Wild Wild Borneo

July 13^th, 2011

Getting from Pulau Tioman to Kuala Lumpur should not have been complicated, but it was. Our boat was late (or later than we thought it would be) causing us to miss the direct bus to KL. So we took a bus to Johor Bahru (only kind of in the right direction) and on to KL. We arrived near after ten at night, and decided that it wouldn’t be worth checking into a hotel, as our flight was in eight or nine hours.

I didn’t even care about the situation when I found out the airport had free wi-fi. Internet had been extremely expensive on the island, so we didn’t even bother with it. The airport cafeteria treated us well, although we had an issue with our boarding pass, since we had not printed it out before arriving at the airport. I don’t remember exactly how, but we somehow managed our way around that without a fine.

We landed in Kuching on the southwestern tip of Malaysian borneo. Supposedly there was public transit into town, but this proved to be old information. Malaysia is the kind of place where it seems that public transportation is actually getting worse, instead of better, because so many people own their own cars. So we gave a shot at hitchhiking, since a taxi would be too expensive. After fifteen minutes, a Christian Malay man named Joseph picked us because, as he put it “Nobody will pick you up here. People here don’t understand what you are doing”. I think he proved his point to be wrong, but we didn’t point out the mistake. He had a big luxurious SUV with lots of leather. For the twenty minutes it took to get to town, he acted as our tour guide. He showed us the areas where the cheap (and nice) hotels were located, the best places in town for laksa and the areas to avoid at night. Most importantly, though, he gave us an insider’s tip that somehow had escaped the pages of the Lonely Planet’s “shoestring guide”: there was lots of smuggled beer at reasonable prices if you knew where to look. It was mostly at the casual Chinese diners or sometimes at market stalls. The smuggled price came down from over $2-$3 for a can of beer to just $.66.

With Joseph’s little tour, Kuching seemed promising. Although it was quite modern, and probably not what somebody envisions when they think of the word “Borneo”, it had a charm to it.

After catching up on sleep we explored the riverfront, which was touristy and featured a Hilton and at least one other hotel of the same breed. But across the river, the town became rather humble. The neighborhood was filled with charming wooden homes on stilts, painted in bright colors. Cats slept everywhere, and kids ran around in the damp alleys. We came across a layer-cake shop, which apparently is a specialty of the region, and this one was thriving. Dozens of varieties of buttery multi-colored layer cakes were on display, with lots of sampling going on. We looked very impressed and ready to buy many cakes as we sampled as many as we could, probably getting the equivalent of a free meal. When none of the staff was looking, though, we ducked out and were on our way, stomachs full.

We liked the town enough to stay for two nights, which turned out to be the only place in all of Borneo that got that received that honor.

Most of our time in Borneo was spent in transit. Lots of hitchhiking, lots of boats, occasional camping. Our biggest task was to avoid the tour groups and guided trips that seem to be the norm. This was no easy task, and without more time to dedicate to the island, we did not have the luxury of exploring the place deeply and getting off the beaten track.

So we left Kuching on a boat to Sibu, taking us from river to sea to river. Although we were staying on the same island, it was cheaper and faster to get to this city by boat. Then we quickly boarded another boat to continue up the Batang Rajang (Rajang river) into the heart of Borneo. Like the other boats, the boat was far more comfortable than we had anticipated. The “comfort”, however, is an illusion. It had things like air conditioning, turned up so high it left us freezing on the front, while my back got sweaty on the vinyl seat. The boat was shaped like a torpedo, giving it the feeling of being on a wobbly bus, more than a boat. The movies they played were absurdly violent and awful, but at least the speakers didn’t work too well. Most painfully, though, were the tiny airplane windows that were tinted, making it nearly impossible to see any of the surely beautiful scenery passing us by.

It took something like three hours to get to Kapit, the largest town in this area of the interior with a population of 8,000 people. Without road access, and being a three hour boat ride to the nearest large town, I imagined Kapit would feel a little more remote or rural. However, it could have been a slice of neighborhood cut out of Sibu or Kuching and plopped right here in the jungle. There were multi-storied hotels (I remember because we felt like we had to climb about 80 floors to get to our room, though it was probably five), local and western restaurants, discos, karaoke bars, and internet cafes jam-packed with kids playing World of Warcraft and first-player shooter games at volume. Borneo’s next generation of headhunters will be of the electronic variety.

Most people visit the city as a launching point for tours to visit rural longhouses, Borneo’s traditional communal housing. As much as visiting a longhouse seemed awesome, the last thing we wanted was to go on an expensive tour in which the locals would be obliged to feign hospitality, maybe dance, drink the obligatory rounds of rice liquor, etc. Yeah, it looked cool when Anthony Bourdain did it, but looks a lot different when you’re there on the ground. Going on your own to these places is also controversial, as the easily accessible ones are used to tourists, but no longer appreciate unexpected guests that don’t speak the language expecting a place to stay. Traditionally, though, and still in many parts, the obligation to provide a place to stay is very important.

We had thought taking another river boat, further, towards Belaga, might get us somewhere interesting. Unfortunately, a new dam was recently built that was either in the way, or reduced the water level to impassable levels, I am not sure which. We tried going to the peir and asking if any of the local boats were visiting the smaller towns in the area. It was market day, after all, and most of the people in town were not local. Our attempts at asking if about these boats were met with confusion due to lack of English, or lack of understanding why we would want to go to the random villages we were naming.

At night, we went to the night market for dinner, then looked for a karaoke bar. We could hear the wails bursting out of several buildings, but the one we picked was not the right one. Instead of karaoke, it was playing techno music at an unbelievably loud volume, making conversation a distant memory, and hearing your own thoughts unimaginable. The lights flashed around us as we tried to figure out the price of beer. It didn’t matter though. Even if it was free we couldn’t have stayed. This sensory overload was too much for us and we had to bail. On our way out, a wild man danced past us, moving crazily to the beat, and appearing to be laughing out loud. His behavior, so uncharacteristic of Malaysians, made me suspicious that this was some sort of ecstasy bar. I had learned that it was a big thing in Malaysia, and apparently had even reached these small towns. I had seen a sign near the internet café as a public warning to the youth about the dangers of the drug.

The next day, after asking around some more about boats, we decided to just take the torpedo back the way we came and get off halfway. We chose the town of Song, as it was the smallest town we knew the name of. We were surprised to find that there were two hotels in town. I checked the price at one, while Lise checked the price of the other. She got the cheaper price, so we went there. It was pretty run down, but it was still the cheapest place we had stayed in on the trip so far. Lise said it had been a weird situation when she went to ask. She said there were a lot of women sitting in one room, and at some point they started singing. She got the feeling it was a brothel. It wouldn’t have shocked me, as it had become quite common to see the cheaper hotels renting rooms by the hour. We later found out, to our relief, that it was not in fact a brothel, but a nunnery.

We took a walk out of the town, and eventually reached a kampung, or village. It was pretty typical, but one of the rare times that we would get to see some rural life in Malaysia. There wasn’t much more than a few homes, a mosque and a cemetery. It was very quaint, and the kids all seemed excited to wave at us.

We were surprised to meet some other tourists that night at the night market. Two middle-aged Dutch women and a Dutch guy closer to our age sat eating grilled meats with their guide. The guide caught our eye, saw a business opportunity and invited us to join them. The Dutch were staying at the more expensive hotel, probably because it had air conditioning, but the investment hadn’t paid off. Someone had gotten into their room and stolen 50 Euros and an iPad. They didn’t seem too worried, though, since they had some sort of insurance to cover it, so they just needed to get a police report. I smelt fraud…but probably not. It still seemed weird, though, that in Song, the smallest, town we visited in Malaysia, would have blatant theft like that. Their guide had taken them to a longhouse that day. They said it was pretty awkward, since they couldn’t communicate with each other. They also expressed their disappointment that the longhouse seemed so modern. They had cars parked outside and satellite TV. It didn’t make me feel too bad about missing out on this experience. They offered us some of their grilled meats, though we just nibbled on the chicken butts, since they didn’t seem interested in them anyway. Lise and I were not above scavenging, but there is still room for tact. Luckily, though, heavy rains came, and they abandoned all their meat quickly. Lise and I had a feast.

We took the boat back to Sibu the next day. This is where we would get in our Borneo groove and decide that our place was really more in the cities. Sure, they weren’t traditional and set in a beautiful jungle setting, but it didn’t mean that they didn’t offer some other great experiences. Sibu does not get a very good review from travelers, apparently. It is kind dirty, sketchy, fast-paced; whatever. We found the night market as it was setting up and we attacked it. Lise was a fiend for the dumplings. She was familiar with them from China, so she just went to town on them. We got such a diverse spread of street food that we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. The vendors were also selling smuggled beer for 2 ringgit ($.66) so we got to indulge a bit in that too. There was an endless supply of grilled animals, with all their parts, weird juices with jellied shapes floating in them, vegetables with peanut sauce, dumplings, steamed buns, noodles, and things wrapped in banana leaves. We took turns picking out the next thing to try. Sure we spent more than we would have if we had just sat down for a plate of fried noodles or rice, but this was our time to experience. This was our entertainment. Some people go on longhouse tours, or SCUBA diving or bird-watching; we go plow through night markets.