Warning: this is really long. Do you want to commit your whole lunch break to it, or do you want to get some friends together and have a dramatic reading on Saturday night with some beers? You can cast people as different voices (Emma, Bridget, Carl, Mike, Agnes Keith, orangutans) and send me photos of your freeze frames so I can guess which scene you are reenacting. If I guess the scene, you win a prize.
After an Earl Grey tea at Harrods in Kuala Lumpar - the first and most delicious cup of Earl Grey, made with real cow's milk, fresh from a cow, that will go off if left for too long (I checked with the waitress) in ten weeks - we finally made it to Malaysian Borneo, or the state of Sabah as it is also known. Our taxi driver apparently doubled up as a tour guide and was incredibly informative during our three hour transfer to our hotel, which was super helpful, but also a little bit of an overload after a day of travelling and excitement of nearly-missed flights. Because this was an action-packed holiday, I will have to use subheadings to organise all the anecdotes into manageable chunks. Feel free to treat these anecdotes like episodes in a series, and come back to them as and when you have time to escape to the jungle-filled landscape that I will now create with my amazing talent for imagery and figurative language...
Kinabalu
This subheading refers to the town, the mountain and the national park. Of the three, we got to only two properly. We knew we didn't have the time to climb Mount Kinabalu, and apparently Bridget and I have a poor track record with tall mountains and mist: by the time we had commandeered a reasonably priced taxi from our hotel to the park gates, and digested our breakfast, the clouds had sat down on the mountain and we stood at the view point and stared at spooky whiteness. Technically, we did see the mountain, but there was an inconveniently dense amount of cloud coverage, so all we saw was this:
Can you see the mountain?
A similar thing happened last year at the top of Toubkal. On this occasion, our failure was due to the fact that neither of us had stopped to realise that in the rainforest, the clouds get tired during the day and so descend to earth for a snooze, soaking everyone on their way down and not because we were walking against a mighty and aggressive wind storm. Unperturbed, we took a walk through the jungle, which involved much bug-flapping and unexpectedly walking through spider webs and having more inadvertent girly fits about things clinging to us. It wasn't particularly Li Hi, but then the thought and very real danger of leeches (leeches!) is enough to cause even Bear Grylls to have an epileptic spasm of leg-slapping, deet-spraying and entirely useless arm-wiping. Ug. Leeches.
We tried to wait out the clouds, and watched them roll across the landscape like the crests of waves from underneath our raincoats for a while, but eventually gave up and returned to our hotel to sit in sulphur-smelling hot springs whilst it continued to rain. That was pretty cool. Whenever we got too hot, we just got out and stood in the rain for a while to cool down.
The rainforest, by the way, is pretty impressive. It's everything you imagined the rainforest would be like: lots of green and vines and creepers and strange noises and enormous flying bugs and jumping frogs and bats. Pretty rad. We arrived at night time and could just see all the trees poking out of an entire blanket of cloud that had dropped right into the valley. Now that WAS like looking at the ocean. All we needed was an enormous spotlight to shine onto all 4,000-something metres of Mount Kinabalu to see it in all it's glory. Maybe next time.
Sepilok and Sandakan
Remember how I only go places if there's a book involved? Well Borneo was a different kettle of fish: I had to find a book to justify the literary worthiness of the trip and so whilst Bridget has been reading 'In The Shadow of Kinabalu' (morbid death march fest), I have been flicking my way through Agnes Keith's 'Land Below The Wind' (colonial and imperial romp fest). Conveniently her house just happened to be the perfect mini-museum stopping spot after a five hour bus ride and before our expedition into the jungles of Sepilok to see orangutans and other rainforest-type creatures.
Agnes Keith's doodle:
Actual view:
Pretty accurate.
As is always the case with awesome nature-type things, it is difficult to describe them in a way that does them justice. Being less than twenty metres away from six orangutans, including one baby, and a whole hoard of macaque monkeys, including babies and one that jumped up onto the viewing platform and scared the life out of us and almost caused an old Australian lady to fall over (hehe - but we weren't allowed to laugh) is pretty darn cool. There were hornbills flying overhead also. Extra cool. Walking back to the cafe and shop and having one of the naughty orangutans turn up at the reception area and hang out for a bit whilst everyone freezes, unsure of exactly how dangerous a rogue orangutan is, whilst slowly reaching for their camera is also pretty cool. Wandering down to the Rainforest Discovery Centre and strolling along a canopy walkway to hang out with a giant tree squirrel, some really tall trees and some brightly coloured little birds, all 17 metres off the ground: cool. Pretty cool. But 'cool' is not a very descriptive word. Conclusion: watch more of the Discovery Channel or come to Borneo to hang out in the rainforest with some orangutans. Do it. Nature is amazing.
Mabul (not Sipidan. What's so great about Sipidan anyway?)
So I'll get it off my chest straight away: the start of this leg of the journey was like knowing you were going to get an iPad for Christmas, seeing the packaging in your parents' wardrobe and the gift receipt on top of the microwave and then not receiving said iPad on Christmas day because you don't have a PADI qualification and therefore can't even get a permit to sit on your iPad let alone dive in it.
Translation: mother, father, I don't want an iPad for Christmas. But I did want to dive off Sipidan and it turns out I can't. Risk or Death made a really big deal out of how amazing it was but when we arrived in Semporna, a nice man named Mike spelt the whole thing out for us, whereupon I genuinely nearly cried. Not exaggerating, I had to check myself and remind myself that I was in public with strangers and it wasn't okay to cry tears of bitter disappointment. Borneo is a really long way away from even Vietnam and I'd come on the understanding that I'd be Discovery Diving Sipidan. Bad times. So when I tell you about my trip to Borneo, do NOT ask, "oh, the diving there's supposed to be amazing - did you dive off Sipidan?". The answer is no, I did not.
After two lunch time beers, some pizza and reassurance from Bridget and Mike, though, I was totally over Sipidan and booked two dives and an overnight stay on Mabul island. Mabul island is like Sipidan's less flashy, chilled out cousin. It has more or less the same stuff to offer, but it's not making a big deal of it: that's not Mabul's style. Sipidan is like the melodramatic frontman. Mabul is like the cool bass player or drummer.
I then had a lot of fun with the medical questionnaire:
Mike: do either of you have any medical issues you think we should know about?
Me: Bridget has a heart murmur.
Bridget: that's right, I do.
Me: (looking at list of questions) Bridget, are your preparing to be pregnant?
Bridget: sadly, no.
Me: do you want to tell him about your dysentery now or later?
Bridget: er...
Me: Bridget only has one lung.
The next day we zipped across the Celebes Sea in a speed boat and arrived at the same time as the rain. It makes no difference though, because you're underwater. I peed in the ocean, Bridget freaked out about equalising her ears. After that, we saw six, that's right, SIX hawksbill turtles hanging out on some coral and some sunken wrecks. One even did swimming and swum above us so that the sun shone through the ocean and made him/her look like the shadow of a sea angel, slowly gliding through the still water. See, told you you'd get some figurative language.
We also saw lots of pretty fish, that we instantly forgot about when we got up onto dry land and were unable to identify on the Diver's Laminated Book of Fish, a shoal of squid, a big, ugly cuttlefish and some form of ray (Charles). Apparently coolest of all, though, was a Flamboyant Cuttlefish that looks like a stone when it's stationary but when it moves, turns into a neon light show and has black and white strips pulse along its back like Christmas tree lights. All the other divers thought we were completely Li Hi for having seen it, even if we were just on a Discovery Dive. We didn't tell them that Bridget and I had crashed into each other underwater or that Bridget had messed up her buoyancy and floated, unawares, to the surface from where Carl had to pull her down by a flipper. Nicht zo Li Hi...
Almost-last-day of the trip was spent waiting for the rain to stop and then SPRINTING to the beach to sunbathe and wandering around the Bajau village on the island and taking photographs of beautiful and interesting things. Here are some for your viewing pleasure:
The last one is my favourite.
Red fish: ARGGGGHHH!
Grey/brown fish: Hmmmph.
Pinky fish: uuuhhh?
Shark bait ooh ha ha.
