The Headhunter's Trail

The morning after the visit to the Deer and Lang Caves a smiling Larry guided us upriver by canoe to yet more caves and a Penan village.  The Penan were originally nomadic, but are now largely settled in villages.  In the Penan village in Mulu National Park they make some income by selling their craft work and other souvenirs to the passing travellers.  I bought this mat.

After lunch by the river we were taken by boat to the start of our trek.  Here Larry left us in the hands of Hafiz, who works for him, for the nine kilometre walk to Camp 5 where we were to spend the night.  It's a gentle trail through rainforest and most of the way it chucked it down so that the hundred or so trekkers in various parties arrived at the camp soaked to the skin.

That night we all slept as best we could in the damp dormitories of Camp 5, while a large bat circled around the rafters catching insects.  Next morning I, Hafiz and my Dutch companions set off the "Headhunter's Trail", an eleven kilometre trek to a portage point where we would get a boat downriver and out of the National Park.

For me it felt like a farewell to rainforest, as I've no idea if I will ever return to Borneo.  The weather was fine and the trail was clear although very waterlogged in places.  I picked up a leach or two, no great problem except they inject you with an anti-coagulant so it takes the small wound hours to stop bleeding and scab over properly.

At the end of the trail we were met by Larry's father, who was to transport us downriver to the family longhouse.  This took a couple of hours even though the river was in flood from all the heavy rain of the previous days.  At times we felt like an unguided missile shooting rapids at a good ten knots with water splashing over the sides of the narrow canoe.

Eventually, we left the rainforest and dropped down to more mixed jungle and farmland, with the odd longhouse at the river's edge.  Some displaying simple wooden statues like the one opposite.  There was very little cloud and as the journey dragged on I could feel myself getting increasingly sunburnt, but at least we could sit down in the boat after our trek.  It's an odd thing but rainforest trekking often doesn't feel especially arduous and yet it seems to take much longer to cover distances.  The eleven kilometres of the "Headhunter's Trail" for example took a good four hours, when logic would suggest it should be a little over two.  Funny, mysterious stuff rainforest, like wandering through a great, damp, green cathedral, where the gargoyles are constantly out of sight, making weird noises off.  I'm glad I've spent time there and I will miss it.

Finally we reached Larry's longhouse, where his dad explained to us that we would be staying in the old building (opposite), which is being replaced by a smarter concrete version with aircon et al.  That evening we had supper in the new building, including a birthday chocolate cake for me, which I and the Dutch family hungrily wolfed down.

Next morning Larry arrived to drive us the one and a half hours to Limbang, where the Dutch family got a bus to Kota Kinabalu and I hung with Larry for a few hours before going to the airport to catch my plane back to Miri, where Sue was waiting for me.

The Great Bat Exodus

We flew from Hanoi to Miri, via KL on Saturday 26th July.  Miri felt like unfinished business as I had to leave there in such a rush in early February to get to dad's bedside.  As our budget airline dropped down to the coast over the oil rigs and offshore service vessels and towards Miri Airport I felt both sad and excited to be back.  My stay didn't last long before I returned to the airport on the Monday to take the short thirty minute flight up to Mulu National Park.  Sue was back at work so I thought I'd use the weekdays constructively by visiting Sarawak's only World Heritage Site and doing a three-day trip along the "headhunter's trail".

The trip had been arranged for me by Sue's colleague Kerry, who is a friend since our days in the small Sarawak town of Saratok in 2011-13.  The trip is run by Larry a local guide and entrepreneur with his finger in many pies.  Like so many things in Sarawak the tour had a fairly haphazard feel to it.  I was met at the airport by a four-wheel drive which whisked me to a homestay near the National Park gates where I was allocated a bed in an almost empty dormitory.  Later in the afternoon Larry himself arrived to brief me.  He's a big man with a ready smile, a handshake and a trilby hat perched on his round head and thick neck.  Later he led me, a Dutch family of five with whom I would be travelling the headhunter's trail and a young Englishman called Thomas to the Deer and Lang caves a couple of kilometres inside the National Park.

The caves are reminiscent of the Batu Niah complex south of Miri - like the surface of Mars with the powerful smell of ammonia from thousands of years of accumulated batshit.  Going deeper into the caves there are streams and spectacular stalactites and stalagmites.  As evening approached Larry left us outside the caves with a few hundred other tourists to await the nightly exodus of the bats to scour the air for insects while a pair of eagles also circled hungrily.

Often these big set piece events are an anti-climax and I understand that when the weather is poor the bats can just stay in the great cave and refuse to come out.  But that evening they didn't disappoint their expectant audience waiting with cameras ready.  It started with a few strings, each comprising several hundred bats and after about twenty minutes turned into a continuous stream snaking from the cave, punctuated from time to time by a dive-bombing eagle pulling a hapless bat from the throng.  After about forty five minutes it was too dark to see anymore and so we all returned to our hotels and homestays with images that were mainly a pale imitation of what we had seen.

The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

Sue was feeling poorly on our first day in Hanoi, so this morning I set out on my own to walk the three or four kilometres to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.  It's a chaotic and friendly city, teeming with motorbikes and taxis and sensually overwhelming, with its mixture of strange sounds, sights and smells.

Our hotel is in the old quarter, which is particularly dense and busy, with narrow streets and a jumble of old buildings in a wide range of architectural styles.  As I got closer to the mausoleum the streets turned into wide boulevards and more police and military uniforms became apparent.

Eventually I reached the queue for the Mausoleum, patrolled by sombre white-uniformed soldiers who checked we were suitably attired (no vests or short shorts, no cameras and sunglasses and hats respectfully removed).  We were kept moving at a steady walking pace up marble stairs and round a couple of corners into the chamber where Ho's body lies in state, looking like a Tussaud's waxwork.  Apparently the body is whisked off to Moscow for a few weeks each year for "maintenance".

Inside the chamber the white-uniformed guards seem particularly sombre - there are several lining the walls and one at each corner of the coffin/sarcophagus.  They exhort us to keep moving, somehow emphasising their special status as guardians with a right to stay in the company of the Leader.

Filing back out into the heat and the sunlight I put my sunglasses back on and reflect on the experience, which has left me peculiarly moved.  I guess because Ho's mausoleum is such a powerful symbol which works on many levels.  At one level it's a powerful statement by the Vietnamese government that however liberal their economic policies have become, Vietnam is still at heart an unreformed one-party communist state.  At another it's a demonstration of a kind of doomed conservatism, desperate to embalm the past and create the impression that Ho's spirit lives on, although the man himself apparently wanted a quiet cremation.  At yet another it's a tourist freakshow to which everyone is invited provided they follow the rules, which kind of adds to the freakiness.

Afterwards I paid the small fee to visit Ho's nearby house, where his official cars are on display and his bedroom, study and politbureau meeting room.  Also there is a "stilt house" where he liked to spend time.  What's most interesting about these is that the rooms are beautifully and simply furnished with stylish pieces from the thirties in hardwood, plywood and bamboo, which suggest the man had extremely good taste that is very much at variance with the heavy-handed style of the mausoleum built in his honour and obviously against his wishes.

Back at the hotel the attentive and american accented reception staff asked me if I had enjoyed my visit.  To which I replied "yes, it was very interesting," accompanied by the most knowing smile I could muster.

Hoi An Nights

It's our ninth and last night in the Ancient House Village Resort and Spa on the outskirts of the charming City of Hoi An.  Our days here have developed a comfortable routine - a leisurely breakfast followed by sunbathing or sightseeing, a light lunch and in the evening a stroll around town and supper.  The resort is three kilometres from the town centre, but the management lays on a regular minibus to whisk us to and fro.

The town is dismissed by some reviewers as very touristy and unlike the "real" Vietnam, whatever that is.  But usually places are popular with tourists for a reason and Hoi An is a very beautiful place, close to the beaches of the South China Sea and bisected by a wide river.  The old town centre is a collection of ancient two-story wooden shop-houses blackened by decades of varnish or lacquer, with small temples dotted here and there.

In the evening the place is full of tourists from all over the world of all shapes, sizes and races, walking and browsing, sweating and smiling, stressed and angry, happy and relaxed.  Most of the locals are out to make a buck or two, but are laid back rather than desperate.  We've wandered around the place for most of the last nine evenings and still haven't run out of things to look at.

Usually at 9.15pm we catch the early minibus back to the resort and go to bed early, ready for another punishing day.

Vietnam Tour Veterans

Sue and I have survived our first tour of Vietnam.  Running out of things to do in the beautiful city of Hoi An we rashly booked a tour of the "My Son Holy Land".  This is our tour guide on the left.  The tour company collected punters from hotels all over the city in small vans and then herded us into a coach on the edge of town.  When our driver exhorted us to leave the van with a cry of "take all your belongings with you" I felt a frisson of alarm.

It was grey and drizzly as we sped to our destination about an hour from the city.  Our guide did his best with limited English to convey the delights that would have been in store, but for the US carpet bombing of the area in 1969.  On arrival we found something like Ankor Wat writ very small and interspersed with flooded craters.

While our guide enthusiastically demonstrated the purpose of the damaged Lingam and Yoni sculptures I took photos of butterflies.  By the end of the tour our wet and bedraggled party wanted nothing more than to return to their hotel rooms, but a boat trip and tour of a "carpentry village" village were inflicted on us instead, before we were finally abandoned in the centre of Hoi An and left to make our own way back from whence we'd come.

Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh City

On my first morning in Ho Chi Minh City I got up as quietly as I could and put on some running gear to go for a quick trot around the city centre.  Not far from the hotel is a large piazza, maybe a kilometre long and three hundred metres wide, at one end of which stands City Hall and a large statue of an avuncular looking Ho Chi Minh.  It was good to join the locals jogging and walking around the piazza and the tourists taking photos of the fountains.

For someone brought up in the sixties on an endless diet of Vietnam war footage, the country today is a strange and confusing place.  At one level it's like any other tourist destination full of landmarks and capitalist logos, but this co-exists with a totalitarian Communist government with loudspeakers in every village and town centre barking news/propaganda.  Take the City Museum, which has an interesting collection of mementos of the recent past and some really strange stuff, which I guess concerns disputed islands in the South China Sea, including a really amateurish model of a some kind of island base, complete with the glass dolphins holding up the Communist party badge pictured opposite.

Our hotel has a rooftop bar with really good views over the city.  After a day strolling around and taking in the City's atmosphere it's a good place to stand with a drink and reflect.  Being high up it also catches some cooling zephyrs of breeze to ameliorate the hot and humid atmosphere.

Standing there sipping my brandy and looking at the City's equivalent of the Gherkin, I think to myself that from this perspective most cities look fundamentally the same, but that down at street level things get so much more contrasty, the "same same" and the different all juxtaposed and jumbled up.  Perhaps that's why I feel such a compulsion to travel and why I love it so  much, that constant search for the "same same" and the new constantly benchmarked against where we've come from making us feel part of something much bigger than ourselves?

Killing Time

Yet another airport.  This time Heathrow en route to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC to the congniscenti).
 Walking round Dixons I got paid a fiver to do a customer survey during which I did my best to create the impression of being a cosmopolitan world traveller.  Then took the fiver and my other cash in hand to the currency exchange and became a millionaire - in Vietnamese Dong sadly.

It's a bright sunny beautiful day, I'm feeling cool in my light travel slacks, sandals and collar-less shirt and not at all like the bald, slightly confused, old git I actually appear to other people.

Yay - the "go to gate" sign has just come up on my Bangkok flight!

Last Exit from Calais

My last full day in France was a slog from near Beaune, round Paris and up to the town of Bethune, where I rode round and round in circles trying to find the trip hotel du Golf, a grey and boring dump on the outskirts of town.  That evening I checked out the news and found that more trouble was brewing at the Channel ports where a ferry crew strike had broken out for the second time in as many weeks.  I was glad of an excuse to leave early next morning as the previous strike had led to disruption at the Channel Tunnel as well.

As it happens there was no problem and I was checked onto an early train.  While waiting I had a chance to inspect a couple of other bikers.  Middle-aged blokes (like me?) with all the gear and BMW "adventure" touring motorcycles.  I'm growing to hate these things.  They look mighty and purposeful with their robust chunky looks and square aluminium and black luggage, but most of them only ever tour on motorways and other tarmac roads, when they're built for rugged off-road work.  The people that ride them are as ridiculous as the families that keep a range rover in Chelsea just for the school run.

Anyway, I was back in the UK in no time and riding up to Canterbury towards the Dartford tunnel and Lincoln.  I didn't find out until later that the Tunnel was again closed later in the day, so I had a lucky escape.  Back at dad's bungalow I gave my old Bandit a friendly pat, having carried me eighteen hundred miles without missing a beat.  Next morning it sailed through an MoT, allowing me to sell it's clone to my mechanic for a few hundred quid after having cannibalised it for the odd part.