Flying to Bario

Bario is in the heart of Borneo.  The best way to get there is by the twice daily MAS Wings service from Miri, which uses robust old 14-seater Twin Otter light planes.  You can also go by four-wheel drive using a network of logging roads, but it's a muddy, bumpy 12-hour ride.  The flight is a visceral experience during which you can watch the pilots wrestle the controls and flip the switches as they dodge the clouds then swoop through a clear gap down towards the tiny strip of grey tarmac which is Bario Airport.

I had made no plans, which is just as well because the Lonely Planet Guide to the area is uselessly out of date.  As I left the arrivals shed there were several locals milling about, looking for clients.  I spoke to one who invited me to his Homestay (Malaysia's word for "bed and breakfast").
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Douglas".
"Guess what my name is?"
So I joined Douglas in his four-wheel drive truck along with three young obstetric nurses from Miri and went to De Plateau Homestay a couple of kilometres outside Bario itself.

De Plateau is quiet and charming and, like pretty well every Homestay in Bario and its environs, costs 80 ringgits (about 20 euros) per night, full board.  Also like all the other Homestays, De Plateau relies on a generator for electricity, which runs from around 7.00 to 10.00pm, there is cold water only in the basic toilet and shower cubicles and it gets chilly at night.  The food is good, with a wide selection of vegetables, chicken and sometimes wild boar for lunch and dinner with fresh local pineapple for desert when I was there.  Breakfast is omelette and noodles.

Once in Bario the big question is "what do I do now?"  To which the "Lonely Planet's" answer would be to find one of the many local guides queuing up to offer their services.  Not so, guides are actually few and far between and I found myself kicking my heels for the best part of two days, while Douglas promised me the immanent arrival of an experienced local.  During my wait I did a four wheel drive tour of Bario with Douglas' son (for which a charge of c twenty ringgits was made) and walked up "Prayer Mountain," a three to four hour hike to and from a local peak with excellent views over Bario and the paddy-strewn plain in which it lies, with the three nurses.

Kuching Skies

Sue and I went to Kuching last week for a final visit to Sarawak's capital before we head back to Europe in a few weeks.  For me it was a frustrating time as a couple of days after my 58th birthday I woke up with intense pain in my left knee and was unable to bend it.  It was no better one week later when we set off for the city with me struggling to fit in the passenger seat with a leg which wouldn't bend.  It felt uncomfortably like shifting Dad in and out of cars in recent years and left me with a nagging feeling that I was doing penance for not having been more patient with him.

We stayed at the Pullman, one of the posher hotels, where I spent a lot of the week lying on the bed, reading and watching TV.  When the boredom got too much I took photos out of our bedroom window.  When you look straight down at it, Kuching is much like any other city anywhere.  But look up or zoom in on the middle and far distance and a different picture emerges.  When the sky is not filled with dense, billowing, rain sodden clouds the intensity of the sunlight creates fantastic colourful and sculptural cloudscapes reaching far up into the atmosphere and at dusk these fade with amazing speed into twilight and darkness like God is turning down a dimmer switch.  I will miss these blue, yellow and copper skies when we return to Europe, especially monochrome England.

With the zoom one can reach out beyond the edge of Kuching to the jungle, paddies and rivers that
encircle it.  At the fringes of the city are the Malay kampungs (villages), from this distance they look like the hovels that surrounded the walls of a medieval castle.  The simile is appropriate, for the city is a concentration of wealth and privilege and the lives of many inside its walls are very different to those on the outside.  We come here to get a dose of modern life and to remind ourselves of the "civilisation" we come from.  When we are outside the cocoon of our hotel room we are on the streets and in the malls, buying stuff like there is no tomorrow with little rectangles of plastic that would be useless in our local market in Saratok, where even if they accepted credit cards, nothing costs enough to make it worth the bother.

Miri Again

After two days at Batu Niah I finally escaped to Miri by bus with my new found friends Martyn, Janina and Eva.  They were planning to get a bus from Miri to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, a journey which involves crossing the Brunei border four times and gathering an unfeasible number of passport stamps, while I was headed for the luxury of the Marriot hotel to meet Sue.  I said goodbye to my friends over a very indifferent lunch in the centre of Miri and with time to kill decided to walk up the hill overlooking the city centre to visit the Petroleum Museum.

After slogging up the hill in the afternoon sun it was, surprise, surprise, closed until further notice and
serving no other function than to provide some shade to a pack of disconsolate dogs.  I took a photo of "the Grand Old Lady", Miri's first oil well, had a diet coke at a nearby cafe, then said "fuck it" and walked back down again.  It would have been easy to get a taxi to the Marriot, on the outskirts of the city, but having spent the last few days as a parsimonious backpacker, I decided to walk, arriving tired and a bit footsore in the late afternoon.

I passed the time waiting for Sue by sitting in the foyer cafe drinking cappuccino, eating expensive cake and watching the people come and go.  I have a love-hate relationship with places like the Marriot.  If I'm honest I like the comfort, coffee and cake and that feeling of being "looked after", but I hate that sense of being part of a privileged elite that upmarket hotels foster so deliberately.  I especially hate this because it is so seductive and so quickly morphs into a sense of entitlement.  I've actually been part of this hotel foyer society for much of my life and I feel I know so many of these people personally, particularly the white ones that make up about half of the total.  I've worn those slacks and carried that briefcase and it has been my sporty little number in the hotel carpark.  I've also worn that Timberland shirt and cotton shorts and those deck shoes.  I want to walk up to some of these people and say "hey, don't pretend that you deserve this, remember you're just lucky to have been born in the right place at the right time and had the right opportunities."  But maybe I'm just frustrated that as a grumpy and jobless old git I'm not really part of this society anymore and that what I really hate is my own irrelevance and exclusion.  Or all of the above.