Kuching & KL, Malaysia: Sept. 17 - 22

Why hasn't anyone told us about Malaysia??!!!?! Why hasn't Malaysia been discovered for the easy and wonderful place to travel that it is?? We know exactly three people who have been here - one was born here, and two lived in Singapore at the time. We absolutely loved it and were bummed that we only had 5 days here, three in Kuching and two in Kuala Lumpur. The food is diverse and wonderful and cheap, and includes Indian, Malay and Chinese cuisines. The people are warm and mostly speak English! Such a nice treat! And the country has everything from lush resorts, to coral reefs, to temples and mosques, to jungles with amazing animals. Really, whatever level of luxury you want, you can find it here.

We stayed three days at a lovely hotel called The Lime Tree in Kuching, which is on Borneo, where everything was lime themed, including the yummy body wash and the complimentary limeade served on the rooftop deck. Every morning we had a lovely complimentary breakfast buffet, which included both local and western goodies. Kuching means "Cat" in Malay, so this is known as "Cat City." We spent our days eating, drinking cold coconut juice and wandering through the city taking pictures of the various cat statues.

Favorite food while we were there, Laksa!

Much like Singapore, the downtown area was divided into an Indian section, a Chinese section and then Malay was scattered throughout, but it lacked the chaos factor and the mildly scary politics. Of course there's corruption, but they don't practice the form of oppressive control over the populace as does Singapore. We met up with the parents of Charles's high school friend, Mongkut, whom we saw in Singapore, and had a fascinating discussion about the politics and the upcoming elections. But I'm jumping ahead - that was in Kuala Lumpur.

A feng shui rice bowl fountain:

In KL, we stayed at a great guesthouse run by a really nice couple who really cared about Malay and Malay-Chinese culture. The first night, Christina took Charles and I to a night market and walked around with us for a couple of hours, teaching us about the food items and suggesting interesting things to try. With a twinkle in her eye, she would urge us to try items like duck tongue,



or the gross-looking Century Egg. The Century Egg is buried in clay for one hundred days before digging it up and eating it. Yum. It looks putred, literally. The whole egg has turned black and the egg "white" looks like a black jello. I thought it would taste fermented, but surprisingly it was great - it tasted just like a hard-boiled egg. You just have to ignore the appearance. Christina told us it was actually used on fear factor, blended into a smoothie-type drink.

The next morning, Christina and her husband, Michael, took everyone staying with them out for an Indian breakfast

and a visit to an Indian shrine where you make a wish and break a flaming coconut in return...

If your wish comes true you're supposed to come back and break the number of coconuts you promised as an offering. Here's a picture of a woman we met from the Philippines trying it out.

Nice arm!

  We unfortunately only had the next day to see the city and spent much of that having a slow, fancy, Vietnamese meal with Mongkut's parents. The restaurant was in a crazy-fancy mall - we were so under-dressed! Such great people. I'm so glad we were able to spend an afternoon with them. I really wish we had time to explore KL more, and to go further up the coast to Malaka and beyond. Oh well, next time.

West Kalimantan, Borneo, Indonesia: Sept 8 – 17

We had to fly through Jakarta to get to Borneo. Unfortunately, our layover was overnight and the flight to Borneo left at 7:30 am; consequently, we didn’t want to risk the 2 hour trip into the city, so we stayed at a fancy airport hotel. Much to our surprise it had a pool and a gym, which were both sadly outdoors…with the intense humidity and mosquitoes. Charles worked out, but I definitely did not. I already had enough heat rash and we had only been in the humidity of the region for 4 days. So, it was just early to bed and back to the airport in the morning after a tasty Indonesian brunch buffet.

Our flight took us to Pankalan Bun, where we took a taxi for 30 minutes to our destination of Kumai, the jumping off point for exploring the jungle and meeting some orange friends! This is what I had been waiting for and was so excited. And we saw so many amazing animals! This island is the second or third most ecologically diverse place in the world, behind the Amazon and possibly the Congo.

When we first got to Kumai, we just asked the driver to bring us to a hotel. But we quickly experienced a slight sense of doom as we climbed the rickety wooden stairs in a narrow passage between a restaurant and a convenience store. When we asked for a room, the nice lady communicated that she would clean one and promptly walked away, so we felt obligated to accept the accommodations when she returned from cleaning.  So, we stayed in a small dark room with a small fan and twin beds and a stapled-down linoleum floor. It wasn’t terribly dirty, but the common bath was slightly terrifying. The toilets here are squat toilets, meaning that you actually step on the seat, which is just above ground level, and squat all the way down. These are actually kinda nice – they’re certainly better than the holes in Ghana and are actually quite, um, conducive to what you need to do...just don’t forget your own toilet paper. ;-) After you’re done, you scoop yellowish water from a basin into the toilet to clear it. Then you scoop more water to wash your hands (don’t forget your own soap). The “shower” is just another room with a larger water basin and the same pint-size scoop, and you scoop, scoop, scoop yourself to a cleaner you. Luckily, the cold water feels lovely in the heat. Okay, enough about that.

Look who I found in Kumai!!
 

We signed up with the first English-speaking guide we could find out of pure laziness and wanting to make sure we could head out the next day. We probably could have found a better guide and a better boat, but Adi was really nice with his broken English and eagerness to please.

**Side note (mom's and sister, please don't be concerned, Charles is totally, completely healthy as I'm writing this):

Charles had a rough night sleeping the first night in Kumai because he was alternating between hot and cold. As we found out later, he “probably” had a bacterial infection of somekind. Unfortunately, this meant he spent the entire jungle river trip more or less feeling like crap. Other than a few hours of remission the first night, he had a high fever and was either sweaty or cold (in this heat!)…poor guy. Luckily, we were well looked after with great cooking, lots of bottled water, fresh fruit, and a healthy dose of concern by Adi and the crewmembers. We ended up cutting the boat trip a day short and taking a nighttime, dramatic speedboat ride back to Kumai to visit a doctor after hours, at Adi's insistence. The nice doctor gave us paracetemol (Tylenol), vitamins “for stamina,” and said we should go to the hospital to get malaria testing. So Adi took us to a nicer hotel with air conditioning. When he came (two days later) to bring Charles to the hospital, I was out hunting up some food and water and came back to an empty room and the receptionist handing me the room key and simply saying, “Adi.” Eek. Since I had studied as many medical words as I could find in Adi's English-Indonesian dictionary, I was anxious to be there with them. So, I went to the only doctor's I had seen, who ended up being a dentist. But the extremely nice guy let me hop (side-saddle, as women do there) on the back of his scooter, and took me to the hospital. I just barely caught them - Adi and Charles were just getting back on Adi's scooter when I arrived. Phew. At any rate, it ended up that the test was negative, thankfully, and Charles was given some antibiotics and was sent on his way. Adi very kindly refused our offers to pay any doctors fees, and arranged our airport transportation for the next day! So nice. So, we went back to the hotel and put Charles back to bed to rest for our flight to Pontianak the next day, where we hid in the confines of an extremely upscale hotel and ate all of our meals in the hotel restaurant - basically we didn't see the outdoors for three days except when Charles ventured out to get water.

Anyway, getting back to the jungle river boat trip... In between wiping Charles's brow with a icy wet cloth, I did get to enjoy sitings of many of his furry cousins! And so did he. Actually, when we first started off on the trip, Charles was napping on the deck while Ludo (a French guy we invited to share the trip with us) and I excited searched the canopy for orang utans. After about two hours of this, Charles rolled over, wearily lifted his head, and immediately pointed out our first orang utan! What a brat! :-) After that we were lucky enough to see quite a few wild orang utans before getting to the area where the semi-wild reintroduced orang utans congregated. We also saw long-tailed macaques, proboscis monkeys...and maybe even a gibbon, which are notoriously hard to see.

The three of us sitting down to our first meal on the boat:

Check out the schnozz on this proboscous monkey!

Ludo and I went with Adi for the afternoon feeding of the reintroduced orang utans. This was a bit zoo-like and manufactured for my tastes, but it was exciting to hear them crashing through the trees and coming so close...without a cage or fence. There were about 4 adults and a baby eating when all of a sudden they spread out from the feeding platform.

 

Moments later, the dominant male came crashing through like an elephant to take over the eating. He had those huge cheek pads and the loose neck skin that looks like a huge double chin. The loose skin is for making their long whooping calls, but researchers don't really know what the cheek pads are for...other than making him look larger. An adult male will only grow them when he has his own territory, regardless of his age.

After the feeding, we returned to the boat and heading further up the river. Charles was feeling better at that point and joined us for another delicious meal and animal watching. We turned up a smaller river arm and crossed over a line between the filthy mining-contaminated water of the main river and into the crystal clear, coffee-colored smaller river. Adi said 20 years ago, before mining began, the water was healthy in both.

By nightfall, we found a spot to "pull over" into - they literally tied ropes to the river plants to keep the boat off to one side. It was a long night. Poor Charles was ping-ponging between hot and cold flashes, and trying dizzily to make his way down the dark obstacle course that was the boat at night to reach the bathroom. Needless to say, I was concerned each time he got up. To get down the boat, you had to step out of our mosquito net and squeeze your way past Ludo's mattress along a one foot wide space bordered on the other side by the shin-high railing that marked the edge of the boat, all while ducking under the strings tying up his net. Not fun for me, and really difficult for Charles. But there were no large crashes into the water that night. But the night noises were amazing! We definitely heard a lot of loud splashing and thrashing sounds coming from the water and many mystery shrieks and yells from animals of the jungle. We could make out the long whooping sounds of orang utans, screeching arguments of the long-tailed macaques and an infinite chorus of insects and frogs and who-knows-what-else.

The next day, we continued our journey up the river to Camp Leakey - the head of orang utan research, and an indigenous community, in the park. As we went further and further upstream, the river narrowed until the boat was brushing past the long leaved river plants on either side. Ludo and I spotted two Gharials, which are like crocodiles, but with really narrow mouths like a caiman. We also saw a large crocodile and a yellow and green-black monitor lizard that was climbing through the leaves of a durian plant just above the water. (Tobin, I suggest you don't read the rest of this paragraph - don't worry, there are no pictures). I saw an amazingly beautiful water snake that was probably close to two meters long! It's head and front third were bright green, then it's middle third was reddish brown, and its hind third was grey-black. Each color faded into the other and it looked just like a dying, broken off leave of the durian plants that lined the river.

I took a short excursion up to the information center while Charles rested and then a half-hour small hike around the area with Ludo and Adi. On the walk we came upon a mother orang utan looking for termites with a juvenile (maybe two years old, pictured below) and a baby in her arms. We stayed and watched them for a while, with the mother taking no notice and this juvenile coming within feet of us to say hello! yay!

On our way back, we came across some pretty tame long-tailed macaques along the trail and one came right up and sat next to me on the walkway! hee hee hee.



After this, I stayed on the boat with Charles while Adi and Ludo went to another feeding. Even though he wasn't feeling well, Charles got to enjoy the orang utans that were hanging around the boat area, looking at the zoo animals (us) in their cages (the boats).

That was the night we decided to call it quits and head back to Kumai just to be safe. So the plan was to bring the boat back to the main river where a speed boat would pick us (Charles, Adi and me) up, then Ludo would stay on the boat for the third day with a different guide.

Back on the main river, we began to see the mystical, magical fireflies! wow! I wish I could have taken a picture. Blinking rapidly, not like the ones in the US, they light up the trees in a glorious sparkling spectacle along a pitch black jungle river. They looked like tinsel, or like white Christmas tree lights flickering like they were about to blow out. And they weren't in each tree, but every few trees. And their groups were so large that they could be described as swarms. I can't describe it well enough, but it was truly magical.

Then we made our oh-so-dramatic speed boat getaway back to Kumai, where Adi had a van waiting for us at the docks. The rest you know. The culture here is so incredibly friendly - although they mostly didn't speak English, and my Indonesian is extremely limited (but I can say, "Can I have some chicken soup please?" very well), just one smile and you are greeted with an ear to ear grin that lights up the face, and maybe a shy giggle, and a greeting of "hello mister!" The food was fabulous. The only negatives are the air-quality (filled with smoke from controlled burnings) and the bathing situation. It's sad that Charles didn't get to enjoy this most adventurous part of our trip, but it is an experience I will never forget.

Gorging ourselves in Singapore: Sept 4 – 8

What a diverse, lively, interesting and strange city. Charles and I thought 4 days might be too much for this small island nation, but planned it because we had friends to visit as well. As it turned out, we would have been happy to spend two weeks there. Oh well, we just have to come back I guess. :-)

The city is a flavorful mix of shiny, wealthy areas and chaotic, bustling neighborhoods, separated by ethnicity. Clarke Quay, for example, was a shiny Disneyland of bars and lights and boats and interesting decorations. Chinatown was half fancy with expensive bars and lots of expats, and half small alleys lined with restaurants and food stalls. Areas like Little India were more chaotic, but filled with intriguing aromas and character. As you walk through the city you see signs of the different cultures like Mosques, Hindu Temples, Christian Churches, Chinese decorations, Offerings being burned on the streets...

 

As always, we love to find things that are odd or funny in our culture, though not in another. Things such as these popular drinks: 

This one is no joke! We saw the "bird hotels" all over Indonesia where they attract these birds (Swiflets, I think) and sell the nests to China! Apparently these birds use mainly saliva to hold their nests together and somehow this became a popular soup, and apparently a drink too...

And these food signs:

And these signs:

This "Waiting seat" was in women's bathroom and was completely visible to walkers by:

I love these recycling containers!

And the food!! There are food courts all over the place with a variety of different Asian foods. We tried as much as we could manage and loved almost every bite. And it was so cheap! Our meals were around $3 to $6 each. Of course, they would have quickly gotten very expensive had we gone to restaurants or the more expensive neighborhoods rather than eating from the hawker stalls, but this is where it’s at.

And such great company! Charles’s friend, Eric, lives in Singapore and is responsible for introducing us to our good friend, Laura. Charles met him while working in Korea several years ago. What a great guy with a charming sense of humor! We went out for several meals together and he taught us about the contradictions in the laws and the ways of Singapore. Being gay is technically illegal, but they have a Gay Pride that attracts more than 50,000 people, though they can’t do anything beyond standing together wearing pink. Basically, the government is willing to look the other way because they don’t want negative international attention. Littering will get you a $500 fine the first time, then community service, then jail time…though Eric has never actually known anyone to get past the community service phase. Selling/possessing drugs will get you the death penalty. Durian fruit (a very stinky fruit popular in many Asian cultures) is illegal, but you see it sold on the street and I tried a Durian shake (not bad). HIV is also illegal. Eric said he got tested a few years back and asked the nurse if it was really anonymous. The nurse responded that s/he would have to report it and then the government had its ways of finding out who. If he had tested positive, he would have had to leave the country within 24 hours. Scary. And you don’t see many police because they follow the self-policing theory that by having mostly plain-clothed officers, people will generally police themselves because you never know who is watching. But none of this is felt, at least to the nonresident, as you wind through the streets taking in the exciting mash of cultures.

We also met up with our friend, Monkut, a Malaysian-Australian with whom Charles went to UWC. He lives in Hong Kong now and was here to take the equivalent of the GMAT. It was great to catch up with him after….5 years? We walked around Clarke Quay and ate at a food court in that upscale neighborhood – interestingly the least exciting food we had eaten in a food court yet. The next night we walked through Chinatown and ate at a Vietnamese place. While that wasn’t terribly exciting, we later went to a Malaysian place (I think) and had Chandol! So friggin good. It was icy and coconut-y and had a green tapioca that wasn’t too sweet and grass jelly made from Kandan leaves or something. Sounds totally weird, but it was amazing!

We also attempted to meet up with friends of Derreck’s (Heather’s brother for those of you who don’t know the Lilly clan), but it didn’t work out. This city really is the crossroads of Asia.

Adelaide River & Darwin, NT: Sept 2 – 4

When we planned this portion of the trip, we thought Adelaide River was another jumping off point for bushwalking in Litchfield Park. However, while it is adjacent to the southern portion of the park, there are no developed trails in the area. So, it turned out to be a lovely, two day oasis at a still-functioning cattle station. It was perfect!

They had all sorts of animals – water buffalo, peacocks, horses, cows, and a dog. and the place was absolutely overrun with Agile Wallabies! such a great sendoff. We lazied around and took walks, hoping to see some Salties in the river, or Freshies in the billabong. But we saw neither – I suppose that’s better than seeing one too close for comfort. The rest of the time we spent being lazy at the pool and talking to our housemates – an older couple from an agricultural area in NSW. As we walked around, wallabies were constantly boinging away – there must have been thousands!

Oh! I nearly forgot the Curloo! These birds started singing their sad ghostly songs at dusk. Eerie, but also beautiful. But late in the night, the forlorn song turns into a higher pitched scream and several birds scream back and forth and at the same time, sounding like a village of women getting slaughtered. They do this for a minute or so, then quiet down for fifteen minutes or a half hour, then start all over again. Luckily they don’t keep it up all night because it was quite disturbing and nearly impossible to sleep through.

The second night, we had a little visitor in our bathroom – a rather large Green Tree Frog. I opened the seat of the toilet and screeched, jumping backward a mile. I immediately started laughing and called Charles in as I went to the other stall, nearly wetting myself. J We had no idea whether he had come up through the pipes or had somehow gotten the lid open to get in and we had to decide what to do. We figured he had probably, though disturbingly, come up through the pipes, and since we didn’t know whether he was poisonous or not, we thought it would be best to shut the lid. Later that night, I went to use the other stall, opened the lid, screamed once again as we found our friend had somehow transferred toilets and was sitting on the seat under the lid just staring down into the bowl! Eww…he must have been able to go through the pipes to the other toilet. And of course now I was afraid to sit down for fear of a surprise attack from below. I once again, between fits of laughter, called Charles in. I lifted the lid and he was gone! We never saw him again, but wondered where he went…whether he got sucked in with river water or was there by choice? 

We took our time leaving this dusty place and went into Darwin to find some Kangaroo steak before leaving Oz. Darwin is strangely shiny and cosmopolitan. We expected it to be a bit more relaxed and perhaps rough around the edges, but those going to work were dressed much like New Yorkers – mainly in black, grey and white, and very stylish. The area was bombed during WWII and was later nearly completely wiped out by a hurricane a few decades ago. Over 11,000 homes were destroyed, leaving only 400 standing. The result is that it very much felt like a planned city without anything organic about it. Also, maybe because it caters so much to tourists, we couldn’t find a kangaroo steak anywhere. The one place we knew of was closed for lunch, so we settled for a kangaroo burger and a spinach salad with kangaroo steak, beets, pine nuts, feta and olives. Yum. Everything was delicious – the burger was amazingly spiced and the combination of flavors on the salad perfectly accented each other. The meat itself basically tasted like a really tender beef – perhaps just a bit gamier.

Then we were off to return the car at the airport and make our grand exit from Oz (by almost missing our plane). With that, we were off to Singapore!

Litchfield Park, NT: Aug 31 - Spet 2

Delightful swimming holes!! Unimpressive hiking (very short, highly groomed trails), but stunning waterfalls and croc-free swimming holes! Well, saltwater croc-free anyway. Freshwater crocs are allegedly harmless and eat only fish and are rarely even seen at the surface.

The park is set up for driving from attraction to attraction with very little trail development. We saw mammoth red termite mounds which were fascinating but totally creepy. The larges was about 30 feet tall and estimated to be 50 years old! creepy.

There was also another type that was grey and headstone shaped and were "magnetic termite mounds." The park was sorely lacking in informational signs, but what I overheard a tour leader say was that they are not actually magnetic, but are aligned with Earth's magnetic field...but I have no idea why. Because of them all facing the same direction, I actually thought they were old graveyards with giant headstones when I saw them earlier in our trip. oops.

Then we got to the real treat - swimming holes! Yay! It was so that the first area of a river that was accessible, we just jumped right in. Charles was wearing his swimming trunks but I just jumped in fully clothed. Can I just say how much I love quick-dry clothing! So worth the investment for a trip like this. We splashed around and just sat in the knee-deep holes and a crawfish nibbled Charles's toe and then scuttled away when he moved. When we moved on our clothes dried in minutes in that desert climate.

The next stop in the park was Wangi Falls - the main attraction of the park. Signs said there aren't any Salties in the dry season and that Freshies are rarely seen. It was a beautiful seen with two falls plunging into a large swimmable area. We sat for some time with just our feet in the water, but we couldn't help ourselves and jumped in again. The water was lovely and crystal clear.

The next morning we drove back in to the park to visit a couple more stops and for a final swim. This area was more a series of tiny water falls with small water holes. We splashed around for a while on our way out. As I scrambled across a rock that had a small, flowering plant on it, Charles saw a cloud of flying somethings rise up, and heard me scream as one stung my bum, and again when I swatted and got stung a second time on my finger. Ouch! I have been stung several times in my life, including by a white-tailed hornet (wasp?) and they didn't come close to the pain this caused! Thankfully, the pain and throbbing was gone by that evening. After that, we decided we had had quite enough, and Charles found another path out since he is at least slightly allergic to bees. On our way out, I rolled my ankle and gashed the edge of my big toe on the rough path surface. It was not a fun half hour.

But, on the flip side, it is always nice when one of the supplies you always pack actually comes in useful. I got to use an iodine swab and antibiotic cream I've been traveling with for years. :-) Anyway, the stinging went away and the toe healed nicely. No harm done. After licking my wounds, we went back to the caravan park we had spent the two previous nights in for a tasty crocodile burger! yum. The croc itself was like a mix of calamari steak and some white fish - probably not all that flavorful by itself, but the texture was actually great. The flavor was helped immensely by the fried egg, bacon, lettuce, tomato and beets that also came on the burger. Such an odd but oh-so-tasty combination.