Around the world

Tell me a word with q not followed by u!?
What about Qatar? It can save you in a scrabble game (ask Sally;)
Well, on our way back we decided to have a 20h stop over in Doha, Qatar’s capital and (almost) only city. We arrived from Kuala Lumpur at 6.00 in the morning after having spent the whole day before walking around KL. Pretty tired we decided to take a cab and go downtown. Doha is a 400.000 city and it’s business district stretches along the coast of a small gulf for about 9 km. Since it was so early we decided to stop half way and then walk on the “corniche” to the “center”. Walking along the sea at 6.30 in the morning breeze was pretty enjoyable and it was interesting to see a mix of expats and typically dressed peoples making their mornings sport…
Around 8 we were getting cold (this was the first temperature shock 31->18) and went into a huge shopping mall with ice skating rink… Imagine the temperature
After some coffee and window shopping had a look around the ultra modern buildings that they are building everywhere, in fact, the feeling you get walking around the business district is that you are doing something wrong, the roads have 6 lanes, everybody moves by car and the whole thing is in construction.
A short nap on the corniche and we take a cab to the camel market. Getting there gets us through the city outskirts wich are very different to the center, here you feel that you actually are in the middle of a desert. Everything is pale yellow/gray and covered in sanddust. The market itself was cool, nothing to do with a lively asian market (probably because we’re more likely to buy a fake Billabong tshirt than a camel), foremost since the traders where not interested at all in selling us anything and happily tried to give us some information using handsigns just in case you are interested, a work/meat camel goes for 1000 to 3000 USD, racing camels for much more!
As the evening approached we tried to visit the islamic art museum wich was closed and then moved on to the impossible quest of finding the number 1 attraction of Doha, the old Bazaar. I say impossible because the map we had had a kind of bizarre variable scale. As we had almost given up we tried one last little road, and there we were, a beautifully restored city in the city with spices shops, falcons shops, restaurants, lots of locals and, yes, tourists!
After a huge iraki dinner we went back to the airport with the feeling that Doha is definetly interesting enough for a stop over, but not a 20h one
Cheers

Last day in Malaysia, pity the trip is already almost over ahead of us just two nights in the plane , 20 hours in Qatar and then snow.

But back to KL, the biggest city in Malaysia, the place of the Petronas towers and shopping malls… a hard day indeed, with a lot of walking, we got there around noon and started walking to china town where we wanted to buy some last original T-shirts and stuffs . A super veggie lunch and we’re ready for more walking, back to the bags dealer where we forgot our lonely planet… typical! Then off to little India where we buy some curry powder to take home.

Getting really tired, we decide to take the metro to go to the Petronas towers and we get there as it starts to get dark and they light the towers. Actually kitsch but pretty amazing!

A “quick” trip to the golden triangle, KL’s lively business and mall district, a Thai dinner, a last walk back to the bus station and we’re off to the airport. Mean of transport: a taxi with a driver which has no clue where the airport is… cool!

since we hadn’t done much “cultural” (as in humanistic discipline) during the whole month, we though that Melaka would be a good place to stop on the way to KL. Indeed it was, Melaka is a small city on the Melaka straight. This strategic position made of the city a major hub for Asia trading companies during many years. Obviously, the city was very important to European countries which successively ruled the city leaving their architectural and cultural marks. The result is a very interesting mix of Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial architecture and cuisine topped with modern day’s Chino-Malay way of living.

The centre of the town, which has been declared UNESCO world heritage site last year, boasts a gorgeous red brick complex, build between a hill and the riverside, which served as governor housing, church and city-hall.

Being the Sunday at the end of the Hari Raya Haj (?), one of the biggest Muslim festivity, the city was dressed up for a big festival with open air performances all around the old centre. After a dodgy performance by a NZ movement researcher we moved across the river, on jalan carpenter, the road where the Chinese have settled their Chinatown.

Jalan Carpenter is a bustling little road with a night market and touristy shops. As we got there the night market was being set up forcing all the people into close proximity and obligation to watch the stands, a mix of tourist gifts, food stalls and magic cleansing products sellers. And then THE highlight of the day, a real, original, straight-to-your-heart open air Chinese karaoke where elder peoples brought their favourite midi bases and sang on a huge stage!

Definitely a nice place Melaka

Borneo, the land of the wild, the forest and the oil palm.
One month in borneo has reserved us a lot of beautiful surprises but has given us a lot to think about as well.

Our last two days on Borneo, what shall we do? Of course run to a national park for the last bits of nature full immersion.
Bako national park is a costal park only half an hour from Kuching but definetly remote enough, in fact

Well, we can’t really say that our trip was a cultural trip, unles you consider seeing plenty of wildlife is a cultural activity. Since we decided to cut the batan rejang side trip to go to bako national park we had lowered the quota of cultural activity to nearly 0. So we decided to go for the emergency/touristy solution: the Sarawak cultural village. This is a sort of living museum (like Ballenberg in Switzerland) depicting all the indigenous etnies traditional houses, uses and costumes. Going there we were a bit skepitcal about the whole thing, but once there we were very pleased to see that the place was very tourisy but actually very interesting. we got plenty of informations about the history of Sarawak and about how people lived in the past and live nowadays in longhouses.
Further more Sarah got to see Otters for the first time!!!
So, all in all touristy but interesting

I don’t know if some of you had the chance to see a film called “Shark water” http://www.sharkwater.com but if not we encourage you to watch it! We did it a few days ago…

Shark are an endangered species because chinese people (for some kind of crazy believes) eat their fins!!! so millions of sharks are killed every day just for their fins and then thrown dead back in the ocean. This is intolerable!

We unfortunately saw a few chinese shops selling sharks fins in Kuching! I can tell you: this feels not right! At all!

(In a slightly American way of doing things: “while you read this post (2′30”) 500 Sharks have been killed“ http://www.savingsharks.com)

We thought that for our first day in kuching we will just spend it walking around. Since we arrived pretty late with the bus the night before, it was a late morning start! Never mind, the town isn’t so big so we will have time! The atmosphere there was unusual, different from Miri or KK! That might be because it is old… there were even a few 200 years old Chinese temples!!!! it was really pleasant (specially the chocolate waffle followed by Lebanon food).

This whole trip has been kind of not super organized, I guess that it’s because we tackled it as a long trip (as the last two we dud in the americas) but 30 days is not that much and you have to plan a bit more… Nothing drammatic of course, just that you might end up doing a lot of unforseen bus travelling instead of short (and almost at same price) flights.
On the other hand, cheap flights are very restrictive regarding last minutes changements, like our Mulu-Miri flight which we would have loved to anticipate of half day so that we would make it in one day to Belaga the following day. It didn’t happen, a change would have cost more than the actual flight, so we flew to Miri as planned, spent some time at the airport and then took a bus to Bintulu. By the time we arrived, Sarah was very sick for she ate something wrong in Mulu. The day After Sarah was feeling better and we had a very though task ahead of us: plan the last 10 days of our trip. The original plan was to go to Belaga, a small comunity 150km upstream the Batang Rejang (a very large river) and then boat down to Kapit, Sibu and finally Kuching. From there fly to Singapore, then Melakka and finally Kuala Lumpur. But as I said only 10 days left and we don’t like to rush too much so we decided (after a very very mathematically complex analysis involving some 5th degree differential equations) to skip the Batang Rejang part and to leave by bus to Kuching and stay there 4 days and then fly to Singapore.
Moral of the story, sometimes if you don’t plan you end up doing 15 h of bus over 2 days instead of a 45 minutes fly
Cheers!

The night shift!

That was definitely one of the 10 RM we spent! Apart from the 3 Germans guys that kept speaking very loud ( the key point when you try to see the wildlife at night is to SHUT UP!)

We saw snakes (yes with an s and one of them felt on our guide head…), a moon rat which was pretty cool (all white with fur), walking sticks, frog, cockroaches (beuh) and lots a insects!

The next morning we went for a canopy walk at 7 am, supposedly the best time to see some mammals! The canopy are actually bridges at 20-30 ms high between trees. . And that was really nice. We weren’t that lucky regarding the animal side…that all right, once again this is part of the game. In the late morning, we went for a self guided walk to another cave! On the way we saw quite a lot of crazy insects! Mantis, dragon flies and lots of colourful macro things..

The Pinnacles, the one sight I remember most (maybe the paradise bird dance – but that was in Papua New Guinea) from Planet Earth when David Attenbourgh is narrating about Borneo! What he does not tell is that they got there by helicopter and that getting there on foot involves quite a lot sweating and a 3 days trip (well it could be done in 2). The First day we left Mulu HQ by boat and stopped to visit Wind Cave and Clearwater cave 170km

If you have ever seen the best documentaries series ever made (BBC’s Planet Earth, which we super highly recomend) you will feel confortable with this and the next posts since we are starting the main course of our trip. Niah Caves and the Gunung Mulu national park.
But first things first, today we took a small van to the UNESCO world heritage site of the Niah Caves. As the name says the main attraction here are the limestone caves, what the name does not say its the grandeur of theese…
After walking for about an hour from the park entrance we arrived to the Traders Cave (which is actually a cavern – meening that it is very wide open on one side. A bit like the difference between a tunnel and a bus shelter), where we coud see the rests of an early bird’s nest and guano collectors settlement used as a trading post with the costal traders, hence the name.
Few minutes further we got to west mouth of the great cave. 60m high and 250m wide, it definetly deserves the name!!! And it is only the entrance… Moving into the cave we got the feeling of being in a huge place, althoug dark, you could feel how big these chambers where, foremost when the powerfull torch would’t make it to the opposite wall or ceiling. Even more spectacular are the bamboo and ironwood (belian) poles used by the local birds’ nest collectors. I have no idea how they hang them on the ceilings to later climb on them to collect the saliva-made swiftlets’ nests highly regarded in Chinese cuisine (birds’ nest soup is a very exxclusive plate as caviar is in Europe). Fortunately, the park constantly monitors the harvesting to keep the swiftlets population healty and avoid yet another ecological catastrophy caused by Chinese beliefs (see turtle eggs poaching and most remarkably shark finning).
After walking for about an hour in the dark we emerged on the other side of the cave where we walked through the forest to the Painted cave, a very quiet and relaxing place where old cave paintings and death-ships (boat shaped coffins) illustrate the burial beliefs of early Niah settlers.
On the way back after going through the great cave we decided to have a look at the longhouse nearby and of course to take the other branch of the plankwalk… Well lets say it would have been easier to listen to the kiosk ladies saying “tida bagus, tida bagus (not good, not good)” but then what explorers would we be ? So we took it and had to crawl under, jump over, climb around fallen trees that where blocking the way… Well it was hot but fun!
Cheers

Ok, let’s do a bit of geo trivia:
- which countries share Borneo? (easy)
- which one is the richest one? (easy)
- what is it’s capital name? (medium)
- what is it’s ruler complete name and how much did he invest in a Country club? (hard)

Got them?
Here the answers:
- (ordered by percentage) Indonesia (Kalimatan), Malaysia (Sabah & Sarawak), Brunei Darussalam

- Brunei, thanks to it’s oil fields

- Bandar Seri Begawan, also known as BSB

- the complete name take 2 lines and I can’t recall it… The empire hotel and country club costed 1 Billion US$

Well, you guessed it, we are in Brunei right now. Pretty interesting place, fairly different from sabah, it looks richer and along the road you can actually see rain forest and not oil palm! Which is nice, very nice!
We are here just for two days, tomorrow we’ll leave for Miri in Sarawak and then to Gunung Mulu!

BSB is a small city (90000 inhabitants, Brunei has 400000) with coupple of interesting Mosques and a museum filled with presents to the Sultan by other heads of state… Funny what they give each other… I wouldn’t want to keep those things in my house, ehm palace (did I mention the sultan’s palace is 200000 sqm and has 1788 rooms?)…

For the rest, we had a very chill day walking around and in the evening had an interesting conversation about brunei/immigration/chinese/oil/switzerland/… With a local journalist.

2.am wake up call ( at least for those who slept) and let’s do the highway to the summit with 50 other persons! Good side of waiting in a jam…you are not starting too fast! After overtaking almost all of them, we make it to the top in 2 hours!! Unfortunately it is really cold and we don’t want to wait 45 min to see the sunrise…so we decide to start the descent…

we are really lucky with the weather, it is absolutely gorgeous! The granite is shining with the first rays of light! It is going to be our reward for the next hours! We are back the base camp at 7 am and after the breakfast, the worst part of the trip is still in front of us! OH MY GOD! 2300 meters in 8 km….that’s hard! For the knees and for the legs. We looked like handicapped when we reach the HQ! So we decide to go straight to the poring hot spring 50 km away…

Well, after seeing wild Orang Utans we are not really shore if we want to go to Sepilog since it is more of a touristy thing, at the end we decide that actually, although many tourists go there, a rehabilitation centre (for injured, house pets, …) is not a zoo, and they try to make people aware of the precarious situation for Orangs. It must be noted that driving trough Sabah’s main roads makes us feel almost sick due to the quantity of oil palm plantations. Basically it is the ONLY thing you see, with sometimes some ridiculously small patches of intact forest. It’s sad, foremost knowing that very little can be done since kernel palm oil is used almost everywhere…

Now, back to the rehabilitation centre, as we entered we meet a guy holding a sign: “silence please”, all excited we thought there was an Orang there, we where mistaken, there where three!!! Soooo cooool, and not even so many people watching. Most people arrived around 3pm when the centre staff feeds the Orangs that decide to show up. Remember it is not a zoo, there are no boundaries, nets, nor cages, just a “playground” in the jungle where they can get easy bananas

As the banana time was getting closer, more Apes arrived, including a huge Alfa male (that had been in rehabilitation 10 years ago) that stayed for almost an hour and a mother with her 2 weeks old baby.

Although they are not totally wild animals it was extremely interesting and touching having the chance to observe our close relatives from so close and for so long without them being scared.

BTW on their websites you can help the centre with an adoption: http://www.orangutan-appeal.org.uk/sepilok-rehabilitation-centre/

Our secret goal was to spot wild orangutans…well mission accomplished! Cruising early morning on the river we even had the chance to see some proboscis monkey, silver-leave monkey, gibbons, and some gorgeous birds while trekking at night time!

Malaysia try to push 5 star resort travellers, which is really sad because lots of things are without reach of backpackers travellers. Danum Valley, Tabin Reserve and further Mont Kinabalu national park are managed by only one company that aims “wealthy” people! Nature and UNESCO world heritage should be “available” for everybody. Furthermore, backpackers allow a lot of local families to work! I really don’t get the governement politic!

For exemple, if you want to go to Tabin, the choices are either the 800RM (250CHF) 1 night 2 days package to the exclusie lodge or 1 day at 350 RM (100CHF) just for transportation and a 20 min walk to the reserve. On top of that, public transports do not exist between Lahad Datu and the reserve which make it difficult to visit it!

Anyway, we shared a taxi we two guys from the hostel. After the short walk we climbed the look out platform with view on the mud pools that are an important sources of minerals for animals wihch means a great spots for viewing wildlife. As usual you need to be lucky! That is part of the deal! we saw a few hornbills, two warrants, monkeys and….a wild boar… .

First day backpacking, but first we go shopping in Semporna, we both need shoes half an hour later Sarah is a proud owner of her first pair of pOma!!! The plan for today was to get a bas mini (mini bus) to Lahad Datu and then go to Danum Valley conservation area, unfortunately they are booked for the next 2 weeks, so we are stuck in Lahad Datu. In the evening we met a swiss coupple that showed us some pictures of Pulau Derawan, a small island in Indonesia just south of Tawau where the Manta Season is at it’s peak… We might go and have a look, we’ll see.

We were so excited (event without sleep at all) to dive Sipadan and I have to say while trying to get some rest, I was thinking that to compensate this spoiled Mabul island, it must be really really really cool! Well it was…it is crazy to think that we were working only 50 min away form this world famous island but that the underwater world is so different! White and black tipped reef sharks, schools of bumped head parrot fish and barracudas, heaps of turtles, groupers, and so much more! And Foremost BIG WAAALLL diving…

Definitely world class.

Today we left “the island” for good, it was a mix of emotion, on one hand the joy of starting a new trip, on the other the sadness of leaving back some very good persons with which we spent a lot of time while here on the island.

It was very touching seeing all the dive-shop staff come down to the jetty to wish us luck and give us a beautiful card made by Yunus. It was hard to leave, when  even the “tough” boatmen and assistants looked sad and made us understand that they really liked working together.

I really hope, that our future replacements will be cool people and that all the local staff will enjoy working with them. Anyhow, for now they are in very very good hands… or are Sally and Michelle in very good hands… !?

After getting to Semporna we embark (with a Russian couple) a mini boat to Mabul. Mabul is a small island whit an overpopulated waterfront, in fact it looks more like a maze on piloti than a village. Our home-stay was full so they sent us to the neighboring one, the “Hyatt”… well name only of course

A quick live cleaning of the room and here we are our little retreat on Mabul is ready… did I mention that the diesel generator is just beneath our window? Oh, we are not there yet… Walking around the village you encounter a mix of kids, cats and roasters. Once we get to the other side of the island we get in front of the main landmark on Mabul, the oil rig, is an authentic oil platform in front of the best hotel (of course you don’t see it on their website which has now been converted into a dive centre. After a BBQ dinner at our dive center, we go to another bar where a live band plays some good music till late night (It’s weird to have a party after 2 months on quiet Pom Pom). Then we go to bed, ehm to the generator room and unsuccessfully try to sleep.

Here Some Great pictureso of the diving around PomPom Island:

So, sitting in the internet room today I was wondering about efficency, It is a well known thing that swiss tend to be on the maniacal side of efficency, but even for me, a laid back ticinese (means from south switzerland -> with all the mediterranean implications) some things just can’t be right…

Imagine sitting in a room near a new chinese office staff being trained by a senior japanese senior staff… The training is stock taking, and it involves a lot of counting, but now, what if the person being trained has no clue (well, maybe a bit) a it about numbers in english… let alone japaneese… Well, Higlly amusing yet still a bit “disturbing”

hello, I’ve been kind of lazy this days, you might think, but I haven’t at allll… In fact I’ve been very very active reparing my laptop wich apparently doesn’t like hot climates at all. Not big news actually since it ran super hot the all winter back home. well, apparently now I got it fixed (knock on wood).

Back to life in pompom, we had some “big” events like an almost sunken boat,  me doing laundry, seeing a see snake, shaving… you know, big stuff

Diving is cool, but finally after 11 in a row diving I had a day of office work doing some uninspired graphic design… I soo much miss my favourite designer (aka Sarah ) and today I started teaching a nitrox course to two Italian doctors…. cool, I really like teaching this course, there is a bit more thinking involved

here some pics:

So,  It has been a week from when Sarah and I were still renewing our (now awesome) apartment in Sagogn and now I’m living on a semi-tiny Island east of Semporna (Sabah, Malaysia). The island is about 30minutes around (that’s what people tell me, I haven’t  done it yet, but tomorrow I will ) and it has a resort on it. There are around 60 guests and 30 employees, so not much folk . The guests are mainly Italians and some Japanese, the difference couldn’t be greater

After suffering from a plane-cold, yesterday I restarted diving. by noe I’ve done 6 dives just following a local dive-master to get the feeling about where those small -sometimes very very small- thingies live.

As I said before (I think) the Celeb sea is a paradise for macro photography, which basically means that anything bigger than 10 cm is neglected … doesn’t make my life any easier…. but today I found my first orangutan crab,  a banded pipefish and a tiny lionfish. As well I saw a beautiful mandarinfish… so I’m getting my eye tuned.

I’m starting learning some words of bahasa melayu (malay language) a

nd yesterday I had my first “super satisfaction”… After repeating some words with a boat captain, he told me that I had a very good accent unlike the others… Brits

so, write to you soon
cheers Marco

Hello from the island!

Finally yesterday I got on the island, after a long day waiting for the boat to get me here, I can now see myself how it looks like. It is actually veeery beautiful! today I got to do my first two dives and to guide a snorkeling trip. Very cool, I already got to see some highlights like the orang-utan crab, the mantis shrimp and many nudibranches. In the afternoon I saw some squids, turtles, lion fishes, clown fishes and many more while snorkeling near mataking.

Unfortunately, there is not only good things, the reef here has been bombed (as in bomb-fishing) and some bits are in an horrible state, what a shame.

Now I’m super tired and I need to sleep… I’ll write soon again

cheers Marco

Hi all, just a quick note that I Smoothly landed on Borneo after 3 flights and 19 hours of sitting… Right now I’m in Tawau and tomorrow I’ll go to pompom island (2h bus+boat). Tonite I went for chinese food with a chinese-malay guy from pompom and he ordered steamed prawns with sabah vegetables… Yummmmy
Marco