Quite Random

Quickie to Borneo

Travel misconception number 316 shattered – I got off the plane in Borneo and there weren’t bowl-cutted natives blowing darts at me, my luggage wasn’t stolen by a wasp the size of a poodle, my transportation to the guesthouse wasn’t a dugout canoe but a five-door Proton, and I didn’t have to hunt my own dinner.

I should have read Lonely Planet before I went, but then not reading Lonely Planet before you go somewhere is part of the fun.

Kuching, the state capital of Sarawak, the Malaysian part of Borneo, is quite a beautiful place, a mix of Chinese, Malay and Indian people, in a town of less than half a million that sits languidly around the Sarawak River. There’s a Hilton Hotel, a Holiday Inn, nice air-conditioned shopping centres, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds, and even a Body Shop. A Body Shop. It’s a sign I’ve been in Cambodia long enough when I get excited about a Body Shop. We have at the time of writing no KFC or McDonalds in Siem Reap. The global money machine has not yet fully reached Cambodia (never mind that the global money machine isn’t prepared to bribe all the people it needs to to do business here), though a KFC is opening soon. I say I hate fast food as much as anyone who pretends to have principles about these things, but I was straight into the KFC when I got to Kuching. A Zinger burger is an illicit pleasure after months of Siem Reap food.

Kuching is clean and comfortable to walk around, unlike Cambodia where taking a walk in the evening sometimes feels like wading through insect soup. Carpenter Street where I stayed is a sleepy, shady strip of Chinese shops selling bikes, books, buns and dumplings. People are decidedly unpushy – no hawkers, no-one beckoning you into their shops, no ‘sir you want T-shirt?’, just relaxed people who couldn’t give a monkeys if you went into their shops but were very friendly if you did. I felt like I was on holiday as soon as I got to Kuching.

If I’d read Lonely Planet apparently I would have been warned that Royal Rum, the local spirit, is evil and should be avoided. Just in case you don’t read it either, stay away from this stuff. After eating fantastic fried mussels, steamed crab, chicken, beef and pork at the brilliant Top Spot dining area Billy, Dave and I headed back to the guesthouse with Tiger Beer and Royal Rum to finish the drinking we’d started at dinner, and I was left for the whole of the next day with a hangover that just made me want to lie down, maybe curl up a little bit, and weep pathetic self-pitying tears. I can now confirm that Borneo’s Royal Rum, Cambodia’s Mekong Whisky and India’s Captain’s Choice whisky are all evil and should be outlawed. Except they’re cheap and occasionally the only thing on offer.

After relaxing in Kuching for a day I headed out to the Semenggoh Orangutan sanctuary to see the morning feeding of the orangutans. Sarawak has a conservation program for orangutans whereas in Indonesian Borneo many have been shot for encroaching on farmland. As over a hundred tourists tramped through the woods to the feeding area, the orangutans crashed through the trees above us, shaking the branches to shower people with foliage and swinging nonchalantly from vine to vine like primates without a care in the world. The dominant male came along to feed, entering the clearing like an articulated lorry with wings, and the park rangers dutifully informed us that if he was in a bad mood we should all be prepared to sprint into the woods and hide. This is all very well but I was stuck behind a Chinese woman who moved at the pace of a snail with a nasty limp. Bloody tourists are always getting in the way.

As great as it was to see orangutans, the highlight of the trip, short as it was, was Bako National Park. An hour’s bus ride and a boat trip outside Kuching, Bako is a beautiful place, the first time I felt truly like I was in Borneo. Visitors included a school group on a trip, an evangelist, a National Geographic photographer and a French family. Locals included proboscis monkeys, wild boar, long tailed macaques, cobras, hermit crabs, mudskippers, fireflies, 2 centimetre long ants with deep red abdomens and countless other creatures that hid in the foliage and clicked, grunted and whistled. The French family had their packed lunch stolen by a team of fifteen macaques in a flash raid, the evangelist sat in the cafe talking at top volume about how in love with God she was, and the National Geographic man photographed proboscis monkeys with a camera so serious looking that the lens sat in two different time zones. The school trip blundered through the forest looking disgusted, whinging about leeches and treading on the ants, followed by their teachers who all wore an expression a little bit like the one you’d wear if you were contemplating whether anyone would notice if you buried your students somewhere in the trees.

I was hardly amazed but pretty disappointed by how many people walked about the place as if they were on a shopping trip to Ikea. The students and others didn’t seem to get that in order to see anything, you had to move slowly and quietly and look up, and down. The proboscis monkeys sat eating in the trees or leapt from branch to branch but scattered at the slightest noise, and the ants, hermit crabs, lizards and other creatures all hid in the leaf litter at your feet. I suppose the school trip could say they encountered nature, but only in the respect that they went home with a lot of it stuck to their shoes.

Coming back, I spent the night in Kuala Lumpur (or KL as everyone calls it) airport, sat in a cafe, pacing around, falling asleep on a bench, and trying to get money out of numerous ATMs. Mehran Karimi Nasseri spent about eight years living in the departures lounge at Charles de Gaulle Airport, yet I was in KL for six hours and thought I was going to crack up. He was either very patient, or he actually cracked up.

Dave and Billy hired a car and headed east from Kuching with a Dutchman called Marco. Nothing has been heard from them yet. I don’t know if they took a tent but Billy nearly took an electric rice cooker.