information, such as cats
in ancient Egypt, the superstitions customers of Malay, Chinese, Japanese and
West, the behaviors of the cats, the movies about cats, cats in oriental art,
cat in modern western art, cat in medieval arts, poems about cats, cats in
stamps, the celebrities and their cats, Malay’s proverbs on cats, cats in
theatre posters, etc.
Ancient Egypt
(3,000 B.C.) was believed to be the first country to domesticate the cat. At that time, if a family cat died, it
was considered to be a painful experience and the whole family went into
mourning immediately by shaving off their eyebrows and mourning would last
until the eyebrow grew back. In 19th
century, 300,000 cat mummies weight over 20 tons were discovered at Beni Hassan, Egypt. I did not know that even I went to Egypt in
November 2003.
Of course, there is an introduction of the musical “CATS” by Andrew
Lloyd Webber and Jim Davis’ cartoon “Garfield”. The interesting thing is Jim Davis does
not keep any cat because his wife Carolyn is allergic to cats.
Also there is a section about cat food from Friskies and Whiskas, the
two major cat food brand.
After visiting Cat Museum, I was going to visit the Timber
Museum nearby in the afternoon but it was closed during non office hours. The Timber
Museum is owned by PUSAKA, a large
timber company in Malaysia.
At night, I took the 20:00 bus to Batu Niah
where I am going to visit the Niah National Park to see the one of the largest caves in
the world, Niah Cave.
Discovery:
Did you know cats sleeps more than 2/3 of the time? If a cat is prohibited to sleep for a
week, it dies.
Did you know Earnest Hemingway had owned 40 cats?
Did you know from 1927 to 1982, there were
about 39 movies about cats or with the name? For instance, “The Owl and the
Pussycat”, with Barbara Streisand, “The Night of a Thousand Cats”,…
2005 01 23 (Sun) Niah
Cave, One of the Largest
Caves in the World
Since the journey to Miri (pronounced as me
li) is about 14 hours, there are two bus drivers on the bus. While one is driving, the other is
sleeping. They switch every three
hours stop. Although the road is
paved, it is still very bumpy. It
was very difficult to get to sleep.
At around 7:45 in the
morning, the bus stopped at the Batu Niah.
I stopped a car and asked the driver to take me to Niah National Park
which is about 15 km from
the bus stop.
After checking in at the park office, I
walked about 3 km in the
tropical rain forest. It is all
boardwalks so it is very easy to walk.
I was totally submerged into the tropical rain forest. The tropical rain forest is
“evergreen”. The trees in this area
had been growing continuously for more than 100 million years. There are more than 3,000 species of
tree and does not include herbs, shrubs, ferns, palms and epiphytes in this
park.
The soil here, to my surprise is not very
fertile. 90% of the nutrients are
from the plants. The plants died, falling to the forest floor as forest litter and broken down and re-used
by other living plants. Ants,
termites, worms, fungi and other bacteria are helping the decompose
process. The forest litters
produced is about 10 tons/hectare/year.
I am not a plant or tree fan but just look
at these information and numbers are quite interesting.
The first cave
of Niah Cave is Traders Cave. It is not a very large cave but you can
still feel its size. Another 5
minutes walk is the Great
Cave which is one of the
largest caves in the world. It took
me 45 minutes to cross from one entrance to another. It was very dark inside, and you had to
bring your torch light. Inside the
cave is all boardwalk but because of the water dripping and animal feces and
sometimes it was quite slippery.
Inside the cave, you could find some local
people collecting the bird nest.
Niah is one of the major centers of bird nesting industry. Some other local people also collect the
guano (bird and bat feces) for fertilizers. Both need license to do that. Since there are a lot of birds and
bats inside the cave, there is a lot of guano are produced annually. It was quite stinky smell inside the
cave.
Passed the Great
Cave, there is another cave called Painting Cave. Archeological findings showed there were
people living here back to 40,000 years ago. There are some paintings on the wall
that was done by the people during that time.
After the visit, I took a bus to Miri (2
hours ride). It is a very small
town with about 150K people living there.
I stayed at Highland Backpackers Inn near the waterfront. It is clean, and even with satellite
TV. The owner, David is a Kiwi and
he is the Twin Otter pilot for MAS (Malaysia Airlines). Running a backpackers inn is his side business.
Discovery:
Did you know a swiftlet (a kind of swallow, 金絲燕) weights about 16 gram and eats about half of weight of insects per
day? They can eat up 11 tons of
insects in one single day in this park area.
The swiftlet that is living in the cave has
a specialized saliva gland that can form “nest cement” so their nest can attach
to the cave wall. As it is very
dark inside the cave, they have a echolocation similar to radar. When they fly, they emit “clicks” from
their throats to find their way.
2005 01 24 (Mon) Mulu
Cave, the Largest Cave in
the World.
Got up very early morning and looked around the Miri town. I was going to take the 12:30 flight to
Mulu but it was fully booked. The
airline said there were some seats available at a earlier flight which was
9:50. I looked at my watch, and it
was 9:00 already. I packed all my
stuff, paid the room bill and jumped on the taxi all that in 6 minutes. That should be a record.
Only 15 minutes I arrive the airport. After checking in at the airport, I
found that I still had the room key with me. I called David. He said I could give the key to one of
the MAS pilots. That is easy. Otherwise, I have to mail it him or come
back to Miri again and return it to him.
The flight takes only 30 minutes to fly to Mulu. There is no road way to reach Mulu. You can take a boat but it will take a
very long time. The Mulu National
Park is about 2
km from the airport.
There are several caves in Mulu
National Park. Among these caves, the Deer Cave
is the largest cave passage in the world (W: 120 m, H:
120~160 m, and L: 2.2 km).
It is also on the UNESCO heritage list. There is an interesting calculation that
you can put fifty 747 jumbo jet inside the cave passage. Besides, the Sarawak
chamber in the Mulu cave system is the largest cave chamber in the world. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to
get there. It is a 10-hour back and
forth and you must be very experienced in caving.
After visiting the Langs and Deer
Caves, we sat outside the
cave and observe the bats flying out during sunset. Each day during sunset, there are about
2.5 millions of bats flying out from the caves in many different groups. They fly in a strand of spiral pattern
and last for minutes in each group.
It is spectacular. As you
know, the bats are blind and the blinds are flying with the blinds, and that is
more amazing.
Interesting
People:
I met a Malaysian guy, Zaidi and he is very passionate in climbing the
mountains. He set up a target two
years ago to finish the 12 highest mountains in Malaysia. He finished ten already. In fact, some of mountains are not very
high but very difficult to climb.
For instance, he just finished the Mulu summit. The mountain is about 2,300 m high, but you need about 4 days and 3
nights to climb back and forth. And you have to bring your own water and food
for the whole trip. The weather is
hot and humid in Malaysia,
always around 30oC during the day time. He told me weather and the conditions of
the trails are not the worst. There are leeches in the
forest. They stick to your body and
suck your blood. And it is very
itching after the bit. You have to
use fire or salt to get them off your body. If you just pull it out, you will bleed
for maybe half an hour to an hour because of the anti clog substance they
secreted. He said he is going to
climb the highest mountain in Africa, Mt. Kilimanjaro
in the coming years. I asked him
why not Mt. Denali
or Mt. Everest. He said he was afraid of cold. Any mountain with snow and ice he does
not want to climb.
2005 01 25 (Tue) Wind Cave and Clearwater
Cave
We took a boat to the upstream of Melinau
River and visited the Wind Cave
and Clearwater Cave. Before the arriving the caves, we
stopped at a local village, the Penan settlement. They also live in longhouses.
Wind cave is named because it has wind breeze blowing out from the
cave. It was like with the air
conditioning. Inside the cave, there is a chamber called the King’s Chamber,
where there are many beautiful stalactites, stalagmites, helictites. We also saw the cave spider and
scorpion.
Clearwater Cave is about 500 m walk from the Wind Cave. It is named for the crystal clear
river. It has a cave passage of 108 km long. However, it is not the longest. The longest cave passage is in Kentucky State, USA. Inside cave, we could see the powerful
erosion force done by the water on the passage wall. We also saw a cave cricket inside. It is different from the normal cricket. It is a strange look little
creature. We also found a lot of
interesting one-leave plant outside the entrance. One of the species is only found in
here.
If you like hiking, there is hiking trail to Pinnacles. It is also one of the tough hikes. You need to bring 3 days of food and
water. On the third day hike, it is
only 2.4 km but it
is also 1.2 km
up. It is a very tough hike. Other than the easy show caves, you may
also do some adventures caving.
However, you need to be experienced in caving. It involves wading across rivers,
squeezing between rocks and crevices, swimming through underground rivers. Some also needs the skill of
climbing. So far, I am not
experienced enough and mentally ready to do those yet.
Interesting People:
Met a Columbian
Australian.
I asked if it is safe to go to Columbia, South America.
He said the guerilla only appeared in one place a time. It really depends on your luck. If they stop your car on the road, you
just give everything you have.
Usually they won’t harm you.
I am not sure if I want to go to Columbia.
Met 3 Malaysian Chinese
girls.
They are neither classmates nor colleagues but they are very good
buddies. They go to scuba diving or
mountain hiking together every 3 months.
They even shared their lunch with me. Thank
you very much.
2005 01 26 (Wed) Labuan, the Wreck Dive Paradise
Checked out Mulu National Park, I took a Fokker 50 twin propeller
plane back to Miri and changed plane to Labuan. It is an Island right across of Brunei but it belongs to a federal territory of Malaysia. It is also a free port where all the
import goods are tax free. The only
reason I stopped at Labuan is to do the wreck
dives.
There are four wreck ships near Labuan:
The Blue Water Wreck (Mabini Padre, a stern trawler), The Cement Wreck (MV Tung
Hwuang, a freighter), The American Wreck (USS Salute, a US Navy Minesweeper),
The Australian Wreck (SS De Klerk, a cargo/passenger steamer).
Unfortunately, things are not happened as you planned. The wreck drive is organized only by
Borneo Divers but they closed their business in Labuan
last year. Well, I guess I will
have to come another time.
So I decide to take a ferry boat to Kota Kinabalu (KK) tomorrow, where I
am going to climb the highest mountain in SE Asia, the Mt. Kinabalu
(4,100 m). This mountain is even higher than Yu
Shan (Jade Mountain)
in Taiwan.
Discovery:
Did you know that Labuan is an
International Offshore Financial Center (IOFC)? There are about 70 of them and Hong Kong is one of them.
2005 01 27 (Thu) Kota Kinabalu, the Capital of Sabah State
The ferry took about
two hours and 45 minutes to arrive Kota Kinabalu. Check-in at Tropicana Lodge. The owner, Vincent is a Chinese who
speaks Cantonese. I wasn’t going to
stay here but he has a very good sales staff, Yusuf who met me at the
pier. He sold me to stay at this place.
This time is my
third time to KK. For the last two
times, I was here to learn scuba diving and transferred while diving in Sipadan
(the world’s best diving place). After
the diving, you are not allowed to climb the mountain because it is very dangerous
as the dissolved oxygen and nitrogen in your blood could release out due to low
pressure. That is why I never had
chance to climb this mountain. This
time I am going to climb the Mt.
Kinabalu (神山).
In the afternoon, I
made the booking for the stay in the lodge inside the Kinabalu Park. It is compulsory to stay in the lodge at
the middle of mountain, and in the next morning, climb to the summit. Also you need to hire a guide. In fact, this mountain is very easy to
climb and the guide is only for the safety purpose.
Discovery:
Did you know that Mt. Kinabalu
is the first Malaysian World Heritage Site?
2005 01 28 (Fri) Mt. Kinabalu,
the Highest Mountain in SE Asia
Since I am traveling
alone, I went to the park very early and waited for someone to share a
guide. Luckily I didn’t have to
wait long. There is a Chinese from Shanghai who is working in Singapore and a Hungarian girl
showed up so we could share the guide.
The Hungarian girl is teaching English in Hungary and at the same time she is
also studying her PhD degree in English.
At
the front of the park office, we took a van to Timpohon Gate (1,866 m) where this is the start of the
hike. We started at 10:40 and we
need to reach the lodge before dinner.
The distance is only about 6 km
but the altitude is 3,272 m
at the lodge.
The trail is quite
wide and is not different to hike.
However, it still took us approximately 6 hours to get to the reception
lodge. We could hike faster but we
tried to use slow and steady pace because the attitude can cause mountain
sickness.
We arrived there
around 17:00 and it was the time for sunset. We saw the sea of clouds were underneath
us. The sun gradually submerged
into the clouds. It was
magnificent.
I was speechless.
There is not much to
do in the lodge. After dinner, we
just went to bed. The lodge I
booked was not a heated one. It was
very cold at night. I woke up
almost every half hour to rub the body to get warm. Later, I decided to put on my jeans and
long sleeve shirt to sleep. But it
was still very cold. I even got
headache and I understand that was minor symptom of the mountain sickness.
Interesting People
I met a German who
is sharing the same the room with us at the lodge. He is working in one of the National
Parks in Thailand. He is assisting some of the PhD students
in study the vocal of the apes. They tried to use fake animals such as
tiger, leopard, eagle and put close to the ape and see the ape’s vocal
response. He said the most
difficult is the fake eagle. They had
to put the eagle on the top of a tree and pull the lines so it looked like
flapping the wings. That is so
interesting.
2005 01 29 (Sat) Mt. Kinabalu,
4 Hours to See the Sunrise
Woke up at 2:00 in the morning and started the climb at
2:40. It was very dark and quite a
lot of people were going. We have
to reach the summit before 6:10 to see the sunrise and the distance is about 2.5km.
The first part of
the hike was almost the same trail as yesterday. But after 20 minutes, the mountain
becomes very steep and it is all granite.
The park has put ladders and ropes along the rock trail which is helpful
to some of the steep parts. About
4:30, I passed the Sayat-sayat Hut (3,668 m). This is the last visitor shelter and it
is also the check point to go to the summit. It still has about 1.5 km to the summit.
At about 6:05, I
reached the summit, the Low’s Peak (4,095.2m).
I adjusted my pace so I did not need to wait too long to see the sun
rise. The Hungarian girl reached
the summit about 5:00. She said it
was quite cold there. Some of the
people couldn’t make to the top.
They just gave up. Some
arrived after the sun has gone up.
Luckily the weather
was very nice: no rain, no strong wind.
It could be below freezing up at the summit. Also I believed it was due to the
training in Mt. Merapi and Mr. Bromo
in Indonesia, and the backpacking for the last one and half months allows me to
overcome the highest mountain in SE Asia.
2005 01 30 (Sun) Resting Time
I woke up this
morning and found my legs were so sore that I couldn’t walk very well. So I decided to take a day off. I went to an internet café and do some
ticket booking as I am coming back to Hong Kong
for the Chinese New Year.
The direct flight
from KK to Hong Kong one way is quite expensive. Then I thought of taking a ferry from Sandakan to Zamboanga, Philippine and then fly to Cebu and
from Cebu to Hong Kong. However this alternative is still not
cheap. I realized I still have a
return ticket from Jakarta to Hong
Kong. I decided to fly
to Jakarta and use my return ticket to Hong Kong. It
takes one more day to fly from KK to KL and from KL to Jakarta but it can save me at least US250.
Interesting People:
Remember the Shanghainese guy that went to
climb the mountain with us? Turns
out we had met each other 8 years ago in Shanghai. What a small world! The story began about 12 years ago. When I went to graduate school in Alaska, I had a very
good Chinese friend, Yi.
Unfortunately he was killed in a car accident. Later I went to Shanghai visited Yi’s
parents. His parents told me that
Yi had a very good undergraduate classmate, Min that I had to meet because he
was leaving to Singapore
to study. So we had lunch together
8 years ago. However, this guy had
changed a lot. I couldn’t recognize
at the first sight and so did he.
We talked and talked.
Finally, I suspected he was the guy who knew Yi. So I asked if he was graduated from Fudan University
in Mathematics? He was quite shock
when I asked that. He still
remembered he had lunch with a friend of Yi but he could not remember me. He is going back to teach in Shanghai Hua Dong Normal University
in the coming semester. I asked him
to send my best regards to Yi’s parents.
2005 01 31 (Mon) Sandakan (山打根), the Old Capital
of Sabah
I took an early bus
to Sandakan. It takes about 6 hours to get
there. The bus is surprisingly
crowded. More than 90% are native
people. They were traveling with
their kids and with tons of luggage.
Almost each of the two seats were seating three people. Some of the kids are crying and
yelling. About an hour before
arriving Sandakan,
there is a checking point. One of
the police got on the bus and checked our ID, while the other one is holding a
MP5 machine gun. What’s going on
here?
When I was a kid, I
heard from my dad’s friend that many Hongkongnese came to Sandakan to work in the 50s and 60s. At that time, I started to wonder
what kind of city is this that. Why
so many Hongkongnese came here to work?
That is the only purpose to visit Sandakan,
to fulfill my curiosity.
Since I do not have
much information, I went to the tourist information center first. The woman is a Chinese, very kindly to
explain to me this and that. She
went to school in England,
studying hotel catering about twenty years ago and had worked for big companies
in business development in tourism and later decided to settle down in her
birth place, Sandakan.
The weather in Sandakan was not very
good. It was raining very
heavily. I finally taste the
monsoon season of Malaysia. The pouring rain lasted for hours.
2005 02 01 (Tue) Sandakan, Touring the
City
At first I was
thinking to go to the Selingan
Island (the turtle
island). However, I did not make
the booking and their boat had left at 9:30. This is the tour package to go to the
turtle island and stay overnight there, see the turtle hatch and see how the
baby turtles are released to the sea.
If lucky, you may also see the mother turtle coming to the shore and lay
eggs at the beach during the night time.
They said it is only place in the world that the turtles are coming back
to lay eggs 365 days a year.
For the turtle, I
will have to see them some other time.
So I decided to go to the Museum
of Sandakan and find some
information about this city. Sandakan was the first and foremost port for the export of
logs and timber in Borneo. It was said that Sandakan’s
timber was used in building of Beijing’s Temple of Heaven. In 1923, the earliest international
automatic telephone exchange was installed in Sandakan,
much earlier than those in Hong Kong and Shanghai. In the 1930s, Sandakan has fully developed into an
international trading center. It
was also known as the “Little Hong Kong of Borneo”. Trading items including wood, pepper,
cinnamon, curry leaf, etc. In its
heyday, Sandakan
had the greatest concentration of millionaires in the world. Unfortunately, those millionaires did
not keep their wealth in here. They
immigrated to other countries, such as UK,
Canada, and Australia.
During the WWII, the
allied forces bombed the whole city and the Japanese burnt whatever
remained. After the war, the
capital was moved to Kota Kinabalu.
This is a photo showed in the museum. All the building were gone, not even one
building had the roof. It was very
sad when talking about the war. It
reminds me the city of Wurzburg in Germany
bombed by the British bombers (Note 1).
Everything I see now at the city center was built after the WW II. Since the city needs to be rebuilt, and
a lots of expertise and workers in construction were needed. That is why many Hongkongnese came here
to work during that time.
Note 1:
I wrote something
when I traveled to Wurzburg,
Germany on
August 28, 2002.
“…Back to the world
war II. The city was almost totally
destroyed by the British bombers. I
had chanced to talk to a gentleman who worked in the museum. He told me that the city major did not
want to surrender as was asked by the British force. They wanted to fight till the end. So the British sent the bombers and
bombed the whole city. It was on
March 16, 1945, around 21:00, only 20 minutes there were more than 300,000
bombs dropped to the city (most of them were petroleum gelatin). Almost 90% of the buildings were
destroyed, 5,000 citizens were killed.
It was terrible when I saw the pictures and the model in the Town Hall…”
2005 02 02 (Wed) Sandakan, Library Day
Since the city has
not much to see, I spent the whole day in the Sabah State Library, reading some
magazines and books. The library
has a fine collection of Chinese martial art fiction. Writers such as Gu Long (古龍), Jin Yong (金庸), can be found
there.
I will be flying
back tomorrow for the Chinese New Year.
I will fly from Sandakan to KK, from KK
to KL, and from KL to Jakarta. The next day, from Jakarta to
Hong Kong. I will stay in Hong Kong for about two to three weeks. After that, I will continue my journey
to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos,
Thailand, Myanmar, India
and Nepal. And probably from Nepal to Tibet,
China.
For Indonesia and Malaysia, they are Muslim
countries. Malaysia has strong British influence while Indonesia has
the Dutch influence. In the coming
countries I am visiting, there will be more of French influence, such as Vietnam, Cambodia
and Laos. They are more of Buddhism in religion.
Discovery:
Did you know Lonely Planet published a
book named The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Countries in the World? It covers 230 countries and the book
weights 4 kg.
2005 02 03 (Thu) Flying the Whole Day to Jakarta
I was going to take the 7:10 flight to KK. When I arrived the airport at 5:50, I
was the first and only one in the airport except two securities. The MAS open their counter at 6:30. After checked in, I found a pamphlet
about KK, saying that there are two airports terminals in KK, one for
international and MAS and the other is for Air Asia.
The plane to KK is a Fokker 50.
Upon arrival, I took a taxi to get to the Terminal 2 which is at the end
of the runway. I was early enough
to change an earlier fight to KL which allows me to have more time in KL.
On upon arrival, the immigration at Jakarta asked me for onward ticket but I told
him the ticket is in the checked in luggage. However he still let me in. My cousin and auntie came to meet me at
the airport. My auntie almost
couldn’t recognize me because the grey hair and mustache and beard.
2005 02 04 (Fri) Coming Home, Sweet Home
Went to the Jakarta
airport at 4:00 in the
morning. I was so exciting as I am
coming home.