At the end of our month of volunteering it was with a sense of relief that we escaped into the departure lounge of Trichy airport to wait for our Air Asia flight to KL and then on to Kuching in Sarawak. At Kuching airport we got a familiar red and yellow taxi to the Basaga, our old favourite haunt when staying over in the provincial capital. Breathing in the warm and humid air en route to the hotel my pervasive feeling was one of coming home.
Next morning I had a wander round the town and got a haircut and was reminded what a cool place Kuching or Cat City really is. Culturally diverse with Chinese and Malay communities and tribal influences everywhere. There is now a new bridge over the Kuching River to the Sarawak parliament house, a kind of Asiatic county hall.
That evening we dined with Mr Steve, Sue’s old colleague from our time in the little town of Saratok, a few hundred miles further up the coast. Steve has stayed here since the British Council project in Malaysian Borneo ended, continuing his India summer in this seductive corner of South East Asia.
After a few days in Kuching we hired a car and headed up to Saratok and the Kabong Peninsula for the real business of meeting up with Sue’s former group of mentees. A feisty bunch of Sarawak women, from diverse cultural backgrounds, Malay, Iban and Bidayu, but united by their commitment to teaching and to not taking any old rubbish from anyone.
The main event was a barbecue in Kabong with the magnificent view over the South China Sea pictured above. It was a lovely afternoon in which we ate huge quantities of fried chicken and seafood, including jellyfish and just enjoyed the vibe. The time in Saraok and Kabong was made more intense by the fact that since Sue left Sarawak in 2015 this lovely group has been hammered by tragedy, with Anisha and Jocelyn losing their wonderful husbands within a year of one another. Such beautiful and strong people. When we finally bade our farewells it was a feeling that perhaps this is not the last time we will meet these people and come to this magical place.
After the reunion we headed back down the pan-Borneo highway to Kuching for a final few days at another old haunt, the Pullman Hotel. Travelling that route is probabaly one of the most dangerous road journeys you can make outside a war zone, struggling to overtake overladen palm oil trucks pumping black diesel fumes as they grind their way up the steep hills. While back in the provincial capital we revisited the Semengoh Orang Utan Sanctuary, which made me think of my last trip here with Sue and Keith Ramptahal back in 2012. Keith was not well and was clearly depressed, but we had no idea that he would be dead within a couple of years of that trip. At Semengoh we’d been shocked by how little energy he had, prefering to spend time in the café where he could sit and have a smoke, but still delighted that a mum and baby orang utan came there to say hello to him.
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