Back To The Jungles – Borneo Sarawak

Posted On Thursday, January 31, 2008 at at 1:58 AM by Alvin  

The Grand Old Lady Of Miri !

Along the Northern coast of Borneo lie the riches left behind by Time – Oil. Miri benefited from this natural resource and grew into a sizable town. We visited the Oil and Petroleum Museum and met The Grand Old Lady – the first oil-drilling platform in Miri. She had served her time and is now having a peaceful retirement on top of Canada Hill that overlooks Miri.

The Niah Caves

About an hour’s bus journey West of Miri lie the Niah caves where ancient burial sites and pre-historic wall paintings had been found. We reached the caves after 2 hours’ walking through beautiful jungles where we spotted woodpeckers, millipedes, flying squirrels, giant ferns and a tiny frog the size of a shirt button (bless the frog as Mandy almost squashed it in her strides). The caves were pitch black and it took us almost half an hour to walk (slowly) through to the other side, passing a few guano-collectors on our way. Guano is a substance made up of bat and swiftlet droppings and can be used as fertilizers. The shafts of light coming through the different cave openings during our passage through the darkness were inspiring.

We came across a real funky hotel lift in Niah and I felt that I was taking in a walk-in part in the "Twin Peaks" series. Spooky !

Meeting Richie in Semengogh - Hi Richie, be nice !
Outside the pleasant city of Kuching lies the Semengogh Rehabilitation Centre for Orangutans and Richie is the Alpha Male of the group – a giant heaving and bouncing reddish mop. Richie and his group are now living independently in the wild but they still come back to the Centre for an occasional visit when they cannot find food during the non-fruiting months. These creatures may look friendly and hilarious but they can be aggressive, simply even if you just stand in their way; so no fighting over the bananas with Richie.

Kuching was a very pleasant city with a nice long promenade by the river and we settled here for a few days over the Chinese New Year. Part of the fun during this time of the year was to find somewhere to eat - almost ALL the Chinese shops were deserted and we were lucky to find a vegetarian restaurant open and yep, we even resorted to Pizza Hut !

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Brunei - Land Of Calm and Peace

Posted On Monday, January 28, 2008 at at 1:52 AM by Alvin  

Crossed over to the Brunei capital – Bandar Seri Begawan (BSB) after a few days in Pulau Labuan that was a duty-free island and gateway to Brunei. BSB had to be one of the most calm, quiet and sleepy capitals in the world; there was hardly anyone out on the street after 8p.m. and we were lucky to manage even to find a place for dinner. The showy state mosque and the air-con glitzy shopping malls did manage to keep us awake though.

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It's a Jungle Out There - Borneo Sabah

Posted On Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at at 1:44 AM by Alvin  

Awesome Mount Kota Kinabalu

Kota Kinabalu is quite a pleasant town although most buildings were built after WW2 as the strategic township was bombed to pieces by the Allied Forces. We moved on after 2 relaxing days to the Mount Kota Kinabalu National Park that was a 2 hours bus ride from KK. Thanks must go to Mandy who organized a beautiful park lodge with all mod-cons in the middle of the jungle for us to stay in. But that didn’t stop the leeches from attacking my feet after a walk in the wet jungle as I found three of the blood suckers having a feast on my toes ! Luckily they came off pretty tamely after we torched them with a lighted mozzie-coil since “no amount of high-pitch screaming would help” as quoted in our guidebook.

Tenom – Beaufort Train Journey

Tenom is a small township surrounded by misty rolling hills in the southwest corner of Sabah; we like staying in out-of-the-way little towns during our travels to gain an insight into the local life. After an interesting walk-about in the evening in Tenom, we took the early train to Beaufort and we enjoyed the peaceful, uneventful and scenic journey that followed the path of the Sungai Padas. We were however not prepared for the horror when we reached Beaufort. We were greeted with >100 tourists fighting, climbing-thru-windows and generally extremely eager to get on our train to make the scenic journey back to Tenom. Luckily we pushed through the incoming crowds and made our way out of the Beaufort train station. Whew !

We caught a small boat from Menombok to the duty-free island of Labuan and found the island a pleasant place to relax for a few days. The weather was a perfect blue as we walked around the island in the balmy sea breeze and visited a number of WWII memorials, marine museums and even a mosque of such an incredible design - take a look below !

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New Year's Day Fire Dragon

Posted On Thursday, January 3, 2008 at at 12:33 AM by Alvin  

Dry air visits HK every Winter and coupled with the careless and thoughtless smokers about, this unfortunately causes numerous hill fires. The hill opposite our house is called Castle Peak and it was visited by the Fire Dragon on New Year's Day and the earth was scorched for 2 full days before any signs of the fire abating. A truly great start to the year, I hope !

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