Our Borneo Adventure begins

Borneo, the third-largest island in the world, is a wonderland of tropical forest, amazing caves, beautiful coastlines and lovely people.  We were excited to begin our two-week adventure in Borneo together.

Riki’s thoughts…

For Kelly, airports and airplanes are the painful parts of travel. They are necessary evils, but definitely evils in his mind and in his experience. Too many hours (that have added up to days and weeks over his lifetime) spent at the gates of flights, followed by time in the airplane itself, shuttling to final destinations, have robbed him of the joy and anticipation that a person new to world travel experiences. This was only my second international trip so I was excited as we were in Sunport, and in Dallas International (even after a two-hour delay). I was thrilled as we boarded our plane for Doha, Qatar (a 14-hour flight).

The wonder continued when we arrived at the airport in Doha, named the best airport in the world by someone who knows airports. It was full of high-end stores and people travelling all over the world (Europe, Asia, Africa, North America). It seemed like anyone flying anywhere was going through Qatar. I grew up hearing George W. Bush pronouncing it “Cutter.” I listened to the in-flight ads to see how it was REALLY pronounced. Sometimes it was pronounced kind of like Bush pronounced it. More often, the accent was on the second syllable “Ka-TAR.” However they said it, the image of wealth and opulence was apparent in the ads and in the airport itself. We had a few hours to spend in the airport, that includes an indoor rainforest walk – SUPER cool, even though it was a bit weird to see people asleep on every flat surface of the rainforest “floor.” I guess it is better than sleeping in the seats at the gate?

Our flight from Doha to Kuala Lumpur was shorter (only 8 hours) and again I boarded with enthusiasm. I have to say that even though Kelly is not a fan of the travelling part of world travel, he was so tolerant of my newb energy! He even smiled a few times, when he may have felt more like growling. He is a lovely, though subdued and quiet, airplane buddy. I especially love how he holds my hand or rests his hand on my leg or shoulder, hour after hour.

The biggest challenge I have with the travel is that after months (years) of working on a degree and then learning how to teach a second-grade class, it was very hard for me to not be productive. It felt weird and uncomfortable to just be watching movies or listening to music or sleeping. Forced complacency was a difficult transition, but it did not kill me.

The last leg of our trip was Kuala Lumpur to Kuching. Both cities are part of Malaysia, but Kuching is on the island of Borneo, a large island that is shared by 3 nations – Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei. We were lucky enough on this trip to spend time in both Malaysian states (Sabah and Sarawak) on Borneo during our two weeks in country. Kuching is in the southwest. It is a modern, clean city full of beautiful, polite, hospitable people. I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with them.

Arriving in the late afternoon, we took a cab from the airport to our hotel, the amazing Culvert Hotel. It was a beautiful resort right on the beach of the South China Sea. The rooms are actually large concrete culverts (10 feet in diameter, maybe?). They are sealed on one end by a glass door framed by two windows. A small platform helps you step up to the bed, which reaches straight across the culvert, from side to side. You crawl over the bed to get to the bathroom, which is built into the other end of the culvert. They were adorable, unlike anything we have ever seen. The concrete walls and the air conditioning unit kept the room delightfully cool and comfortable. The resort had two infinity pools built into the hill. The whole place had a pretty steep slope, so everything was kind of built on platforms or levels. It made it so that every room had a view of the ocean, though the trees all around the place partially blocked the view.

Before jetlag drove us to a fairly early bedtime, we enjoyed exploring the coastline with its beach and tidepools. We found some lovely seashells and were mesmerized by a gorgeous sunset. We were on the correct side of the island to enjoy watching the sun go down. Next to the resort is a very tall peak (which would have been delightful but extremely difficult to summit, especially because I was not yet acclimated to the tropical climate.) We found out later that this peak was the toes of one of the sleeping princess Santubong, a mountain ranges with a local legend attached.

The Legend of Mount Santubong

Mount Santubong is one of the most famous tourist attraction places in Sarawak. Located 35 kilometer from Kuching City, and reachable in a 45 minutes drive, facing the South China Sea and with its height of 2,658 feet above sea level Mount Santubong is a great deal for those who love hiking and jungle trekking.

According to history, Mount Santubong was discovered by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in 1855 while he was collecting specimen in Sarawak. Mount Santubong has been gazetted as one of Sarawak’s National Parks, and its nearby beach is recognized as one of the biggest wetland areas in the whole of Borneo. When people pass by Mount Santubong, they usually comment that it has the shape of a woman’s profile viewed from a certain angle; whether this is true or not we leave it to you to discover for yourself. This is the legend of the mountain was formed.

Once upon a time, two beautiful sister princesses from heaven came down to earth to bring peace to a dispute between two local villages. Santubong and Sejinjang were the names of the princesses, and they were both very talented: Santubong had amazing weaving skills while her sister Sejinjang was known for her talent in pounding rice. They were successful to bring peace to the villages. These two princesses had many admires, but they would not accept anyone until one day Prince Serapi came into the picture.

Prince Serapi fell in love with both of them and wanted both to become his wives. Santubong and Sejinjang both loved Prince Serapi, and a frightful fight ensued since each of them wished to become Prince Serapi’s only wife. The quarrel turned increasingly violent, with Sejinjang hitting Santubong in the cheek with her rice pounder and Santubong fighting back and hitting Sejinjang with her ‘belidak’, a tool used to weave cloths.

When their father, the King, realized what was happening, he was furious. He came down to earth to curse the three of them. Both sisters were transformed into mountains, namely Mount Santubong and Mount Sejinjang, while the broken pieces of Sejinjang’s head scattered into the sea and became islands: Kerak island, Satang island, Talang-Talang island, Lakir island and many more. Prince Serapi was also cursed. He was turned into Mount Serapi, located far far away from the two princesses.

https://tropaws.wordpress.com/2021/02/05/mount-santubong-a-tale-of-two-princesses/

Our first excursion was to the Bako National Park. Kelly found this gem in his world-class sleuthing. He knew that the park was only accessible by boat. Early in the morning, we took a cab from the hotel to the jetty. There, we hired a boat driver and a guide (after a suggestion from one of the locals.) Our guide, whose nickname was Pablo after Juan Pablo Escobar – his hero for reasons that I did not grasp – was amazing. He was former military and was able to tell us all about survival in the rainforest. After our boat ride to the park, he showed us useful and dangerous plants, along with some super cool Borneo wildlife. First, he showed us our first proboscis monkey (males have extremely large noses). Then, he showed us a green tree viper. I am pretty sure that the word viper means that it is dangerous, but both Pablo and Kelly were maneuvering around it like it was a sleepy kitten. I took a picture of Kelly taking a picture of the snake from a tiny distance of 6 inches or so. I thought it might be useful for the insurance claim.

We also saw a monitor that was over 4 feet nose to tail. That, according to Pablo, was a “dangerous creature” that was tucked under the walkway until after the fellas had walked by and wandered out right under me. I thought we weren’t scared of reptiles after the time with the snake, so I calmly brought it to their attention, then found out that it was scary.

We took a brisk and challenging trek through the rainforest to a lovely spot on the beach, where we saw one of the sleeping princesses from across the bay. During the trek, he showed us a place where a few nights before, he had seen four clouded leopard kittens (which I would have LOVED to see) and places on the trees where you could tell that the mother had been sharpening her claws. Amazing!!

We saw some cool insects and some gliding lemurs hanging out high in a tree (a mama and baby), along with some silvered langurs also chilling in the treetops. After our first intense and grueling hike with a lot of vertical change, we took a short rest at the park headquarters. Malaysia is a Muslim country, and the people were celebrating Ramadan while we were there. The park employees were fed from a huge vat of some kind of porridge. Pablo got us some to try, which was a cool experience, but did not taste super exciting. That may be the point, since it is part of the fasting diet.

Our second hike of the day was a trek on a boardwalk through the rainforest, much shorter and easier than the first, for sure. We followed a lovely river, where he showed us some grooming fish, some little caves with cool spiders, and a ton of gorgeous jungle flora. This was a fabulous start to my introduction to the rainforest, for sure.

We caught our boat back to the jetty, where our cab driver friend was waiting for us (he ended up taking us several more places during our time in Sarawak.) We enjoyed dinner at the hotel restaurant, another walk on the beach, some time in one of the large, round swings located around the facility, and then an early time to bed. We got treated to another beautiful beach sunset, though we thought the late-day rainshower would make that impossible. The clouds broke just in time to let the last rays of sun through in a rainbow spectacle.

Kelly’s thoughts…

It took slightly longer than forever to fly to Borneo.  There’s a reason we didn’t see a lot of Americans there, if Americans want to see the tropics, there are places far closer to home.  Mostly we saw Europeans and Asians.

So the flight took forever, or longer.  But eventually we arrived in Kuching, Borneo.  Below, Riki describes quite well our resort… the Culvert Hotel.  Yes, we slept in culverts!  Pretty cool, actually.  Right on the beach.  In planning, I thought that we should take it easy for a couple nights in Kuching since we’d be pretty severely jetlagged, so I booked two nights in the Culvert resort.  Our first night there was beautiful as we leisured on the beach finding shells and cool rocks and crabs and sunsets.

The next day we headed for Bako National Park, one of the oldest national parks in Borneo.  It’s a beautiful tropical forest peninsula right on the coast with dense, beautiful forests and wonderful, isolated beaches.  I saw on a board that it actually has something like 40,000 visitors each year… not seriously that many when you consider even small national parks in the US.

We hired a guide because we were advised that if we wanted to see wildlife, it would be best to have one.  Our excursion to the park took us on a boat along the coast, which was lovely.  Once there, immediately our guide took us to see an incredible green viper.  We also saw bearded pigs, a huge monitor lizard, and then… a big, male proboscis monkey.  We got a great look at this male with his huge nose, pot belly and weird Dr. Seuss-like features.

We took a long hike out to a beautiful beach which had hermit crabs, shells, pitcher plants and gorgeous views.  Even though we intended to take it easy, this hike kinda kicked our butts!  The heat, the jetlag and just the hiking was a lot for day one, but we enjoyed it.

Other sights in Bako included a mother and baby flying lemur sleeping in a palm, silvered langurs, a dead horseshoe crab, mud skipper fish, various cool arthropods including some of the first millipedes of the trip, and a lot of birds.  We agreed it was a pretty cool day one of our adventure.