Saturday 31 October 2015

Day 369: Hey, big nose!

It was raining this morning when we got up. My first job of the day was to set about re-packing our bags – we'll be using the Nova Hotel as our base in Kuching over the next week or so, so we can leave a big chunk of our stuff here to save us having to lug it around. My cold has really settled in now – searing pain at the back of my throat and a big throbbing lump in my sinuses – so before we had breakfast we looked around for a pharmacy or similar to get some cold and flu tablets. Unfortunately, the best we could do was some paracetamol from a 7-Eleven. And the best we could do for breakfast was to go back to our funny little alleyway place, where we got some won ton noodles and a couple of pork buns.

Afterwards, we went back the room, where I finished up the packing. We had organised a taxi through the hotel and it was waiting for us when we went downstairs and dropped off our spare bags and checked out. Our destination for today was Bako National Park, the oldest park in Sarawak. It's located on a peninsula and is only accessible by boat. The drive out to the pier and national park office only took a bit less than an hour. After handing over our booking details and paying our entry fees, we moved across to the boat desk, where we were given two options – we could hire a boat just for us, or for quite a bit less, we could just pay for four seats, but we would have to wait until the boat filled up before we could leave. As it was mid-morning, we assumed that no-one else would be going out now, so were about to pay the higher fee when a middle-aged European couple suddenly appeared, closely followed by another. We quickly switched options and not long after were pulling on our life jackets and climbing aboard a small boat with the first of the European couples. 


The boat took us up the river and then out into the open ocean. We turned right and followed the coast for about a quarter of an hour and then the driver turned us towards the beach. The boat started to slow down and then stopped. The driver revved the motor and we went forward a bit more and then stopped. It was low tide, he explained, and the water was very shallow, so we were going to get stuck a few times before we got to the beach – and would have to get out and wade the last part. After a while, he signalled that this was as far as we would be going and Kate and I took our shoes off and climbed into the warm water, which reached up to our knees. Under a light rain we ferried the bags across to where another boat was sitting exposed on the sand, but when I went back to get the girls, I found the driver already carrying Zoe to the beach. I grabbed the last of the bags and he grabbed Sarah and soon we were all heading across the sand to the park headquarters (we were lucky – the other boat, with the other European couple aboard, got stuck well out to sea and was still out there as we were sorting out our accommodation). 
 




When we got to the main building, we found the national parks office and showed them our booking details. They gave us a map and some orientation information but informed us that our room wasn't ready yet, so we put our bags in the (hopefully) secure luggage room and wandered over to the cafeteria, where we had some tea and cake and the girls watched some Madagascar 2. While Kate and I sat out on the balcony sipping our tea and eating somer pretty good banana cake, we heard a commotion nearby and looked over to see a macaque (Boo! Hiss!) sitting in the middle of a table quickly shovelling in food from a plate as two tourists stood watching, mouths agape. Someone ran over and shooed the monkey away and the tourists grabbed their plates and moved inside.

By now it was lunchtime for us, too, but we were keen to eat the food we had brought with us, rather than eating the cafeteria food. However, there were signs up all over the place forbidding the consumption of 'outside food' at the cafeteria tables, so we walked over to a small shelter near the beach and constructed our sandwiches – Kate and the girls keeping a sharp eye out for macaques the whole time. We wolfed them down quickly, still scanning the surroundings for marauding monkeys, and then headed out for a short walk.

The trail, when we found it, was along a raised wooden boardwalk, and took us through some nice rainforest. Several sets of wooden stairs took us higher and higher, and eventually we emerged on top of a rock outcrop, where a little shelter had been set up. The view looked out over the beach and national park headquarters, but we had eyes only for the stunning little red and black bird that flew into a tree beside us.

 



We saw some nice pitcher plants on the way back down and as we walked back towards the cafeteria, I observed that the ground had been extensively dug up and remarked to Kate that if we came out at night, there was every chance that we would see the pigs responsible for the digging. By the time we got back down to the office our room was ready, so we grabbed our bags and set off along a path that ran adjacent to the beach. (It turned out that we wouldn't have to wait as long as I had expected to see the pigs - as we walked past the cafeteria, we saw a large bearded pig standing, unafraid, on the grass.) Our room turned out to be one of about six in a very basic concrete block. It consisted of four beds, fan, toilet, sink, cold shower. As we were settling in, Zoe called us outside and there on the grass was another of the pigs – another big male that was soon joined by three smaller females. 




The others were feeling a bit tired, so they all lay down for a rest. But we were in Borneo (!) and I was keen to stay out to see what I could see, so I left them and continued down the path away from the headquarters. After passing through a forested area, the path opened out and crossed a bridge beneath which the tide was coming in, flooding a muddy mangrove forest. I scanned the ground, the bushes and then the trees – and did a double-take as I spotted a large, dark shape high above me. This was what I had been most hoping to see here at Bako – a proboscis monkey – and there was another, and another. There were four of them lounging around taking it easy, looking like proper couch potatoes with their round, distended bellies.

 
After taking some photos I continued on, finding a raised wooden boardwalk through the mangroves. There were several macaques on it, but thankfully they scampered off without giving me too much grief, although a few of them did hiss and bare their teeth as they left. I walked to the end of the boardwalk and then turned around and headed back to the room. When I got close to where I had seen the proboscis monkeys I heard a noise and, rounding a corner, surprised a female quite low down, close to the path. She quickly leapt away, crashing into the undergrowth, before picking a spot to sit and eat some leaves not far from where I was standing. 




Back at the room, I gathered the others up and we headed out for another walk through the forest. We headed back past the headquarters and onto another boardwalk, where we came across another of the bearded pigs – this time a female accompanied by several very cute striped piglets. We hadn't been on the boardwalk for long when we spotted another group of tourists up ahead with a guide, all looking up into the trees. I asked what they had found and they pointed to two brown shapes high on one of the trunks – flying lemurs! Looking up through binoculars and telephoto lens we discerned that one of the them had a baby that was peering out from the protective embrace of its mother's 'wing'. 






Continuing on, the path headed uphill and then down again towards the coast. As the closed rainforest gave way to a more open coastal forest and the boardwalk petered out. Almost as soon as I left the walkway, I saw and heard some movement in the trees to our left. I ran ahead to see what it was and caught a glimpse of a proboscis monkey but by the time the others had caught up, it had disappeared. We kept walking in that direction and were soon rewarded to an awesome view of several monkeys swinging from vines and leaping between trees. When they had moved out of sight our attention switched to the water's edge, where we noticed numerous small mudskippers skipping about on the mud. Making our way back to the boardwalk, we found a path heading in the opposite direction that eventually took us to a beach, where we saw many more, larger mudskippers.






 
On the way back, we walked along the beach and I took the others out to the boardwalk, where we saw a few more proboscis monkeys.




In the evening we had dinner at the cafeteria and then headed back out onto the boardwalk to do some spotlighting. On the way out, we didn't really see very much, but on the way back, we spent a bit more time trying to locate some of the frogs we could hear calling and soon enough, we managed to find a few, including an interesting little red-brown toad. While Zoe and I stopped to get some photos, Kate and Sarah went on ahead to see if they could find some more. As they scanned the vegetation, they were joined by an organised night walk group, which was Sarah's cue to step into a gap between the wooden boards of the boardwalk and get her foot stuck, leading to hysterics for both of them as the tour group was forced to navigate around them. 




When we got back to the room the others went in for some cold showers and sleep while I continued on to the mangrove boardwalk, were I came across some geckoes and a constellation of fireflies in the mangroves, winking on and off like Christmas lights.

Tuesday 27 October 2015

Day 368: Bound for Borneo

I awoke to the soothing tones of Kate's alarm at 4.40am, the unmistakable stabbing pain of a nasty cold settling in in the posterior regions of my nasal passages. We quickly got up and out and down and onto the street for the short walk to the bus stop, where a slightly disreputable-looking group of men sat around a table listening to the radio and making desultory conversation, while something smouldered nearby to keep the mosquitoes at bay. The bus ride to the airport was considerably smoother than the journey had been going the other, and we were there before 6am. We had some trouble figuring out where to check in for our flight, but when we got to the counters, the queues were short and soon enough our bags were on their way to the plane and we were on our way through security.

The flight to Kuching in Sarawak, the more southern end of Malaysian Borneo, only took about two hours, but oddly, despite the fact that it was a domestic flight, we still had to go through immigration when we arrived, fingerprinting and all. It all went nice and smoothly, however, and we grabbed our bags from the carousel and grabbed a voucher for a taxi and then settled back for the ride into Kuching itself. The taxi dropped us at the Nova Hotel, where we checked in, but then struggled with the newfangled electronic door key, which stubbornly refused us ingress to our room. Once we got inside, however, we were impressed with the size of said room and spent a few moments regaining our composure before heading out again to see if we could find the national parks office so we could book our accommodation for the rest of our stay in Borneo.




The walk took us alongside the Sarawak River, which runs through the city, and before long we had found the office and started making enquiries about staying in Bako, Kubah and Guning Gading national parks. We were aided in our efforts by a wonderfully patient and helpful gentleman, who, unfortunately had clearly been lumbered with an incredibly antiquated and laborious digital booking system. To make matters worse, we were trying to juggle about ten nights of accommodation spread over three national parks, two of which we could travel between but one of which would require us to stay a night in Kuching either before or after. Each potential combination of nights required multiple key-strokes and switching between screens and I'm sure it must have taken us at least an hour to come up with a viable itinerary (an hour that ate significantly into the poor man's lunch hour), but eventually we reached a satisfactory conclusion, paid all of the required fees, and left the office clutching our booking confirmations.

It was time for us to have our lunch by now, so we headed up the road to a large shopping mall to see what we could find. The guy at the office had suggested we try the mall's food court, but it looked pretty grim, so the girls got their wish as once again, we ate at the McDonald's downstairs. On the way to lunch, we had passed the Textile Museum, at which point Zoe had announced suddenly and uncharacteristically that she 'loved museums', so after we had eaten, we returned there and then made our way to the Natural History Museum (which was mostly closed for renovation) and the Sarawak Museum (where most of the rather moth-eaten natural history exhibits had been moved). 



 
On the way home, we walked through the Chinatown area. We noticed that there were numerous rather trendy bars along the road we were taking and as we were a bit hot and tired, we thought we would stop for a beer – until we looked at the prices! A half pint of draught lager was about 12 ringgit, or US$3, which seemed just a little extortionate, so we kept trudging back towards the hotel. By the time we got there, we were unacceptably parched, so we tried another, less trendy looking bar across the road. Unfortunately, the beer there was just as expensive, but we bit the bullet and Kate and I shared a pint. We then visited a supermarket to stock up on a few essentials ahead of our national park stays before going back to the hotel room to relax for a few hours.



In the evening we went in search of somewhere nice for dinner, but all of the restaurants we looked at looked less than appealing. In our meandering, we stumbled across a covered passageway between two buildings where tables and chairs had been set up. The area was really buzzing, with almost all of the tables filled with groups of diners, many with large buckets full of ice and beer. On one side of the passageway was a sort of cafĂ©, serving drinks and Chinese food from a buffet, and on the other side was a collection of carts manned by individual vendors specialising in particular types of food. This looked perfect, so we sat down, ordered some remarkably cheap beers (we later learned that they were actually cheaper than if you bought them from the supermarket) and ordered a variety of very tasty noodle dishes from a few of the carts. 




Saturday 24 October 2015

Day 367: Another hazy day

We all had a nice sleep-in this morning, before returning to last night's restaurant for a breakfast of good old roti canai (for Kate and I, that is – Sarah had a yoghurt from 7-11 and Zoe had some muesli bars; both girls are definitely starting to struggle with the constant onslaught of Asian food). Then it was back to the room to try, with mixed results, to arrange our accommodation for Borneo. For lunch, the girls insisted on McDonald's, but I couldn't face it, so I went into Chinatown and got a huge portion of barbecued pork, roast duck and rice for just ten ringgit – the equivalent of about US$2.50. On the way, we checked out the airport bus situation. The bus stop is in a pretty random spot outside the McDonald's and isn't signposted in any way, but we found a guy sitting at a table under a sunshade who had a timetable, so we're pretty sure we know where to get it and at what time. The haze from the fires in Indonesia has been so bad that some of the local schools have been shutting down. Our hotel has responded to the problem by handing giving away free face masks.




Back at the hotel, we had another go at the Borneo accommodation. We want to stay inside three national parks and although there is a special online booking form, it's not very user-friendly. We tried to use Skype to call the booking central office, but couldn't get through, so it looks as though we'll have to drop by the office when we arrive in Kuching tomorrow. In the evening we went back to Chinatown for an evening of skewers – starting with some satay from a roadside stall and then moving on to our regular restaurant. Afterwards, we split up – I went into the big cheap-knock-off market to get some underwear and a power bank while the others went to McDonald's for an ice cream and then back to the room. Our neighbours appeared to be hosting another party, so Sarah rang down to the front desk to complain. Not long after, one of the hotel staff appeared at our door to inform us that he had asked them to keep the noise down, which seemed to do the trick, thankfully, as we have an appallingly early start tomorrow. 



Thursday 22 October 2015

Day 366: Like it or Lumpur it

The alarm went off at 6am this morning and we packed up and went down to a place in the main, upper part of town for breakfast, sitting and waiting for a while as the roti canai guy warmed up the hotplate. We then walked up to the car park, where we thought the bus back to Jerantut made its pick-ups, but were told to go back down into town. The expected departure time of 8.15am came and went and it wasn't until 9.15am that we were able to climb aboard the bus. An hour later we arrived in Jerantut, and discovered that the next bus to KL didn't leave until 4pm. We met a couple of French guys who were also trying to get back to KL and between us we managed to cobble together a new plan - we would catch a bus to another town, Temerloh, from which KL buses left every hour or so. We only had to wait about half an hour for the rather rickety bus to leave and were in Temerloh about an hour after that, but when we got into the bus station, we discovered that tickets had been selling fast for the multiple coaches to KL and the earliest we could get on was at 3.30pm (the French guys got on a slightly earlier bus as there was only the two of them).


It was about lunchtime by now so we headed over to the local Pizza Hut for a slightly dispiriting meal and to plug our various electrical components into the power point conveniently located adjacent to our booth. The journey to KL took about three hours, taking us through some torrential rain and abysmal traffic. Then it was up the stairs to the sky train and back to our familiar neighbourhood, where we trudged down to Hotel 99, where we had stayed the last time we were in KL. Everyone was looking forward to a soft bed, air-con and some HBO, but when we turned the TV on, it was just showing a collection of fuzzy local channels. The horror! Kate went down to complain and soon the barefoot tech guy was reconnecting us. The joy!



For dinner we decided to take a break from Chinatown and walked down the main road past the hospital to a place that did a mixture of Indian and local dishes – and had come highly recommended on TripAdvisor. It took us a while to find it – we walked straight past it the first time – but when we sat down, the staff were incredibly friendly, welcoming and helpful, and we had a nice meal of curries and naan. Back at the hotel, our neighbours appeared to be hosting some sort of party, with people regularly coming and going and bad local pop music playing until after midnight.