Down at the bottom of the Deep Blue Sea...

Today we had a 'rest day' and a chance to just chill before our momentous attempt to get to the summit of South-east Asia's highest peak, Mt Kinabalu.

Chilling out Borneo-style is to take yourself off to the nearest island by speedboat, and spend the day lounging, eating, swimming and snorkelling.

I'm not a huge fan of snorkelling: too many opportunities to get burnt and bitten, but I was eventually persuaded and thoroughly enjoyed it for the whole time that my mask remained glued to my head. Eventually it started to leak and I didn't enjoy salt water up my nose quite so much, but I was glad to get a bird's-eye view of our underwater world. Some of the fish were absolutely beautiful and the water wasn't too deep, allowing us to dive down a little way to get up close and personal, which they didn't like quite as much.

I'm sure I've posted enough white-sands-and-palm-tree-beach shots but here's another one anyway:

The set-up on these small islands just off the west coast of Borneo was of an excellent quality, and probably where I'd least expected it. The beaches had life guards, buoys separating swimmers/snorkellers/divers and a great barbecue set-up on the beach - unfortunately outside our budget. You could even stay on the island and the chalets were set back amongst the palm trees. There were public showers and toilets and different food stalls available too. All in all, it's been the best example of eco-development that I've seen in Malaysia...permitting tourists to see the sights without overextending their footprints. It was a great day. And then as the clouds gathered it was time to go home...

To the rainforest and beyond...

Today we wanted to go a little deeper into the rainforest and headed for the jungle canopy walk - a wood and rope bridge that allows you to walk around 40m off the ground in order to get a different view of the jungle. The bridge seemed to be elasticated somehow and would kind of 'spronng' under you as you stepped on to it. It was quite unnerving and although I'm smiling in the picture, I was quite happy to get to the hot springs that could be found a short distance from where I landed back on firm ground.


Looking up was as interesting as looking down:

And on the way, we got a first glimpse of the challenge we had set ourselves: to climb Mount Kilabalu...more on that later...

Proboscis

Our main aim today was to go in search of this probiscis monkey, a native to Borneo and also sometimes known as 'the Dutchman monkey', tee hee. The male monkeys have the funny protruding nose while the females have much smaller and dainty little things, while still much larger than other monkey noses. They live in the trees and come out at dusk, so we set off for a river cruise as the light began to fade...but clearly not the colour of our lifejackets unfortunately.

The river was huge and wide and provided some beautiful sunset pictures as we slipped back to camp:

We ate by the water's edge just outside a fisherman's village where the fishermen and their families continue to live in houses built on stilts over the water. Everything is linked by wooden walkways or by boats. One obvious problem of being so close to the water are the plagues of mosquitoes that come out towards night-time. As instructed, I liberally applied repellant and had to put up with the smell of the mosquito-repelling citronelle smell as I tried to eat my rice and chicked. How ironic then, that it was not the mosquitoes that eventually got me, but bugs in the foam put on the chair to provide some padding managed to chomp 19 holes into my backside. I do have a very funny photo of the damage done but as it's verging on the pornographic i'll just leave you to imagine the 'ants-in-my-pants' effect I created on the bus ride home.

In the beginning...

In the beginning was the word, as they say, and my account of our travels in Borneo is going to involve plenty of them. If you want the shortened version, then it's basically that we had a fantastic time and Borneo is not what I expected at all but miles bettter. After that, it's just a case of looking at the photos. However, if you want to know more and if you're sitting comfortably, then I'll begin:


Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is the name given to the entire island, although it is actually parts of 2 countries (Indonesia and Malaysia) plus an entire third country (Brunei). Indonesians refer to the island as 'Kalimantan' although for most people outside of Indonesia, Kalimantan refers only to the Indonesian-owned southern half of Borneo. Malaysia's region is called Malaysian Borneo but is divided into two parts: Sabah in the north and Sarawak in the south.

I had always imagined Borneo to be a wild and savage place, certainly under-developed and impoverished. I couldn't have been further from the truth. The island is fabulously wealthy in terms of its oil income, biodiversity and culture. The people were absolutely lovely, the traffic contained, the weather cooler than Penang, the sights amazing and the general experience well above expectations. They have somehow managed to develop their tourism industry without destroying that which have the tourists have come to see, resulting in clearly made walking trails, pristine beaches with well marked areas for diving/snorkelling and swimming, and the implementation and enforcement of such divisions.

Our first evening was spent at the night market, where the day's fish catch was boiled, grilled, barbecued, roasted and fried for locals and foreigners. An example of some of the offerings:

Here was a huge tuna on display:

And the type of gentleman doing the selling:

Much like the rest of Malaysia, Borneo can also experience huge downpours that flood the streets in a matter of minutes, but then disappear within the hour. The major city in Sabah (Kota Kinabalu) is criss-crossed with these storm drains. They make it more important to watch your step than even in Paris....

Borneo 'Out-of-Office' reply

Off to Borneo (Sabah) for 1 week.

Driving in Penang

I spend quite a bit of time thinking about transport in Penang: time vs cost of buses/taxis, trying to avoid rush-hour, sharing taxis etc. But this week we hired a car, and although it's given me the freedom I was looking forward to, it also exposed me to the locals' absolutely appalling driving habits. They cannot keep between the white lines. That much is obvious. But last night, at these very traffic lights, I was slowing down as the lights had changed from green to yellow. It did not surprise me that the car 3 in front of me sped up to get through the light before it changed to red. I raised my eyebrows slightly when the car 2 in front of me followed suit and also sped up, although the light had a very red glow by the time he was through. But my jaw actually dropped when the car in front of me ALSO roared ahead through a blatantly red light to clearly get as fast as he could to wherever he was going...the next red light 100 metres up the road as it turned out. So you can imagine my squeal when the car BEHIND me nipped out, overtook, made for the line and kept going in an entirely stupid and dangerous manoeuvre.

But it's like that all the time here in Penang. I've never seen such dangerous driving in all my life. Everyone is really aggressive and they even run ads on the radio to be a courteous driver and let others out of side streets etc. So if I find myself back here, I'm not sure that either a scooter or a car is terribly wise. I might continue to give taxis with their local drivers the responsibility of getting me from A to B.

113-12B-03

The above is my appartment number and this is my appartment:

When you exit the lift, this is what you see. Our place is the first flat on the right hand side.

This is looking back from the appartment to the lift. You can see how there's lots of open-air bits to help the air circulate and keep it cool.

Then here is the 'porch' to the appartment. All flats and houses have this sort of an area to leave shoes. You also leave your shoes at the door to some shops and almost any sort of place associated with the service industry.

Once through our front door, the first thing you see is the living room and balcony directly opposite. To the right hand side is the door to Laila's room.

And to the left hand side is the corridor to my room straight ahead, the spare room which is on the right hand side of that corridor and the bathroom to the left hand side.

And still standing in the same spot, if you pivot to the left you can see the dining area and kitchen, and the door off the kitchen is for our recycling and washing machine etc. It's all open plan which is really nice but we've seen much better decorated flats. Still, can't complain..lots of the flats round here and covered in mint green. I'm not sure why it's such a favoured colour but we seem to have managed to escape, for which I am very grateful.

The tale of the very hungry caterpillar

Sunday morning: we rose with the sun and the birds and the screeching monkeys and while declining our neighbours' curry and rice, settled into a hearty breakfast of multiple weetabix and warm u.h.t milk. Later, as we took down our tents, we spied a quite incredible caterpillar making significant and rapid headway across the top sheet. It was about 8 cm long, just over 1 cm wide and seemed quite hairy. He was brown in colour and exceedingly quick. When you camp, it's only natural that you end up a bit up close and personal with nature and we'd already done our fair share of trying to keep the natural circle of life going i.e. us at the top and all those creepy crawlies and flying things at the bottom, and perferably dead. Well, not quite, but the locals ring their tents with sulphur to prevent snakes and other slithering things from having access to all those nice people.

We coaxed our caterpillar on to a twig and settled him down gently near some tall grass, before carrying on folding the tent and sorting out out stuff. About half an hour later, we were sitting on the wooden benches trying to work out a plan for the day, when I spied the same hair caterpillar around our feet and heading for the nearest table leg. It might not have been the same one, but it was quite a distinctive caterpillar and we were only about 4 metres from where we had left him, and as I said, he was exceedingly speedy. So we left him to it, only to have him come exploring the milk box, plates, cups, spoons etc within about 30 seconds. Obviously, once up there he hadn't quite figured how to get down, so did a circuit of the table top 3 times, until Fred coaxed him on to another twig and gave him a helping hand down...with a quick flick of the wrist that saw the caterpillar land some 20 feet away.

I sat back down at the table and we watched our new Malay friends leave by boat with all their pots and pans, but leaving all their plastic and rubbish behind. We decided to forgo the game of badminton (even though I'd lugged the racquets over the mountain) for a swim. As we were chatting while Fred put on his suncream before going in the water, he suddenly looked at me, his eyes grew big, he said 'wow' quickly followed by 'don't move' and leapt around the side of the table, lunging to the floor as he did so. I couldn't work out what was going on at all so bent over sideways to see what was happening, and that movement turned me head and I came face to face with the very same very hungry caterpillar. The thing had scurried back to the table and proceeded to climb up the bench and apparently all the way up my shirt, arriving at the top to say 'coucou'. Upon reaching the top, there was nowhere else to go, so he'd kind of ended up on his hind legs on my shoulder with the rest of him vertical in the air - and it was that part of him which I was introduced to just an inch from my nose. Of course I screamed, lept of the bench and flung myself around the clearing in an effort to shake him off, the whole time while Fred was shouting don't move! But I'd seen this thing hang on to a spinning stick the last time Fred had launched him off into space and I knew he wasn't going anywhere, which panicked me more as I imagined him heading for my head, hair and face. By this time Fred had found himself a stick but in his rush to get the caterpillar off in response to my screeching, he kept trying to move the stick too quickly and the caterpillar wasn't having any of it. Finally, finally, finally, the caterpillar was on the stick and moving rapidly up it towards Fred's hand. He also panicked and FLUNG the stick with the caterpillar hanging grimly on way, way back into the forest.

Still, we never quite settled properly for the remaining half hour that we spent at the beach, expecting to see our very hungry caterpillar reappear at our feet, and possibly with enforcements.

That was enough adventuring for one weekend.

The Great Beyond

Admittedly, we had a slightly later start than planned after last night's Green Marghueritas, but our destination was Penang's only (and small) National Park. On the map to the left, it's the top north-west corner penninsula. Having borrowed the various necessities, we drove for around 45 minutes to the National Park entrance. From there, we loaded ourselves up and headed off into The Great Beyond. It took about 1 hour to reach the other side, so neither that 'great' nor that 'beyond', but our best attempt at an adventure on Penang.


There are 3 beaches available in the National Park to camp on, and you get to them all by walking through proper jungle that involves various degrees of difficulty. For example, the first beach is found by walking along a paved path and following the signs, whereas the one we were headed to involved crossing the 'spine' of the national park and descending through the densest jungle that I have yet encountered on this trip while monkeys criss-crossed overhead. Thankfully, there were enough markings to prevent us getting lost but there was a lot of scrabbling over and under vines, logs and boulders. It was absolutely stinking hot. It was so hot and so humid that it was a blessed relief to finally get there. Here is there:

Our campsite for the night was basically a strip of greenery just slightly higher than 'monkey beach'. We pitched our tents and managed to fit in a swim before dark. When darkness came it brought amazing views of the starry heavens, which are normally hidden from view by the stark and overenthusiastic street lighting on Penang...as well as the glistening eyes and howls of a nearby wild dog. The best bit though for me was....toasting marshmallows over the camp fire, a tradition I enthusiastically promoted amongst the local Malays we met also camping on the same beach.

Friday night drinks showing off new ring birthday present

A Last Supper of sorts...

It was with two good travelling companions of mine through both life and foreign adventures, that our 'last supper' meal was born. It came out of necessity - having only a bottle of wine, bread and cheese one evening in Italy, and has since become somewhat institutionalised and ritualised. This time, it took place on our balcony with a good bottle of France's finest, real French cheese and real French bread, alongside Penang's best genetically modified seedless grapes. It was absolutely fantastic..and so rich! Having existed predominantly on a diet of rice, such succulent flavours were almost too much...and to think I lived like that for a couple of years. It wasn't so much 'au bord de la Seine' as 'fight off the mosquitoes', but still, it was perfect, and great to see the Last Supper so easily adaptable to yet another culture. Still, will have to make doubly sure tomorrow night tee hee...

A 'bounty' ad...

Langkawi

Langkawi is a beautiful island about 30km off the west coast of Malaysia and a 25 minute flight from Penang northwards (unless you go via KL of course). It is right on the border with Thailand in the southern Andaman Sea.

The name Langkawi is a combination of "Lang" and "Kawi". "Lang" comes from the local native Malay word 'helang' which means eagle and "Kawi" means "red". In the past, the land was a home to innumerable red-eagles(helang Kawi).

It's also known as the Jewel of Kedah (Kedah being the Malay state it belongs to) and it's not hard to see why. This archipelago of 99 islands is classic 'bounty advert' stuff....white beaches, palm trees, clear green waters, and plenty of burnt Scandinavians. I'm not sure why it should be the retreat of such northerners but I am definitely surrounded by blondes speaking gobblydegook.

Friday the 13th

These sorts of dates never mean anything to me, but when I realised it was Friday the 13th, I raised my eyes heavenward, sighed and thought 'no surprise'. That's because I arrived at the airport in Penang at 13h00, in plenty of time for the 25 minute hop to Langkawi, only to be told that there was a 'technical fault' and we had all now been re-routed through KL (it's like travelling from Edinburgh to Aberdeen via London).

I stopped counting how many flights I take when I regularly topped 40..and that was back in the Brussels days. But despite all that experience, when I boarded my flight, two of us headed to seat 10A. O-oh thought I, for airlines never normally make a mistake like that I've found; it's almost always the passenger's fault as airlines have the ability to prevent it from happening before we get anywhere near boarding. The stewardess looked at both our tickets and said to me, 'you are on the 1525 flight'..more a statement than a question. I said yes. She said 'ah now is 1525'. Ahhh, I said knowingly, but was still none the wiser so stayed put. She tried again. It honestly took about 10 minutes for me to realise that 1525 was the BOARDING time of my flight as well as the departure time of the flight I was currently sitting on. So for the second time in my life, I got escorted off an aeroplane. This time, however, it was not under armed guard. For those of you who don't know THAT story, you will have to wait for another time...

There's no place like 'home'...

In order to spare you further photos of my latest pedicure (tootsies get a lot of air time here so this IS a valid topic..honest), I've responded to a recent request to show you my 'home', but from a slightly different angle.

There are many places I've called home in my life, but there are only one or two where I am at home. Home is sometimes where I am living, or sometimes home isn't where I am living at all. And home isn't always a house, because if home is where the heart is, then I am truly home whenever I am with my family..wherever that may be. But the current place I call my home, or perhaps more accurately, where I am staying, is 5 degrees North and 100 degrees East. And if you're not sure where that is, then here's a helping hand.

Here is Penang. It's marked with a yellow pin on this google earth map. So it's about half way down the Malay penninsula. At the bottom end is Singapore, further north is Thailand, the jutting bit to the north east is Vietnam and to the left of that Cambodia, and the island to the west of Penang is Sumatra, separated by the Straits of Malacca.

And here is a slightly closer view of Penang Island itself. Penang Island is actually called Pulau Pinang in Malay. It means bettlenut tree, which can be found everywhere on this island. You can also see fairly clearly how built up the east coast is compared to the west. Almost three quarters of a million people live on this island of 114 square miles. There's a bridge linking the narrowest section to the mainland, with plans to build a second further south.

And here is Penang with some points of importance. The bottom pin is where i work - about a 15 minute journey by car from 'home', which is the middle pin. The top pin is the centre of Georgetown.

And here is a close-up of that middle pin. You can see the deep channel of water running between us and the small island opposite called Jerejak. You might also be able to make out the semi-circle that is the Gold Coast Resort Appartments, looking out over the pool to the island. Further south (about a 7 minute walk) is the curved building of Queensbay Mall, where I spend more time than I really care to, but it houses the post office, shops, supermarket, cinema, hairdressers, food court and yes, the pedicure place.

And from the sublime...

..to the ridiculous...

...but don't you totally love the colour?!

30 Take Two

I can't imagine the receptionist at WorldFish Center has been hoarding my cards, but today, 1 week and 1 day after I turned 30, no less than 7 cards arrived plus 2 gifts. Thank you everyone! Here are some of the Cool Cards. There are more but I don't want to show off ;-)

Same old, same old I'm afraid...

What? An uneventful week and weekend? Well yes, apparently so, although all the rest of my cards and cadeaux arrived en masse this morning so I had a few minutes of delayed glory before it was back to the grindstone.

Onwards and Upwards

There's a quote that goes something like this: "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather, skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, thoroughly used up and screaming, 'woo hoo, what a ride'".

Those twenties, man, what a ride.

4th March

All you need is...

...a roof over your head. But what we got was some beautiful accommodation: