Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo

Talor: By the time we were feeling better, we were needing to move quickly and cover some ground since we only had about a week before making our flight to Bali to meet Kappy. So we set our sights on Sibu, a city on the Western side of Malaysian Borneo. There we hoped to make a trip upriver to visit longhouses. But to get there wasn't going to be easy... we took a 2-hour bus ride west to a town called Seria then changed buses for another half-hour ride to Kuala Belait. From there, we boarded a bus for a 10-minute ride to a boat for a 5-minute ride across the river. On the other side, there was a bus waiting for us, which took us to the border. After formalities on both sides, we got on yet another bus for a 1 ½ hour ride to the town of Miri. We were finally in Sarawak, but rather than stop there, we decided to go for the record... killed a few hours then boarded a night bus for a 10-hour ride to Sibu. We finally made it, but we were a mess!

The bus pulled into Sibu a couple hours early (imagine that!), and we were dropped off at the bus-terminal at 5:00 in the morning. Bleary-eyed, we got a cab to the Hoover Lodging House, checked into a tiny windowless room and immediately passed out for several hours. Upon waking, we moved to a larger room with a window then went downstairs to the corner coffee shop and realized we were smack dab in the middle of Chinatown... aaaah! Our favorite part of town! Spent the next couple of days finding out the boat schedules for the trip upriver and just checking out the town. Visited an impressive 7-tired Chinese temple where we were given the keys to climb up to the top for great views of the city. Went to a night market and gorged ourselves on street food then took in a free concert in the park. We also found, just down the street, a hawker stall with the best plate of keow tuoh (broad rice noodles) ever... spicy, smoky and a little bit sweet, served with roast pork and a fried egg... we couldn't get enough of it!

Then it was time to try our luck upriver... we decided against going with a tour because we wanted something a bit more authentic than a packaged tour so we took a speedboat to the town of Kapit on the Betang Rejang (river) and started asking around. A woman at a hotel suggested we go to the market and there, once again, we asked people about visiting a longhouse. Unfortunately, most didn't speak English. We were beginning to feel dejected and wondering if it was a mistake coming without a guide when I saw Akau, a man with a kind face. So I decided to try one more time and hit gold! His English wasn't very good so we weren't quite sure what we were getting ourselves into, but decided to trust our instincts and take a chance. Turned out to be one of the most memorable days of our entire trip...

We got into his boat and took a short ride to a longhouse, where we were welcomed in and immediately served refreshments. A longhouse is just that... a long house... with a row of individual apartments for each family and a shared veranda out front that runs the length of the house. That is where all the socializing happens. Whole communities live in these longhouses with a leader, elected by the people, who oversees things and settles disputes. Despite the individual apartments, most things are shared by the community, including labor, creating a harmonious environment. We were invited to lunch and then to an “end-of-mourning” party at another longhouse later in the day.

After lunch, Akau took us to the other longhouse where the party would be (and where we would spend the night), and along the way, we stopped to take in cockfights. I was both repulsed and fascinated by this ancient past-time that has been going on for centuries. Later we found out that in their animist beliefs, the people held the cockfights in order to appease the war gods who would then allow for a peaceful party later on. Afterwards, we were led to a river to cool off and bathe where we were greeted by kids shouting, “Hello!” Then it was a steep climb up to the longhouse, where once again, we were welcomed in, no questions asked, and immediately served rice wine and snacks.

Soon the men were back from the cockfights, the loser cocks were cleaned and put on a bbq, and the party got underway... for the next 24-hours! The Iban tribe we were visiting have a tradition of mourning a death for a year, then they throw an end-of-mourning party attended by all the longhouses in the neighborhood. For 24 hours, people eat, drink and celebrate while drums are beating and mourning songs are sung. We never experienced hospitality like that before... though we were strangers, we were welcomed in and treated like family. We were invited from group to group to share their food, drinks and anything else they had. After several hours, we couldn't eat or drink anymore, but couldn't say no, which would have been an insult. By 10:00, we were simply exhausted! According to tradition, no one is supposed to go to sleep, but they took pity on us, and cleared some space on the floor of the leader's house where we eventually passed out. At 5:00 in the morning, Akau woke us for yet another round of food and drinks before taking us back to Kapit where we boarded a speedboat back to Sibu, arriving yet again, absolutely exhausted. But this time, we were happy-exhausted and couldn't stop thinking about, and talking about, our experience. It was truly amazing!

We checked back into the Hoover Lodging House where the kind old men who run the place saved us the same room #104 with a window. The AC and warm shower felt like heaven! Spent the day resting and recovering, then got ready to move on. The next morning, we boarded another speedboat for a 4 ½ hour ride to Kuching, the capital of Sarawak. Settled into a comfortable room at the Kuching Waterfront Lodge in Chinatown, then spent the next three days walking around the city sightseeing.

Couldn't believe we had been in Malaysia for seven weeks! Though I bitched and moaned a lot during that time about crappy lodging and unwalkable sidewalks, I felt sad to leave. I'm really gonna miss the hustling bustling chinatowns, the wonderfully flavorful food, and especially, the friendly smiling faces... sigh.

Erik: Yes, the Iban longhouse party was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. I've never met people so welcoming and generous. We felt almost a part of the community, and smiling faces kept pulling us from one door of the longhouse to the next, to share in each family's celebration, food and drink...and drink...and drink. It's impolite, bordering on offensive, to refuse an offer of food or drink, and I being a man, was constantly being offered the latter – palm wine and the much more potent, black arak – a bitter/sweet liquor many times more potent than the palm wine. It seemed that every few minutes a new glass of each was shoved in my hands, and I soon became adept at kindly accepting it, then misplacing my glass – otherwise I'd have been done for before night fall. As it was, with a great deal of polite restraint, I only managed to remain conscious until 10pm or so, and I can only remember the last few hours of the evening with the aid of T's many photos. The worst part was that when Akau woke us at 5am, there were all my friends huddled around a huge Johnnie Walker bottle, having been up drinking the entire night, and they were now eagerly awaiting me to continue the party! I've never quite experienced anything like that one day upriver in the Iban longhouse. I just wish that I remembered more of it!

Photos of Sarawak:

Sibu, Borneo Malaysia

Kapit, Borneo Malaysia

Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

Brunei Darussalam, Borneo

Erik: Brunei separates Sabah from Sarawak, the other district of Malaysian Borneo. It is one of the world's smallest countries, and is quite wealthy due to its off-shore oil reserves, though the oil is projected to run out in the next 10-20 years, so it will be interesting to see what happens to the country then. As it is, the Sultan of Brunei is incredibly wealthy. He owns 250 luxury cars, and his palace has 1100 rooms and nearly as many bathrooms! He is generous with the wealth, and distributes it in positive ways among his people – subsidizing housing purchases, free education and health care, etc. The capital city of Bandar Seri Begawan boasts enormous, majestic, gold-laden mosques, and big shopping malls, though it also has an enormous water village where 32,000 people live on less opulent houses built on stilts over the river, complete with their own water-schools, fire and police departments.

Again we'd planned to stay only a few days stay in Brunei, and again were detained against our will. This time I caught T's strange cold with its piercing headaches, and we both suffered from bronchitis/sinusitis. We visited a local doctor, and paid a total of about $40 for the two consultations complete with antibiotics and other medicines he prescribed (and issued) us. Not bad, but still feeling poorly, we decided to stay in the very expensive city several days to nurse ourselves back to health.

The highlight of BSB for me was our boat trip out to see the proboscis monkeys. We met a very nice water taxi man who took us on a river tour of the city and royal palace. He was a great, energetic guide, and when he told us that we could see the monkeys from the river early the next morning, we quickly agreed. At dawn the next day, we headed out and were not disappointed – the river was gorgeous at sunrise, and we saw dozens of the simians with huge, dangling noses – mostly we saw them from the back as they swung away through the tree branches, but several sat and stared at us from a distance. Our guide was almost overly enthusiastic in pointing them out - “look! look! there another monkey! honk, honk” (his strange, nasal call to the monkeys.)

Talor: Once again, I was expecting to see wealth and opulence, but it seemed just an extension of Malaysia, except cleaner. I guess just the name of the capital city alone, Bandar Seri Begawan, made me envision something much more exotic. Instead, all the people looked the same, spoke the same language and the food was identical, just more expensive. After spending a night at the only budget accommodation in town, which was none too pleasant, we checked into the mid-range Brunei Hotel and paid a whopping $57/night (the most we'd ever spent on our trip for accommodations). But it was worth it. Clean and comfortable and with a big screen TV, we took the time we needed to get well enough to hit the road again...

Our photos of Brunei:

Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalem

Sabah, Malaysian Borneo

Erik: I had such high hopes and excitement about Borneo: unique wildlife, some of the world's largest caves, mysterious tribes living deep in the rain forest. Before leaving on our trip, I would cite Patagonia and Borneo as examples of the far-flung, magical-sounding places we hoped to visit. Patagonia never happened because our first time in south america it was winter, and the 2^nd time our passage there was blocked by an erupting volcano. Borneo was very nearly a bust because of bad luck and bad time management.

For only the 3^rd time in 16 months, we had a set time frame in which to visit the world's 3^rd largest island – 3 weeks. This was because we'd purchased onward tickets to Bali to meet up with my friend Kappy who was coming to vacation there and share our journey for a while – the first time we would have a friend come travel with us, and we were excited about it. By the time we'd got all of our passports, visas and doctor visits sorted out in KL, we had 3 weeks left before flying to Bali, so we planned accordingly, not trying to cram too much into that time, but hoping to see as much as possible.

Our first stop was Sandakan in the Sabah district of Malaysian Borneo. “Sandakan” - it sounds mysterious and magical, like a town out of the Arabian Nights. We'd read that at one time Sandakan boasted the largest percentage of millionaires per capita in the entire world, so we expected some lavish, lush city of beauty and mystique. What we found was a small-sized concrete city full of broken sidewalks and dirty vendor stalls. There was absolutely no beauty to the city at all – everything was ugly, dirty and dilapidated. Even the port was full of old, rusting navy ships and not much more.

It didn't matter, though. We'd come to Sandakan for two things: orang utangs and river safaries. We did succeed in visiting the orang utang rescue center just outside town, which was wonderful to see, though very short and very touristy. Sandakan is also the jumping off point for river trips into the rain forest to spot the unique Bornean wildlife, such as pygmy elephants, crocodiles, orang utangs, etc. Upon arrival, we checked into the Mayfair Hotel, a small guesthouse run by the surly, but lovable, Mr. Lum. The rooms weren't luxurious, but large enough and they each boasted a flat-screen tv and dvd player, and full access to Mr. Lum's huge dvd movie collection – which proved quite useful in the days to come.

We called Uncle Tan's river lodge to organize a few days upriver, but they were full for the next few days. We really didn't want to stay in the ugly, boring city any longer, but finally decided that the river safari was worth a few day's wait, and so reserved for 2 days later.

The next day Talor fell ill, with piercing headaches, fever and congestion. We waited a day, but she only got worse, and so had to cancel our reservation. I was more worried about Talor than any stupid midget elephants, but she assured me that it was just a bad cold, so we got her some medicine from the pharmacy and waited. After a few days, she was feeling better and thought she could deal with the rustic trip upriver, so we called Uncle Tan's, but they were full again. Aaargh! After a week in the awful, broken, polluted, concrete city, we decided to skip the safari and move on.

We were now several days behind schedule, so we took a long, all-day bus to Sabah's capital city, Kota Kinabalu. “KK”, as it's referred to was a bit prettier than Sandakan, but only marginally so. It was also terribly expensive. After much searching, we found a tiny, almost-affordable room. The next day we hopped on a boat out to some islands just off shore that were supposedly beautiful and tranquil. Again our timing was off, though. It was the weekend, and the islands were swarming with hoards of local tourists. The snorkeling was crap, the beaches crowded and the food mediocre and terribly expensive. Oh well. We'd used up nearly ½ of our 3 weeks at this point, so we moved on the next day to Brunei Darussalam.

Talor: Aaaah... Sandakan... only 3 things worth mentioning...

1. It was one of the ugliest cities I'd ever been in. Instead of opulence, which I had envisioned, there were rundown concrete block buildings competing for the “worst slum in the world” award.

2. Mr. Lum (who Erik already mentioned), pushing 70 according to him, but I was convinced he was taking some magic pills since he only looked 40... 50 tops!

3. The illness, which came at the worst possible time, but when is it ever a good time to be sick? It is worth noting that, under the circumstances, I couldn'tve asked for a better “nurse.” E took the best care of me... getting me food and making sure I took my meds on time... sitting in the heat of the room when I had the chills, and pumping up the AC when I was burning up... anything and everything I needed to make me feel as comfortable as possible! In my mind, there is no better travel partner... EVER!!

Two nights, one day in Kota Kinabalu was enough. Famous for their sunsets, they didn't tell us the view would be blocked by corrugated metal walls. But at least we found the Filipino Night Market where we got freshly grilled fish and squid for a song.

Photos of Sandakan and KK:

Sandakan, Malaysian Borneo

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysian Borneo