Borneo

I'm writing this post from the Executive Lounge of the Sheraton at Kuching airport. I'm staying here for the night courtesy of Air Asia. Once again, I find I'm oddly drawn to business class.

I scoured the Internet to find a picture to explain why I'm here, but none of the news reports carried a photo. So I took my own from the eighth floor of the hotel:

I guess this is the blog equivalent of a news flash. The plane I was to catch today slid off the runway last night on landing. As you can see, it's still there (I took the photo less than an hour ago). All flights leaving today were cancelled. Needless to say the Sheraton's doing a brisk business. The reason I'm in the Executive Lounge (I'm the only one in here) is because as lovely as my room is, the people in the next one are smoking and the smoke is seeping through to mine – there's a locked door between the two. Obviously they're pretty full, but I'm trying to pressure them into giving me one of the executive suites on the top floor. Although any other room will do as long as it's as nice as the palatial one they've already given me.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's backtrack: Penang to Kuching. Actually, let's backtrack a little further. I found this interesting passage on one of my favourite Asian food blogs, Easting Asia. I was reading the entry about cendol.

Malaysian and Indonesian palm sugar is unlike any other sweetener – rich and complex, with a whole host of notes that go well beyond the realm of 'sweet'. Brown, dark brown, and muscovado sugars can't touch it. Nor can Thai or any of the other 'upper' Southeast Asian palm sugars. It must be tasted to be believed (unfortunately the good stuff isn't exported). It's the perfect partner for coconut in any form – and cendol's shaved ice provides the ideal backdrop for a palm sugar-coconut pairing.

I read elsewhere that the stall Ai Ling and Leo had taken me is famous throughout Malaysia. Many people believe it makes the finest cendol in the country. No wonder it was so amazing.

Oh, and I thought of another passage to give from David Sedaris. His father pushes him into learning the guitar, and he has a midget teacher called Mister Mancini. Now Sedaris is gay and knew it from an early age, but Mister Mancini, despite his stature, fancies himself as a ladies' man. He tells the young Sedaris that he must give his guitar a name, says that his is named Beth. Sedaris shrugs and says maybe he'll call it Oliver. "Oliver? What the hell kind of name is that?" Mister Mancini exclaims. Sedaris hastily names it Joan, after one of his cousins, though he doesn't let on of course that she's a cousin. Mister Mancini finds this more acceptable. "Is she stacked?" he asks. Sedaris notes, "I'd never noticed my cousin's breasts and had lately realised I'd never noticed anyone's breasts ..." He goes on to relay his dismal attempt to learn the guitar and Mr Mancini's funny ways. Finally there comes a point when Sedaris can no longer pretend he's cut out for this.

    My voice shaking, I told him that I had absolutely no interest in mastering the guitar. What I really wanted was to sing in the voice of Billie Holiday. "Mainly commercials, but not for any banks or car dealerships, because those are usually choral arrangements."
    The colour drained from my teacher's face.
    I told him I'd been working up an act and could use a little accompaniment. Did he know the jingle for the new Sara Lee campaign?
    "You want me to what?" He wasn't angry, just confused.
    I felt certain he was lying when he denied knowing the tune. Doublemint gum, Ritz crackers, the theme songs for Alka-Seltzer and Kenmore appliances: he claimed ignorance on all counts. I knew that it was queer to sing in front of someone, but greater than my discomfort was the hope that he might recognise what I thought of as my great talent, the one musical trick I was able to pull off. I started in on an a capella version of the latest Oscar Mayer commercial, hoping he might join in once the spirit moved him. It looked bad, I knew, but in order to sustain the proper mood, I needed to disregard his company and sing the way I did at home alone in my bedroom, my eyes shut tight and my hands dangling like pointless, empty gloves.
    I sang that my bologna had a first name.
    I added that my bologna had a second name.
    And concluded: Oh, I love to eat it every day.
    And if you ask me why, I'll say
    Thaaaat Os-carrr May-errr has a way, with B-Oooo-L-Oooo0G-N-A
    I reached the end of my tune thinking he might take this as an opportunity to applaud or maybe even apologise for underestimating me. Mild amusement would have been an acceptable response. But instead, he held up his hands, as if to stop an advancing car. "Hey guy," he said. "You can hold it right there. I'm not into that scene."
    A scene? What scene? I thought I was being original.
    "There were plenty of screwballs like you back in Atlanta, but me, I don't swing that way – you got it? This might be your 'thing' or whatever, but you can definitely count me out." He reached for his conch shell and stubbed his cigarette out. "I mean, come on now. For God's sake, kid, pull yourself together."

I'll be forever grateful to my friend Heather for introducing me to Sedaris. I know she meant, see, there are people out there like us. I could never work out if she meant eccentric geniuses or freakish outsiders, but either way I know our world is richer with Sedaris in it.

There's another person in the lounge now, and I couldn't help burst out laughing at that "pull yourself together" line. I wonder if the other person thought, what could be so funny that I'd break the social etiquette of instead of having a quiet chuckle, having an explosive laugh. I guess that's why Sedaris is so popular. I don't know if either of the passages I've given hit your funny bone, but I'd encourage you to read him. He's a lot of fun.

Pat bought a book of his for the flight home to Amsterdam and thoroughly enjoyed it. Speaking of Pat, I thought I had to quote her latest email to me. I hope she doesn't mind. My colleagues have just gone back to work, and I thought some might appreciate these couple of lines.

We both are delighted to be back at the office. HAHA, HELL NO. We both were offered new tasks that are supposed to be "challenging", "exciting" and "interesting", but to our opinion are just pains in the ass: stressful, boring and too abstract. We are thinking of a way to say "no" without leaving an impression of being lazy, retarded employees without any ambition at all. What a way to start the new year!

So I caught Air Asia from Penang to Kuching. For those that don't know, it's probably the world's largest budget airline, and it's pretty well run. We actually sat on the tarmac for about half an hour because the rain was so strong we just couldn't take off. Here are a couple of photos to illustrate. (They remind me of Turner paintings. Turner was an early nineteenth century painter who often painted seascapes. Many of the works are so indistinct he's often credited with being the first abstract painter.)

I had booked seat 1A (paid about $6 extra for the privilege), and had ordered a meal. Even the food is no frills, but it was okay. I had a nasi lemak.

Kuching is a pretty city. It's also very clean – I saw numerous cleaners and rubbish bins. I had seen neither in Penang or KL.

I was staying at a hotel called The LimeTree, which was an upmarket boutique hotel. After roughing on the islands I wanted to fork out and enjoy some comfort. And it was just as well: somehow I had caught a bug in Penang or earlier. I ended up being quite achey and had a fever. Of course delirium has its own appeal. I remember listening to TJ Swann on my MP3 player and thinking this is phaaaat! I imagined myself at an early roller disco. Really it was some nice boogie funk.

As luck would have it I was also reading a book for which the main characters were delirious for most of the story. Skeletons on the Zahara is about a shipwreck on the west coast of Africa a couple of hundred years ago, and the truly wretched experiences of the survivors. One thing that struck me about the book was how much Bear Grylls would like it. He's a fairly cheesy TV presenter, a former SAS soldier who gets himself in survival situations. Watching his show you realise he seems to have a burning need to drink his own pee. Sometimes you think, well he's not that far from water, but no, he starts pissing into some vessel and then downs it. You have to imagine his wife has words when he gets back home: can you do it a little less maybe?

The author, Dean King, gives a number of cases when people survived doing this. "In 1877, a US cavalry company lost in the desert drank their own urine sweetened with sugar, which, they claimed, improved it considerably." And, "In his narrative of the 1785 wreck of the St Catherine, Pierre Raymond do Brisson reported that the ship's baker survived on nothing but snails and his own urine for ten days." And so on. In fact the sailors in King's book drink so much urine – their own, each other's and camels' – that the story becomes an Aristophanes farce.

At some point I staggered out and bought a Time magazine to keep up with the world. It named "BFD" as one of its phrases of the year ("big f---ing deal"). Thanks to Kerry at work for putting me on to that one, it's one I enjoy. One I've used a couple of times is "FFS" ("for f--- sake"). It's excellent: it's implies the forcefulness of swearing without quite coming right out and being overly coarse.

Anyway, after a few days my fever abated and I went exploring. I found Kuching a little boring to be honest. And the food didn't overly impress me. Except for one meal at the Top Spot Food Court. This is a well-known seafood centre, and I had an excellent meal there: a local fern dish, which was superb, some chilli prawns, and some soft-shell crabs with a pepper sauce.

One day I went to the orangutan sanctuary, which was very worthwhile. I had no idea orangutans were so big. And their dexterity in moving among the trees is mesmerising.

They did swing by, but just so you can see how far away the feeding platform is ...

Here's a young one swinging by:

The sanctuary was also my first taste of Borneo flora.

I also visited the Sarawak Museum, which was very interesting. The first thing you encounter is the indigenous snake section: there are stuffed versions of the reticulated python, the mangrove cat snake (which had a bulbous head and looked rather vicious), the dog-toothed cat snake, the flying snake (!), the common Malay racer, the triangle keelback, the cobra, Wagler's pit viper, and so on. Welcome to Borneo.

The masks were also interesting. The one on the right here struck me as straight out of a horror movie.

I did manage to find a place that sold nice gateaux. I bought one and rushed the little box back to my air conditioned room. I felt like an emergency worker whisking a heart to a hospital in a chilly bin.

Unfortunately the thing was coated in chocolate dust, and I spilt some on the quilt. I tried to get it off and only made it worse. It really looked like I'd had another mishap ...

Eventually I got it so you'd only notice it on the second glance.

Then it was off to the Bako National Park for a couple of days. This is what I'd come to Sarawak for. It's about an hour bus ride and then a twenty minute boat ride. A nice sign greets you at the jetty.

When you get to the park, if the tide's out, you have to walk to the headquarters.

When I arrived I needed to use the bathroom. This is what the water was like after I let it clear (seriously):

Luckily I'd brought some hand sanitiser with me.

In the afternoon I went for a three-hour walk. This was a tall ask given that I'd been ill for three days and had little or no strength. And the walk began with a vertical climb. But it was what I came for, and it was very beautiful.

It was a good, hard slog. I'd taken some precautions. Just in case, I'd put in my bag a torch, a lighter, some energy-rich food, and a few other choice items. I pictured myself getting lost, having my own I Shouldn't Be Alive adventure. I'd regale my colleagues with tales of marauding macaques (actually they're rather cute) and poisonous animals. However, first I met the Japanese kids coming back from my destination, and they looked like they'd just stepped out of a mall. Then there was the older German couple, also coming back. They'd hardly broken a sweat. I could see this wasn't going to be as perilous as I thought.

In the end it was indeed a bit of an anticlimax. When I reached the beach, the macaques all skedaddled and there wasn't much to look at. The sea was appealingly violent (it's the monsoon season), but as with most South East Asian beaches, there was rubbish strewn about.

Still, the walk back was nice ...

One thing that helped, I have to say, was some Nurofen Plus. That's how I got round India – taking Nurofen. You tend not to notice the filth or heat so much. It's just a nice general aid in developing countries, and for combatting near exhaustion on a long march.

Nearing the headquarters, I took a rest at this shelter.

Here's my bungalow at Bako:

Here's a macaque running along my railing (don't ask me how I created this effect):

There was an odd-looking hog that kept roaming around:

I have to say the room smelt a little musty. But I came prepared for that: I had bought a little incense holder and some incense at a Trade Aid shop back in New Zealand.

A few people on Trip Advisor complained of the food at Bako, but I thought it was fine – good enough. A bain maire full of various curries and fried noodles and things.

The next morning it was raining. It's halfway through the monsoon season, so when it rains it pours. Perfect excuse to stay in bed and read. More camel piss in the desert. Seriously, imagine that for a minute. Thinking, oh thank God! The camel's pissing again – quick, get some.

In the afternoon I went for another walk. This time I was heading into the rainforest. Here I really would be putting myself on the line. I could hear myself actually saying the words, I shouldn't be alive. About a half hour in to the walk, I came across a thick black pipe. I hugely resented the intrusion of civilisation in my jungle fantasy. I figured it was a water pipe, but then I noticed a warning sign. Danger: High Voltage Wires. Oh FFS, I thought.

I have no idea where those wires were going – it's a National Park, and you got the idea that the headquarters itself barely managed to keep the electricity running. But at the next junction I decided to take another trail. There were two problems with this idea. First, you have to write down the trail you're taking in a book back at the office, and I had just taken another one. And the second problem was that I really had no idea where I was going. Judging from the cobwebs on the path, it was quite clear I was the first person to take the trail that day, which of course made it all the more dangerous should something go wrong. Still, they'd forced me into this with that damned pipe.

It was obviously a little-used trail, and in fact I did accidentally veer off it. Moreover, as my old running shoes were waterlogged from the previous day, I was wearing sports sandals. They're good footwear (Tevas), but in a Borneo rainforest I really wasn't sure it was ideal. It's fairly nerve-wracking keeping an eye out for snakes. I'm a fairly vigilant person, though, so it seemed safe enough. In fact, after a while, I kept lamenting the fact I came across no animals at all. After an hour I was thinking, where are those dog-toothed cat snakes now?

Really it was Jungle Lite. But that's okay. That's how I'd planned it. I'd always known it wasn't a "heart of Borneo" experience. I wanted to experience the rainforest and see how I felt about it. I've been fascinated by jungle for many years, and I wanted to see how I would feel about it if it was teeming with things that could kill me. Better, I thought. I really did. I felt at home there. Particularly boating up the river. I loved the silence. I loved that you don't hear the blessed beep beep of a cell phone. I like that with enough effort you can get away from civilisation. So I'll be doing more of that.

I also did a night walk while I was at Bako. There's a two-hour guided walk through the rainforest surrounding the headquarters. Early on the guide spotted a lemur (an almost bat-like monkey). He then picked up a large bit of wood and started hitting the tree it was in with an almighty thud. The idea was to make the thing fly, I would guess. It was interesting: the few Europeans starting edging their way to the back of the group, clearly disconcerted. The Asians were all up the front, under the tree, snapping away. Yep, there's a culture clash right there.

Next up we saw a green snake. It was pretty cool seeing a snake in the wild, but of course the guide had to poke at it with a stick. And everything we saw was beset by hundred of camera flashes. Why they don't insist on no cameras, as in an art gallery, say, I've no idea. It wasn't the most enlightened of places. Luckily we didn't see much wildlife after that, so there wasn't much to disturb.

After two nights at Bako it was back to Kuching. The boat trip was pretty wild. The first part is over the ocean and then you reach the river. The sea was incredibly rough, but the boatman skillfully road between waves the whole way (one in front and one behind).

In Kuching I went to the Satok weekend market. It wasn't as good as the Penang one, but it was still interesting, and there were a number of fruits I didn't recognise, though the first one is durian (the smell is so bad it's banned on airplanes and in hotels, but the taste is quite nice).

One thing I noticed was there was quite a lot of tempeh. This is an Indonesian invention and is a compressed cake of fermented soya beans. Like Anthony Bourdain, I think life is too short to eat tofu, but I love tempeh. My cousin Lou keeps trying to persuade me to go to Bali, and it's the tempeh that'll get me there.

I had a little time to kill before the shuttle to my next resort, so I thought I'd catch up on Survivor. Just finding a computer to watch it on was a mission. There's only one Internet cafe in Kuching, and it was shut. I found a bookshop that had a sole computer, and the connection was incredibly slow – two hours to watch a thirty-minute segment. But hey, it's Survivor, what can I say. [Spoiler alert: for those watching, don't look too hard at the photograph.]

For the second season in a row I've lost a bet with Viv as to the winner. I can't believe I've lost twice. I think Viv has an unfair advantage – she can read people better than anyone I've ever met. She thinks it's working in the hospitality trade: you just watch people and overhear their issues. It reminds me of a psychologist Heather once told me about (Erickson?). He'd had a very sickly childhood, so the family put him in a room off to the side of the lounge. He spent his childhood watching people and became so good at pairing behaviour with issues that people could speak to him for a few minutes and he'd give a lengthy and accurate diagnosis of their family history. 

Anyway, I won't spoil the season for those watching. But I think if you'd asked people who was least likely to win most would have said this person. Well done, Viv. I was actually wondering what I'd say if a local came along and wanted to use the machine. I was riveted. I'd have to ask them, "Has hell frozen over?" They'd have a puzzled look on their face. "Sorry, has hell – has hell?" "Frozen over," I'd say.

The next place I was staying was an eco resort called the Permai Rainforest Resort. My room was a treehouse, sixty feet off the ground. Pretty fancy treehouse, but nice idea. Really it was captivating. You notice a place like this when you're single – you don't have someone there saying, wow, you chose well. (But then that's what you're all for. Let me know how good it looks ...)

In the late afternoon I went for a swim. Perhaps it was to make up for the danger I'd missed out on at Bako, but this was seriously one of the most dangerous things I've ever done. The surf was violent and pounding. There were other people swimming, though not as far out. I befriended some Australians back at the resort (they were on their honeymoon and were actually cooling off in Sarawak compared to the temperatures back home.) They told me that there were three sets of flags and red was Danger. Needless to say I'd missed the red flag. Naturally it was rather exhilarating, though. I feel at home in the sea. Sure there was a pretty strong undertow (really strong), but learning how to navigate that can be useful. There were others nearby, and I wouldn't have gone in on my own. Still, I stayed the hell away from it after that.

Again the rains. So I just stayed in bed and read. It was probably all the walking at Bako. I was bushed (pardon the pun). The book I read is quite simply a masterpiece. It's called Zeitoun and is by Dave Eggars. It's the true story of what happened to a guy during Hurricane Katrina. It's exquisitely written and enormously moving (tears came to my eyes by page 26, and the hurricane was still chapters away). Anyone who likes good nonfiction should read this. I'm happy to lend my copy, but I'd urge you to get one from Amazon; all proceeds go to the Zeitoun Foundation, and you'll feel good about sending your money that way after you've read the book.

At one point I went and checked my email. I got caught in a tremendous sustained downpour and had to stay there. Eventually it seemed like it had lessened so I asked to borrow an umbrella. Walking back I saw that it had actually stopped raining – with the water falling from the trees, and the wind, and the surf, it had been hard to hear properly. They must have thought I was a crazy foreigner for borrowing an umbrella after the rain had ceased. But they'd smiled at me all the same. That's the thing about professional hotel staff, they'll smile at you no matter how much of an idiot you're making yourself. It's enough to make you paranoid.

So this morning it was off to Kuching airport for my flight to KL. Only all the flights were cancelled. I guess I was lucky in that I was catching a morning flight. Later in the day there were people arriving at the Sheraton, and it looked like they're full. I've just been back to my room and it's fine now. I don't need to swap. Apparently it's a non-smoking hotel, so they were going to talk to my neighbours and charge them 200 ringit for the cleaning bill. Hopefully the airport is functioning again tomorrow.

I actually love my room. The bathroom is larger than my bungalow on Koh Lipe.

Here's me grinning about my free hotel room:

Upcoming posts include more food in KL and the tsunami museum in Khao Lak, Thailand (yes, I'm headed back there). I've already decided my last post will be a behind-the-scenes of blogging – more involved than you might imagine. So stay tuned for those.