Hi Everyone, we’ve just arrived in Darjeeling after a day driving through a mixture of lovely hill views of tea plantations and thick cloud permitting the sight of nothing. I have settled for a cup of tea and to catch up on the blog. We spent the past week in Bhutan which was really spectacular and incredibly photogenic. Unfortunately we didn’t have nearly as much internet as I expected so I have got far behind with the blog. I am catching up writing and sorting the photos for Tibet and Nepal now so will post something when that’s done. In the meantime, below are the photos I took on our first day in Bhutan (including a great flight through the mountains)
Journal Entry – Darjeeling & Bhutan
May 10th, 2010 by Jonathan
Fluttering in the breeze: Qinghai
May 10th, 2010 by Jonathan
Until you’ve seen the desolation of the terrain it’s hard to understand the prayer flags that dot the Tibetan landscape. Our tour bus drives past huge areas of yellow-dry scrub and grass which morph to and from incredible desert-like dunes of sand. Everywhere there are mountains on the horizon and we drive along a seemingly endless road that continues until it meets that horizon. Not a soul is around except perhaps the odd herdsman with his cattle off in the distance. When we stop the bus and venture outside, the only sound is of the wind as it whistles unhindered across the plain.
In some places the hillside is eroded and you can see slightly reddened areas of mud adding this to the dry palette of colours. It makes you think of the surface of some distant planet. There is a suggestion of green in the landscape but it is as though the fertility has been sucked from the earth leaving only rusty browns, olives and yellows. The only natural break from this dry colour-scheme is the blue-green glow of Qinghai Lake when we reach it.
Looking again at the yellow-dry grass, it begins to make sense. The prayer flags are a sign between the people who live here of human presence and kinship. Yes, they have a religious significance too, but when you see the bright colours it gives a sense of warmth of not being the only person in the emptiness. I imagine in the past, before the roads were built and the electricity pylons erected, that it was a great comfort to Tibetans here to see bright flags fluttering in the distance and know that you might be joined by some friendly companion for a cup of yak butter tea. Even from my cosy tour bus I get a sense of this and wonder how much more intensely I would feel it if I were covering the distances on foot and out there in the harsh elements.
That day, (as my dad was still trapped in London by the volcanic ash cloud), I had decided to take a group day trip around the Qinghai Lake area. In my experience so far, group tours rarely visit all the best places and often include irritating side-trips to carpet showrooms or other shopping ‘opportunities’ so I prefer not to use them, but the choice was to pay 100 yuan (£10) for a group tour or nearer 1,000 yuan (£100) for my own car and driver… With this decision made by simple economics, I joined my group outside the hotel early that morning.
All in all it turned out to be a good day. It was my first trip with an all Chinese tour group. I only understood 50% of what was being said, but it was a positive cultural experience to travel with the mixed group from all over China. There was much singing of regional folk songs on the journey by many of the passengers on board and they were so eager to hear me sing a song in English that I surrendered to the situation and sang. I get horribly embarrassed and hate that kind of performance but somehow (in the absence of anyone I would ever see again!) it wasn’t too terrible.
In terms of where we were taken it was (as expected) a disappointment because we went to a couple of shopping sites, including perhaps the most bizarre one I’ve been to to-date, where we were encouraged to purchase spheres of red-orange stone to put in on our mantelpieces. Why anyone would want these I could not make sense of.
The other disappointing thing in terms of itinerary was the preference of the Chinese tour groups not to visit the remarkable Bird Island (see below) in favour of a couple of very mediocre ‘historic’ sites in the area. I put historic in inverted commas because I think that emphasis is placed on at least one of these sites because of the supposed significance of the location to the Chinese claims of sovereignty over Tibet. I don’t blame my travel companions (who were all just along for the ride like myself), but it felt like a latent nationalism was directing the agenda set by the tour company rather than someone with a nose for an interesting site.
I would far rather have visited Bird Island because it is a major stopping off point and breeding ground for thousands of species of migratory birds and we were bang in the middle of the breeding season (March to May), but instead we were taken to the Sun Moon Pavilion (pictured below).
The Sun Moon Pavilion was a stopping off point for the Chinese princess, Wen Cheng, on her journey to Lhasa in the 7th century to marry the King of Tibet. The Chinese government claims that this marriage and that of Princess Jin Cheng a century later, are an early ‘proof’ of the allegiance of Tibet to China through ‘Uncle-Nephew allegiance’ (that is, since the King of Tibet was the nephew of the Emperor of China, his Kingdom owed allegiance to China). Conveniently ignored by them is the subsequent Sino-Tibetan treaty (822 A.D.) still preserved on a stone stele that stands in Lhasa and its inscription that guarantees mutual respect of the borders of the two nations, an irony seemingly lost on the Chinese authorities (there were two other identical copies, now destroyed, one on the border between China and Tibet and the other in the Chinese capital of the time Chang’an).
Qinghai Lake is famous for being the largest lake in China and also for the beautiful contrast between its blue-green waters and the surrounding landscape. Unfortunately when we arrived the weather was overcast with poor visibility so the views were unspectacular. I knew that the train to Tibet I would be taking a couple of days later skirted the northern shore of the lake so hoped for better weather then.
What I enjoyed most of all about the whole day was the drive to the lake and back through a region that was so completely new to me. It was an incredible introduction to a new physical landscape and demographic of both ethnicity and wealth. I saw so many things I’d never seen before.
My experience of China so far was of several eastern provinces that are much richer (with the exception of Anhui), greener, and populated by an overwhelming majority of ethnic Han Chinese. Qinghai is very poor (this was obvious watching workers by the side of the road doing back-breaking work) and still has a substantial minority (45%) of Tibetans, Hui Muslims, Mongols and other ethnic groups, even after much Han migration to the area during the past twenty years.
To give just a small taste of some of the new sights, in addition to radically different ethnic clothing there were horses running across the road (and up the road towards our minibus at speed!), a guy riding a motorbike carrying the skins of a dozen sheep on the back and many factory workers walking by the road wearing old fashioned blue ‘Mao’ suits with faces so dirty you could barely make out their features. Qinghai’s GDP per head is 25% below the national average and only a quarter of what a Shanghaier would be expected to earn. I really noticed the serious poverty out there, so much so that I often wondered if people working by the roadside were convicts that formed part of a chain-gang or ordinary citizens. They were clearing endless scrubland, planting tiny shrubs (probably in an effort to stop soil erosion) in the huge expanse, digging by the side of the road and mixing cement by hand. Perhaps I’ll find out more as I continue the journey. The final new sight of this first trip to the ‘West’ was an icon; my first ever yak!
Here are all the pictures from that day.
Journal Entry
May 3rd, 2010 by Jonathan
Dear Everyone,
I’ve arrived in Kathmandu after nearly two weeks spent crossing Tibet. It’s been an amazing journey, sometimes exhilarating with off-road driving through incredible terrain, but at other times difficult and sad because of the conditions of abject poverty faced by so many people. And that’s without even mentioning the political situation in the region. I will write about the trip in more detail over the next few days. I was sick for the first week in Tibet… not enough to take me off my feet, but enough that when I finished the day, the headache meant that writing or sorting through photos was not going to be any fun. There was often no electricity, let alone internet access for the second half of the journey.
Fortunately, when I arrived here in Kathmandu, I met up with my dad (who missed Tibet because of the Icelandic volcano) and after a great reunion and couple of days in the city, we fly tomorrow for Bhutan. Bhutan’s name in their own language is the Land of the Thunder Dragon, (which in my book is reason enough to visit a country!) and it’s one of the most interesting and mysterious places in the world. I can’t wait to take a look. For now though, I’m going to sign off and sort out some photos and stories to post from Tibet and Nepal. By the way, whilst we’re travelling together, my dad is going to post some items to the blog too, so if you see an article posted by Alan and you didn’t already know who he was, that’s the answer!
Love and best wishes to you all,
Jonathan
For now, here’s some photos from the journey up to Lhasa by train from Xining in Qinghai Province, China (and the lunch before!):
Sitting at Xining Railway Station
Apr 18th, 2010 by Jonathan
The last few days have been spent watching and waiting to see what is happening in Europe. The plan was to arrive in Xining Thursday, pick my dad up at the airport on Friday, get the train to Lhasa together today. Unfortunately a certain volcano in Iceland has had other ideas, so here I am, waiting to board the train alone, dad still in London. I’ve wanted to visit Tibet for many years, but the reason for going now was to do it with him (he has wanted to go for much longer but never made it for one reason or another). We can’t postpone or get a refund so he has told me to go ahead as planned and hopefully will follow on and either catch me in Tibet or join me for the start of the next leg in Kathmandu. It’s a real disappointment for us both, but it seems it’s not meant to be this time.
It’s also meant for the past couple of days I’ve been on my own in Xining, so I organised to join a day trip to Qinghai Lake (will post separately about that) and yesterday arranged to have dinner with a Couchsurfer (Clark from Kentucky) and meet some of his local friends. He offered me the choice of restaurant and I went for a style I hadn’t tried before; Hui.
The Hui are a group of Muslim Chinese people and their cuisine is the result of a very different mix of influences than the Han. The main event was a mutton and potato casserole which was perfectly cooked and beautifully spiced with Middle-Eastern flavours… absolutely delicious. It was brought out with another dish of Hui-style dumplings and something called Eight Treasure that was fantastic too. The dish was spinach and other vegetables that were cooked with sesame, soy and other tasty ingredients I couldn’t identify. A great meal.
The people who came with Clark were fellow teachers (three women, one Hui who taught music, one Tibetan who taught English and one Han who taught Chinese) and a Han businessman who imported French wine into China. This guy was also opening a French restaurant in Xining during the next few weeks and had brought along a large 1.5 litre bottle of Argentinean Merlot. It was quite rare (in my experience anyway) to drink wine at a meal in China (beer or baijiu, Chinese ‘white’ liquor, being much more common) and imported wine was even more of a rarity. I only had one glass (because I didn’t want a hangover on the journey up to five thousand metres), and was surprised when the familiar Chinese shout ‘gan bei’ (literally ‘drain your glass’) was given by the businessman. It has to be the only time I have ever downed red wine! After a very enjoyable evening of food, drink and conversation we headed for home and I got back to my hotel for a final (bad news) update from Europe before bed.
As I’ve been sat here writing, I am getting some early tastes of Tibet from the Tibetans in the waiting room. The clothing of the ethnic Tibetans is different but it’s not just their clothes. You can notice a difference in the way these folks interact with each other as well. It seems somehow more light-hearted.
A moment ago an old Tibetan man with white hair and a black fedora asked the help of the young Tibetan sitting next to me. He wanted him to tear a strip of green fabric — I’m not sure what for — but when the young man couldn’t do it and returned it to the old man, I took out my knife and gestured to make a knick so the old guy could tear it himself. He tore the fabric no problem now and gave me an incredible smile. It was unrestrained, full and obviously sincere; th kind of smile that you rarely see shared amongst strangers. It caught me a little of guard but definitely a good omen.
Anyway on that note, I’ll have to go for now and join the scrum to get onboard.
See you in Lhasa.
Photos from Uncle Tan’s
Apr 17th, 2010 by Jonathan
Here are the photos from my recent visit to the Borneo jungle with Uncle Tan.
For the post about the trip, click here.
Back to the Mainland: Chengdu
Apr 16th, 2010 by Jonathan
I’m sat in Sim’s Cozy Guesthouse cafe with my journal in front of me, waiting for some food to brought, listening to some guy playing the guitar on the other side of the room. The hostel here is a big hub for backpackers and I’ve met another couple of Chinese students… both with a couple more years Chinese under their belts than me, one from Aberdeen and another from Jerusalem. It was good to have some conversations about our experiences travelling and studying here, also helping me keep the faith! I’ve been in Chengdu for two days now and been to see the Pandas this morning at the breeding research station which is about 10km from town. It was great to see the pandas in real life and I rightly feel very spoilt to have seen Orangutans and Pandas within little over a week.
One thing though… these ‘giant’ pandas aren’t so gigantic at all. I was expecting polar or grizzly bear sized beasts and was surprised by the compact size of the adult bears. They’re more the size of really overweight human-beings albeit much cuter (and less sweaty too!).
The centre is spread over a large site and has enclosures for different age groups and a separate area for the red pandas. The great thing (or at least the thing I really liked!) was that the enclosures are not covered by massive cages with the animals trapped behind bars; they’re all open air with large trenches around the perimeter to keep them separate from the humans looking on. The whole place is really well planted with trees and shrubs too and feels as close to nature as I think they could possibly make it. Thumbs up.
Aside from the trip this morning, I also walked across the city (in yesterday’s more or less continual drizzle) to get a sense of the place. The first area I stumbled upon (within about ten minutes) was the local food market and immediately you are unmistakeably in China; the way the food is displayed is unlike any other place in the world. They had fresh noodle vendors, cooked meats, raw meats hanging on hooks (unrefrigerated as seems to be the case most places in China), fruit and vegetables, raw dumplings, fresh breads and pancakes. Even though I was fairly close to the city centre the market still had a small-town feeling and people were chatting, joking and laughing. This was especially true when I asked to take the occasional picture!
After that, I spotted a monastery (the Wenshu Monastery) marked on my map (about another 20 minutes away) so went to take a look. The sign near the entrance said that it was one of the four major temples of Zen Buddhism. The complex looked fairly extensive and impressive so I paid my entrance fee (only 5 RMB = £0.50) and went in. It was worth the time and seemed to be very much in use (unlike a lot of the other sights I’ve visited this trip) with religious services taking place, dining rooms for the monks, people praying and giving offerings and a myriad of shrines to both familiar and mysterious figures. The landscaped gardens that surrounded the central complex were home to a guesthouse for visitors and many local retirees were strolling in the gardens. The first temple on the site was founded in about 610 AD but the current buildings dated from the earliest around the 1680s. Somehow the monastery survived the Cultural Revolution intact and it still seems to be a living and breathing centre of Buddhism to this day.
After Wenshu, I took the long walk across town passing by the central TianFu Square (天府广), where there is one of the few remaining statues of Mao in China and he looks down on the square commandingly, hand raised as if marshalling an invisible crowd of followers. Most have been taken down in the years since his death as the Party tried to reduce the cult of personality surrounding him and his successors as Chairman. The Party recognised that so much unbridled power in one pair of hands is a bad idea for the country, (a tacit acceptance that Mao had caused many bad as well as many good things for the nation).
After about an hour’s walk, I got to where I was headed in the south-western corner of the city, a little restaurant in the Tibetan quarter of the city that came recommended and served amongst other things sweet dumplings called tangyuan (汤圆). The meal (see photo below) was good but not brilliant. I tried the dandan noodles (担担面, which I’d never heard of before but saw advertised in various restaurant windows walking around town) and when they came they were really spicy. Well it is Sichuan – I suppose I should have expected that(!) The dumplings were spicy too (except the sweet tangyuan). Anyway feeling satisfied and with a rather numb tongue I headed out to the nearby (and also recommended) Tibetan shopping street. Either I missed something or this street was rather a waste of time for someone like me. I could find nothing much to see (unless I wanted to have my own set of monk’s clothes made). It only seemed to sell souvenir type bric-a-brac that I had no use for. On reflection, I’m not sure what I was hoping to find. Never mind…
I walked back towards the hostel and saw what from the crowds was obviously another big tourist sight. Having no idea what I would find inside I paid the (unexpectedly high) 60 RMB entry (£6) and went inside. It turned out to be the “Wuhou” shrine to the Shu Kingdom which ruled parts of modern day Kunming, Guizhou and Sichuan between 220 and 265 AD (one of the Three Kingdoms). It honours the founding emperor, Liu Bei and the now perhaps even more renowned military strategist, Zhuge Liang, who loyally served the Kingdom. Zhu is known to all Chinese as the most intelligent of all their historical figures and the mastermind of various celebrated victories for Liu Bei. The temple is here because Chengdu was the capital of their kingdom.
John Woo’s recent movie Red Cliff tells the tale of one of these battles against the Wei Kingdom and further popularises the characters. Zhu was reputedly offered the chance to take the throne after him by Liu Bei, an offer which Zhu is said to have declined. Sadly for the people of the Kingdom, Liu’s son, Er Dou was meant to be a weak-minded and foolish leader and eventually betrayed his Kingdom, (by defecting to a neighbouring Kingdom) leaving his own to a rapid demise. I’m told that even today Er Dou is used as an insult towards another person being particularly stupid. Although there has been a shrine on the site, uninterrupted for nearly 1800 years, (in addition to Liu’s burial mound), the temple itself is relatively new with the oldest buildings and objects dating from the 1670s (the rest destroyed in the late Ming period).
Tomorrow lunchtime I head to Xining in Qinghai Province where I’ll be staying until Friday. Then I pick up my dad who’s flying in from London after which we’ll be travelling together for the next few weeks. The first leg of our journey is to take the new railway (opened 2006) from Xining up to Tibet. It is the highest train line in the world reaching heights of 5,072 metres at the Tanggula pass. We should (all things running to plan) arrive in Lhasa sometime on Monday. If you want to check the full route after that, click here and look at destinations 32-51.
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Here are all the photos from Chengdu:
City of Spice: Kuala Lumpur
Apr 15th, 2010 by Jonathan
KL is a remarkable city. I remember my first impressions of New York when I travelled there in July 2001 for the first time. Even having grown up in London, I was surprised by the huge variety of people on the street and on the subway. It felt exciting and different, perhaps even more diverse than London although this may just have been my own unfamiliarity with the city.
Well KL has thrown me back to that feeling with its display of colours and cultures. Walking around the Bukit Bintang area (where I stayed) each shop or restaurant down the street offers food and wares from a different part of the world. India, China and Malaysia of course but also Iran, Pakistan, Vietnam, Thailand, Iraq and Morocco just to mention a few. And the faces you see are a beautiful mixture of colours and shades; different browns, blacks, yellows and whites. A totally different set of combinations than I’ve seen anywhere else in the world. You can see many who must have been born of mixed race parentage and have strikingly unusual and beautiful features. When you add to this the assortment of regional clothing worn, from headscarves and skull caps, to African caftan’s and various traditional Islamic clothes, it is a feast of new sights.
And the food… the food. Well I love Asian food and this place has to be the most eclectic and delicious city in the world. Whether its Iban, Nyonya, Cantonese, Japanese or any one of dozens of other cuisines you’re after, you’ll be in luck here. If you’re in town, try the first floor food court in the Pavilion Mall and you won’t fail to be impressed by the freshly prepared displays of food ready for the swarms of hungry diners to enjoy for only and handful of ringgit.
On the downside, the weather here has been hot and humid which makes moving around and even sitting still often uncomfortably sticky. The only interruptions to this come from either aircon or the torrential downpours and thunderstorms after which you get respite for a few hours. The traffic is also a minor disaster and I do not envy the drivers in this city. I hope you can get a sense of how heavy the rain was from these photos; I haven’t seen anything like it for years.
KL in the rain from Bukit Bintang Monorail Station
KL in the rain from Bukit Bintang Monorail Station
It’s been great as well to find that I can use my Chinese outside China too. According to Wikipedia, 43% of the residents of KL are of Chinese descent making it the single largest ethnic group. The first taxi I took there, (during a fearsome thunderstorm) would have been an incredible struggle without being able to communicate in Chinese. It gave me a well needed boost to keep working away at the Chinese when sometimes I get a bit disheartened by how much there still is to learn!
I also found a fantastic spa and massage place where they do one of the best massages I’ve ever had but best of all, unlike the hostel, it had a good shower and it was a blessed relief to get under the fresh water.
I stayed in the Red Palm Backpackers hostel and it was a really friendly place. Sophie, Mac and the handful of other staff keep the place running brilliantly and it feels more like a homestay than a hostel. If it had decent showers, it would be the perfect place to stay. As it is, when I return, will have to try someplace else.
Well tomorrow I have a 6pm flight to Chengdu, Sichuan and will then venture onwards a few days later towards the Himalayas. Bye for now.
Kota Kinabalu and Pulau Sapi
Apr 14th, 2010 by Jonathan
It was only meant to be a flying visit, and so it was.
I arrived on Wednesday evening and today (Friday) am flying again at lunchtime so had only one full day here to play with. I had already decided to use it to do a bit of snorkelling and relax on the beach and after talking to the tour guide from Mount Kinabalu settled on the island of Sapi, a twenty minute boat ride from KK. This was, he said, the first choice for most local people and avoided the main alternatives (Mamutik and Manukan) that were cursed, like the National Park, by having their facilities managed by the dreadful Sutera. That was a compelling enough reason for me to choose Sapi, so together with a few people from the hostel, we headed to the ferry terminal to get a boat to the island.
Sapi has a lovely beach and some coral, so attracts snorkelers and scuba divers in addition to the sunseekers. There were many colourful tropical fish within only metres of the shore. The island itself had a place to rent snorkelling gear, a dive shop, a restaurant and some toilet facilities and was buzzing with a combination of foreign and local visitors.
Most of the foreigners were sat on the beach or in the water but the locals were all congregated around the rows of picnic tables that were set a little back from the sand in a clearing of trees. They were all sharing delicious-looking food either brought from home or cooked on the barbeques in the middle of their tables.
The people Jane and I travelled to the island with were a couple from Cornwall called Ruth & Jonny. Both had been working two to three jobs for the past months to save up for their trip and Jonny had recently sold his online eco-business to free up his time. They were very interested in environmental projects and I think set a good example for people like me who don’t do enough to minimise their own impact. Jonny’s company sold products like a stapler that used no metal (instead threading the sheets of paper to hold them together). Cornwall sounds great too (except for a frustrating lack of well paid jobs). I hope when I am back in England I have opportunity to visit and spend some time down there.
I also met a young couple on the beach who must have been only eighteen or nineteen but were also quite an inspiration. They had been camping on the beach for the previous three nights for the cost of only five Malaysian ringgit (£1) in total. Not only had they found the perfect spot but had had the initiative to find out that they could join the local library for a small fee (20MYR / £4) and borrow whatever beach reading material they wanted. They had all sorts of books with them laid out on their picnic table. To buy only one book in the shops would have cost much more and they told me they had been travelling around Asia this way for a couple of months already.
I didn’t really get much time in Kota Kinabalu itself but as the first place of any size I have been in Malaysia this time, I got my first chance to have an Indian curry for many months, yum. We stayed in the North Borneo Cabin backpackers and I really liked it. A pretty much perfect hostel with really friendly and funny staff, good showers and a great common room for watching movies, chilling and chatting with other travellers.
Anyway, that’s all for now… I must get to the airport…
Spirits of the Mountain: Mount Kinabalu
Apr 9th, 2010 by Jonathan
Mount Kinabalu is a freakish rock formation rising to over four thousand metres. It stands alone – its neighbours dwarfed by its size, the highest point between the Himalayas and Papua New Guinea. The mountain was such an important symbol in the area that in 1968 the people renamed the nearby state capital Jesselton, Kota Kinabalu (or KK). The state flag also shows the mountain’s profile. Our guide in the Kinabalu National Park explained that whilst other areas of the country were opened up to development (particularly for palm oil plantations) and other forms of exploitation, the mountain itself remained largely untouched because the local Kadazan Dusun people considered the land sacred. The indigenous population believed in various spirits (the spirit of the earth, the water and so on) and the mountain was where they believed their own spirits went after they died. In their own language Kinabalu means ‘the place where the spirits of the dead exist’.
We (me and a fellow traveller, Jane, who I met at Uncle Tan’s) spent a night in the Mount Kinabalu National Park and the following day hiking on the local trails, which are in virgin forest and have a huge variety of life on show. Because I was only in the area for a day, I had pre-arranged to have a local guide for half a day (at a cost of about £10) to show me around and teach me a few things. What should have been a straightforward arrangement, turned out to be a lot more complicated because although the park has avoided the exploitation of its natural assets, it has fallen victim to financial exploitation. In the 1990s the state government privatised all of the lodges and restaurants in the Park and allocated them to one company whilst at the same time outsourcing management of all the Park Guide services to a second private company.
The result has been that the price to climb the mountain (which takes 2 days and 1 night) has risen from about 300 MYR (£60) in the 1990s to about 1,500 (£300) today. Local people who used to be entitled to free or very discounted entry are no longer able to afford to come into the park. The hotel staff try and push expensive services on you (for example, we were offered a private bus to KK for 150 MYR (£30) when the real price should have been 20 MYR (£4). The same beds in the same lodges are triple the price they were twenty years ago and to add insult to injury, I was told that the company (Sutera) that runs the lodges and restaurants is owned by the daughter of the former Prime Minister of Malaysia. Corruption? Hmm…
The two companies do not cooperate, so although they are next door and I had arranged my guide in advance with the hotel, the hotel staff were having obvious difficulty in actually getting me one! On check-in I asked where and when I should meet the guide the following day. Their reply? Maybe you don’t need a guide? When I explained that I knew we didn’t need one, but we really would like one, I was told it would be arranged in the morning so to ask again then.
In the morning we asked again and were again reminded that we didn’t need a guide. Same conversation and we were told to come back after breakfast when one would be provided. Ok.
After breakfast, we are taken to meet our guide. I go to say hello and within seconds it is clear this guy does not speak English. Ok. Not much point in paying for that. By this time I have spotted the Park Guide office so give up on the hotel and go and talk to the guy apparently in charge on their front desk. I ask for an English guide. He and the other staff in the office look at me as if I’ve just asked for a blow-job and then quickly return to their indifferent gazes. He grudgingly says ok and we are sent outside to wait for the new English-speaking guide. After only a few minutes he turns up and away we stroll… Within moments we are suspicious; the new guy is carrying a map of the hotel complex and trail routes and is examining it as if it’s the first time he’s ever seen it. I ask him if he knows where he’s going. He replies ‘yes’ then after a short pause, ‘no’. I repeat the question. He stands and stares at me confused. Great. No only does he not know where he’s going, he doesn’t speak English either!
The truth is that all of this carry on – much like a scene from Fawlty Towers with our very own Manuel – isn’t getting me angry. I am happy to be travelling and on the mountain and at the same time equally amused by the situation and disappointed for everyone else who has to put up with it (the other visitors and particularly the decent members of staff who have to work there). Despite this new obstacle, I decide to have one last attempt. I say to Jane I’m going to go into the office and try a bit of ‘controlled’ shouting to see if we can get what we want, now understanding the situation better. Jane says in that case she’s going to go in the opposite direction (not liking conflict) and scurries off to do some emails.
I head into the office and raise my voice enough to get the attention of all four staff members and two other visitors in the centre and throw it out there “WHAT KIND OF BUSINESS ARE YOU RUNNINGHERE?!”… They all look up with extreme distaste and I repeat the question in the same tone. The leader says, “please calm down sir.” Still with a slightly raised voice I reply “I think I am entitled to be angry given that you just stared me in the face and lied.” I’m not making any friends. Anyway, there is one tour guide in the room who looks rather sympathetic to my predicament and (in good English) offers to take me, but then adds that if he does it will cost more. I ask why I should pay more than was already agreed and he gets visibly angry too but remains silent.
I try a change of tactics to win back this guy and explain that me and my friend have travelled a long way to see their beautiful country. That we only have one day in the area and that we had really hoped to see and learn something about it. Did they really not care about that? Isn’t that what there supposed to be there for? The guys on the desk remained totally indifferent, in fact now looking at me with increased loathing and disdain, but the guide himself softened, half-shouted something in Malay to the guys on the desk and told me to follow him.
As soon as we step out of that office things totally changed and he quickly apologised and explained that his anger was towards his own company not me. Apparently they always do this and try and provide the cheapest person (and least qualified guide) they can get away with. They insist that the guides try to take more money and he seems genuinely embarrassed we were put in that position. I quickly offer my own apology in case I had offended him somehow, but he assures me that’s not the case and we shake hands. Mission accomplished, I grab Jane from the internet room and off we go.
The guide turns out to be a really good guy, probably in his early forties. Sadly the weather is rather overcast so views of the mountain are absent (luckily we caught some the night before) and we enter the forest where he talks about a some of the plants but more about life in general including the woes of the privatisation, his family and growing up in the village next to the mountain.
View of the mountain the night before
He is one of the indigenous Kadazan Dusun who make up 50% of Sabah’s population and it is interesting to hear how it was only in the 1950s that his people stopped living a nomadic existence here when European missionaries brought them the agricultural knowledge required to survive in one place. He talks about the changes with mixed feeling, on the one hand regretting the loss of the culture of his forefathers but on the other readily acknowledging the greater quality of life he and his five children enjoy compared to his elders. He and his kids all attended missionary schools and he says as well as providing the new agricultural techniques they also provided healthcare to some of the local community. In terms of converting the local population the Church placed its emphasis on the Holy Spirit which was a familiar enough concept for the locals with their own spirits already established.
We also discussed his five kids, the oldest of whom is off to Kuala Lumpur to start university in September, a lucky scholarship winner, and the system in Malaysia that continues to privilege the Muslim population over other ethnic groups. Even though the Muslim population only represents about 40% nationwide, they are allocated 65% of the scholarships. To get a job in the national government is basically only possible if you are a Muslim. In Sabah, Muslims are only about 20%. He says that he didn’t get to go to university because of this policy and it is the main source of resentment in Sabah where otherwise things are fairly harmonious between ethnic groups. He tells me that in Malaysian Borneo (Sabah and Sarawak) its quite common to see people of different ethnicity eating out together, but that you never see that in Peninsular Malaysia. Apparently the Malay (Muslims) do not like the Indian population, but the Indian and Chinese groups get on well together and between them more or less drive the entire economy.
After a great two hour walk and even better conversation, we reach the end of our trail, exchange contact details and say goodbye. Next time I make it to Sabah, I hope to visit his farm in the village and even better, side-step the disaster taking place up at Fawlty Towers!!
Uncle Tan’s
Apr 7th, 2010 by Jonathan
Sabah rocks.
I’ve just arrived at tonight’s lodgings and am waiting for the water to warm-up enough for a very good shower. We came out of the jungle this morning and still haven’t had a proper wash for 3 days! There was no running water in the jungle camp (although river water was available) and from there we had a five hour bus journey to this stop on the route; Mount Kinabalu National Park.
Am dying to wash but will be another 45 minutes till its ready, so will scribble down a little bit about the trip so far.
I flew straight from Kaohsiung to Kota Kinabalu (KK) in the north of Borneo with Malaysia Airlines and then connected in KK to Sandakan on the south-east coast of the island (a short 40 minute hop by plane). The plan is to make my way back to KK across the island (8 hours by bus) in time for my flight out at the end of the week, stopping off to do three things.
- One. Spend some time in the jungle and see the Orangutans.
- Two. Visit Mount Kinabalu, do some trekking in the area.
- Three. Spend a day or two in KK for a bit of snorkelling.
So the last three days were part One and on the recommendation of a friend who was in Borneo last year (thanks Bernie), I went to Uncle Tan’s; a company that organise great wildlife tours from their very basic camp in the jungle near Sepilok. To get there from town is an hour’s drive down tarmaced roads, then another hour on dusty dirt tracks through palm oil plantations, followed by a short boat ride on the Kinanbantan river.
When you arrive you are greeted by the friendly camp staff and a small village of raised wooden walkways and six-person sleeping huts, plus one large hut for eating meals and chilling in the evenings and a couple of smaller briefing areas. Everyone is allocated a sleeping hut and I was the only guy in a group with five women between 24 and 32 years old (who the staff would refer to conspiratorially as my ‘five wives’). Each sleeping hut had three double sleeping mats and these were really dirty, smelly and horrible… It was so hot that you would sweat not even moving and these mats had probably seen dozens of night’s worth of grime.
The temperature when we arrived was well above 30 and the humidity intense. Later that night, trying to sleep and wearing the lightest of clothes, under nothing but a mosquito net, we were all still dripping. It didn’t really start to get cool until perhaps 3 in the morning, by which time only 3 hours remained before our six a.m. wake up call to do the day’s first wildlife spotting.
Fortunately the discomfort of the camp was more than compensated for by the wildlife we got to see. After nearly two days of treks and taking boat trips up and down the river in search, we had managed to see some really rare animals. Amongst others, we saw the Proboscis, Red-leaf and Grey-leaf monkeys, various gibbons and macaques, kingfishers, civet cats and eagles. But greatest of all was to see the old man of the forest himself, right in the wild… the Orangutan.
I will post the pictures as soon as I get to a half decent internet connection. Update: Photos are now up. Click here to view.
The group of people on the tour were fun, and the staff good humoured and entertaining too, so everyone remained in good spirits for the duration. In the evenings, the staff would play guitar, sing and offer you local rice wine and joke around with the camp visitors. If you’re heading down that way and don’t mind slumming it a bit, go see Uncle Tan!
Well my time waiting for hot water is up so I’m off to have a dream shower. Bye for now.