Borneo (group email)

I think last time you heard from me, I was grizzling about how grim Malaysia was in comparison to the other places I've been. Well, it's seeming less grim now. It's still not as good as the other places I've been, but I'm growing more accustomed to it. Borneo is certainly much better. I think the main thing (apart from the predominantly horrendous food) is that Malaysia just feels so soulless after the other four. A bit like England in being so damn multicultural that it's lost so much of any national identity it had. I think if I was a foreign tourist visiting London or Edinburgh I'd feel the same - where are all the locals?! In Malaysia, it seems to be that the muslims run the politics, the Chinese run the economy, and everyone else fits in around that.

Anyway, since arriving on Borneo my plans have, well, not really been plans but more a following of my nose. The stop-off for getting to Borneo (Johor Bahru) was horrendous - the biggest shithole I've ever seen, and the guesthouse was the biggest shithole I've stayed in and I got food poisoning from the shithole restaurant and... Oh, it was just horrible. I then had to spend my first few days on Borneo taking it easy, which meant that I was soon getting grumpy in Kuching (which is actually dead nice and has a cat museum). I was feeling better, so on a complete whim at 9pm I decided to join a trip at 8am the next day to an Iban longhouse.

The Iban are one of Borneo's tribes and they live in a semi-communal dwelling. It's literally a long house divided into 2-room apartments and a communal 'veranda' down the length. The one I went to had 22 apartments and almost 100 people living in it. Myself and an elderly Swedish couple spent 4 days and 3 nights living with one couple, observing life in a longhouse and joining in where possible. It was so untouristy, it was brilliant. A PROPER homestay. I stayed another 3 day after the Swedes left. It was supposed to be 2, then the rain set in and the river was too high to take the boat down it for another day. I can't properly express how amazing an experience the Lalang longhouse was. The majority of the people there speak no English, but we had a really good laugh and they really opened up to me once the Swedes had left. I learned so much about their way of life, which is mainly spent harvesting rubber and a whole variety of fruit and plants from the forest around them. They are millionaires in food terms - if you're peckish on a walk, you pick fruit from the trees. You stuff your pockets with ferns for dinner later, catch a couple of fish, and if you're thirsty, chop open a vine or some bamboo for a drink. I saw them building boats, helped them weaving baskets, bathed in the river... It was very sad to leave.

Since then I've made on the spot decisions and worked my way up to Brunei, where I am just now. It's one of the smallest and wealthiest countries in the world and it's quite odd. Nothing to write home about (although I have just sent mum and dad a postcard), but there's some nice stuff to see for a day or two. It's a no-alcohol muslim sultanate with very British tinges and high prices. It's an oil-state and the only thing that's not expensive is petrol - 15p a litre. Even cheaper for diesel.

Tomorrow I head further north, back into Malaysian Borneo. I'll be going into the jungle again for 3 or 4 days - hopefully seeing orangutans - before climbing Mt Kinabalu. Then it's a couple of days in Singapore before jetting to Oz on 6 February. I can't believe it's come round so soon! I'm ready for it though. I've loved SE Asia, but it's time for a change and for some home comforts.

Weirdos and disasters

It's occurred to me that I may be a disaster and weirdo magnet. Wou've met the cream of the weirdos already through my blog - at least those I know don't read it ;o) - oh, and except for Danish Steen, who won't go to Borneo because it's boring, because there are not many guesthouses (?!) and no fast food restaurants (he only eats McDonalds except every now and then when he 'fancies a change').

As for the 'disasters', well:
- arrive in Bangkok Sept 19: military coup
- enter Vietnam Oct 15: typhoon
- in Bokor jungle Nov 6: Ryan dislocates shoulder
- on Ko Pha Ngan Dec 29: bungalow burns down
- return to Bangkok Dec 31: new year bombs
- arrive in Johor province Jan 14: biggest floods in years

Doing well, eh. I'm sure there'll be more...

Home comfort-sickness

I've now definitely got to that stage of travelling where I'm really looking forward to, if not going home, at least being in a country where the beds are dry, where there are pavements you can actually walk on, with hot baths, good red wine and cheese, toilet seats that aren't wet (at the moment squat toilets are vastly preferable to western toilets with wet seats), where people don't stare and shout after you ALL THE TIME, and where the 'walking ATM' sign will automatically vanish from my head.

Aaaahh...

Jo the Traveller

Travelling, like anything, comes with its highs and lows. If you're travelling alone, I find the lows can feel particularly bleak. This one's the worst yet. It's not helped by being ill, being ina country I'm yet to be endeared to, sitting through immense monsoon thunderstorms in dreary guesthouses, getting rather bored of having to go through the 'so, where have you been/are you going' drudge of travel itinerary conversations. I'm slowly looking forward to no longer being Jo the Traveller and just being Jo again. Whoever that is.

Jo the Traveller

Travelling, like anything, comes with its highs and lows. If you're travelling alone, I find the lows can feel particularly bleak. This one's the worst yet. It's not helped by being ill, being ina country I'm yet to be endeared to, sitting through immense monsoon thunderstorms in dreary guesthouses, getting rather bored of having to go through the 'so, where have you been/are you going' drudge of travel itinerary conversations. I'm slowly looking forward to no longer being Jo the Traveller and just being Jo again. Whoever that is.

Tips

It's got to be providence that I get runny tummy in a ######## of a restaurant 2 doors down frmo the biggest ######## of a guesthouse I've stayed in yet (and the most expensive) in the worst ######## of a city I've ever had the displeasure of setting foot in.

In my current mood I have the following tips for anyone visiting Malaysia:

1. Consider going to a different country.
2. If you still come, spend as little time in Johor Bahru as possible, if you can't avoid it altogether.
3. If you DO stay the night in JB for some stupid reason, the staff in the Hyatt Regency are wonderfully friendly and accommodating to non-guests who turn up with strange requests (such as 'can I please just sit in one of your armchairs for half an hour').

Photos: Festive period

Photos from:

Christmas and new year: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddballproductions/sets/72157594466657540/

Phrae: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddballproductions/sets/72157594466664342/

Elephant course: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddballproductions/sets/72157594466756424/

Jeans

Found in Malaysian Women's Weekly, in a feature giving advice on perfect fitting jeans:

'Relaxed fit: They rise low on your hips. Best suit those with less-than-ideal shapes [my italics], or those with curvy hips and thighs. Sometimes known as cowboy cut.'

I wonder what Malaysia's stats are on eating disorders with advice like that?

Superstition

Meet Gunther. I don't know his real name, just that he's Austrian and Gunther seems appropriate.

We shared the bus ride to our guesthouse here in Melaka and he spent most of the trip insisting that Flemish and Dutch are absolutely NOT the same language. He should know, he's a native German speakers and he can understand Flemish but can't understand Dutch. So there.

Gunther left the guesthouse this morning because a cat kept walking past his room last night. When the same thing happened to him in Equador 8 years ago, there was an earthquake. If that's not proof enough, two years ago he was living with a Thai girlfriend. When she was there, he didn't sleep well. When she was out for the night, he slept like a baby. There you go.

Animal count

Whilst in Taman Negara, the oldest virgin rainforest in the world at 130 million years old, I saw the following:

Birds: BRIGHT blue kingfishers and loads of unidentified warblers.

Insects and reptiles: spiders (big'ns), stick insects, millepedes, centipedes, termites, leeches, scorpions, crickets, grasshoppers, praying mantis, cicadas, monitor lizard.

Mammals: elephant (one of fewer than 200 left in Taman Negara), wild boar, samba deer, mouse deer, slow loris, giant squirrel, striped squirrel.

And rats in our hide. An adolescent rat spent a lot of time trying to navigate the rafters carrying a candle twice its length. What on earth could a teenage rat want with a candle?!

Answers in an email, please.

David Attenborough

I have a new respect for Attenborough and his fellow zoologists/animal people. They must have to sit and wait in silence in hides for days, weeks on end to catch the animal shots we love. I've just spent 18 hours overnight in a hide. While it was wonderful - we were lucky enough to see an elephant - I doubt I'd be able to manage much more than a day or two of that tiptoeing around and whispering in the darkness.

I do better than most though. The majority of tourists I met in Taman Negara were either unable or unwilling to restrain from needless chatter - which to me is akin to someone answering a mobile phone going off in a classical concert - and those who could shut up couldn't be bothered trying to walk quietly. When I actually asked a couple of times if we could sit or stand in silence for a bit, the average time people could manage was about 2-3 minutes.

The couple I shared the hide with was an exception, thank god.

Culture shock

I'm in a state of rather unpleasant culture shock. And I don't like Kuala Lumpur. It's all so westernised, it's almost impossible to distinguish anything as specifically Malaysian culture, the food sucks. Also, everyone speaks English and they have Marks and Spencer.
It's not that I don't like M&S, or being able to communicate easily with people - I was actually starting to feel I'd be ready for it when I hit Oz in a month. It's just that I'm not ready for it yet, not right now. And I certainly wasn't expecting it.

Elephants and Malaysia (group email)

I have left Thailand. Yes, I'm now in Malaysia, having arrived yesterday.

After new year, I spent a few days in Phrae. It's well off the beaten track and is a lovely town to while away time. I had some of the best food I've had so far there too.

The big excitement though was my elephant/mahout course. It was the most incredible 3 days. I was partnered with an elephant called Look Khang, her mahout is called Thiit. They were both wonderful. Look Khang is a 14-year-old female and a really beautiful, docile elephant. The days were spent fetching the elephants from the forest where they spend the night, bathing and feeding them, watching their show and spending time with the mahouts. The mahouts taught us a lot of the commands to control the animals, and to do some of the tricks. On the last day, we then got to actually be in the elephant show and demonstrate the various ways of getting on and off them and getting them to pick up things for you while you're sat behind their ears. Look Khang does a trick in the show of putting her mahout's hat on his head for him. She did it to me too. Oh, and by the way, bathing the elephants means getting a bath yourself. Thiit has the knack of standing on her back so barely gets wet, but Look Khang enjoys completely submerging herself in the water, and so I got soaked every time sat as I was behind her ears.
It was just brilliant. There were 6 others doing the course at the same time and they were all wonderful. We had a really fun time together.

One more month in SE Asia. Kuala Lumpur has to be the most westernised place I've been since leaving Scotland. I don't like it much, so I'm figuring out which direction to head next and will probably leave tomorrow.

Supermums

Some of the most inspiring travellers I meet are the mothers. Not those with little kids, but those who have weans my age and who, like my own inspiring, wonderful mum, have found their own new lease of life post-kids.

L, who shared many of the same cities as me through Thailand and Laos, decided to take a sabbatical from her job and travel SE Asia and then some of the less stable countries of the world. She missed her daughter's thirtieth, can't do everything she wants because of back problems, but is otherwise vibrant and completely unstoppable.

Likewise B, who I rode elephants with. Her son is the one with the steady job and income. B lives on a 36' yacht and currently runs a yoga centre in Hawaii. Her whole take on life is incredible.

All these amazing mums around me are making me realise motherhood - a club I eventually want to join - is not a one-way ticket; the rat-race is jump-offable and I don't have to rush to fulfil all my other desires and dreams before decorating the nursery. Oh, and the supermums are always ready with a few much-appreciated wise words for a young independent female traveller like me!

Videos: Zipping

Check out the following two links for some videos of the entrance and exit method from Gibbon Experience treehouses:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz72lIIYb1A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lysXVBVvZd0

High drama

Wow, I thought military coups and dislocated shoulders were as dramatic as it would get. Wrong.

On 29th December, we were enjoying dinner in a clifftop restaurant at our beautiful island resort when smoke billowed over the patio and we had to run to discover its source: a bungalow in the direction of ours in flames. It wasn't ours, thank god, but the one next to it.
It's the dry season and the thing went up so quickly anyone asleep inside would not have got out. Luckily no one was home. The next real fear was of the fire spreading to other bungalows, so everyone packed what they could and cleared out. Those of us with a torch, steady feet and a bit of cool-headedness combined to look after little kids, warn others and set up a chain of buckets while the owner rigged up a hose. No other bungalows caught fire, but it's incredible to see the destruction caused by dodgy wiring.

And to top it off, some nutters bomb Bangkok on new year's eve when I'm there.

Happy new year!