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Borneo Dinero Kota GamalabaluWe
arrived in Borneo very late after a comfortable flight from Singapore, only
to find that there was nobody available to give us the key to our room in the
guesthouse we had booked in advance (yes we were pro active for once). So
there we were in the middle of nowhere, at 1am, no staff, no key, no room. After
wondering around the place for about 10 minutes and shouting in a desperate
attempt to wake someone up, we were just about to sit down and crash on the
couch for the night when Super-Chris spotted a key hanging on a board. We
were certainly not sure whether this was our key, but snug upstairs and
locked the door, claiming the room as ours for the night. Gamal deep, Mountain highEarly
next morning we were woken up by the shouts and screams of kids playing in
the garden and got up for breakfast. The key turned out to be ours and after
a lovely breakfast we got the bus to head up to Mount Kinabalu. This is the
highest mountain in Borneo (at 4101 metres) and we were ready to attack it
the next day. It is then that we realised just how expensive - or rather
extremely bad value for money - Borneo is: we booked our first ever usd40 a
night accommodation; and this was for 2 single beds in a damp dorm room. Everything
seemed to have doubled in price over the last few months and most tourist
activities were atrociously overpriced. This soon turned out to be one of the
main reasons why we cut our trip to Borneo short. This and ....the weather. Our first
day was exhausting but comparatively dry and we arrived in the half way point
well in time, to rest, eat, enjoy the view and get warm. The trip up was very
very tough (steps, bigger steps, and some more uneven slippery steps, all
2900 of them!) and Silvia was particularly dead after her 4.5h non-stop hike.
Not too soon after the clouds came in and the promised stunning view was
well....not there. When the time came to get up the next morning at 2am for
the climb to the summit it was pissing down with rain, making the already
steep climb, miserable, cold and very slippery. Clever Silly decided to give
this one a miss and stayed in bed to catch some more sleep, but mighty Chris
geared himself up to go out, conquer the elements and make a brave attempt
for the summit (together with another 100 idiots). He arrived at the top
bright and early with the first group and, for lack of a view, a cup of hot
chocolate or anything apart from rain and total darkness to stare at, he took
a nap, waiting for the 5:45am sunrise. He was woken up by the guide who was
wondering what the hell he was doing sleeping at the top at 6:15am, when
everyone else had already left!. When at
6.30am Chris had still not seen the light, he had a crappy picture taken and
came down to meet Sil who was bravely attempting the defrost the other 100
climbers and re-animate them back to human form. The climb back down to the
park (yeah yeah, under the rain...) went surprisingly smooth -and oh so
fast!- and at noon we were back and ready to go to the Hot Springs in Poring. A hot Gamal and three horny ScandiesThe hot
springs turned out to be heavenly and we spent some well-deserved hours
relaxing and soaking our tired limbs in the pools with three Scandinavian
travellers (Yannika, Annika and Helga, or something like that). We had
decided to skip many of the must-see sights in Borneo as it was still raining
and it was still expensive: all the worthwhile tourist spots seem to be run
on a well-guarded extortion monopoly basis. A visit to Turtle Island would
have set us back usd40 a person on accommodation only, plus boat and park
entry fee, whereas diving in Sipadan would have cost more than usd600 pp for
2/3 days- and it wasn't even the good diving season). Instead, we headed to
the well-recommended jungle camp of the famous Uncle Tan. Uncle
Tans dead Gamal, Uncle Tan's dead... ...and
the camp is now run by a bunch of irresponsible show offish adolescent
gigolos whose main concern is getting laid with the young female guests who
seemed to have gone totally gaga at the sight of the pierced nipples of these
modern pseudo-Tarzan. We were only three guests to arrive at the camp that
day, a 2 hours boat ride into the heart of the jungle. It was immediately
obvious that our arrival did not feature very high on the agenda of the camp
kids, as they had not done the slightest bit of effort to clean the camp or
even repair the boat which had failed the day before. When we got out of the
boat, after floating aimlessly on the Sungai Rinabatangan river with a broken
motor (and having had enough time to admire lots of macaques, huge hornbills,
a rhino hornbill and many eagles) we were quite shocked at how disgusting it
all was. Walking knee-deep into a mixture of mud and pig shit, we were guided
to our "bungalow", "unpacked" and went back to the
"kitchen" to meet the rest of the crowd. The few people which were
already there turned out the be long termers, some of them having already
spent more then 2 months, on-and-off, in camp. We were welcomed with a small
smile, a slight nod, and lots of whispering behind our back; it was like
stepping in the middle of a sect of some sort. Silvia needed no more than
half an hour to realise that there was no way she would stay there for more
then one night, and luckily she found a buddy in Mauri (the third new guest)
who also hated the place at first sight. By this
stage we had visited the outdoor "toilet" where the toilet paper
had been stacking up in the
stainless eel barrels for at least a month (and everybody seemed to be
wondering why the toilets stank so much!); we had eaten in the
"dining area" which
was incidentally also the designated toilet for the two families of semi-wild
pigs; and we had almost broken our neck on the wooden "stairs"
leading to our "beds" which were in desperate need of fixing. Luckily
enough there were still a few spare boots left, for one is nothing - and
nobody- without a pair of rain/mud/shit/garbage-proof tall plastic wellies. We had
already been to the jungle a few times before, and we were ready for the
(very) basic accommodation, and for the mud, and rain, and humidity, and the
millions mosquitoes, and for the meals that are a mere improvisation art, and
for the outdoor toilets, the lack of real showers and for all the other
aspects that make a jungle camps not exactly the bloody Hilton ... but the
jungle does not have to be dirty, and we could not really see past the heaps
of garbage, the dirt, the stinking unemptied toilet bins, and the general
carelessness. The same
night we went on our evening safari (only after all the guys had their
monthly hair-colouring session), and, from our small long-tail boat, saw
sleeping colourful kingfishers from amazingly close, a green viper and lots
of super weird long-schnozed Proboscis monkey. The young lads certainly made
up for their total lack of housekeeping by their excellent animal spotting
technique and knowledge of the jungle! Another
thing that we found great was that a little family of Orang Utans had decided
to make our camp home for a while. We could hear them making all kinds of
noises during the night -though their branch-breaking, object throwing on our
tatch roof and unremitting screaming was still not loud enough to cover up
the live karaoke night organised by the regular sect gang till 3am. The next
morning we got up nice and early with high hopes of our promised 6am tea and
our 6.30am morning safari, only to find that, of course, absolutely nobody
was up. After making a little karaoke of our own, using the dirty pots and
pans as instruments to accompany our slightly off-tuned morning voices, we
finally managed to get some movement in the love barracks, followed by a
charming, 'Hmm, you want a morning drive? Why?'. We politely reminded the
half-naked Mogli-wannabe that of course we wanted a bloody morning drive as
that was what we had paid for, and that hed better hurry up or else... We
left at around 7am and caught some more great sights of the very
funny-looking Proboscis monkey and cheeky macaques. When we
arrived back to camp starving, we found out that breakfast consisted only of
dry toast and old biscuits (they had run out of almost everything and had
forgotten to go shopping). Mauri had absolutely had enough of it all and
decided to have a shouting match with one of the sect members, who very
stupidly told her she "could go home today if she didn't like the
place". Mauri was in no mood at all to be told what to do by a pumpous
23-year old silly twat and made that abundantly clear. The heat was
definitely on! Things
were relatively quiet after that and we had a great time looking at the huge male
Orang Utan (one of only 8,000 left in the world may I add for the record) who
had built his nest right above our bungalow and who spent his time throwing
down large branches and pieces of jackfruits that were quickly picked up by
the opportunistic cheeky macaques. At least
it was quiet, we were in the jungle, we were in the middle of the nature, we
had great views, we were sweating like pigs, and longed for a nice shower... It
is then that we found out that the water pump was not working and that none of
the lazy bums could be bothered to fix it, or to get some water from the
river so that we could freshen up. On top of this we were told we could not
have our afternoon drive as all the boats were out to collect 23 new guests
(23 victims! where did they think they were going to put them??), Silvia
completely flipped. She tried to still be very polite and asked why we were
not getting the service we had paid for and were promised, when brother sect
member number three commented "what?, do you want them to built a
boat?" This was the final drop and no single word was ever spoken again
between the three aliens and the local mafia. Luckily things got slightly
better when the new guests arrived. All of a sudden, the place got cleaned,
the garbage burnt, the dining room moved to a excrement-free part, the pigs
sent away, the spare boots lined up and the piling dishes washed. Only the
one-month-and-one-day old toilet paper collection was left as reminder of the
good old days...The camp was now buzzy, people were playing volley ball, and
we finally had some decent people to talk to and laugh with. And yes, the
new-comers were just as underwhelmed as we were by the camp; so we could have
yet another proper moan before heading off the next morning back to
civilisation, and a mud-free clean nice bed. Gamal goes to a Rehab CentreThis we
found at the Sepilok bed and breakfast which is located just outside the gate
of the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre. While this guesthouse does
not receive a particularly great review in the Lonely Planet, it turned out
to be the nicest place we stayed in so far. We had a beautiful spacious room
with a wooden floor, large windows and a balcony overlooking the big garden
and the Sepilok National Park. The public area downstairs became our own
private comfortable living room where we spent the entire evening glued to
the TV, reading gossip magazines and eating wonderful food. At first
we had decided to give the Orang Utan centre a miss, but our appetite had
been widely awakened by the great male in the camp and we were ready to go
and see some more. We were not disappointed. At the rehabilitation centre
they keep a lot of Orang Utans which were kept by people as pets (highly
illegal and plainly stupid) or apes which found themselves without a home due
to the constant logging going on in most of Borneo. They are taught again by
the caretakers to feed themselves, climb on trees, hang upside down on
lianas, and do all the nifty ape tricks that would allow them to live in the
wild again. In the beginning many are still fed at special feeding stations
where visitors can see them. Even though there were a lot of people, as it
was Sunday, it was still amazing to see them coming in from the jungle,
swinging from tree to tree and collecting their daily ration of bananas and
milk. Some of the younger ones put on a great show for us and they were a
delight to look at. From
Sepilok we made our way back to Kota Kinabalu, had dinner with Mauri at the
Segala cafe on the beachfront, and took the plane to Sing-a-shopping-poor,
where we'd spend one night before finally going to much anticipated
Indonesia. Conclusion: We had
originally planned to spend quite a lot of time in Borneo (then again, we
also wanted to be zillionaires by age thirty! but hey... shit happens), but
we finally cut it down to 10 action-filled, emotion-rich discovery days.
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