"In the Jungle"

So from Bako National Park we headed back to Kuching for a night (and some washing!) before our next adventure which involved a couple of boat trips through Sibu to Kapit where we had a chill day, not even managing to make it to the lake! From there we headed off in boats again to get to Belaga, a small town on the river which is used as a base for visits to longhouses and treks into the jungle. After some swift negotiating by Pete, we ignored the Lonely Planet’s recommended guide and headed out to the jungle with Ham and his friends. Our first day started slowly with a gentle boat ride up the river (until we could go no further due to rapids), and a nice gentle walk through the jungle along the edge of the river. After a brief stop mid-morning for a sip of the all important rice wine, we continued our journey, which got a little more exciting, with some rather dubious “bridges” (usually a slender moss-covered log above a ditch) that needed to be crossed. Before the trek (Rich, Alexa, Jo, Elaine, Jen, Pete, Michael S & me):

It was about 2pm before we rolled into camp, dripping with sweat and all feeling quite good about ourselves for having done so well. We spent the afternoon hanging around the camp, swimming in the river, and, that which we do best, chatting. It gets dark around 6.30, and it was just before then that our guides prepared a hearty meal of rice and chicken, and some small river fish, freshly caught. Little were we to know then how much strength we would need for the next day, or perhaps we all would have gone back for seconds…

Elaine was enjoying it... honestly...:

Our home for the night was a tarpaulin with some mozzie nets underneath – not our most luxurious accommodation, but certainly an experience, particularly when the rain started to come down by the bucket-load (well, we were camping! What could we expect??). While we slumbered (or attempted to!), our guides headed off into the wilderness to catch / shoot / spear / hook breakfast… And a fine feast of frog, mouse deer and spicy 2-minute noodles it was! So, suitably sustained, we headed off for our second day of trekking. We started back along the same path that we had come along, and spent a couple of hours meandering along, until Ham said (rather ominously), “Now we go over mountain. Oh, I mean hill”. No, he meant mountain.

For the next couple of hours we slogged up the hill, using our walking sticks (freshly cut for us the previous day) and tree trunks and roots to haul ourselves up a seemingly never-ending mountain of dense forest! The most disheartening times of the journey were definitely when our local guides shot off up the hill past us, not needing to haul themselves up, but rather seeming to spring from slippery mud to rock and back again, while we carefully placed each of our feet! We arrived at the top with an immense sense of achievement, only to hear our guide say, “and now we go down”. If going up had been hard, coming down was quite an experience – I don’t think any of us managed to stay on our feet the whole time, with even the most sure-footed of us (of which I am definitely not one, hence the bat guano incident in Niah National Park which I will talk about later) ending up on our bums at some stage!

A rather sweaty version of me, by the buttresses of a huge tree:

We finally reached the bottom, exhausted, filthy dirty, sweaty and generally smelling and feeling quite foul. So it must have been a real treat for the people in the longhouse to invite us in for coconut juice! A bit of sugary water helped to revive us enough to head to the jetty and to the boat back to Belaga for a shower and change of clothes before we would head back to the longhouse to visit properly.

This was only half way through...:

Into the boats for the trip back to Belaga: The longhouses are, as you might expect, houses that are long. The Borneo equivalent of the terraced house? We had brought gifts of rice wine for the adults and balloons for the kids, so after arriving, and being offered a small glass of rice wine (more than enough!), we spent quite some time blowing up 100 balloons, and giving them to the kids. There were those who were too scared to come up to get one, but sent their parents instead, and then there were others who seemed to finish the afternoon with tens of balloons which someone had helpfully tied together for them to let them run along the balcony with the balloons streaming behind them. The balloons were very well received by the kids, some of their enthusiasm could perhaps be attributed to the fact that they had all been away at boarding school all week, but were home for the weekend!

The longhouse we visited:

Ah, digital cameras and balloons, all you need to keep kids entertained: We were lucky enough to be invited into one man’s house which gave us a really good idea of the layout of the houses and a bit of an insight into how the people live. Our guide, Ham, told us a little bit of background to the inhabitants of this particular longhouse. A new dam is under construction upriver from the longhouse and it has caused the river to silt up, which has killed all of the fish and driven away the crocodiles, and is making life very difficult for them.

After a good night’s sleep in Belaga, we headed off in two 4WDs. Accompanied by a rather eclectic mix of music (Celine Dion to Barbie Girl, and some very hectic dance music), we headed up over logging roads dominated by logging trucks that have supreme right of way, and free licence to travel on whichever side of the road they choose. A couple of hours later we arrived at Niah National Park, and checked into some very lovely cabins – 2 large rooms with 4 beds each, and then a living area, and, most exciting of all, a BBQ! For both nights we stayed there we were treated to a BBQ dinner (chicken wings, apparently the rest of the chickens are exported, so only the chicken wings remain in the shops…) and, SALAD! Despite my earlier statements in the Stans, tomato and cucumber have never tasted so good! Perhaps it was the lack of dill…

A red millipede:

Niah NP is home to a huge cave housing approximately half a million bats, and about the same number of swiftlet birds. On our second afternoon at Niah, I headed off with Rich, Elaine and Pete to explore the caves. Armed with headtorches we headed deep into the caves, finding bats (and their associated guano on which I managed to slip and graze my elbow… who has a grazed elbow at my age?) and eventually some of the oldest cave paintings in the world.

To the bat cave, batman:

From Niah we headed to Miri, our first proper city for a while, and planned our celebration for the fact that tomorrow is our 6 month anniversary of leaving London! Time has flown.