After my short flight to Brunei, I arrived at 1:30 am, tired, disoriented, and not too sure what to do for my sleeping arrangements. I had made a reservation at a decent hotel using Agoda (
www.agoda.com), and looked around the Brunei arrivals area for a spot to sleep, but it was mostly under construction, and there really wasn't any good spots, so I just hailed a cab to take me to the hotel, in hopes of being able to check in early. I would later find out that there's official taxis and unofficial taxis, with the official ones being much more expensive. I paid my $30 Brunei, and was at my hotel within 15 minutes. Upon arrival, no one was at the counter, so I hung out there for a bit, before I saw a bell, rang it, and woke up the lady who was sleeping in a back room. She said she didn't think I could check in, but that I could sleep on the couch in the lobby, so I just did that until 7 am, when the manager arrived, and said I could check in early. I made my way to my nice room, hit the comfy bed, and was out like a light.
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| Vehicle parked in front of my hotel..yeah there's a bit of money in Brunei I suppose! |
I didn't wake up until around 1 pm, and wandered down to the hotel restaurant, where I was quite impressed with the food. The prices weren't terribly bad, about $10 for a nice meal, and another $3 for a great fruit shake. After lingering around for awhile over lunch, and catching up a bit on some things, I asked the hotel staff if there was anything worth seeing in the area. They said there wasn't a whole lot other than malls and shopping in the area, but that I could go into the city and walk around and see some things there. They told me I could take the bus for $1 Brunei into town, and where it left from, so I set out on my way. I found the bus stop, which didn't seem like much, as there was some construction near it, and it looked like it was actually blocked off from traffic, but sure enough, there were 2 people sitting there waiting. What happened next was a bit interesting, as a small car pulled up in front of the stop, and the one man at the stop went to get in, as I looked on, a bit puzzled, thinking it was maybe a friend of his, picking him up. He then motioned myself and the lady over to the vehicle, and she got in as well. I then hopped in, and thought, wow, the buses here are really SMALL!....Everyone paid their $1 to the driver, and he dropped us off in the city centre. I have since found out that the people of Brunei are very resourceful in making money, and if a person who happens to be driving in the direction where the buses are going, they will often stop at the bus station and offer people a ride for the same price as the bus ha ha!
I was dropped off, and wandered around a bit, but the city is so small, and there's really not a whole lot going on. I heard some music being played, so I wandered over to the waterfront, and found that they had some karaoke going on (seriously, Asians love their karaoke!). After watching that for a bit, I took a peek across the river at the floating village, when a local man approached me, and told me he lived over there, and would be interested in taking me on a boat tour the next day to see his home and the village if I was interested. I was a bit taken aback, but figured that I had nothing else to do, so we arranged to meet the next day around 1 pm for the boat tour. After sorting that out, I just wandered around the city for another hour and a half, checking out the lovely Jubilee Mosque, and a few other buildings.
I did come across the Pusat Belia (http://www.hostelman.com/Asia/Brunei/Bandar_Seri_Begawan/Pusat_Belia/), which offers beds for $10 a night, so if you're ever in Brunei, and looking for a cheap room, check that place out, it's right downtown, next to the Radisson Hotel. After wandering around a bit more, I decided to head back to my hotel, and tried to figure out the buses at the main station. Unfortunately, the map there wasn't much help, and confused me greatly, especially since the area I was staying in, Kiulai, wasn't listed anywhere as a stop on the map. After some head scratching, and walking around, a local man asked me where I was going and if I needed help. I told him I needed to get to the Palm Garden Hotel, and he said he could drive me there for $5, or I could wait around for the buses and get there for $1. So I said sure, why not, and I was on my way with my first unofficial taxi ride.
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| Place where there was some karaoke going on |
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| Wild and crazy downtown Bandawar |
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| The Jubilee mosque |
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| View from the East side of the Jubilee courtyard |
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| Hey buddy! |
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| Random traffic circle clock |
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| Just liked something about the stone designs on this building |
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| Washington DC replica? |
The man's name was Marzuki, and he was a super friendly fellow. He dropped me off, and said he could drive me anywhere I needed to for a cheaper price than taxis, so I now had my own personal driver :) I told him I might be going to the Empire hotel in two day's time, so he gave me his number, and told me to call him when I needed a ride. I arrived back at the hotel, and didn't really feel like doing much more, although the hotel did offer free use of the enormous fitness centre for its guests, so I decided to pump out a bit of a workout, since I've been pretty lazy and useless. After that workout, I just caught up with Hilla, who informed me she was coming to Brunei the next day. I had thought she was going to meet me the day after, so I had booked my hotel for two nights, but since she was coming tomorrow, she agreed to just come stay with me that night, and then we would go check out the Empire Hotel the next night. I just had a late dinner, while impulsively looking for beer prices, only to realize that I was in a muslim country, where they didn't sell alcohol! A good time to detox I guess! After my tasty roasted chicken dinner, it was off to bed for an early night.
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| Last day of my travel beard, time to clean up! |
The next day wasn't too eventful, as I just woke up, went to the bus stop, caught an actual bus this time, and arrived in the city, and wandered over to the river where I was meant to meet Haji. He showed up in his boat, and I boarded that, and we went on a little tour of the area. It was interesting to see all the water village establishments and means of transportation, including water school buses for the children. We toured around, seeing the local schools, police stations, mosques, fire hall, etc., all of which were built on stilts, on the water. After touring around in the boat for awhile, we stopped by Haji's home, where I met his wife, a few of his children, and just had some coffee, juice, snacks, and a chat about life in Brunei. He was a fairly kind fellow, and had many photos of foreigners who have come on his boat and toured the city with him. It was a nice little afternoon, experiencing life in a traditional Brunei water house. I finished up the tour a bit earlier than expected, and figured I could grab Hilla from the bus station, as she had told me she would be there by 2:30. I arrived there, and waited, and waited, and was approached by numerous locals offering things such as prostitutes, cigarettes, rides, jobs! (as a labourer), etc, etc....it was quite an experience! I waited about 1.5 hours there, but finally decided to call it quits, and just head back to the hotel, and let her figure out her way to the place.
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| Water village |
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| The closest I got to the Sultan of Brunei's Grand Palace |
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| Floating school |
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| Floating Mosque |
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| Manchester United fans everywhere |
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| Hanging with a Brunei family |
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| Floating gas stations everywhere |
I was back for maybe an hour when she made her appearance via taxi, and I was quite happy to see her. There's just some sort of great chemistry that we have, and really enjoy each other's company. Since there is next to nothing to do during the evenings, we just went out for a bite at a Thai restaurant, where I had to pay for dinner since I lost a bet to her (I thought that Norway was part of the EU, but alas I was incorrect). After dinner we just went back to the hotel for the night and booked a room at the Empire for the next day.
The next day, we just wandered around the area, shopping a bit, and killing some time until we could head to the Empire. After not finding anything we needed, we wandered back to the hotel, and had Marzuki come pick us up and whisk us away to the Empire. The Empire was built in 2001, and was a billion dollar hotel project, that has been classified as a 6 or 7 hotel, before the Burj Dubai was built and classified as a 7 star. The place is absolutely incredible, and the price for a room is fairly decent, as Brunei isn't really a tourist destination, so they keep the rates reasonable. We were able to get an ocean view room for $200 for a night, which wasn't too bad. The complex itself boasts a Jack Nicklaus golf course, bowling alley, cinema, several pools, incredible restaurants, and an amazing attrium in the main hall....walking into the place, with our backpacks, and not dressed like people belonging in an oppulant place was a bit of a surreal experience, but fun nevertheless. As we gawked in awe at the fabulous main hall, it was easy to get caught up in the atmosphere and showmanship of the hotel. We checked in, settled into the lovely room, and then just spent most of the afternoon lounging by the pool until we were able to take in the lovely sunset.
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| Fans of Arrested Development will appreciate this chair |
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| No! No reason for what you shouldn't be doing is given though! |
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| The Main Attrium of the Empire Hotel |
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| What $200 US will get you |
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| A room with a view |
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| Main pool area |
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| I believe I can fly |
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| Not your typical guest of a 5 star hotel :) |
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| Sunset by the pool |
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| View from the walkway at our hotel |
After enjoying the sunset, we tried to get into the nice Italian restaurant, but were informed they had a dress code, so we would have to go back to the room and change. Once back at the room, I noticed we could get the same food through room service, so we just ordered that in, and were treated to another lovely but expensive meal. We just relaxed for the rest of the night, enjoying each other's company, and had an early night. This whole lack of alcohol thing in Brunei, plus being with a woman who doesn't drink, makes it a lot easier to have a sober time :)
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| Wandering through the massive Main Attrium |
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| Can't remember the name of this stone, but it's the largest in the world, and was given to the hotel as a gift |
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| Room service with the lovely Miss Hilla |
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| Engaging in a lively discussion over dinner |
The next day we had Marzuki pick us up in the morning, after enjoying the amazing breakfast buffet, and were on our way to the airport to fly to Kota Kinabalu. I had arranged for us to go on a jungle tour in a place called Sandakan, but we had to go to Kota Kinabalu for one night first. We arrived there in the afternoon, and went to a hostel that we thought was where our friend Joe, that we met in the Philippines was staying, but ended up being at the wrong Borneo Backpacker's. We were able to get a “private room” which was actually a room with 4 bunk beds, but was rented out as a private room for two people, which was a bit odd, but oh well. We settled in there, went out and Hilla did some shopping for a few things, which took a very lengthy time, but fortunately I'm quite patient, although I really do dislike shopping! After the first mall, we settled into a little sports bar, as a huge lightning storm rolled in, with the lightning striking about 60 m away from where we were sitting, three times....It was a pretty cool sight to see, as I've never seen lightning strike that close! A few of the locals were quite terrified by the strikes as well, it was kind of funny to watch them screaming like little girls.
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| Marzuki, my personal Brunei chauffeur! |
After that crazy storm subsided, we wandered over to the next mall, which was a more modern and large mall, where Hilla could go crazy shopping, so I tagged along and waited and waited and waited some more until she was finally finished up. After all that, we just wandered back to the hostel, and had a quiet night, since we had to be up quite early the next morning for our flight. We took the cheapest flight possible to Sandakan, which meant flying out at 7:45 am, and arriving quite early in the day there. Upon arrival, we grabbed our taxi to Uncle Tan's operations camp, where we were about 3.5 hours early for the initial meet and greet, so we just lounged around, playing some table tennis, and then laying in the hammocks until it was finally lunch time. The food they served was so incredible, and I've quickly fallen in love with Malaysian cuisine! At first there was only about 8 of us at the lunch thing, so I piled on the food, as there seemed to be way too much, but of course a huge van of 20 some people showed up shortly after, having returned from their jungle tour, so I felt a bit bad, as some of the dishes ran out before everyone could get some, oh well! We had our little orientation, which I was a bit distracted from by a praying mantis. There were two Danish girls sitting at the table next to us, and when they went up to get their lunch and came back, the one was a bit shocked and yelped a bit, as she noticed a praying mantis had perched itself on the back of the chair where she was sitting. I was immediately awestruck and was quick to grab my camera to take a photo. As I set up and started to zoom in, the crazy bugger jumped at me and landed on my arm! I had no idea they could jump so far and so quickly...it then started climbing along my arm, and decided to perch itself on my shoulder and back area....it wasn't really causing me any grief, although I don't know a lot about them, they are a pretty cool creature, so I just let it hang out, while trying to sneakily take photos of it, but without much luck. Eventually, it decided it had enough of hanging out on me, and went on its merry way, crawling up the beam and onto the ceiling...super cool!
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| My new mantis friend |
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| Finally done climbing on me, off to ascend my computer cord |
After the mantis show, and little orientation thing, we were all ready to head on out to the jungle. We packed into several vans and were taken to a nearby market, where we could pick up any last minute supplies for the trip, including rubber boots, insect repellent, snacks, flashlights, etc. Hilla decided to buy some rubber boots at the store, and settled on this tiny little ankle boots, that would end up being a terribly ineffective shoe. I knew I could rent boots from the actual camp, so I just planned on doing that instead. I searched around aimlessly for bug spray, and at one point saw a guy who I thought was working at the shop, and asked him, and he just gave me a weird look and shook his head and walked away. I realized shortly after that he was just a customer there, oops. After we had our supplies, we were back in the cramped van and on our way to catch our boat. Unfortunately, Hilla and I weren't able to sit by each other in the van, as we were the last ones to get into it, since we're kind of slow, but the great thing about the girl is that she's so fun and friendly, that she makes friends a lot faster than even I do, which was great. We endured the hour long van ride, and then were put onto boats for another hour long ride to the camp. Due to the unpredictable nature of Borneo, with rain storms frequently occuring without warning, we had to try and wrap all our bags up in plastic, which made me kind of regret not bringing my other travelling backpack that came with a rain cover. In fact, my travel bag on this trip, has now pretty much fallen apart, as the waist straps have now ripped completely off, so I'll need to either find a sewing shop that can fix it, or else get a new bag, bummer! We were lucky to not get poured on in the boats fortunately, and my bags survived without getting soaked.
While meandering down the river, one of the other boats apparently spotted some Orangutangs, but we didn't see them, which was too bad, as we wouldn't spot any throughout our whole trip, bummer! We arrived at the camp, and met some of the staff, and settled in nicely. The common area is a super cozy and homely area, where everyone meets for meals throughout the day, and includes areas where the staff members play music during the evenings, and a decent little soccer pitch, where there's a football game between the workers and foreigners every morning for one hour. We were shown to our accomodations, which were little huts with single or double mattresses and mosquito nets, and sorted into groups. Since there was one honeymoon couple, another travelling couple, and myself and Hilla (a couple by this point), we were put into the one room that had all double mattresses, although the beds were all placed next to each other, so there was no wall or privacy really...bummer for intimacy but oh well! The huts also had no doors, so to avoid any rat problems (they do occur), you had to make sure you removed all food from your bags and put them in plastic containers outside the huts...real rustic!
We then met Leo, who gave an overview of the events throughout our stay, as well as some insight on some of the animals we might see. We were split into groups, and then went over to enjoy the first of our amazing feasts. The camp manager, Mr. Lan, was a wicked chef, who would show people how to cook Malay style every night, if you were interested. The food he prepared, for 40 some people, in such a short time frame was absolutely incredible, and sooo delicious. It was awesome the first night, when he was preparing some Sambal sauce (A spicy Malay sauce), that was so hot, that the fumes actually made everyone in the dining area start to sneeze, and even some to have their eyes water. Awesome! There was about 12 different dishes to choose from, so it was a heavenly feast. After dinner, we were on the boat to do a night cruise, where we might be able to see things such as Tarsiers, and Cevic cats....but we didn't really see a whole lot. I was so exhausted, as was Hilla, that we both actually fell asleep in the boat ha ha. When we arrived back to shore, we just called it a night, and were both asleep by 10:10 pm since we had to be up at 6 am the next day.
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| Uncle Tan's Jungle Camp |
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| Dinner feast, night 1 |
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| Walkway to our accommodations |
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| Mr. Lan and his cooking class |
We were lucky, as we happened to have 3 owls that were perched above our hut, keeping the place free of rats, but a few people in the other huts weren't so lucky, as they had rats come in, and one girl had them tear several holes in her bag to get at some treats she had forgotten about, oops! We had some coffee and tea, but no breakfast :( and were on the boat for our morning river cruise. This offered us a chance to hopefully see some proboscis monkeys, and hornbill birds, and possibly orangatangs and crocodiles. We embarked in the foggy morning, on the boat, and fairly quickly began spotting various birds, mostly white hornbills, but also a few kingfishers. The kingfishers made me recall a funny time in Nepal last year, when we were on a safari, and there were two couples on there that were going absolutely nuts over spotting kingfishers...my friend Dave and I couldn't resist constantly mocking their excitement by screaming “oooooh kingfisher!! kingfisher!!” and that's all I could think about when we spotted a few during our river cruise. After spotting a few more birds and a big lizard out for a morning suntan, we did see our first batch of prosboscis monkeys. Unfortunately, I don't have a fancy camera with a huge lens and zoom capabilities, and we weren't nearly close enough for me to take any good photos, but oh well. The prosboscis monkeys are rather hilarious looking apes, with funny noses. Here's a closeup photo of one.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_a_Proboscis_Monkey.jpg
We also spotted several Macaques playing around in the trees, but again, from a fair distance so not really easy to grab any great photos. We at least didn't fall asleep during this river cruise, so that was a start! After the morning cruise was all done, we were starving, and went back to the camp to enjoy a nice breakfast and a break for 2 hours. During this time, the soccer matches began, but I wasn't so keen on playing, as I'm terrible, so I just watched the foreigners team do pretty good against the locals, considering the locals were all quite great players. It was entertaining at least. After lingering around and killing time, we were then ready to head off to our next part of the trip, a 1.5 hour jungle trek.
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| Foggy morning on the river |
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| Kingfisher! |
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| Monkeys everywhere |
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| Lizard chilling out |
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| Owls that ate the rats around our jungle hut...good friends! |
We boarded a boat, and shored up in a very muddy region, as there had been quite a bit of rain the last few days, and it was a rainforest after all. We all had our rubber boots on, and struggled through the deep mud to get to dryer ground. I had to laugh at Hilla's little rubber boots, that didn't even cover her ankles, as the mud was up to the mid shin at least, so they weren't really that effective. We also had to help an older South African navigate the mud, as he had really bad legs, and struggled to walk without a walking stick....I look at people like that and admire them for still going out and doing things, but at the same time, I'm glad I'm out travelling and being active while I'm still healthy and don't have any major issues with joints, ligaments, muscles, etc. After a few nearly lost boots, and falls, we were onto a better walking bath and wandered around the jungle, spotting mostly plants and bugs, since it was too hot to really spot any animals, as they only come out in the early morning or evenings to drink and eat.
It was a nice walk, although we didn't really see a whole lot, other than some cool spiders, a form of sweet potato that has leaves that will leave you extremely itchy like poison ivy, and a few local medicinal plants. We also heard from the guide about some of the stories about the area, and how hard they had to fight to get the Malaysian government to classify it as a protected area, so that there wouldn't be clear cutting logging done, and how he had also caught poachers in the area. During one trip, he actually found a spike snare trap for deers that he almost ran into, so he quickly called his friend with the world wildlife federation, and disabled the trap before any animal, or unsuspecting tourist would get caught in it. After wandering around, it was time to get back to the river, hop aboard the boat, and head back to the camp for lunch. Again, the food didn't disappoint, as Mr. Lan is such an amazing cook, and the Malay spices are so so damn good. After lunch, we had a few hours to unwind and kill time, or else go on a jungle walk. Hilla and I decided to just go have an afternoon nap, as we were pretty tired again. I think we ended up sleeping for about 2 hours in the afternoon, which was nice, but then had to get up for the afternoon boat cruise. I actually wasn't so keen on the afternoon cruise, as I find that boat cruises don't really enable you to see a whole lot, but I went anyway.
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| Old man with bad legs battling the mud |
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| Not so easy for the old guy |
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| Daddy Long Legs...jungle version |
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| Crab Spider |
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| Millipede |
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| Nice blueberry...but poisonous |
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| Dead Cicada |
We didn't see any Orangatangs again, drat! But did see lots of monkeys again, and spent most of our time meandering around, looking for the Orangatangs. One of the other boats happened to run out of gas, much to our laughter, as their boat captain had to siphon gasoline from our boat to get them back to camp, and then the next day, that same boat would run out of gas again....sounds like something I'd do. We made our way back to camp, to get ready for dinner. While waiting around for dinner, the new arrivals showed up, including our friend Joe from the Philippines, so we greeted him, and caught up for a bit, until he had to go off to his orientation. Since we didn't have to do an orientation, we were able to sit around the food table, and actually watch Mr. Lan prepare each dish for dinner. It was a pretty cool experience, as he's a great teacher and very engaging personality. Once he had everything all ready to go, we were first in line at the table, to make sure we had our selection of the dishes, as there's usually not enough for everyone to get a portion of every dish. We settled in for dinner, and hung out with Joe and some of the others from our group. Once dinner was finished, we just lounged around a bit, having a beer, until it was time to go out on our night walk.
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| Prosbiscus Monkeys |
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| Sunset on the river |
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| The wok being heated |
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| Amazing dishes for dinner |
The night walk was right near the camp, so we didn't have to stray too far. I was mostly focused on looking inside trees for scorpions, as the guides had mentioned that was a good spot to find them, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to spot any. We did find several birds sleeping, which was kind of neat, as they won't wake up, even if you're up close and pointing flashlights at them. They also tuck in their heads into their bodies to protect themselves from mosquitos. We saw a few kingfishers during the walk, but nothing else to note really. I had to laugh at Hilla at one point, as she was looking at some beetles near one of the fallen logs, when some fire ants decided they didn't like her near their home, so they crawled up, and one of them nipped her leg, so she ran off to the side in a bit of a hurry, but was fine. The trek only lasted about 35 to 40 minutes, and we were back to the common area. Most of our group was having quite a few beers, and having a pretty raucous time, but Hilla, Joe, and I just played some cards with a few others, and kept it pretty quiet. We didn't have anything for the next morning, so we could sleep in, but Joe did have to be up at 6. We shut it down around 12:15 am, and caught a decent night's sleep.
The next morning we just had our breakfast, then I decided to join the foreigners and play a few quick matches of soccer, which was pretty good, considering my lack of skill set. After a rousing hour or so of football, and a lot of sweating, it was time to pack up and check out of our jungle shack, and jump on the boat and head back to town. It was a super fun couple of days, and I'd highly recommend the Uncle Tan's Jungle Adventure to anyone. If you're interested, here's their link:
www.uncletan.com, check them out!
We arrived back at the pier, and found that there wasn't really enough room in the vehicle to get all of us back to camp. Part of this may have been myself, as I wasn't too sure where I was going after the tour was done, and had mentioned I might go to Semporna, so I think the staff took that as a definite yes that I was going to Semporna, but I hadn't really decided. So we had to pack an extra body into one of the taxis there, but managed to fit and were on our way back to headquarters. Several people were flying out that afternoon/evening, including Hilla, who was off to Bali. I had looked into flights to go there with her, as I really enjoyed her company, but the prices were around $400 one way, which was a bit too much, so I decided against it. I decided to spend one night at Uncle Tan's headquarters, and try to head to Semporna the next morning, so I just grabbed a dorm room there when we arrived, had a much needed shower, and relaxed. Hilla had to be at the aiport for a 7:30 pm flight, so we just spent our last few hours together, enjoying each other's company, before it was time to leave. I decided to escort her to the airport, and spend some more time there, seeing her off. It was probably the first time I've ever been really bummed out to see someone leave on an airplane, not knowing if we'd get to see each other again or not, as I had really grown to enjoy her company so much. As a parting gift, I even gave her my engineering ring, as a kind memento of our brief time together. After saying goodbye, I returned back to the lodge, where I found Ryan, one of the South Africans from our jungle tour, still kicking around. He was staying one night there with his wife, before flying out in the morning, and we were the only 3 staying at the entire place so it was extremely quiet. We played a few games of pool, before he called it a night, but it was good to get to know him a little bit before the night was over.
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| Departure village for jungle tour |
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| A typical toilet in Asia :) |
After Ryan retired, I spent quite some time figuring out future travel plans, and just suddenly decided I would go to Europe for my last month of my trip, and then fly back to Canada in June for a few things. I found a pretty wicked deal, flying from London to Iceland and then to Toronto for $400, so I booked that plane, and figured I'd worry about getting to Europe after that sometime. Wow, thinking about going home, after this long journey is just crazy! I also figured that if I went through Europe for my last month, I could hopefully visit Hilla one last time before I went home, as well as catch up with some of the great European friends I've made on my journey. After sorting that out, and writing down a few places to stay in Semporna, I called it a night.
My taxi driver from the previous night showed up right on time at 6:15 am, and I was off to the local bus station to catch a bus to Semporna. I grabbed some friend chicken and rice, and was aboard the bus shortly after to Semporna. It was a pleasant enough ride, with some nice scenery, and took about 6.5 hours to arrive. Upon arrival, it was starting to rain, and I didn't really want to be caught in the rain. I knew the dive shop where I had first wanted to check out was nearby, so when a taxi driver asked me if I wanted a ride, I said sure, since I didn't know exactly where I was going, but he wanted 30 Ringgit ($10 or so). After having paid 35 Ringgit in the morning for a 45 minute taxi ride, I scoffed at that idea, and then he said 15....so I said sure, as I wasn't exactly how far it was. I hopped into his super crappy old car, that had a busted passenger side window, which ended up getting me wet from the rain, and 4 minutes later we were at the shop. I ran inside to check if they had rooms available, and they did, and then they asked me where I came from, and I said the bus stop. They then told me I shouldn't pay more than 2 Ringgit from there, otherwise I was getting ripped off. This made me a bit mad, so I went outside and told the guy I was giving him 5 Ringgit at most, and he made a huge deal about it, and was playing the no English card...so then one of the Scuba Junkie staff members was walking by, and asked if I needed help, since he spoke Malay, and I said sure, that he wanted to charge me 15 Ringgit from the station, so that guy started speaking and telling the guy off....so after more arguing, finally the guy said 10 Ringgit, but I still wasn't having any of it. Finally, I just gave him 5 and walked off, and he was still sitting there, upset. I went into the shop, and booked into some dives, but unfortunately, because of my last minute nature, I wasn't able to get a Sipidan dive any time soon, but was placed on the waiting list.
In the meantime, I just booked 3 dives to other spots with the company, to kill some time until I could figure out the Sipidan diving. For those who don't know about Sipidan, it's basically one of the most amazing dive spots in the entire world. It's a 600 m volcanic reef island, that has an amazing dropoff, and some of the most incredible large fish life that you can see anywhere. Everyone raves so much about Sipidan, so I had to figure out a way to get out there while I was in Semporna, but for now, I just settled for some other local dives. I paid my fees, and noticed the taxi driver was still waiting outside, peering into the shop, which kind of worried me that he was maybe hanging around and would engage in an altercation, but once I went into the back room for some gear fitting, and came out a short time later, he had left. I got to the dive lodge, and checked into my room for the night, as they told me there weren't any dorm room beds available until the next day, so I had to take a private room for one night. It was raining quite heavily, and I was tired and didn't feel like getting up a whole lot. I just watched some Planet Earth documentaries, and relaxed a bit, until it was time to sort out some dinner. Rather than straying too far, I just went next door to the Scuba Junkie restaurant, where they had some pretty tasty pizzas, although for a bit of a steep price. I ordered one of them, and met a few of the staff members, including two Kiwis named Rory (great name I told him, since that's my Dad's name), and Rich. They were both super cool, and I played some pool with them and had a nice chat. Rory had been a dive instructor, but now was running the restaurant, and I later found out that he was actually a professional chef, so that would explain why the food was quite tasty there. After some pool and food, I ended up meeting a few more of the staff members, including one Canadian who had been working in Honduras, before moving to Semporna. Out of curiousity, since I knew a girl who had been working in Honduras, and was now working in Indonesia, I name dropped, but she didn't know her, but as luck would have it, one of the other staff members at the table did know her! Small world indeed.
The staff were all quite friendly and chatty, considering a lot of dive shops have staff that are fairly clique since they all work together for so long, and most divers are transient. I ended up hanging out with them for awhile, and having 2 beers, but then I was pretty tired, so I just retired for the night, since I had to be up and head out diving the next day anyways. As luck would have it, I actually ended up with the Canadian girl as my Divemaster for the dive, so it was alright to talk about Canadian things and have some familiarity with her. We took the boat out to Mabul island, grabbed some more people, and were off to our first destination, Kapa Lai, which provided some decent macro diving, with lots of smaller animals like shrimp, nudie branches, crabs, boxfish, and quite a few rays and eels. It was a fairly comfortable and slow dive. After that dive, we returned to Mabul, for some coffee and snacks, and I had to grab some toothpaste, since I was having fogging issues with my mask. The next dive was was meant to be at Eel garden, but then our divemaster wasn't feeling so well, so we had to go with a different DM, and went to a place called Ribbon Valley, which had a few more interesting things, like anemone cleaner shrimp (who were in an anemone shared by some clownfish that weren't too happy with our DM using her stick to point out the shrimp, so one of them kept charging and biting at her mask ha ha), a painted spiny lobster, a pufferfish, and some more eels. After that dive, it was back to the island for a tasty vegetarian lunch, and to hang out with a few other divers, before heading out for our third dive of the day, right next to Mabul Island. There we were able to see lots of big turtles, lionfish, rays, eels, etc., so it was a very nice dive.
After all the diving wrapped up, it was back to town, to check into my new room, the dorm room. Upon checking in, I started chatting with the Swedish guy in there, who told me that he had been the only person sleeping in there the night before, yet the staff told me the room was full...interesting indeed, but oh well. After showering, I went over next door for dinner at the Scuba restaurant again, had a burger, and joined the staff again for a couple beers, but was quite exhausted from the diving, and just decided to call it an early night. I went back to the room, and watched another Planet Earth episode, where they talked about caves, and one of which happens to be in Borneo, which gave me an idea for my next location to visit; so I've decided I would go to the Deer Cave in Mulu next. I could barely keep my eyes open, and fell asleep half way through the episode however. Upon sleeping, disaster struck! I wasn't sleeping so well, and feeling pretty itchy all night, but thought it was maybe just from dry skin or from diving, so I didn't think much of it. I woke up early, and felt exhausted, and went to the bathroom. When I returned to the room, I looked at my sheets in horror, and saw some large brown bugs on the sheets, and I instantly thought bed bugs!! I wasn't too sure though, but I grabbed all my stuff and moved over to the next bed, and layed there for a bit, until cleaning staff came into the room and asked why I was in a different bed, so I pointed out the bugs and told her I thought they might be bed bugs. So she takes a finger and presses on one, and it explodes with blood everywhere, ewww!! At that instant I knew they were bed bugs, and she was pretty panicky, so she had more staff come in, and they immediately stripped the sheets, took the mattress out, and started spraying down the frame. I was just starting to begin to itch, and looked in the mirror, and saw the damage done....probably 150 bites if not more....and damnit are they ever itchy!!! What a terrible experience, I wouldn't wish that upon anyone!!
So after the bed bug horror, I just wandered over to a nearby Indian restaurant, where they had prety decent internet, and just hung out there for most of the day, eating and drinking coffee, and surfing the net. While there, I also found a dive shop in town that had Sipidan availability in the next 2 days, so I decided to book that. After that I just sorted out some more flights, and just caught up on a few things. I think I ended up hanging out for about 8 hours in that restaurant throughout the day, since it was raining, and there's not really much to do in Semporna anyways! After lingering around there for most of the day, I just wandered back to the room, chatted with the Swedish dude about the bed bugs, noticed that some other dude had checked in and was apparently sleeping in the same bed, but wasn't in the room so I couldn't warn him, and put on my orange onesie for the Las Vegas party that was in the bar that night. It was Rich's birthday, so the staff decided to make a Las Vegas theme party for him, and I just figured wearing the onesie would be strange enough for a Vegas thing, so I rocked up in that, and had a pretty good time meeting some cool new people. The staff members went really all out on some of their costumes, including one girl making a slot machine out of cardboard boxes, and another guy making a die. It was a pretty wild time, and one of the Dutch girls there especially loved the orange outfit. I ended up hanging out until closing time there, enjoying the great band, and the festivities. The staff members that had the next day off were continuing on to karaoke, and I was going to join, but then got distracted by a late night noodle stand with a few of them, and after eating, was just kind of tired, and decided to go back and try and sleep.
I didn't sleep terribly well because of the itchyness, and quite early in the morning, I noticed the guy in the bed that I had been in, getting up in a hurry, and packing up his things and getting out. Sure enough, the bed bugs were still there, and had attacked him that night, so when I woke up for good the next morning, the staff was in there, taking the bunks apart and spraying everything down. I had to check out and move to a new place, since my dive package included three nights at a different hotel, but I found out from the staff that they had satellite tv and that it carried NHL games sometimes. Since the playoffs had started, I rushed into the living room, and found out I was able to watch some live hockey, win! I hung out there, and watched a few games with a dude from Boston, who was also a Canucks hater, so we got along pretty great, especially when LA beat Vancouver in game 1. After that, I was about to wander over to the new hotel, when I ran into an Englishman named Joe, who was at Uncle Tan's Jungle tour, and chatted with him a bit. He was also heading off to the Mulu park after he was done diving in Semporna, so we chatted a bit, and he showed me the accomodation he had booked, so I wrote that down, and came back a short time later to hang out and watch some more hockey.
After watching hockey, I ended up just heading back to the Indian restaurant to eat again, and hang out with the Boston dude for awhile, before finally taking all my stuff over to the new hotel and checking everything in. The new place was a bit smaller, but it seemed decent enough. I just settled in there, then went to the Sipidan Scuba shop, registered there, got all my gear setup for the next day, and then just wandered back to the Scuba Junkie bar for dinner and a few beers with English Joe. We ended up just hanging out there playing 15 games of pool so far, having dinner and a few beers, but I was pretty worn down again, and ready for an early night since I had to dive Sipidan the next day. I said goodbye, and wandered back to the hotel for the night.
The next day was an early morning, as I decided to sneak over to watch an hour of hockey before heading to the shop for 8 am. After catching some puck, I went to the shop, met a few people I would be diving with, and we were on our way to the jetty and then off to Sipidan!! The boat ride was pretty long, and I tried to chat a bit with a cute English girl beside me, but she wasn't really too talkative, so I just kind of rested and sat in silence the rest of the way. We arrived there, grabbed our permits, and I met a Quebecer who was a pretty nice guy, so he said he could speak in French with me to help me practice, which was nice. There was also another Quebecor on our boat, so it was a little Canadian connection, and they were quite happy to see that some of us Western Canadians do actually speak a bit of French. We got all geared up, and plunged in at the Baracuda Point, looked down, and wow!! So many Baracuda swimming around, it was awesome, to drop into them. But, it was also super intimidating, dropping into the swim zone, as the wall is at least over 100 m, and it's so easy to get disoriented, and lose track of your depth if you're not careful, plus the currents are wicked strong!! We got into our group, and didn't travel more than 5 minutes, when the first batch of sharks showed up, yes!!! They were some Grey Reef Sharks, and they were awesome! I love Sharks so yeah, was pretty pumped, but also pretty excited! We went through the current a bit more, and then found some rocks to hold on, where we could observe the sharks for a bit longer, and the current was so strong, it was hard to hold on. If I was a beginner diver, there's no way I would come dive there. The combination of the hard current and subsequent hard swimming, plus adrenaline from the sharks, made me just smash through my air tank, breathing heavily....I was already getting pretty low on air within 35 minutes, which is so quick for me, so it was time to get to a less strong current area, and get ready to do our safety stop. Fortunately, the quiet area still had loads of sharks and turtles and other huge fish, so it was fine. Myself and an older German guy were both the ones with the lowest air remaining, so we had to end the dive just a bit sooner than the others. The German guy was actually so low on air, that he had to use the divemasters secondary air supply to be able to safely ascend, something I haven't seen before.
We got back on the boat, and headed back to Sipidan Island for a bit of a break, and to have some coffee and snacks. Sipidan used to actually be a resort island, but then there was a large pirate attack where 100 some tourists were kidnapped in the late 90s or early 2000s, so the government decided to shut the place down, and only allow people to come dive there in limited numbers, so it's kind of an interesting place.
After an hour break, we were back on the boat and on to our next dive site, the Turtle Tomb. This is a large underwater cave near Sipidan where sick turtles will swim to and subsequently die, so it's kind of an eery place. It was my first ever entrance into an underwater cave, and it was fine, it didn't bother me at all, although it would have been nice to have a flashlight, as I had to closely follow the dive master who had one. After swimming around the cave for a bit, we got back outside and into another really strong current. At this point, I actually had a bit of an anxiety attack, and started breathing quite heavily, which wasn't very good for my air consumption, especially based on the depth we were at. It's a freaky occurrance, especially when you consider how far below the surface you are, and are having a hard time to breath, but the feeling passed eventually, as it always does. However, I couldn't stay in the water too much longer, since I sucked back so much air, so I had to surface a bit earlier than I would have liked to, but the German guy also was low, so I wasn't the only one. We did get to swim in this massive school of Jackfish, which we had first encountered when we entered the water, and it was such an awesome experience, as they just acted like we were another fish in their group, so cool! After that we finished off our dive at a nice coral garden, and saw some pretty cool White Tip Reef Sharks, Wrasses, and Napoleons, super cool! After that, we were back to the island for our lunch break.
Lunch wasn't so great, as it was just some crappy sandwich, but I guess beggars can't be choosers. After a 2 hour lunch break, we were back our for our last dive of the day, into the Hanging Garden. We hopped in, and enjoyed a bit of an easier dive, compared to the previous two, as the current wasn't quite as intense at times. Again, many sharks, turtles, a big pufferfish, many brightly coloured Angelfish, etc were spotted, so it was a nice dive to finish off the day.
Here's some eye candy to give you what an idea at Sipidan is like :) FYI, I didn't take these photos, these are from Steve, the French Canadian's camera, and he was kind enough to share them with me, but they are the things we saw that day.
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| Welcome to Malaysia |
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| Hey Nemo! |
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| White Tip Reef Shark :) |
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| Diving in the Turtle Tomb |
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| Sleepy Shark |
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| Swimming with the Jackfish |
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| Barracuda |
We were back to town, then, arriving an hour later, tired but happy to have experienced such an amazing dive site. I was actually starting to feel like I was coming down with a cold too, so that wasn't so pleasant but oh well. We arrived back in town, I continued itching and scratching due to the damn bed bug bites, and just went back to my favourite Indian restaurant, grabbed dinner there, chatted with a few people, and then just went back to have an early night since I was exhausted.
I didn't sleep particularly well, due to the head cold that was striking, plus the itching from the damn bed bugs! I was up early again to go watch an hour of hockey before the diving though, and picked up some breakfast/lunch for the trip from the Indian restaurant. Unfortunately, in my slightly fatigued state, I forgot my lunch and water in front of the dive shop, doh! We took our gear and went down to the jetty, and I got to know a few new people on the dive, one of whom was a friendly Canadian guy and his Aussie g/f, as well as some Finnish guy that I had actually recognized from having met in El Nido in the Philippines! We boarded the boat, and this group was definitely more talkative than the previous day's group. We didn't have as far to go this day, so we were at Mantabuan Island within 45 minutes or so, grabbed that day's permit, and were all ready to dive. Unfortunately, due to my head cold I was having a really tough time equalizing my ears this day, so diving was actually a bit painful on the ears and sinus, but oh well. The water was also quite cold, especially for the last 2 dives of the day. The first dive was fairly shallow, with a few cool new things like a Leaf Scorpionfish (which are quite difficult to spot apparently), a flounder, and a pretty sweet crocodile fish that blends in really well with the seafloor, and is hard to spot unless you have a keen eye.
After that, we went back to Mantabuan island to relax for a bit, and it was a super gorgeous little island, but without much to do. The military personnel that look after the island have to spend 3 months there per shift, and I guess it's extremely boring for them, since there really isn't anything there, poor guys. We hung out there, and I just tanned and chatted up the cute scuba instructor from England for awhile, until it was time to head to our next dive site. There we spotted some colourful nudie branches, another crocodile fish, several rays, and I spotted this crazy thing under a rock that I think may have been a Cuttlefish, but I'm not entirely sure...I was looking at it, and it kept changing into different colours to match it's surroundings, it was really awesome, but everytime I would peer a bit closer, it would hide a bit more under it's rock, and if I would back up, it would pop it's little yellow eye out to keep a watchful eye on me...pretty cool stuff. There were some pretty cold water currents here, and we did end up getting pretty chilly, so we were happy to get back into the sun on the boat. We went back to the island again for lunch, and then back to our third destination, which was pretty similar to the first 2. The only really cool thing I spotted there was a Stonefish that was walking along the seafloor, which was neat...they are super ugly and super poisonous in fact, here's what they look like.
After this final dive, and the subsequent chillyness, we were back on the boat and on our way to town. After getting to town, we sorted everything that needed to be done at the dive shop, then agreed to meet up later for dinner. After relaxing at the hotel for a bit, I met up with the Canadian guy and his g/f, the Finnish guy, and this other guy from Trinidad that was on our boat, and we found some Chinese restaurant, after buying a bottle of rum for dinner, and settled in there and had some food and drinks until 9 pm or so. After that, the others left as they had to dive the next morning, and I just wandered back over to the Scuba Junkie for a beer with some of the people there, then called it a night.
The next day I just got up, went to watch hockey, but was disappointed to find that the satellite channel I had been watching it on didn't carry any games that day, but the internet connection was decent enough to stream the games, so I just watched them on my laptop, then basically hung out at my hotel for most of the day, doing some trip planning, buying a bus ticket to Kota Kinabalu for that night, and just bumming around for the day. I got fairly caught up on blogging as well, after having been about a month behind at times, so that was nice. After several hours of doing nothing, I just went and had my last meal at the Indian restaurant, said a few goodbyes to some people, and was off to catch my night bus. The nightbus was actually pretty decent, and I slept quite well, even though I had a local guy who took up a lot of space, as he basically stretched his one leg out into my foot area, but oh well. I slept a good portion of the way to Kota Kinabalu, arrived there at 6 am, found a cab to a hostel there, and checked in.
After checking in, I managed to watch the earlier NHL game, then wandered off to some bistro that the hostel staff had recommended, where I had some amazing food and just lingered around for the entire day, fully catching up on blogging, drinking beer, watching hockey (alright LA Kings, only one more victory and the Canucks are toast wooo!!), and doing some more trip planning. After several hours of hanging out there, I just wandered back to the hostel, met up with Joe and some girls he had been in Brunei with, and we just wandered down to the waterfront, so they could grab a bite to eat, and to have a drink. Our server may or may not have been a lady boy, and wasn't the strongest in English, so upon looking at the menu, I asked for an Espresso Martini, but he said they didn't have that drink, even though it was on the menu...okay? So I had a laugh about that and showed him, and he finally realized that they did have it, but then for curiosity's sake, I asked what the price of beer was, and he said they didn't have any...so I just went with the martini. Hilariously enough, Joe and this other American guy then asked if they had beers, 1 minute later, and they said that they did...ahhhh these moments in Asia are hilarious, so we all had a good laugh over that. We just hung out for an hour or so, while everyone ate, and had a drink and chatted, then wandered back to the hostel for the night. I didn't sleep terribly well, as I think there was mosquitos in the room biting me, but of course I also kept worrying they may have been bed bugs...ah so paranoid now!
I was up pretty early the next day, grabbed some pieces of toast from the kitchen, and then just streamed some of the hockey games to kill some time. We were originally going to take the bus to the airport, but then we kind of lingered around for too long, and just decided to hail a cab. So we packed up and wandered along one of the main streets until we could flag a taxi down, and I told him we were flying with Malaysia Air, and to take us to the airport...well apparently the driver didn't understand so well, and took us to the wrong terminal!! As soon as I walked inside, I knew it was wrong, since I had flown Malaysia Air from KK previously, and that was from a different terminal...so we walked around, asked the info desk to be certain, and they told us we had to take a taxi to the next terminal which was 7 km away, and that it would cost 30 Ringgit!! Arghh, so frustrating, as the price from our hostel to the airport should have been 25 Ringgit in total, but we paid 25 to get dropped off at the wrong terminal, and another 30 to the next terminal...damn taxis! The taxi we did get into was one of the crazier taxis ever, it was a complete pimp mobile, with headrest tv screens, black velvet and fake crystal everywhere...it was quite a sight.
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| Pimp Taxi |
After getting dropped off, we were already only 50 minutes before our flight, so we rushed to check in, and Joe forgot to check his knife in, which he realized at security 20 minutes later, when we were going through our final checkpoint, so he ran back to check in his backpack with the knife, so I waited at security for him, since he had left all his other belongings with me...I waited until he finally showed up, and we only had about 15 minutes until our flight, so I was in a bit of a hurry to get down to the gate. We ended up having to go through Malaysian Immigration, and get our passports checked, even though we were flying to another part of Malaysia (strange I know), and then Joe realized he had now lost his ring, and was upset over that so he went running back to retrace his steps...at this point there was 13 minutes to go for the flight, so I just left him and went to get on the plane, not knowing if he was going to make it or not. I arrived at what I thought was my gate, and handed my ticket over and started walking to board the plane, when the staff called me back and told me I was actually about to board a plane for Kuala Lumpur ha ha oops! So they restapled my ticket back, and I got to my proper gate, got on the plane, and Joe eventually did make it, although he couldn't find his ring, and had now lost his boarding pass as well...ahhh what a mess! We made the quick flight to Miri, where we were told to get off the plane and go through immigration again (wtf!!), and get another Malaysian passport stamp...yes very very odd country...After getting stamped there (and the immigration officer using up one of my only 2 clear pages for the stamp arghhh), we were back on the plane to Mulu, which only took another 30 minutes or so. We arrived, found a ride to our camp headquarters and checked in.
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| Arriving in Mulu |
After checking in, and paying some fees for various tours, we found our room, settled in, and then decided to go for a walk to see the bats coming out of the Deer Cave. The Deer Cave is the second largest known cave in the world, and is home to about 3.5 million bats, who come out to feed every evening, so we walked down there, without a map and no real clear directions, and found a spot where we were told to watch the show. Shortly after, the first big group of bats emerged, which was quite impressive, and they kept coming and coming and coming....eventually there was a constant stream of several hundred thousand of them for a good 5 minutes, it was absolutely amazing....Unfortunately, there weren't any hawks swooping around, preying on the bats this time, as they are known to do that every few days as well. After watching the bat show, we just wandered back to camp, grabbed some dinner and chilled for the night, meeting a nice girl from Manchester, who was doing her medical studies practicum. This was the 2nd British med student I had met in two nights, who was here in Borneo doing their practicum. Apparently they have a 5 week practicum in their 5th year where they can go work anywhere they want, and the doctors in Borneo typically sign them off if they just show up for 5 or 6 days of the required 5 week period, so that they can go out and explore and travel around....pretty interesting gig. The Mulu Camp HQ is a pretty quiet place, however, and all the lights shut off by 10 pm, so the nights end early here, and we just went back to the dorm room and called it a night.
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| The Deer Cave from the observation point |
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| 3.5 Million bats exit the cave each day for feeding |
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| Whoa, double camera! |
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| Sunset at Park HQ |
The next day we were up and ready to
head out to check out the show caves. After breakfast, and being a
bit tardy, we got to our boat and were on our way down the river,
stopping at a small village to see some local handicrafts and read a
bit about the indigenous tribes in the area. After hanging around in
the village for all of 15 minutes or so, and being pressed by the
guide to get back to the boat, we were again on our way, but not
before witnessing an unstaged cock fight, awesome! It only lasted
like 5 seconds, and the one ran away, so Joe tried to challenge the
winner, but of course the cock wanted nothing to do with him. We
hopped back in the boat, and arrived at the Cave of the Wind. We
walked up a few stairs and into the impressive cave, that gets its
name from the wind currents that pass through the cave, generated
from a connecting passage from the nearby Clearwater Cave. We made a
nice 25 minute stroll around the cave, admiring the beautiful
stalagmites, stalagtites, an awesome skylight, several bats, and
various other geological goodies. It's a shame I don't have a better
quality camera to take any photos, as it was quite an impressive
sight. After that cave walk, it was off to the next spot, the
Clearwater Cave. We walked up the 200 or steps (got the heart racing
a bit, really out of shape now!), and entered the massive opening.
It's really awesome to walk into these massive caves, as it feels
like you're entering a whole different world. We walked around,
losing Joe several times, as he stops to take photos and can take a
really long time. The Germans in our small group began calling him
“number 4”, and it was suiting, since he was always behind us ha
ha. We toured around this even more impressive cave, admiring the
underground river that flows through it, and some very interesting
rock features, where water had met impermeable formations, and had
etched out new routes to pass through. After about 35 minutes or so
in this cave, we were told we could head back and catch the boat back
to town. We stopped outside the cave for a bit, Joe had a swim, and
then we were on the boat back to camp.
We arrived at camp, and grabbed lunch.
Shortly after finishing lunch, Joe got up and started screaming like
a little girl and running around in circles....apparently there had
been a bug underneath the armrest of his chair, that he had been
stroking for a bit and not knowing what it was, until he looked and
saw it....and then he became frightened...such a city slicker! To be
fair, it was a fairly massive rhinocerus beetle, and did look pretty
bad ass. A few people around us came over to check out what he was so
afraid of, and were looking on in awe of that bug. I tried to provoke
it a bit, but tapping it, but it didn't move. Then one of the locals
came over, and picked the thing up and showed us it a bit closer.
Apparently it only really become active at night, so it was just
trying to sleep. We ended up playing around with it for a bit, and it
was a pretty cool thing to goof around with. Joe settled down, and
actually wanted to have photos of him with it on his face. The thing
had some pretty sharp little hooks on its legs, and once it was on
your skin, it was pretty tough to get it off. Here's what the thing
looks like:
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| Rhino Beetle! |
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| Crazy Joe |
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| My new friend |
After goofing around with it for awhile
longer, we stopped back in the room for a bit, chatted with a few new
guys in the dorm, who also happened to be med students from England,
who also happened to know both Shoo (the girl from the night before),
and Verity (a girl in KK that I had met two nights before), such a
small and funny world. After chatting with them for a bit, we had to
go meet up with our next cave tour. We went and found we only had a
group of 3 in total this time, and began the walk to the Deer Cave.
While walking there, our guide and the English lady in our group were
a bit quicker than us, as we would keep stopping to take photos of
some of the macro things, such as insects and such. We ended up
finding a few interesting things including some millipedes that were
in the process of mating. After that, our guide had been long ahead
of us, so I went off to try and catch up, while Joe stayed behind
taking more photos. I am glad I left at the time I did, because while
catching up, I managed to catch sight of two Iguanas on the handrail,
that were also trying to mate, what a day for love. They looked super
awesome, and I snapped a few photos, before the female wrestled away
and fell off the handrail. At this point, the male kind of gave me
this look that was almost like one a guy friend would give you if you
just ruined his chances with a girl, absolutely hilarious! Joe came
by a short time later, and I showed him the lizards, so we grabbed a
few more photos then were off again. We were probably a good 15
minutes behind our guide by this point, and caught up to them at the
bat observatory, waited another 5 minutes, and then were on our way.
 |
| Sweet Millipede love |
 |
| Almost witnessing sweet Iguana love |
 |
| I kind of scared off his mate oops |
We arrived at the Deer Cave entrance,
and wow wow wow! The Deer Cave officially has the largest cave
passage in the world, although a cave in Vietnam has been recently
discovered to have a larger one, they think, but it hasn't been
accepted yet by the scientific world. The entrance to this cave, and
the inside is absolutely insane!! I really wish I could provide some
photos to give it justice, but again, low quality camera boo. We
wandered around the cave for quite sometime, seeing some of the
famous cave birds' nests that people gather and use to make birds
nest soup (a real delicacy I'm told), as well as staring up at the
roof, and seeing the herd (flock? Gang? Group?) of 3.5 milion bats or
so.....and of course looking around and seeing the defication of 3.5
million or so of the creatures...and wow, that's a lot of guano!!
Very impressive indeed. We just wandered around the cave, enjoying
the awe inspiring massiveness of it all, it's truly a world class
site to visit! We also came across some earwigs, that had fallen from
the roof, and they are an insect that has a symbiotic relationship
with the naked bats, as they groom the bats while they sleep. Of
course, the ones that have fallen from the roof no longer have any
food, and would die shortly. Meanwhile, one thing I couldn't stop
thinking about was the 3.5 million bats above, all of whom were
likely to be shitting at some point, so I was just hoping I wasn't
unfortunate enough to get pooped on, since I have had some bad luck
with birds crapping on me, but I was lucky today. We also inspected
and touched the guano, which is really like extremely soft sand,
nothing like you'd expect feces to be ha ha, and inspected some of
the millions of bugs that live off their dung. Finally, we came
across a guano filled river, that contained some catfish (wouldn't
want to eat this probably), and made the full circle around, and out
the cave.
By this point, in true Borneo fashion,
the skies had opened up, and it was pouring rain, but fortunately we
only had a 5 minute walk over to the next cave, the Langs Cave. There
we saw even more impressive stalagtites and mites all over, as well
as these infamous silk ribbon worms, that create these long and
beautiful strings of silk, suspended from the roof, that is meant to
entice and trap insects. There's a great video clip of them in
action, on the BBC's Planet Earth Cave episode...check it out. After
walking around, admiring the formations, and seeing some baby bats
clinging to their parents, we finished up this smaller cave in a
quick 15 minutes or so, and were back out in the rain. We could have
chosen to stick around the bat observatory and see if the bats came
out to feed, but since it was raining, they were unlikely to come
out, plus our feet were killing us from all the walking from the day.
We just wandered back to camp, trying not to get too soaked. We
arrived back in camp, had a nice shower, and then went off to grab
dinner. Dinner was pretty tasty, although the bugs really flock to
the dinner hall during the evening, as it's a large source of light,
so within 15 minutes I had probably 10 or so bugs in my soup
already...damnit! After fishing a few out, I just gave up and
finished eating, and hung out with the ever increasing group of
Brits, as 4 more had joined our table. We just all hung out, talking
about travels and relaxing for a few hours, before the lights were
turned out around 9:15 this night. We just wandered back to the huts,
and called it another night.
 |
| Silk Ribbons for catching bugs |
The next day I slept in a little bit,
grabbed breakfast, and was off to do the canopy walk. Joe was meant
to come as well, but he decided he would stay an extra day and do
some more caving, before leaving for Kuching, so I went off with a
different group of people to do the canopy walk. It was a pretty cool
walk around the canopy of the trees, as there were several bridges
suspended about 30 m above the jungle floor, so definitely not a
thing to do for those with a fear of heights! Unfortunately, it
wasn't fruit season in the area of the canopy walk, so there was very
little to actually see, since there wasn't any food for monkeys,
birds, squirrels, etc to come for. We walked around for maybe 45
minutes or so, taking our time to cross each bridge and try and spot
something, but to no avail. I talked to the guide a little bit about
it, and that's how I found out that it wasn't fruit season, and there
wouldn't be anything to see. After the walk was all wrapped up, 4 of
the Brits I was with wanted to go check out the waterfall, which was
supposedly 1.3 kms away or so, and since I had a fair bit of time to
kill in the morning still, I tagged along. Unfortunately, my choice
of footwear wasn't such a great idea, as the trail became quite muddy
in spots, and I managed to avoid stepping into the mud for a little
while, but finally gave up and started trudging through it.
Eventually that caught up with me, as my thongs become stuck in the
mud, and I fell out of both of them, nearly spilling into a huge pile
of mud before catching my balance.
After having a laugh at that, we
continued on our way, by this point, we must have walked at least 2
kms, maybe more, and were a bit unsure if we were still going the
right way, but the one English fellow had been there the previous day
and assured us we were on track. We finally arrived, although the
time was getting a bit late for me, since I still had to get back and
grab lunch and pack up to catch my ride to the airport. I hung out at
the falls for awhile, even though they weren't all that impressive,
and then had to make a run back to the camp, since it was getting
late. When nearly falling earlier, one of the guys had offered to
carry my jacket for a bit, and I totally forgot about it, and left
for camp. Fortunately, when I was eating lunch later on, one of them
found me and were able to get it back to me. Since I was pressed for
time, i decided to actually run through the jungle, and become very
very hot and sweaty, and when I finally made it back to the main
walkpath, I was disoriented and actually took a wrong turn, running
another 1.5 kms or so the wrong way, not really knowing where the
hell I was! The crappy park map they gave us didn't provide much help
either, as it wasn't really detailed at all....but fortunately I
happened to sort of recognize one stop near the Deer Cave from the
previous days, and was able to turn around and head back the right
way. I didn't make it back to the camp until 1:05, and still wanted
to have lunch and was meant to catch a ride to the airport at 1:30 or
so.
 |
| Trying out the canopy walk |
 |
| 30 m above the jungle floor |
 |
| Tiny waterfall |
 |
| Nice green butterflies |
I grabbed a quick lunch, said goodbye
to Joe, and caught my ride to the airport, and hung around for a bit,
waiting to be on my way to Miri. I arrived in Miri, where I had
initially thought I might just try and sleep at the airport, but
found out from the British Med students that the airport wasn't open
all night, so they gave me the name of a guesthouse they had stayed
at, called Minda's Guesthouse, so I went there.
The place was nice enough and cheap,
and I just settled in and was a bum for most of the day, and didn't
really like exploring the city. After lingering around for awhile, I
just grabbed a late dinner and came back to lay in bed. While
watching a documentary, I moved my pillow, and was in shock to see
another bed bug! Damnit anyways!! I killed it, and just hoped for a
quiet night and that it was just an anomaly, but sure enough, when I
finally went to sleep, I started to itch again, woke up, and flashed
my flashlight and saw several more...damnit, what's with my luck in
Malaysian hostels!! So after killing a few more, I couldn't really
sleep much more, and by this point it was nearly 5 am, and I had a
flight at 6:20 am so I just got up. I went outside and asked the
owner to call me a taxi, but apparently taxis will only pick you up,
if you arrange for them the night before, as they normally don't
start working until 6:30 am....which was quite odd to me, considering
Miri is a city of about 300,000 people or so. At this point I was in
a bit of a worried state, since there was no way to get to the
airport, but fortunately the man said he could drive me, so we hopped
in his car and were on our way. He was a super nice guy, and used to
work in the oil industry until he accidentally didn't follow the
dosage of a painkiller and his kidneys failed, so he's been on
dialysis ever since, and decided to open a guesthouse. He dropped me
off, and I checked in and was ready to head to KL.
I slept most of the way, since I was
running on 2.5 or 3 hours of sleep, arrived in KL, and found the Star
Express bus which was meant to take me right to the monorail station
where my guesthouse was located. I was going to stay at the same
guesthouse as Eugene, but then read a bunch of reviews and found out
it had a bad problem with bed bugs, so I avoided as I'm tired of
still being itchy!! I was dropped off at some bus station that
appeared to be nowhere near where I was meant to be going, but then
found that the bus company had hired a cab to take myself and two
Singaporeans to our final stops. After dropping them off, I was
dropped off at my bed and breakfast called Paradiso. It was a pretty
nice and chill place, and has a great location. After checking in, I
had to run out to get some American money and head to the Burma
embassy to try and get a visa, so I found a cab, who wouldn't run the
meter, as most of them won't, and agreed on 20 Ringitt...(which I
later found was way too much). It didn't take too long to get me
there, and I found that the embassy was closed, since it was Myanmar
New Years..damnit! So I had to just get back in the cab and head back
into the city centre. After doing this, I just decided to head to a
Papa John's since I love their pizza and haven't seen one in a long
time. After eating there and hanging out, I just got ahold of Eugene,
and we agreed to meet up near my hostel and wander around for awhile.
I was completely exhausted, and had contemplated going for an
afternoon nap, but he was keen to meet up, so we just wandered around
for awhile, shopping for a new computer battery since mine is hooped.
We found the mega huge electronics mall, and stopped in there for
awhile, went around bartering for batteries and found a pretty decent
deal, but didn't buy anything yet.
 |
| RTC, the best graffiti artist in KL? |
 |
| Welcome to a concrete jungle |
 |
| Complete Grand Theft Auto cover ripoff |
 |
| Both KFC and McDees VIP stickers |
 |
| Eugene doesn't approve! |
 |
| A damn strong beer! |
 |
| The water metering system in KL |
After shopping around a bit, we decided
to wander down to one of the streets near my hostel that is filled
with tons of street food vendors, trying to find a place to have a
beer, but unfortunately, we didn't have much luck finding a place, as
most places weren't selling beer yet. We eventually stumbled upon a
minimart that had some wicked strong beers for a decent price...hello
Penguin beer! After finding a spot to chill out and have our beer, we
just chatted for awhile, and observed some of the people in the area,
including this cougar on the prowl ;)
 |
| Ooooooh la la |
After the beer, I was feeling
exhausted, and decided to head back for an afternoon nap, although it
was already 5:30 pm by this point. Eugene had met some Spanish guys
the night before who were staying at the Hilton and having a big
party in their room, and told him and some girls he knew to stop on
by, but the girls were a bit leery about it, and didn't want to go,
so I guess Eugene just went over there himself, and said it was a
pretty wild time...if I wasn't so exhausted, I'm sure it would have
been a blast! We were walking back to my hostel area, and since my
travel bag is torn up pretty good and on it's last legs, I stopped
into a bag shop and was looking at one that I liked, but that was
nearly $100....I stopped and looked for a bit, and the guy instantly
dropped the price to $80 for me, so I was a bit tempted. Then, to my
shock, Eugene started speaking fluent Malay to the guy, and
apparently bartering on my behalf...The guy is just full of
surprises. I decided I might come back another time, as I wasn't sure
if I wante the bag or not, and when we were leaving I asked Eugene
about his Malay and what he was saying...apparently he had gotten the
price down to $66, but that it was still too much, and that he has
spent about 5 months of his travel life in Malaysia, so that's where
he learned the Malay from...crazy guy!
After the little shopping stops, I got
back to the hostel and crashed pretty hard, and tried to wake up an
hour later, but that didn't happen. By the time I finally woke up, it
was already nearly 10 pm, and I wandered out for a quick bite to eat,
and got ahold of Eugene to see what the plan was. He was down at his
hostel hanging out with a few people, but said they were going to be
coming up to an area very close to my place, and that I should just
wait there for a bit until they arrived, so I waited and waited...it
was already nearly 12 am, and I was still pretty exhausted, and
hadn't heard back, so I just crawled back into bed, and was about to
go to sleep when Eugene called me and said he was nearby and to come
meet up...I was pretty tempted to say no, but I have a bit of a
rubber arm and went to meet up with him.
I wandered over to the street where we
were supposed to meet, but he said he couldn't make it up the hill,
as he had been feeling really quite bad lately, and could barely
breathe when going up hills even...crazy. So I came down the hill,
found him, and he took me to a pub called Yoko on a street called
Chankrat. Chankrat is filled with small pubs and mini clubs, and is
the place to be on pretty much any night in Kuala Lumpur. When we
entered this Yoko place, I was again met with surprise, as Eugene
knew pretty much every person there, and took me on a whirlwind tour
of the bar, introducing me to so many people, that I could barely
keep track of their names or where they were from. After wandering
around meeting so many people, we just settled into a table and hung
out with some of the many friends of Eugene, enjoying the salsa
dancing, and meeting new people. It was a pretty fun time, although
the beers were a bit expensive ($5 per pint), which in SE Asia is
really expensive...but oh well. It was pretty hilarious to see that
the place also let any customers come play the bongos if they would
like, and Eugene was right up in there, impressing many of the people
with his skills, what a guy. We hung out at that place the rest of
the night until closing time. Around this time, this little
Indian/Malay girl came up and was chatting with some of the mutual
friends of Eugene and then just kind of took a hold of me and forced
me out to dance with her and then started taking my hat and running
around with it. I wasn't really attracted to her, but she was a fun
enough gal, so we talked awhile until the bar closed. Then she
grabbed me and basically took me off with her to some nearby shisha
place, where we could have some late night food as well. I didn't
even have a chance to say goodbye to Eugene, and we were off.
 |
| Eugene on the bongos |
 |
| Everyone is impressed with his skills |
We arrived at this upstairs place, and
had some super cheap shisha, and a bit of food. Since it was a Halal
place, they didn't serve any beer, but they did have a Muslim version
of a drink similar to beer called Barbican, so I tried some of that,
and it was actually alright. We just hung out smoking shisha and
chatting for quite some time, and then Eugene rang me up to see where
I was and if I needed to be saved (as apparently this Indian girl
Kiruba can be a bit aggressive with guys and steal them off and
become kind of possessive) but she seemed cool enough so I said I was
alright and just chilled out. I wanted to be up at 7:30 am to watch
an ice hockey game, and it was nearly 6 am by the time the shisha and
barbican and such was done, so I was going to walk back to the hostel
and have a quick nap, but this girl was pretty adamant that I had to
walk her back to her work place and hang out for a bit until her gym
opened at 7 am.....and since I'm a bit of a pushover at times, I
agreed to that for some reason.
I walked her back to her gym, and hung
out there until 7 am, for some unknown reason, even though I was
exhausted, and when it was 7 am, none of the staff who were supposed
to open the gym were there. She then realized that since it was the
weekend, the gym actually wouldn't be open unil 10 am, and that she
would just head home for a few hours and head back to work at 11 am,
but she was pretty insistent that I should comer to her place for a
swim, but I declined as I was too tired and didn't really want to
give her any thoughts that I was interested. So I said goodbye, and
she took my number and I wandered back to the hostel, getting in just
in time to watch the hockey game. I was so tired, but managed to have
a little nap in between periods, and then finally went to bed
properly around 10:30 am when the game was all wrapped up...phew what
a long day. I ended up sleeping until nearly 3 pm, even though I was
awoken by Kiruba calling me to go for lunch around 12 pm, but I
wasn't really up for getting out of bed, and still needed to sleep,
so she wanted to meet for dinner, so I agreed to that. I finally got
up and wandered out to find some lunch at a chicken place called
Nandos, and wow, that's some damn tasty chicken! After hanging around
there for awhile, I ran back to the electronics mall, to pick up a
battery. After grabbing that I stopped to chat with one of the shop
girls we had chatted with the previous day, and she asked if I was
going to be around the next weekend and if I wanted to come out with
some of her friends, so I said sure and gave her my contact info,
although I wasn't too sure if I would be around or not. After
finishing there, I just went back to the hostel for a bit, and then
went over to meet Kiruba and head over to the Pavillion Mall for a
dinner at this wicked good Taiwanese dumpling resturant. We settled
in there, and had some pretty tasty dishes, including one very
strange dish called Century Eggs or something like that....anyways,
they let these hard boiled eggs sit for 100 days, and the egg white
basically rots, but in a good way, so then you crack them open and
they are black on the outside, and creamy yolk on the
inside.....sounds gross, but was actually pretty good.
http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/century-egg-would-you-eat-one.html
I had a feeling Kiruba was interested
in being more than just friends, so I told Eugene to come join us for
dinner if he was up for it, but he never did, so I just hung out with
her for the dinner. After that was all finished, she wanted to head
down to Chankrat for some drinks at an Irish pub, so we walked down
there, and I told Eugene to come meet up with us, but he was still a
ways away. We arrived at an Irish pub where they had 9 Ringgit beers,
which is a bit better price, and settled in there. While hanging
there, a Norwegian guy who apparently used to date Kiruba for a bit
showed up, and he was a pretty cool fellow, even though she didn't
talk so highly of him. Another friend of hers Omar, was going to be
stopping by, so she ran out to grab him and came back shortly with
him, and he was a pretty cool guy. We all just hung out for an hour
or so until Eugene showed up with a girl from Zimbabwe, but Kiruba
and the others wanted to head to some other club, but I wanted to
stay with Eugene and the new girl, so much to Kiruba's
disappointment, I stayed behind, but said we might come meet up with
them later on. We just hung out a bit longer at the Irish pub, before
finally heading down to Yoko's again, where it was pretty much the
same crowd as the previous night, but still good. We just chilled out
there the rest of the night, and I tried mostly to avoid Kiruba's
calls, but did send her a text to be polite and ask where they were
at. I ended up just hanging out with a couple of nice Chinese Malay
girls, and was distracted by them, so I didn't notice any texts from
Kiruba asking where I was..ha ha oops. Eventually she showed up with
Omar and was pretty clingy again, kind of cramping my style but oh
well.....at one point we were near the toilet and she wanted to use
the women's but it was occupied, and went into hte men's but couldnt'
figure out the lock, and pulled me inside and told me to stand guard
at the door while she went to the toilet...awkward...then after that,
she tried to make a move on me, but I had to turn her down and say no
thanks...ha ha even more awkward..and then we walk out of there, and
this other guy is walking towards the toilet, and just gives this
huge woooaaahhh awesome shout, and I'm having to wave him off and say
nothing happened, but all awkwardly...ahhh what a crazy night. So
after that incident, she was pretty drunk and ready to head home, and
told me to come swimming, but again I declined, said I was too tired,
so she just went off with Omar, and headed home.
After that, Eugene and the Zimbabwe
girl and I just went for some late night Indian food, and then called
it a night. The next day I was woken up by the most awkward and
terrible thing ever in a hostel....the Malaysian guy sleeping in the
bed below me, who I had spoken to for maybe 2 minutes the previous
day, was standing at my bed and rubbing me....I kid you not! I woke
up to this and was in total shock and smacked his hand away and told
him to get lost, and then he asked why I wasn't interested...oh my
god!! So to recap, in 2.5 weeks of Malaysian hostels, I've had bed
bugs twice and some pervert touching me while I was sleeping...wow
what a string of bad luck! I somehow managed to fall back asleep, and was happy to see the guy had checked out of the room when I woke up later on in the afternoon.....
So I decided to get that incident out of my head, and head out to check out my friend Colin's gallery he had set up. He has been teaching Burmese refugees photography for quite sometime, and put together a gallery of their work, hoping to sell some of it to raise funds for some programs that help the children out. I grabbed the address, but before heading there, I decided to swing
by and see the Petronas Towers, and check if I could get a ticket to
go up them that day, so I went on a nice little city walk, after
grabbing another lunch at Nandos. I wandered down to the towers, and
reveled in their amazing presence, before heading inside to try and
figure out where to buy tickets to go up them. I eventually found the
booth, and found it was sold out that night, but was able to get a
ticket for Tuesday night, so I did that. After figuring that out, I
had to battle to try and find a taxi who would run the meter, and who
actually understood the address of the place I had to go to for the
gallery. I had it written down, and none of the drivers really
understood it, until one guy said he did, but he still wouldn't run
the meter, but we agreed on a price of 15 Ringgit...so we were
off...and we drove and drove, and then he kept asking me where
exactly the place was, as he didn't seem to actually understand the
street address, so I had to call Colin to explain to the guy where it
was nearby....whatever happened to taxi drivers understanding an
actual street address???? The guy was so lost and took at least 25
minutes to get me close to the place, when it should have taken about
10 minutes or so at most....I finally arrived nearby, and walked into
the gallery, and met up with Colin and a few of his friends.
 |
| Hey little buddy! |
 |
| Great skyscrapers in KL |
 |
| KL from the freeway |
After touring
around the gallery a bit, we just chatted for a little while, before
heading out into the city with Colin, and his friends Prakesh and
Stacy. Prakesh and Colin are both hardcore photographers, so they
wanted to go and shoot an area of town called Chankit, where there's
a large market, and many people. We hopped in the car, and drove down
there, and wandered around for awhile. It was pretty busy, lots of
action, and not many tourists, so we were treated well there, people
were surprised to see tourists in that area, and were quite kind. We
wandered around for a few hours taking in the sights and sounds, and
the local merchants were loving having their photos taken, asking to
wear my sunglasses for photos while hawking fruits and meats. One
rather hilarious moment occurred when Colin was eating some corn on
the cob, and two Malay girls walked by and said something, and
Prakesh burst out laughing.....he told us that they said “oh look,
it's a white guy eating corn”. Apparently, the most exciting thing
in Chankit on a Sunday is a white guy eating corn! Great for a laugh.
After wandering around the area, we went out for some Indian food,
and then I just caught the monorail back into town, and met up with
Eugene to catch a late movie. We ended up going to see the Hunger
Games, which I had seen a fair bit of people reading lately, and I
was quite impressed and entertained by the movie, definitely
recommend it!
 |
| Colin and Prakesh doing a photo shoot |
 |
| Street tailor...bring him your pants and he'll fix em up for ya |
 |
| Tired of the market? |
 |
| Chess games everywhere |
 |
| Giant peas |
 |
| Interesting items for sale |
 |
| New computers...with Islam Inside! |
 |
| Less than thrilled to have their photo taken |
 |
| Food Market |
 |
| mmmm chilis |
 |
| Don't have a cow man! |
 |
| Sexy fashion |
 |
| KL from the monorail at night |
After the movie I
just wandered back to the hostel for the night, as I wasn't too keen
on heading out for any drinks even though Eugene wanted to. The next
day I tried to get up early and head down to the Burma embassy to get
a visa sorted out, but slept a bit later than I should have. I showed
up there around 12:30 pm, and found the place to be absolutely nuts.
There must have been about 500 people crowded into this little
courtyard, running around with papers in hand. I wandered around
looking for where I could at least get papers to fill out for the
visa form, but couldn't find any spot, and then asked a woman in one
of the lines where she got her papers from, but she said her friend
gave them to her. She was in what appeared to be the visa line, so I
just lined up there and waited and waited and waited.....pretty soon
it was already about 2:00 pm, which apparently is the cut off time
for handing in your visa application, so most of the people left the
line, and I figured I could get up and at least grab the
forms....well, there were several persistant and pushy people, mostly
Indians, who were pleading that they had flights the next morning and
needed their visas processed at once....ahhh some people are so
stupid, like if you have a flight the next day, wouldn't you have
been there bright and early or applied in a few weeks
before..idiots...yet the staff at the embassy actually accomodated
these guys...if I worked at the embassy, I would probably take
pleasure in rejecting them ha ha....so anyways, I finally was able to
get someone to pass me back some papers to fill out and was on my way
back to the hostel.
I checked into
flights, and found that they were already getting pretty high, and I
still wasn't certain that I would even get my visa sorted out, and by
the time that would happen, the flights would probably be really
expensive so I just figured I'd have to skip Burma on this trip, oh
well, always next time! After killing some time, I ended up just
heading back to the hostel, for a bit, and then wandering down
towards Chinatown to meet up with Eugene for a bit. I grabbed the
monorail, and hopped off, and wandered aroudn a bit, before finally
tracking him down. The famous street in Chinatown is Petaling Street,
and it's filled with vendors, who will try and sell you everything,
and for a super cheap price, but I wasn't so interested in anything,
so we just found the Reggae Bar and played some pool and had a few
beers. After hanging out there for awhile, we wandered around for a
little bit, grabbed some food, and then a few drinks and went to
Eugene's hostel to hang out and play some chess. We found some pretty
cheap and terrible Cognac and Whiskey, and an even more hilarious
mixer called Kickapoo....after hanging around for a few hours, we
wandered down to a Jazz club where my friend Colin was hanging with a
few people....we entered the place and found it to be quite empty, so
we were able to grab seats at the front, and were shown a pretty
great show by a band led by a guy from NYC...it was a pretty cool
venue....No Black Tie is the name of the place, check it out sometime
if you're in KL.
 |
| Chinatown |
 |
| The famous Petaling Street |
 |
| Great knockoff Cognac |
 |
| Mixed with Kickapoo! |
 |
| Chilling in Eugene's hostel |
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| Since when is food classified as a religion! |
After the show wrapped up, Colin and his friends were heading home since they had to work the next day, and Eugene and I just carried on back to Yoko's for another night of salsa and beer, although it was pretty empty, being a Monday and all. To make matters worse, in Malaysia, around 12 am until at least 2 am or later, all bank machines stop working so you can't take out any money...ridiculous! So I was broke at the moment, but Eugene had enough to lend me for the night so all was good....after hanging out for awhile there, we stopped by an Indian restaurant that was open 24 hours, had a bite to eat and then called it a night, having owed Eugene 30 Ringgit. The next day I got up and didn't really feel like getting up to a whole lot, so I just spent most of the day watching movies and relaxing in the hostel, until I had to head out to the Petronas Towers that evening. After hanging around for several hours, I made the walk over to the towers, and grabbed a few photos outside, but quickly since it was raining a fair bit, and then was on my way up. It's too bad it was raining, as the windows were fairly wet, so it was a bit difficult to really see the entire skyline, or get a decent picture for that matter. It was still pretty wicked, however, to be on the 86th floor of the impressive towers. After hanging out up there for awhile, it was time to head down, and Kiruba kept pestering me to meet her for a bite to eat, so I agreed to, and wandered over to the Pavillion Mall to meet here there for some Mexican, and then just wandered back to the hostel for the night, so that I could get up early and watch an ice hockey game.
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| Incredible Towers at night |
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| First take, becoming good at self photography :) |
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| Too bad it was rainy, skewing the view |
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| The beams supporting the famous walkway |
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| Tower 2 |
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| Up on the 86th floor observation deck |
After getting up to watch the game, I decided to head down to check out the Merdeka Square (Freedom Square) area of town. I took the monorail, and arrived in the area, and wandered around for a few hours, admiring the lovely British colonial architecture of various government buildings. It was interesting to see that there was staff putting up what appeared to be fences around this freedom square, but I didn't think too much about it, until a few days later, when I found that there was going to be a rally held there by several thousand people to protest unfair elections...ironic that Freedom Square would be banned from protesting a basic right of freedom in a country...Malaysia is such a backwards country at times....So anyways, after wandering around that area for a little while, checking out a museum, and wandering down towards the National Mosque and KL Railway station, I decided to get a hold of Eugene since I was close to Chinatown, and figured I could give him the money I owed him....so I got a hold of him, and was shocked to hear the poor guy was in the hospital! So I wandered over to the Chinatown hospital, and found him in the admittance area, getting ready to be checked in. I ended up hanging out there, and running to grab him a few things, and spending a few hours with the guy, hoping to keep his spirits up....it ended up being Pulmonary Embolism and Deep Vein Thrombosis, as a result of too much travelling, yikes! The doctor even told him he was lucky to be alive, as 80% of people who have it like he did, die...crazy stuff....so after spending some time there with him, it was getting a bit late, so I wandered back to my hostel area, grabbed some street food, and just chilled out for a bit until Kiruba asked me to come out with her for a bit for a drink or two.
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| Masjid Jemak |
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| Lazy day in the Mosque |
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| Kuala Lumpur's oldest Mosque |
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| I couldn't figure out how to properly greet the congregation...but thanks for telling me how to in Arabic :) ha ha |
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| Read step two and look at previous picture |
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| Very lovely Mosque |
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| Quite a contrast from the new age skyline of KL |
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| Does this building not look like it's going to topple over?? |
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| Merdeka Square |
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| More of Merdeka Square |
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| The KL High Court Commission building |
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| I later found out they were putting up fences to prevent protesters..in "Freedom" Square...strange |
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| National Textile Museum |
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| I <3 KL :) |
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| Another great contrast...old railway station peak, with new skyscrapers in the background |
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| Hey kitty! |
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| The National Mosque in the background |
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| Keretapi Railway Station |
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| More of KL's great skyline |
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| Central Market area |
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| Back combing my hair to entertain Reugene! |
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| Get well soon my friend! |
Since I still
didn't really want to hang out solo with her, I decided to invite a
Bulgarian guy from my hostel along, who was a pretty nice fellow, but
had to leave at 4 am the next day for the airport. I figured it would
just be a drink or two, and a quiet night, but of course it escalated
a bit as per usual! We were going to head over to Malones for a few
cheap pints, but then since it was ladies night, and Kiruba could get
free drinks at other places, she wanted to go there, so we just
tagged along. We stopped by a few lounge type areas, which were
alright, but kind of expensive, and then ended up at a club called
Werner, that was way too loud! The outside area was a bit quieter
though, and easier to chat with people...and I happened to stumble
into a large group of people who were actually there for a
couchsurfing meeting...I had totally neglected going on couchsurfing,
so I was shocked to see such a big meeting taking place, and
regretted not going on there a bit more in Asia to find
events....there were some pretty cool people there, and we were
having a good time, although Kiruba kept trying to steal me away to
the dance floor and dancing all over me, kind of ruining my chances
with other girls but oh well....I ended up chatting up some Austrian
girls for quite awhile, and ended up having a good time with them,
and leaving for some Indian food after the place was shutting down. I
didn't know where the Bulgarian guy went or where Kiruba went, but
all was good, so I just hung out with the Austrians, watching the
Champions League semi final match, and hanging out until about 5 am
before finally getting to sleep...yikes!
I arrived back at
the hostel, slept for an hour and then watched my poor Penguins get
eliminated from the ice hockey playoffs...booo.....and then just went
back to sleep for the rest of the day mostly, only waking to grab
some food and water. It was just one of those lazy movie days, with
no real plans. I had heard from Eugene that Elvyera, the beautiful
Lithuanian girl that I met in the Philippines was coming to KL that
day, but I didn't hear back from her that night, after I left a
message. I just decided to have a quiet night in and catch up on some
sleep a bit. The next day I heard back from Elvyera, and decided to
go down and help out Eugene a bit at the hospital. He had to spend a
few more days there, and didn't want to be paying for his hostel as
well, so I ran down there to pack up his bags, and spent quite
sometime trying to get everything figured out there, since he owed
for 2 weeks of his stay, and his friend who was also the owner of the
place wasn't there, so I was dealing with some lady who didn't really
know what was going on. While waiting at the desk, trying to get
Eugene in contact with the owner, a few people in the hostel
overheard me speaking about Eugene and started wondering where he was
including a Lithuanian friend of Eugene's that had come to visit him
for 3 days and had no idea where he was. I told everyone the story
about Eugene, and all the people were sad to hear his plight and
wanted to come visit.
So after finally
getting everything sorted out at the hostel, I was on my way to find
Elvyera and then head back to the hospital, but instead of going with
one person, I suddenly had another 4 people in tow....that Eugene is
a popular guy! We wandered over to the Central Market, picked up
Elvyera, and then made our way to the hospital for a visit. The one
Lithuanian friend, Jack, decided he would get Eugene some insurance
sorted out, and then schemed to have Eugene moved to a different
hospital where he could then use this insurance....ahhh sneaky
Lithuanians! After spending several hours just hanging out at the
hospital visiting, it was getting a bit later in the evening, and
Jack and Elvyera wanted to go see the city a bit, since they didn't
have much time in the city. I offered to take them around a bit and
show them some things I had found, so we were on our way. We first
stopped by Jalan Alor, which is right by Bukit Bintang and is where
all the cheap and tasty street food vendors are, and had some awesome
food and a few beers there, then continued walking towards the Twin
Towers. To me, they are more impressive during the evening when lit
up, so I chose to take the Lithuanians there when it was dark....we
arrived there and were taking some photos when I suddenly spotted a
few of the English med students from Mulu and Joe! So while he was
posing for his photo, I ran up and photobombed him...but no one knew
it was me at first, and were thinking I was this huge asshole who was
ruining his photo....small world to run into those guys...so after
chatting a bit, I found out they were all staying at the Reggae
Mansion where Elvyera was also staying, so we agreed to head there
aftewards and hang out for a few drinks and to go out on the town.
After the Towers,
Elvyera wanted to go check out Little India, and I hadn't been there
either, so we hopped on the monorail and made our way there, and
arrived, and were a bit lost at first, but she had a map fortunately,
and we were able to make our way to the area. It was a fairly
charming little area, with heaps of Indian music and Bollywood movies
playing in all the restaurants, and the amazing scents of Indian
cuisine, too bad we had already eaten! We wandered around for maybe
35 or 40 minutes, as it's not a terribly big area, and then made our
way back towards Elvyera's hostel. We thought Jack was going to be
coming with us as well, but then suddenly he just said goodbye at one
of the stops and got off the train, never to be seen again. He had a
really early flight the next morning, so I guess that's the main
reason he didn't want to join us. We arrived at the Mansion, which
has some pretty intense security, having cameras everywhere! They
even have door codes on all the doors except for the stairs leading
to the roof top bar, so it's tough to get into the hostel if you're
not a guest. Elvyera had a quick shower, and I grabbed us some beers,
then joined Joe and the English boys for some drinks in their common
area. After we finished up those, we wandered up to the rooftop bar.
By this point I had been flirting a fair bit with Elvyera but wasn't
too sure where I stood, so I went and grabbed a spot and left a chair
open beside me, but she didn't sit there, so I figured it was a no
go, no worries! One of the English lads ended up taking the spot, and
we all just sat around chatting, and enjoying the nice view of the
city from the rooftop bar. At one point, one of the English guys was
flirting with Elvyera a fair bit, and his other friend was asking me
if we were together or not, and that he had been telling his boys to
not go after her, since he thought we were together, but since that
wasn't the case I told him to have no worries and go for it, although
he mentioned she kept looking over at my direction all the time, so
who knows..women are confusing!
We just continued
hanging out there, enjoying the night until it came time to play some
flipcup or “flip the cup” as others often call it...reminding me
of the hilarious boat ride in the Philippines where the American girl
Rose was getting so worked up over the name of the game ha ha. We
played that for awhile, and that ended up putting Elvyera down for
the count pretty easily, and it was already 3 am so I was ready to
head home. She was going to bed, so we walked back through the
hostel, and had a little quick kiss goodbye, which was too bad, cause
she was a very attractive woman, but oh well! I just walked all the
way back to the hostel, with a quick stop on Chankrat to see if
anything was still going on down there. Hilariously enough, I was
wearing my Sorry Man I'm Ladyboy shirt and happened to walk by a
group of them enjoying some late beers, and they loved the shirt and
waved me over....being a friendly guy I went and had a sit down with
them and had a laugh at their hilarious pickup lines...the one
wouldn't leave me alone, but I just laughed it off and said no
thanks...well he/she kept trying me to come for a drink to his/her
apartment but I just kept declining. I walked with he/she by the
apartment, said no one last time to the offer to join, and said
goodbye then just wandered back to the hostel and called it a night.
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| Fountain in Little India |
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| Flower stalls in Little India |
The next day I
slept in a bit, and just kind of bummed around for awhile. I was
going to head to see the Avengers in the afternoon to kill some time
and then head over to the hospital to visit Eugene, and then Kiruba
got a hold of me and wanted me to wait for her to finish work and go
to the movie...soooo I decided I would head down to the theatre and
see if there were tickets to an earlier show that she could make and
if there wasn't then I was just going to go solo to an earlier show
or else go another day. I arrived at the Pavillion, and saw Roberto
and Sumi (two friends of Eugene's from Yoko), but didn't stop by
until I had gotten tickets. I was getting a bit frustrated with
Kiruba as she was kind of being a pain, but finally found some
tickets to a movie that she could make, so I bought them and agreed
to meet up in a bit. I thought I had selected seats in the back row
of the theatre (as the Malaysian theatre actually assigns
seats...great idea really), and then wandered down to say hello to
Roberto and Sumi, who invited me to sit down and have some hookah and
a beer with them...since I only had an hour and 15 minutes to go all
the way down to the hospital and come back for the movie, I just
decided to hang out with them for awhile. I gave them the news about
Eugene and where they could find them, and just enjoyed their
company, as they are both well travelled and really kind people.
After hanging out for awhile, Kiruba showed up, and had to go up and
buy tickets to Titanic 3D for two of her Iranian friends.
I tried to pay my
tab, but Roberto wouldn't let me, what a kind Italian! I wandered up
and met Kiruba, then we grabbed what I thought were our seats for the
Avengers. While sitting in these seats, I was laughing at the people
who were sitting in the very front row, and wondering why the hell
they would buy those tickets, as the view is so crappy. Then I looked
more closely at our tickets and realized I had actually bought
tickets in the front row instead of the back row ha ha ha....Kiruba
just told me to be shush, and the theatre was quite full, so every
time some people started walking up the aisle I figured we were for
sure going to be punted, but no one actually showed up for the seats
we were in, so all was good. The movie was pretty kickass, and I left
it being satisfied. I was meant to go meet up with another local girl
afterwards at some posh bar called Skybar, but hadn't heard back from
her when I texted her, so I just joined Kiruba and her Indian friend
for a beer in the mall, while waiting for her other two friends to
finish watching Titanic. I still hadn't heard back from the local
girl an hour later, so I just decided to hang out with Kiruba and
them....then her two Iranian friends showed up, and wow...I was
instantly attracted to the female friend, as she was really pretty
and such a kind person. We all wandered down to Chankrat, and stopped
by Malones for a few cheap pints, then met a few more friends of the
Iranian guy, and headed over to a club called Havana that was
alright. The bar was a bit pricy, and after a few drinks I was pretty
much broke. Kiruba was still trying to flirt with me a bit, but I
still resisted her overtures. When the Iranian girl, Negar, was by
the bar we got to chatting a bit, and I can't really recall if she
asked me for a lapdance, or how it happened, but I totally went for a
spontaneous lapdance, stripping off my shirt and everything...of
course Kiruba came by and was all jealous that she didn't get a
dance, but too bad! The place was closing down shortly after, and it
was time to head off, but we went down to grab some more late night
food. We sat there, and Kiruba became irritated with the Hungarian
guy who was with us, but for no real good reason, as he was a pretty
good guy....she just gets irritated over some meaningless things,
crazy Indian woman! After we finished up the late night food, I
walked back to the hostel, said goodnight to Negar and Kiruba and
then went inside. I still felt I had a connection with Negar though,
so I asked Kiruba if she could give me her number, which I felt was a
bit awkward, but it was okay with her and I just crashed for the
night.
The next day I
decided I should probably leave KL for a few days, and had recently
found out an American friend of mine that I had met in Thailand was
going to Penang with a few friends for the week, and since I wasn't
really up to a whole lot, I decided to check into flights there, and
found they were really cheap, and that flights to Singapore
afterwards were also really cheap, so I spontaneously booked flights
that early afternoon. I also asked Negar if she would be interested
in hanging out that night, thinking we could maybe have a date, and
she agreed to meet up later on. Meanwhile, I wandered back down to
the hospital to visit Eugene again, and found that he had a whole
bunch of visitors again that day, such a popular guy. They had all
brought him food, drinks, and gifts, and all I brought was a lousy
deck of cards, what a bad friend! I hung out there for quite awhile,
ignoring Kiruba's requests to come down and meet her for lunch, then
she asked to hang out in the evening, and I told her I was going to
be hanging with Negar, and she just kind of invited herself to come
along with us...d'oh! Since I was leaving the next day anyways, I
figured it wouldn't really be fair to have an actual date with Negar
anyways, so I just caved and told Kiruba that she could come too. I
hung out at the hospital until the early evening, then wandered down
to the bag shop I had stopped by earlier, and bartered down to $55
for the bag I was interested in, since my last bag was on it's last
legs...got that and just ran back to the hostel, packed up a bit and
showered. I met Kiruba, and we headed out to meet up with Negar at
the KL Sentral station, then wandered over to the Valley Mall. The
girls wanted to eat at Carl's Jr, but then Kiruba saw some guy she
had made out with one night and suddenly didn't want to sit in the
restaurant, even though both Negar and I had wanted to...what an
akward third wheel! Then she agreed to sit in the restaurant, but
wanted to hide behind us, but still text the guy and tell him she
could see him....my god what a strange person!
We had our dinner,
then wandered over to the bowling alley to do some bowling, which
Kiruba couldn't participate in since she had hurt her leg tendons on
the Wednesday night...so Negar and I just finished one game, and then
fortunately Kiruba had to go pickup her daughter, so she left us to
just have some time alone. We had one more game, and then were on our
way out, trying to figure out what to do. We decided to head down to
the Hard Rock Cafe, since there was some live music, and Negar was a
big fan of rock music, so we grabbed a cab down there, and spent some
nice time together, enjoying each other's company. I really had a
great time with her, and was looking forward to seeing her again,
since I would be returning to KL for my flight to Paris on the 10th.
We finished off the night, said goodbye, and I was on my way back to
the hostel to try and catch some sleep, but I was having such a weird
night where I could barely sleep, that I think I ended up catching
all of maybe an hour and a bit of sleep before getting up to grab a
quick breakfast and then off to the airport, blah.
I managed to catch
a bit more sleep on the bus ride to the airport fortunately, although
only about 30 minutes, arrived at the airport, checked in, and had to
laugh a bit at some Malays clearly not following some rules as seen
here:
After passing
through security, it was onwards to Penang, where I arrived
exhausted, disappointed in the airport staff that appeared to have stolen my sleeping bag (seriously, that's the second time now that airport staff has taken things from my bag), but I at least found the weather to be spectacular. I figured I would
take the bus into Georgetown (the capital of Penang and where the
cheap guesthouses are), but then found out I would have to wait 30
minutes or so for the next bus, so I just bit the bullet and took a
taxi instead, which ended up being a bit pricy, $15 or so, although
the ride did take around 45 minutes. I arrived on Love Lane, which is
a popular street with guesthouses, and stopped by the Reggae Penang
to see if they had any beds available. They had some in the dorm
room, so I just settled in there, as I was too exhausted to really do
much else, and starving. I threw my bags in the room, and wandered
out for my first taste of Penang food. For people who aren't too
familiar with Penang, it's an Island in North West Malaysia, and is
quite famous for it's food, but most people say there isn't really
much else to do there. I settled into a little hole in the wall cafe
near the hostel, and had a tasty Penang noodle dish...mmmmm.
After my little
lunch, I just wandered back over to the hostel, and was going to have
a nap, but then ended up chatting up with a Canadian dude who was
actually from Regina and had studied Engineering there, and finished
up his last year when I was starting my first year..small world. We
ended up chatting for quite awhile and just hanging out, while I was
trying to get ahold of my American friends who were in Penang, and
telling them where to come meet me that evening. I was able to
eventually touch base in FB and told them to come pop by the hostel
at some point, but they were taking quite awhile to get back to me,
and it was already close to dinner time, so I decided to head out
with the Canadian guy for a bite to eat. We stopped by an Indian
restaurant in Little India, and had another great meal there....mmmm
Penang doesn't disappoint :). Eventually Holly was able to text me
and tell me they were at my hostel waiting, just as we were finishing
up dinner and on our way back, so that was good. We walked back over,
and I met her and her big group of friends who were all down from
China for a weekend. I ended up losing the Canadian dude, and
couldn't find him to invite him along for a drink or two with the
group, so we just set off. They stopped at some Indian restaurant in
Little India for their dinner, and since I was exhausted, and the
place didn't serve beers, I just grabbed a coffee and hung out while
they all had a massive feast....it looked damn tasty, but I had no
room to eat.
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| The plates at this Indian place were giant banana leaves, cool :) |
After dinner we
just wandered around and found a few pubs for some beers, but I was
pretty exhausted, and their whole group were all sunburnt from laying
at the pool and on the beach all day, so they weren't up for much of
a late night either, and we all ended up calling it a night around
midnight or so. The next day I just caught up on sleep a fair bit,
and then wandered out to Batu Spagglia, which is located on the North
West part of Penang, where the teachers were all staying at some
apartment complex. I hopped in a cab, who wasn't running a meter,
which kind of worried me, especially when the ride took forever, and
was going through back streets due to heavy traffic volumes, but he
dropped me off at the place and charged the rate that Holly had told
me they would charge. Unfortunately, the whole group was gone for
lunch somewhere, so I just had to hang around the pool by myself for
awhile, but it was all good. They eventually showed back up, and we
enjoyed a nice few hours laying around lounging at the pool, having
some beers and gin and sodas....eventually it got to be fairly late
in the evening, and they wanted to head out for dinner, so I decided
to join them, and we went and found some outdoor food market, that
had a huge selection of different types of food for a really cheap
price. I ended up gorging on Indian, Malay, and Chinese foods, all
for about $6 or so, amazing. After our huge dinner, we wandered off
to find a bar, and ended up in the Hard Rock Cafe, where the drinks
were way too expensive and not all that great, but the Filipino band
that was playing were alright. After hanging around there basically
until close it was time to head back into town for the night.
The next day I
decided to actually wander around Georgetown a bit, as it's a UNESCO
world heritage city, and has some real nice British Colonial
architecture. The city itself isn't very large at all, so it only
really took an hour and a bit to walk around, but it was still nice.
At one point I became stuck walking on a major road that offered no
way to cross over to get to a point where I needed to go, but I just
had to laugh as I spent a good 20 minutes trying to cross without
avail, and all I could do was laugh about it. Eventually I managed to
finish up my nice little walking tour of the city, and get back to
the hostel. I just hung out there for quite awhile, chatting with a
few people, and trying to sort out some plans for the evening. Holly
ended up stopping by with my shorts and towel from the pool the
previous day, and told me they would be going out later after dinner
and to come meet up with them, so I just hung out at the hostel and
grabbed dinner there (expensive compared to the street food, should
have just stuck with what works).
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| A nice walk around Georgetown |
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| Old ass payphone |
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| The Boardwalk |
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| City Hall |
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| Fort Cornwallis |
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| One of the Chinese Temples |
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| Largest Mosque |
I ended up joining a German and Dutch guy for a few beers outside, and then an Englishman came and joined us, and we had a pretty fun group of guys there.
After a few hours of hanging out at the hostel, there were a few people that wanted to head down to the pub/nightclub area of the city, and since Holly and her friends were all down there, I decided to tag along and go meet that other group. We ended up stopping for a tower of beer in the street near the nightclubs, and after crushing that I went into the Slippery Senoritas nightclub where Holly and her friends were. It was actually a pretty cool place, with some decent dance music, but of course very expensive drinks. We ended up hanging out there basically until closing time, and then it was time to leave. Holly and I had been kind of hitting if off, and since her other two friends had left with other guys, she figured there would be some spare space at their place for me, so I was off to their place for the night.
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