Finally taking the plunge

I'm scheduled for a busy weekend of diving around a couple of beautiful islands here in Semporna, Malaysia. This is probably my last stop in Malaysia before finally crossing into Indonesia. Before I get distracted by all the pretty fishes tomorrow, I'm going to try to catch you up on the last 3 weeks. It shouldn't be too hard - I was really lazy for much of the time.

I guess I left off telling about Mulu National Park and the joys of bat guano and leeches. While some of my fellow travelers were braving the hike up to the Pinacles at Mulu, I decided to fly back to Miri a little early (almost nothing to do with the leeches).

After another night at the hostel with the kitten in Miri, I caught a share taxi across the border to Brunei. Since Brunei is such a wealthy country (highest car ownership in Asia, most of them SUVs), public transit is even less viable than in California. There is a bus, but you have to change at least twice, and even if you catch the first one at 7am, you might not make your connections. Instead, locals will drive you across the border and to the far side of Brunei when the get 3 or 4 people interested in going there. It's only a little over an hour across the whole country, so the car is a much better option.

Though other travelers insist Brunei is way too boring to visit, I did find a couple things worth seeing and somehow managed to make them last for 4 days. I awoke on my first day to the sounds of explosions rattling the windows. Now usually I take that as I sign to move on to the next country as fast as I can (if that's still possible), there seemed to be a pattern here, and they finally stopped after ~21 explosions. The woman at the front desk pointed at the TV, to a scene of thousands of people in brightly colored clothes filling the street, and she said "That's right outside!"

Grabbing my camera, I tried to make sense of things. It turned out today was Muhammad's birthday - one of those important holidays in devout Muslim countries that I would have avoided if I'd been paying attention (too hard to get accommodation and everything's likely to be closed). However, it kinda looked like I'd missed most of the festivities, so I sat down for a leisurely breakfast in front of The Coffee Bean. Just as they served my food, here comes the Sultan of Brunei leading the parade right in front of my table! Of the 3 guys in black, he's the one on the right. The crown prince is in the middle.
This was apparently the first public appearance by the Sultan in months.

In case you've forgotten, the Sultan was the richest man in the world for many years (yes, even richer than Bill Gates).
He's still considered the richest royal at $22 billion. These days, that's not even half a Gates or a Buffett, but still more than the Google founders. He was followed by what looked like the entire armed forces and most of the country's male populations (all color coded in various pastels, with everyone wearing the same fez-like hat).

Probably the best thing about Brunei is exploring the rambling, colorful Kampung Ayer, across the river from the capital. My best guess on the name is it's a combination of Malay and Spanish, meaning "yesterday's village", and it's used throughout this area to refer to the old villages built over the water. Up until the early 1900s, almost the entire population of Brunei lived in these villages (then the British started forcing them to live in proper houses in dry land). Even Magellan was impressed when they stopped by, calling it the "Venice of the East". No one shot really sums it up, so I'll encourage you to poke around in the gallery starting here (best ones start around page 40). The locals were super friendly there, especially the kids, who kept saying "Welcome to Brunei!" in almost perfect British English.

Somehow I managed to fill a couple more days. Some really good food was involved, and I found the best English-language bookstore I've seen so far on this trip, so I stocked up. I failed to get to Brunei's national park. The lack of public transit makes it very expensive and/or time consuming to get to that corner of the country. There's supposedly a colony of several thousand of those rare (at least in Malaysia) proboscis monkeys just up river from the capital. Unfortunately, the boatman we negotiated with tried to substitute a trip to see the ultra common macaques, no matter how much we tried to explain/mime "No, big nose!" He couldn't even find those, and pointed to an otter scampering along the bank, saying "See, monkeys!" Though we were really impressed to see an otter in downtown Bandar, Brunei, we demanded to be let off, since it was clear he wasn't taking us to see the right monkeys (and it wasn't clear he even knew what a monkey was!).

From there, the easiest route to Sabah (the other half of Malaysian Borneo) is by boat. You have to change boats at the island of Labuan, once the British colony of Victoria. Since I was of course too lazy to catch the first boat to Labuan, I got to spend the night there. Turns out it's not a very nice place. The island is a special duty-free zone in Malaysia, so every shop is like one of those exciting airport shops I avoid. Most of the customers are Filipino smugglers, trying to make it back to the nearby islands of the Philippines under cover of darkness. Needless to say, not a very friendly place after dark.

I caught the first boat in the morning to Sabah, after getting a quick taxi ride out to Labuan's only site, a big WWII cemetery dedicated to all the Allied troops who liberated Borneo. A couple hours later put me in Kota Kinabalu (or KK, as everyone calls it), the capital of Sabah, Malaysia. Though also lacking in sights (like most of this part of the world, everything was destroyed in WWII), it was a great place to hang out for a few days. It had probably the highest concentration of backpacker hostels that I've seen since Bangkok and probably the best food since then too.

Probably the one attraction in KK itself is the Sabah State Museum. Though I couldn't take pictures inside, they had recreated all the different types of tribal longhouses outside. A few of them start here.

Since I'd wimped out on climbing Mt Kinabalu, the ~13,500ft mountain just south of KK, I headed on to do a jungle/river safari on the other side of Sabah on the Kinabatangan River. It's known for having about the highest concentration of primate species in the world (you can see at least 10), and in particular it's one of the only spots you're almost guaranteed to see truly wild orang utans (not "rehabilitated" ones getting free food). I got to see almost everything advertised, including more of the "rare" proboscis monkeys than I could count, a baby orang utan and mother (I can't see them in the picture either), a baby crocodile, a family of otters, and all sorts of rare birds (especially the hornbills that Borneo is famous for). I didn't get to see the Pygmy Elephants or the Sumatran Rhino (only about 25 of the Borneo version left!), but I wasn't counting on either of those.

The only downside on this sort of river tour is that most of the interesting animals are way up at the top of the highest trees. They're fun to watch, but useless for photos. They're also only active around dawn and dusk, so short of several thousand $ in camera gear I don't have, you're not going to see much. It was still well worth the trip, and I also got to meet some great people there (including a brother and sister from San Francisco - she was taking a year off after getting burned out at McKesson). I didn't even get attacked by the leeches while wading through almost knee-deep mud on our night trek, thanks to the special leech socks I bought there (not everyone was so lucky).

Finally, I spent time before and after the jungle trek in the city of Sandakan. The downtown area is what I'd charitably call "moderately post-apocalyptic". Everything was rebuilt with cheap concrete buildings after the war, and the downtown area has been largely abandoned to the flood of illegal immigrants from the Philippines (the locals retreating to the nicer suburbs). So, not a fun place to wander around after dark, but it seems to be turning around. They've knocked down several city blocks near the waterfront, and the few that are rebuilt have some decent restaurants with a good view of the Sulu Sea. The hotel I stayed at had a massive movie collection (many thousands of titles), and every room had its own DVD player, so it wasn't hard to stay entertained after dinner.

Sandakan's most famous sight is the Agnes Keith house. She was a California author who married a Brit that worked for the North Borneo government before WWII. The whole family was held in Japanese POW camps, and she wrote several books about that and her time in Borneo (the POW one got turned into a movie). Her house is now a nice museum, with a proper English tea house next door.

That's it for now. Hopefully I'll get a chance to upload a few fish pictures before I cross into Indonesia in a few days. I'm really looking forward to finally getting to go diving!