Into the Borneo interior

Bags and chickens [Enlarge]

The current vague plan is to head north-east towards the Sultanate of Brunei, and carry on clockwise around Borneo into Indonesia. We could travel overland to Brunei in two days by air conditioned express bus, straight up the Pan Borneo Highway. Or we could take the interesting option, which is to take much more time over the journey and travel by boat up the Sungai Rejang (Rejang River). The Rejang is Malaysia's longest river, and it passes through places that still aren't connected to anywhere by roads, cutting through rapids and passing indigenous long houses. This decision was a no-brainer.

Step one was the once-a-day express boat from Kuching's port on the Sarawak river, out into the South China Sea, north-east across open water for about 90 kilometers, then into the Rejang estuary, and a further 80 kilometres upriver to Sibu. Though the price recently went up, 45 ringgits (GBP 7.19 / USD 13.53) is still pretty reasonable. For that money you can sit watching "inflight movies" in the air conditioned cabin, or you can sit outside with the chickens (by the boxload, clucking and roostering all the way!), which is what we did. The wooden benches weren't too comfortable, but the view was great. As we entered the mouth of the Rejang River, our progress slowed. The boat's huge engines battled against the vicious current and we began to fight our way inland towards Sibu.

Logging barge [Enlarge]

Starting at several kilometres wide, the chocolatey brown river soon began to narrow until we could clearly see the jungle on both banks. The river was busy with passenger boats and logging barges—tiny but powerful tug boats pulling huge, chained together platforms of logs. There were plumes of smoke rising from the forest in places. Along with oil, logging is Sarawak's main industry and the environmental impact is huge, with estimates claiming that as much as 90 percent of the primary rainforest has given way to oil palms and other plantations. From the river, we didn't see any areas of cleared land or deforestation, but certainly a great deal of tree trunks were making their way downriver on this Tuesday morning.

The journey only took five and a half hours, and Sibu was fairly quiet when we arrived just before 14:00. The only life as we left the landing jetty was a cluster of taxi drivers chatting near the taxi stand and a smiley man raking grass clippings in the town park.

Rejang river boats [Enlarge]

First stop as ever was the visitor information centre. In spite of having directions, we walked round in circles getting hotter and sweatier than we wanted to be, but we couldn't find it. Eventually we gave up and phoned the centre to ask where it was. It turns out we hadn't seen it because it had moved a few hundred metres last year. When we found it, the information person was friendly, just like all the other Sarawakians we've met, and spoke great English. He suggested some hotels that we might like to stay in. Clustered on the main square, they were all ones that were in the lowest budget section of our low-budget travel guide. We asked if there was anything in a slightly higher price bracket and he circled a mid-range hotel on the map. In Sarawak 'budget' means around GBP 5 (USD 10) a night for the room, whereas 'mid-range' means GBP 10 to 12 (USD 20 to 24). The extra five quid makes a big difference.

Already we're noticing the effect of our new proper backpacks—people are now judging us as wanting the lowest possible price regardless of quality. Also the number of taxis screeching to a halt on the road beside us and winding their windows down has increased markedly. The backpacks act as huge beacons proclaiming:

I'm a western backpacker I'm just like all the other western backpackers I want cheap hotels cheap food cheap beer and but I won't try to bargain your ridiculous price down because I'm hungover and we don't do that in the west so you can charge what you like and anyway I'm not discerning so you can rip me off with all your overpriced tours and taxi rides and souvenirs after all I'll buy anything.

Yuk.

We walked back through town to find our hotel of choice (a fantastic ten quids-worth), showered and went out for some dinner. The choices in Sibu were a lot less inspiring than in Kuching, but we found a place serving chicken and rice and while it wasn't the best meal ever, it was better than doritos. Back at our hotel, we discovered that they have wifi in the lobby, so we checked that the world was still turning and then had an early night. There is still a long way to go up the Rejang.

Day 620
Kuching to Sibu

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Kuching festival

Shophouses on Kuching Main Bazaar [Enlarge]

Our arrival into Kuching, Sarawak's largest city, must rank as one of the most bizarre arrivals of our trip so far. To get through the door of the Waterfront Lodge, our home for the next couple of days, we had to duck between groups of locals in colourful costumes, and the endless stalls which had been set up in front of all the buildings. We managed to slip through between the boys brigade and the India society into a haven of relative tranquillity. The Waterfront Lodge is part of the old colonial-era waterfront, but it has only just opened after a complete refurbishment. The beautiful shophouse must be one of the oldest buildings in town. The tastefully restored interior is all terracotta floor tiles, white walls, plants and gorgeous local wood. Despite the lobby not being air conditioned it felt like an oasis from the tropical heat. There was more than a little of the caravanserai ambiance that we'd felt in the souk in Aleppo—the silk road may not have come through here, but the Chinese certainly did.

The manager greeted us with a broad smile and checked us in. As he showed us to our spotless room, he told us that this Friday night parade was the beginning of a weekend of festivities. We'd had no idea. When we were checking in the noise from outside was deafening, but it turned out that Sarawakians like to go to bed early, even when there's a parade. By 10:30pm the city was quiet...

Sarawak regatta [Enlarge]

...Until 7:00am on Saturday when the rowing regatta commentator decided to do an early sound check of the PA system, and we discovered that there was a massive speaker right outside our room. We were awake whether we wanted to be or not. After a bit we got up and went for a look at what was going on. Just across the road, under marquees, a small band was playing. A man in his sixties was up on the little stage, dancing. As we watched, a middle aged guy joined him, grooving to the mellow Bornean music. The people of Malaysian Borneo, we began to realise, are an even more chilled out bunch than their mainland cousins.

We paid a visit to the local tourist information centre to pick up a map of the town and to look at our options for onward travel. Then we spent some time walking around, mingling with the crowds watching the regatta races that had now got under way on the river. The regatta had attracted a big crowd. They lined the river on both sides. We learned later some regional bigwigs had paid a visit at some point, but we didn't see, let alone get to meet, the Sultan of Brunei, or Jason Brooke, great-great-grandson of the second Rajah Brooke of Sarawak. Everyone was having a great time, eating satay from the riverside stalls, drinking iced tea and fluorescent milk drinks, buying helium balloons and generally enjoying a day out with the family.

Buying a cold drink [Enlarge]

We hadn't really known what to expect in Borneo, but we'd somehow expected less civilisation. We certainly hadn't envisioned wifi in our room and an excellent Lebanese restaurant just around the corner. Kuching isn't just modern, it's characterful, cultured, vibrant and welcoming. We had such a nice time just hanging out, eating nice food, we didn't want to leave. But we can't really stay forever.

On our last day we crossed the river and visited Fort Margherita, Rajah Brooke's defence against pirates. Sarawak's history is unusual—it wasn't a colony of another country, but was owned and administered by three generations of the Brooke family for over a century, having been granted to Englishman James Brooke in 1841 by the Sultan of Brunei as thanks for Brooke's brokering a peaceful settlement of the Dayak uprising. Brooke styled himself the first Rajah of Sarawak, but eventually the dynasty was pressured into ceding sovereignty to the British after World War II.

Fort Margherita, Kuching [Enlarge]

With the Rajahs and the pirates long gone (at least from Malaysian Borneo) the fort doesn't have much purpose any more, and it's looking a bit tatty. The Bornean weather is not kind—relentlessly hot with torrential rain for part of the year. Our guidebook uncharitably describes the fort as having "been left to rot under the Borneo sun". This is a huge exaggeration. Inside the fort we found a local still guarding the fort. As we arrived he leaned his broom up and led us inside the main building to write our names in the visitors book and stow our bag before climbing the spiral staircase to the watchtower.

It was close to midday. The sun was beating down on the fort's whitewashed stone and gleaming off the river. Water taxis were shuttling back and forth. A rooster crowded somewhere down the hill, and in the background, noise from the huge construction site next door (the new Sarawak parliament we think) rumbled over to the watchtower. The heat was almost unbearable and our need to find some shade became irresistible, so we had to come down from the tower. It's hard to believe that there was ever any need for forts and defences—In this equatorial heat surely no one has the energy to have wars!

Sarawak river taxi [Enlarge]

We beat our retreat down the hill and back across the river. There's plenty to do in Kuching if you have the stamina. There are a couple of crazily decorated temples and some small museums around the town centre, and lots of shops where you can buy locally made souvenirs. Some of the hardwood furniture was beautiful. If we still had a house we might well have bought one of the amazing boat-shaped seats. Of course it wouldn't have fitted in our backpacks, so it's probably a good thing we don't have anywhere to put it. The city's restaurants are many and varied. Chinese food dominates, with Malay cuisine a close second, but you can find almost anything.

So, Kuching was a wonderful start to our Bornean adventure. We can only hope that after such a great introduction, the rest of Sarawak doesn't bring us crashing back to earth.

Across to Borneo

Johor Bahru bus station [Enlarge]

We thought we'd check out Borneo next, to see if we can find some headhunters. There are no ferries between peninsular Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo, so once again we needed to make a short flight. The main city in Sarawak, the western province of Malaysian Borneo, is Kuching. We could fly there expensively from Singapore with Malaysian Airlines, or cheaply from Johor Bahru (just inside Malaysia on the other side of the causeway) with Air Asia. Obviously, Johor Bahru it was.

We checked out of our clean but rule-obsessed hostel and made our way slowly, with a lunch stop en route, towards Kranji MRT station in the north of the island, from where we could catch a connecting bus to Johor Bahru. While we were on the MRT there was an announcement that people going to Johor Bharu should get off at Woodlands station and use bus number 950. It wasn't what we had planned, but we went with it. We found out later that the 950 is run by SMRT (the MRT company) while the buses from Kranji are run by SBS (not the MRT company), so that's why the MRT company tried, and succeeded, to entice us to leave early. No matter, it was a bus going our way. We stopped at the Singapore end of the causeway and everyone was chucked out to be stamped out of Singapore. Then after passport control, the way it works is that you have to wait for the next number 950 bus to come along—your original bus has taken the previous load of passengers on to the Malaysian side of the causeway. It was here that we discovered why the internet resources recommend Kranji and the 170 bus—there are about four times as many of them as there are 950s. It didn't really matter as we were in no hurry.

The trip across the causeway only took a few minutes and we were turfed off again for Malaysian passport control. As we emerged from the building, passports freshly stamped, it was immediately obvious that we were now in Malaysia rather than Singapore. The polishedness had gone, and there were no signs telling you what you couldn't do. But the downside was that there were also no signs telling you where the bus stop was, and when you found the bus area, no signs telling you where each bus would stop. And horror of horrors, there were no special queueing lanes for each bus. After a bit of mental readjustment we just followed the crowd into a big layby area, where it seemed all the buses stopped.

Eventually a 950 turned up, on which we we were the only passengers all the way to the Kotaraya bus terminal, where we would connect with the Causeway Link Express bus to the airport.

Johor Bahru is Malaysia's third largest city, but its bus station certainly doesn't give away this fact. It was devoid of any activity and curiously uncontaminated by buses. The next bus to the airport was due at 16.10 so we sat down in the waiting lounge to kill the forty-five minute wait. While Glenn went outside for a look around, Isla was approached by the bus station cleaner. He leaned his mop up against the table and struck up a conversation. His English wasn't great (but better than our pathetic attempts at Malay of course) and not knowing how to say what he wanted to, he instead disappeared off and fetched us various leaflets from around the waiting room which he thought would be useful to us. He also brought a great free map of Malaysia, on which he enthusiastically pointed out all the places we could visit. Then another local arrived to join in the conversation. When Glenn came back he found a crowd around Isla's table. The second guy turned out the be a Singaporean, and claimed to be a taxi permit inspector, but his ID said he was a taxi driver. He was very friendly and gave us his wife's business card (we now have a great contact for all our plumbing and project management needs in the Johor Bahru area) and his name and address. Malaysia is just like that—it is the friendliest place we have been by miles and we love it. We feel that Thailand's superficial friendliness is often laced with a mercenary streak, and it can stop abruptly when the person finds out you're not interested in buying anything. But we're discovering that Malaysia's friendliness seems to be completely genuine.

The airport was quiet. We ate some dinner, got our backpacks wrapped in cellophane and checked in. The short Air Asia flight left on time and arrived early at Kuching in Sarawak.

Sarawak is a semi-autonomous state within Malaysia and so although we were on an internal flight, we actually had to pass through border control and get another stamp in our passport. Malays have to do this too, and apparently they even need a permit to come to Borneo and can only stay for a limited time.

As at Kota Bharu airport there were no taxi touts baying for our custom, just a well organised taxi desk where you state your destination, pay your money and get a receipt to give to the driver.

We're big fans of Michael Palin's televised travels. In fact he was the inspiration for us carrying an inflatable globe with us on this trip. Incidentally, we still have the globe, although it's got a bit of a slow puncture somewhere in the Russian Arctic. Anyway, we're sceptical about the way that everywhere Palin goes, he always seems to miraculously turn up in a town just as it's having it's once-in-a-century festival. That would never happen by chance, we've always said... Well, as we got nearer to the centre of town the traffic started to get really bad, and the taxi driver explained that we were going to have to walk the last five minutes to our guest house because the road along the waterfront was closed. We've heard that sort of thing before from taxi drivers who are keen to get their next fare rather than sit in a traffic jam, so we were a bit skeptical. But sure enough, there seemed to be some sort of parade going on. A platoon of Roman soldiers marched past the car window and down the road which lines the waterfront.

We have indeed, completely unknowingly, timed our arrival to coincide with the first night of the annual Kuching festival and rowing regatta!

Day 616
Singapore to Kuching

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Singapore slingshot

Aeroline bus from KL [Enlarge]

When we checked into our hotel in Kuala Lumpur we noticed a flyer at reception advertising Aeroline, a bus company offering a luxury coach from KL to Singapore. When we looked at the service they promised, and the prices, we didn't bother shopping around for alternatives. We booked online and turned up at the pick up point, the Corus Hotel near KLCC LRT station, at 07:15 for our 08:00 departure.

The service was excellent—exactly as advertised with a baguette for brunch, drinks on demand, a power point at the seat, the most smiley, helpful staff we've ever met, and a very professional driver. We had booked at the last minute and the only seats available were on the back row. Our fellow passengers were from all walks of life. The man in front of us in a shiny grey suit could easily have been Korean; up front were a middle aged, white American couple; an extended family of Indians occupied the middle of the bus, and took their time disembarking and rejoining us at each border post.

Border formalities at either end of the 'Second Link' causeway separating Malaysia and Singapore were straightforward. As ever it took a bit of time to get everyone through the passport checks and back on the bus, but we arrived ahead of schedule at the Harbour Front in Singapore.

To get to our hostel we had to find the nearest subway station. To get to the subway we had to walk through a mall. We soon found that to get anywhere in Singapore you have to walk through a mall. This is because Singapore is basically a series of malls linked together by little pieces of city.

If you've heard anything about Singapore you've probably heard that it's clean and safe. This is true. Maintaining this infeasible level of cleanliness and safety isn't easy though, and it is accomplished by having rules. Lots of rules, strictly enforced. Rule breakers are fined, heavily. Persistent rule breakers are presumably executed. On top of the national rules, each building implements its own local rules. Our hostel, home for the next four days, had rules posted everywhere. Here are the ones we can remember, along with associated fines:

• Breakfast is between 6 and 10am. Outside this time you pay S$1. People caught stealing breakfast without paying will be fined S$50.
• No eating on the sofa. Fine S$100.
• No food or drink in your room. Fine S$100.
• Guests must leave by 9pm. Trespassers will be handed to the police.
• No shitting on the floor. Fine S$500.

Assuming the last one isn't a joke, it means someone probably did that once. In which case we don't begrudge them that rule! Western backpackers can be a vile lot, and we wouldn't relish trying to maintain a Singaporean standard of cleanliness in a backpacker hostel. Actually, we wouldn't try. Unfortunately the task is so herculean that the hostel owner seemed really pissed off most of the time.

Singapore slings [Enlarge]

We did quite a lot during our short stay in Singapore. We walked the nearly-finished track of the upcoming Singapore Grand Prix. When it's on TV in September watch out for the bit which goes over the Anderson Bridge—it looked scarily narrow to us. We went to the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel for a Singapore Sling in surprisingly laid back and non-touristy surrounding. We shopped and we ate. Actually shopping and eating are Singaporeans' two favourite pastimes. Food courts offer cheap meals from every corner of Asia, and much of the rest of the world. We even saw a British chip shop selling deep fried Mars bars. If food is the national hobby, shopping is the state religion. Malls tower, cathedral like, over the city; their gleaming domes and marbled atria filled with the devoted making their weary pilgrimage from shrine to retail shrine. Shopping is not, never has been, and never will be a pleasure to us. We find it incomprehensible. Does spending too much money make people happier? Does owning this season's ridiculous 'designer' objects fill a need? It made us sick after a few days.

In Singapore we did actually need to shop for a few things. Glenn's shoes never had much grip on the soles, but we've walked so much he's worn them totally flat. We've also both worn out a pair of socks. So we fixed both of those problems.

Also, there is some sad news. Since we started back out on the road from Seoul we have struggled to fit everything into our tiny bags and they have become too heavy. The addition of another laptop, to add to the one we bought fairly early on our trip, a pair of flip-flops and set of swimwear and beach towels each and a couple of extra t-shirts for Glenn had the old bags bursting at the seams. So, we've bitten the bullet and bought proper backpacks. They're not the huge ones that we've been so scathing of throughout our trip. Isla's is 38 litres and is sold as a day pack, and Glenn's is a little bigger at 50 litres and quoted as an overnight bag (he's bigger, so it's fair). We now have plenty of extra space for whatever we need for a particular country. This means we can keep the beach towels we bought in the Perhentian islands until after we leave beachy places and when we move from the tropics back to cooler climes we'll be able to buy a jumper or coat without having to wear it all the time. Our little day bag can go back to travelling inside one of our main bags so we're much more streamlined when we transit. We know it makes sense, but it's still a disappointment that we couldn't keep to our original plan of using truly tiny bags.

Orang utan [Enlarge]

On day three we went to the zoo. Singapore zoo is cleverly engineered so that a lot of the time you're hardly aware of being physically separated from the animals. Orang utans roam freely in the trees above your head and can travel a long way outside their moat, but it's designed so that they can't climb down until they go back to their own area. We had a recommendation from a friend to visit the zoo for their Jungle Breakfast. We followed this up and phoned ahead the day before to book our table. Before breakfast we watched two elephants take their morning bath and snack on bananas. Then we went to satisfy our own hungry tummies. Half way through the meal, we were joined by Miri the Orang utan and her three month old baby, Ah Tseng. Miri was persuaded to sit patiently by a seemingly endless supply of fruit, while tourists oohed and aahed at her, and queued for a closer look and a photograph.

By lunchtime we were flagging in the equatorial heat. The eco-conscious zoo doesn't seem to have any air-conditioned places to provide respite—maybe it knows that if it did they're be swamped by sweaty westerners. We'd seen almost everything we wanted to see, so we trudged back to the bus stop and the delicious coolness of Singaporean public transport (London Underground take note).

We had one final purchase to make before leaving Singapore and her malls. Tomorrow we hop back into a malaria-risk area with a flight from Johor Bharu (just across the Malaysian border) to Kuching in Sarawak, the western state of Malaysian Borneo. So as of tonight we're back on the Malarone. We still have a few of our original UK batch left, and all the ones we bought in Hong Kong, but we felt it made sense to top up while we could.

You can buy Malarone in Singapore without a prescription, if you go into a large pharmacy and present your (non-Singaporean) passport and an air ticket to a malarial area. You have to wait until the day before you fly out. You also have to present a large wad of cash. The price is S$7 per tablet, S$92.40 per box of twelve (GBP 34.21 / USD 67.47). When you can eat a sumptuous dinner for less than S$6 that stings! We don't know what the limit is—the pharmacist didn't blink when we asked for three boxes in Isla's name, so we could have bought twice that if we wanted to, and probably more. We don't know whether you can do this at all pharmacies but as of July 2008 you can definitely buy Malarone in Singapore, over the counter at Watsons. We used the large branch in the basement of Ngee Ann City mall on Orchard Road.

So what did we think of Singapore? It's similar to our favourite city Hong Kong, and very easy to get around in, especially since everything is written in English first. But to be honest the obsessive rules got to us. We were continually worried, for example: we've just bought a sandwich from the Seven-Eleven. Can we eat it in that park over there? Are we even allowed to walk on the grass? Or will we be dragged away and flogged? We think that the reason Singapore doesn't have much crime is because everyone's head is so full of rules, they don't have any mental capacity left over for doing bad things. A crime-free society comes at a hefty price.

Day 612
Kuala Lumpur to Singapore

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

A rather bland place

Petronas towers [Enlarge]

Say the name Kuala Lumpur. What does it conjure up? The Petronas Towers... the Malaysian Grand Prix... anything else?

Us neither. We came here not really knowing what to expect, but expecting a modern, industrialised Asian city. And that's what we got. It's hot, it's clean and it's quite relaxed. But that's it.

So what does Kuala Lumpur have to offer? It's a melting pot of cultures (to use a travel guidebook phrase). On any street or subway train you'll see faces from all over Asia. Fashions are varied. Women walk through the airconditioned malls in full black muslim burkas, accessorised with designer label handbags and the spoils of a day's hard shopping, while their teenage daughters in skin tight jeans pay lipservice to their culture with sequined head scarves; Indian women in garish saris dawdle through the streets of Brickfields.

Taiwanese food [Enlarge]

The multiculturalism extends, gloriously, to the food. Having made such a mess of Taiwan that we didn't even manage to sample any Taiwanese food, we finally rectified this when by chance we stumbled upon the 'Little Taiwan' restaurant after emerging from the subway into an almost deserted mall. We ordered delicious noodles and a side order of dumplings. Glenn's noodles came with chicken and Isla's with honey coated pork. They were worth waiting for!

We spent three nights in Kuala Lumpur, but we arrived late on the first night and left early on the final morning, so we only actually had two days to explore. But despite the short time, we didn't feel we missed anything. As well as the ubiquitous visit to the Petronas towers we filled our time with a fun afternoon at Petrosains, the Petronas-sponsored interactive science museum inside the Suria shopping complex adjoining the towers.

Maybe the friendly Malaysian temperament and culture just doesn't lend itself well to bustling metropolises; or else Kuala Lumpur just doesn't have enough history and attractions to distinguish itself from any other big city. We still love Malaysia, but in our opinion the smaller towns have so much more to offer.