Whither Now?

Travel time. A month - that is all, what sort of a holiday is that? All the other teachers got at least 6 weeks, but not me. I would complain but I have no basis for it, except jealousy.

Destination – Malaysia. Malaysia and Trinidad were two countries that I always liked the sound of when I was young because of the ethnic, or is it racial, mix. Trinidad has West & East Indians plus a fair number of Chinese and Europeans, so at least the food should be good. Well I was there nearly 25 years ago and the food wasn’t good. Wimpys were the most noticeable ingredient. For those of you too young to remember this was a chain of British burger places (as opposed to the British building company of the same name) before McShit came to rule the world. I didn’t like Trinidad – expensive and rather characterless. I spent more time on the sister island of Tobago before moving on to Grenada, where I lived for a while.

So would Malaysia turn out the same way as Trinidad? Broadly speaking it is about 50% Malays, 25% Chinese, 10% each of Indians and the indigenous peoples (the Malays are not the original people) plus a few others.

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur - or KL as it is universally known – late at night. A funny trait this, they give cities two word names and then promptly abbreviate them – Johor Bahru is JB, Koata Kinabalu is KK etc. Mike had recommended a hotel but, naturally, I hadn’t booked, despite the hotel being on the internet. Naturally this fine establishment was closed when I got there but my taxi driver, fortunately, was quite persistent and someone eventually came to the door said they were full and recommended somewhere round the corner. Eventually I found the entrance and got a room. Enquiries about a reviving beer were not greeted with success – it was only 1.00 a.m. and this is a capital city – what is wrong with these people?

The first shock was the price of the room – 80 Ringgits – 15 euros. (I will quote all costs in the local currency and euros. If you think in sterling deduct a third from the euro figure; if you think in US Dollars, add a third to the euro figure; if you think in Canadian, Aussie or Kiwi Dollars – oh dear!) This was 40% of my theoretical daily budget, so a behavioural change was called for; I moved to somewhere the following day at half the price. In fact accommodation in Malaysia isn’t bad and you can generally find places to suit every budget from about 2 euros a night for a bed in a dormitory upwards. I am too old for that sort of stuff and most people don’t really appreciate you blundering around at whatever time you get in followed by a bout of snoring so I largely stuck to rooms for myself at this sort of price.

The second shock. A quick wander round a few markets on the second day obviously called for lunch and the first beer. A 640 ml bottle of Tiger beer was 15 RMs (3 euros). Those of you who appreciate my beer consumption will understand that this is a serious issue for a budget of 40 euros a day (it is about 1 euro in a bar or restaurant in China) and called for another behavioural modification – I would have to go the bank more often.

KL’s most famous building is the Petronas Towers but it also has the fourth largest TV tower in the world, Menara KL. This is on a hill in the middle of the city so in the late afternoon I headed for that. On the way I came across a sort of wildlife area which was free and you could get to the tower through it, but the gatekeeper was very keen that I understood that the park closed at 6.00 p.m. So in I went; it wasn’t that great but I was off the roads so I was fine. Up the tower and you do have great views of the city. KL is a pretty modern city, most buildings are less than 20 years old and many of 40 floors or more while many of the old British colonial buildings are now used as museums or government buildings; although the Selangor Club is still a going concern in the middle of the city with a somewhat different clientele than 50 years ago. The viewing platform is not at the top of the tower but the hill is 90 metres higher than the Petronas Towers, which is a kilometre or so away, so consequently we were level with the very top of the Towers

I left the TV tower at 5.20 or so and continued heading North through the Park. I got to the North Gate at 5.50 – locked and no sign of anybody. It was (and probably still is) two metres high with barbed wire at the top so I didn’t really fancy climbing over it. Shit, this is my first day and I am going to get locked in a bloody park!

I thought “I know that the TV Tower is open until 10 so there has to be some way out from there” so a quick about turn and the direct route back got me there for 6.10 to a very welcome pair of open gates. (Can a pair of gates carry an adjective “welcome”, aren’t they inanimate? Spot my English mistake in that?) Once I was safely through them I was distinctly relieved and had a better look at how I would have escaped had they been closed. With extreme difficulty is the correct answer. The gates were also 2 metres high, nobody older than 2 could have got under them and the barbed wire at the top was, of course, angled outwards. The adjoining walls were about 1½ metres high with metre high fences topped by more outward facing barbed stuff. I was very glad not to be wandering around in the undergrowth in sandals, amidst the scorpions and snakes, as it got dark, looking for a potential escape route.

Malaysia is a Muslim country but, fortunately, they don’t take it too seriously and I was staying in a place that had the attraction of a rooftop bar (complete with visiting snake on my first night). This is OK except all the customers are backpackers. That is they are either 18 or 22 and on their way to or from Australia. All they talk about is where they have just been or where they are going next with lots of enthusiasm and plenty of “like”s, as in “Sydney was like great fun”. Fair enough but not exactly my stage in life and I didn’t really have much common ground with people at that stage in their travelling career (with the odd, very honourable, exception of course) and I don’t travel to meet lots of Brits (and the majority, or close to it, are, the rest being almost entirely European) so this was not a great success. The Muslim bit was quite interesting – I only saw one burka on the whole trip and only about ten veils. However, the modesty thing is important so all the Moslem women wear the headscarves but nobody seems to see the incongruity between wearing a headscarf and tight jeans. I didn’t complain.

KL has plenty of shops, but of course nothing in comparison to Guangzhou – shopping is not just a pastime or hobby in China, it is a way of life. KL also apparently has plenty of nightlife but I didn’t really go looking for it and a couple of days looking round the city was enough for me. One place that you might not immediately pick out from a guidebook as worth a visit but which I thoroughly enjoyed, is the butterfly house in the park. I have read nothing to indicate that Malaysia is famous for butterflies – it should be, I saw many different species during my trip with lots of variety in shape and size as well as colours and colour combinations.

I did stay one more day for a Hindu festival called Thaipusam that takes place on the outskirts of the city at Batu Caves and happened to be on at the time. This attracts hundreds of thousands of people over the three days it is on. The interesting bit is the body piercing by the devotees. Priests stick various needles through various parts of the bodies of the entranced believers without drawing blood or any apparent pain. Places pierced include cheeks, tongues and varying parts of the torso. Sometimes these needles are attached to things to be carried or dragged to the main cave (and some of the things to be dragged weighed tens of kilos) which is a kilometre or so away and up 272 steep steps.

Varifocals (and bi-focals come to that) make walking down steps a bit difficult because you have to look straight down to get the “distance’ vision part of the lens looking at the step you are about to tread on and I can assure that you looked because the riser was as big as the tread but each step was less than a foot length – OK going up, but a bit trickier coming down in a crowd. On the way up I had wondered why there were a lot of abandoned sandals near the bottom; it was a lot easier in bare feet. Now anybody left paying attention will be wondering how the devotees dragged the stuff up the steps. The answer is that they didn’t, each devotee had loads of family and friends who actually carry the thing when he moves. The whole piercing thing has been banned in India (I am not surprised) so there are not many places that you can now see it or join in fully – hence the numbers. At the big cave at the top (which smells of a mixture of flowers and rotting fruit and has been thoughtfully whitewashed up to a height of three metres to allow graffiti artists to show their talents – or lack of them) the worthies get de-needled and then spend a while blessing all and sundry. There was rubbish everywhere – in China there would have been an army of cleaners on constant duty – 90% women, naturally

Next, the Jungle. This is not far from KL but takes a 3-hour bus journey, a two-hour wait, a half hour bus trip and a three-hour boat journey. This seems to typify Malaysia; it is not a very big country and journeys are normally only three or four hours, you just seem to have to do two, three or even four to get anywhere.

King George V National Park was created in 1938. At Independence this was renamed Taman Negara (literally “The National Park”) because there was only one in Malaya (as it then was). This must have looked a bit short-sighted even then you would think i.e. what happens when you create a new one, is that “The Other National Park”? It doesn’t worry the Malaysians, other parks a re called “Taman Negara Niah” etc. but there is still the original Taman Negara with its name unchanged since 1957.

On the way up the river I met a Vietnamese-American called Twee. Her family name is Le and, typically of the Far East, the family name comes first. Now even with my appalling French the possibility for bad puns is legion but I could not think of anything that she wouldn’t have heard before and, amazingly, restrained, myself. Speaking of names, some of you will not know the names that many of my students give themselves. Their Chinese names are normally pretty close to unpronounceable for me and I spend so much time trying not to sound like a complete plonker reading out their names (which I then instantly forget) that I am too busy in this task to actually look at them. This means that name-face recognition is minimal. The students get over this problem by giving themselves English names. These can be Sue or Jack but there is lots of imagination – Purple, Fairy, Wonderful (male) Darkhorse, Simple, Happy & Crystal were all in one class last term and that is not untypical. However, most people’s favourites are Volcano and Triangel – no, I have not misspelt the word and yes, she is pretty good looking.

For my loyal reader I will return to the story. 4 of us, plus a guide, were to do a 2-day jungle walk. My travelling companions were a good lot; although I was, of course, by far the oldest. The youngest was 29, nobody was garrulous and nobody happy-snappy so we weren’t stopping every 5 minutes. As you enter the park proper, they inventory things like plastic bottles, batteries, clothes etc. – an excellent idea to my mind. The problem was that I went in with two less batteries and one more plastic bottle than I came out with! We then had a short ride to a canopy catwalk. This has a standard rope bridge technique with two long ropes between trees, ropes hanging down from the main ropes with ladders at the bottom covered in boards. I have been on much ropier (sorry) constructions in the Himalayas but not 45 metres in the air. I did not do much looking except at the tree platforms and never down – I don’t think that Harrison Ford’s age is going to result in my getting a call for the next Indiana Jones film. We were expecting a quick out and back route but in fact there was almost a complete circle with a circumference of several hundred metres and a height gain of 40 or 50 metres – I was very pleased it was an uphill walk. We were getting near the end and I had just commenced one section when it started swinging quite a lot and I thought that Mark, who is Irish and half way across the section at the time, had decided to put the wind up some British bastard. I beat a hasty retreat but I had misjudged him, it swayed aplenty when I got to the middle on my own. Good fun.

Two hours up the river and a lunch stop was interrupted to cross the river to get away from a King Cobra in the water. We were told that it is the most venomous snake in the world; it isn’t but I wasn’t keen on contesting the theory. After lunch, we crossed back to cobra side to get out of the boat and start the walk! Jungle walks are good for trees, fungi and sounds; you see very little in the way of wildlife. This is because it, the wildlife, is mostly up in the canopy, the vegetation is very thick, everything sees you before you see it and animals are most active early in the morning and round unset – those are my excuses anyway. We did see lots of interesting fungi, some interesting ladybirds, heard reverberating trees and glimpsed some rhinoceros hornbills above the canopy. The guide also showed us the mounds that some crickets build – 6 or 7 centimetres high; I had never seen them before. Highlight of the day was a bat cave. No Michael Keaton or Val Kilmer in their but lots of bats. Access was quite interesting, up a slippery rock-face for about ten metres with a rope for your hands. Up is easy enough but coming down? Actually it was OK. Inside was great, a floor covered in bat shit with insect life crawling all over it, lots of bats and a couple of snakes up in the rocks where they were resting after a good lunch. If I can’t be Indiana Jones, perhaps David Attenborough is more like it “Here in the heart of 130 million year old jungle, I am standing on a metres deep pile of guano with literally ten’s of thousands [Duck for effect as bat flies 2 metres over head] of bats creating a whole ecosystem in this one cave.”

This is real jungle and Katie took on the job of leech magnet, which meant that I did not get sliced once even though I was not good at balancing on the pieces of wood crossing the streams. The night was spent in a cave. It was Twee’s first night camping - ever. Quite brave really - camping in a cave in the middle of a jungle with 4 complete strangers contemplating whether to go back to being a New York architect or give it all up to try and hang on to her marriage. Fortunately, we did not see any snakes in that cave. There were a couple of Mynah birds roosting and a single firefly came walsing through about 2 a.m. The rats licking out the tins caused a bit of consternation but otherwise it was fine. No beer, of course, but I had had the good sense to take my minidisk player. Just as it started getting light I saw lots of eyes looking down at me and though “I don’t remember that many bats in here”. Inspection a little later revealed no bats. What could it have been – gloworms? In a cave? Algae? Ghosts? Matt, the guide, didn’t know. I really could not work it out but it was not my imagination, as I noted there had been no beer and they faded quite quickly as it got light. Perhaps it was the absence of beer.

A good walk out the following day, of which the highlight was either a 20 metre long tree-trunk acting as the bridge across a tiny stream or a brilliant red dragonfly, and check out of the park. We all went off in different directions. I was heading south-east to an island. It took 3 days. A boat ride and two buses brought me to Kuantan with the Rough Guide is quite rude about but I got a decent hotel with a BATH (I only have a shower at home in Guangzhou), to get cleaned up after the jungle, followed by a decent meal. The hotel had sachets of Sunsilk shampoo –does it still exist? (“I love the taste of sunsilk in the evening.” – Apologies to Colonel Killgore) The Rough Guide is good, up-to-date, well written and unpretentious. More to the point it is not Lonely Planet so you can escape other travellers. However, it is not too hot on maps and this can be very important after a few days in the Jungle when you have had an excellent meal for 30 Ringgits (6 Euros) and are anxiously looking for the Boom Boom Bar & Bistro because it is one of the few places in town that sells beer. The failings of the map were, of course, no stopper to an intrepid traveller.

Up with the lark for the morning buses – both full, so I was condemned to a day in this town. I filled part of it with a boat ride on the river for which I was the only customer. This was tedious and a waste of my very valuable time until we got off for a jungle walk. Fortunately, one of the crew (there were two) came with me as a guide and was good at spotting and pointing out things, which included kingfishers, hornbills, sea eagles plus a monitor lizard and a crocodile next to each other. I learnt, perhaps a little late in life, that eating live mud-skippers is the way to a successful sex life.

I reached Mersing that evening. There is nothing of interest in Mersing and I was glad that I had been delayed in Kuantan, although the restaurant that evening had easily available, cheaper beer and a cheerful owner. However, I was glad to get the ferry in the morning to Tioman Island because nobody should have to spend 2 nights in Mersing.

Tioman Island is pure tourism. Some fairly successful film was made there in the 1950s and it became one of the most famous islands in the world but who has heard of it now? There are a series of small villages up the side of the island but it is distinctly mountainous so all movement is by boat, except for the very rich and ostentatious, of course who use helicopters. I chose one particular village based upon the fact that The Rough Guide said it had the best nightlife. Well I don’t know about the other villages but one bar opened for the year on the day I arrived – phew! The beer was surprisingly cheap considering I was on a tourist island and the tourists were mainly foreigners with a few Singaporeans and a negligible number of Malaysians.

I had come to the island to relax. I had a back problem for which the doctor had diagnosed swimming. When I had tried swimming before leaving on my holiday I found it distinctly painful but seemed to do some good so I was here to swim 3 times a day and other than that do nothing – apart from a few beers of course. I found a comfortable air-conditioned hut at a reasonable price and settled in. I proved to be the only guest in a place with 22 huts and it stayed like that for the next 4 days. I was next to a large pond that ran into the sea 50 metres away; a happy coincidence because the pond was full of life – birds, butterflies, interesting plants etc. but the stars were the monitor lizards. For those of you not familiar with these creatures, they walk above the ground, not on it, and can grow to a metre long in the body with a tail rather longer. Add to this a forked tongue that flicks out a further 15 or 20 centimetres and you have quite a substantial animal weighing up to 30 kilograms or so. The tails make them good swimmers and they also climb trees as well so this is a versatile animal that is also omnivorous and a real scavenger. There were plenty of the lizards in the pond and one afternoon whilst I was sat reading on my balcony I saw 4 of them on the land within 5 metres of me – they seemed to like the shrubs nearby. They would walk past on the grass a metre or so from me, notice me, stop for a glance for a few seconds and disdainfully plod on happily ignoring me. Splendid things.

Oddly, or not so oddly, I met the couple who had been my next door neighbours in Taman Negara. This is not really that surprising when you are travelling – people tend to go to the same places so it is not so much a coincidence as predictable that you will meet people that you met a week before.

4 days of swimming, sitting around getting suntanned and evenings drinking was enough for me so it was the ferry back to Mersing. Unfortunately, it was scheduled for 3 p.m. but was 2 ½ hours late. Of course, after another 2 ½ hours on the boat I was too late for the last bus and was condemned to a second night in Mersing!

My esteemed restaurateur actually closed early whilst I was still drinking to take me and a Canadian (who had been visiting Mersing for nearly 20 years) off to another restaurant where a Swiss couple, who were long-term residents of this not very fair town and friends of mine host, were having the opening night of their restaurant. This evening proved entertaining mainly for the swearing ability of the Chinese, one in particular - it reminded me of working on the shop floor of a factory when I was 18. Everybody was, for reasons which continued to elude me, trying to persuade that this dozy little town was splendid and Han, mine host, reopened his restaurant after the Swiss one closed so that a Scot, he and I could continue the debate. I have to concede that a town where a bar reopens at 2.30 a.m. just to please me – a passing tosser - has something going for it but even the Guinness tasted like the African version i.e. nothing like Guinness.

Johor Bharu was the destination for the following day because it is the gate to Singapore. 5 seconds at the bus station there was enough to persuade me to get on the bus for Singapore straight away.

Singapore is a smart modern city that achieved its spectacular growth 30 years ago so it looks like any other modern western city; the fact that it is almost on the equator is irrelevant. This means that it is expensive. I checked in at the second cheapest place in the city centre that The Rough Guide had to offer - $75 Singapore (40Euros) but with bath – but was too late and disorganised that night to do much. What a surprise!

The following day it was tour the old parts of the city and the cricket ground. This is OK but absolutely nothing of any real note. Raffles is a big disappointment – there are better hotels in Guangzhou. Because I was wearing shorts and sandals I was not allowed to penetrate more than a few steps into the rather non-descript (by the price standard) foyer – a rule that does not apply to residents. Difficult to get worked up about such prejudice when you know that you are there just to gawp and not spend money. A very rapid tour of the ridiculously overpriced shops and a drink in the Long Bar is obviously called for. This is, naturally, a Singapore Sling. Slightly irritating that they demand payment when the drink is brought but perfectly sensible when you have to pay $19 S (12 Euro) for a pretty tasteless drink that has no discernible trace of alcohol in it – only the extremely drunk or extremely rich would order another. Funnily enough I did not act like either at 2 in the afternoon.

Right, I have done my tourist bit, wallowed in the bath and consequently was more than happy to set out for a decent meal. I am sorry to have to report that Malaysia lives up, or down, to my impressions of the food in Trinidad, despite the strong Chinese influence; almost everything is western or rice and something of little taste or interest. I know that Guangzhou has the best food in the world so I have to make allowances, and I do, but the food in Malaysia is crap. You only have to visit some Malaysia’s poorer neighbours to eat much better. I wanted a decent meal. Full stop.

Well I got it. Down to Boat Quay, find a decent seafood restaurant with a big TV that the proprietors can easily be persuaded to change from Asian 9 Ball Pool to the Rugby 6 Nations Championship and I am set. Let me explain a little, I do not believe that TV should be in restaurants and pubs unless such establishments specifically cater for people who are specifically interested in the Tele. This regrettable practice is, however, universal in China and means end-to end football, only interrupted by the National Basketball Association games for Houston; who have a Chinese player. Most of you will know that I would rather be found with dirty underwear in an accident, photographs of George W Bush in my wallet or have an empty glass rather than watch these tedious displays of moronic meanderings but cricket or rugby – that is a different matter.

So now I am set with my lobster, white wine etc. and who cares how much it costs. I moved closer to the screen to eat my pud (or sweet to the upper middle class poncy types) and met Ollie & Melody. Fortunately they bought the next bottle of wine so my bill was only $160 (90Euro). Ollie, an Everton fan, wandered off to look for the game against Fulham – I couldn’t contain my excitement – and Melody was the happy to reassure me – between text messages to her ex-boyfriend in Spain- that she had won half an hour’s oral sex the night before because she was Welsh; the Welsh having been lucky enough to scrape a win against England. After checking Ollie watching the boring game we were off to The Irish pub for their game. Loads of yanks off the aircraft carrier on the way home from the Gulf via Tsunami land. I am trying to explain the rules of rugby whilst Melody is taking the piss out of them about the morality of invading Iraq. Fortunately they left, whether out of boredom from listening to me or being fed up with having the same old arguments shoved in their face, I neither knew nor cared, I was in one piece.

Ollie duly arrived and we were off to a club. He kept assuring us that he had to get up in the morning (it was Sunday night) and this was his last drink. About 3 it became true and he wandered off after saying I could kip at their place. For the next couple of hours Melody flirted with me and everybody else in the place – male or female. Yes, she is definitely bi-sexual Essex Welsh.

The next morning I woke after check-out time so I couldn’t flee the country before spending yet more money. I restrained myself and went for a walk down Orchard Road – Singapore’s most famous shopping street. I got a tap on the shoulder and it was the couple from Taman Negara and Tioman Island. We went to the nearest bar for a beer ($15 or 8 Euros a pint) in what turned out to be a Marriot Hotel whilst I tried to figure out why they were following me around. Were they spies? Did they think I was a spy? Was I so interesting that I had to be followed? I did not give anything away. Yes, in Singapore you can get through money at a burn rate that the dot.com companies would be proud of. (Why do we write dot.com – shouldn’t it be dotcom or .com?) The main compensation over Malaysia is that it has lots of good-looking Chinese women in short skirts.

Back to JB (Johor Bahru for those who have not been paying attention) for a night. This is not a very interesting town but it was New Year’s Eve. That is Chinese New Year, as most of you will call it, known as “Tet” in Vietnam (and some of you are old enough to remember the Tet Offensive that made us all realise that the Americans could lose the Vietnam War) but also called “Spring Festival” in China and, perhaps, most accurately, “Lunar New Year”. I was in China the previous year for this and it was good fun – mainly chucking lots and lots of very, very noisy fireworks around for hours, the sort of thing you never did as kids (well not much) – but this was much more restrained. I put it down to the lack of alcohol intake by the Muslims, but most Chinese are not real boozers either so it may just be my prejudices coming out.

Off to Sarawak in the morning. This is not part of peninsula Malaysia but part of Borneo. For the geographically challenged it is time to get the atlas out, because I am not going to tell you.

I flew to a town called Miri. This is because it is near Bruneii – to which I was heading in a few days. The guidebook describes Miri as lively. Not on New Year’s Day it is not, in fact it was closed. The next day was barely any better, nor the next day. I came to realise that the people of Malaysia take, so called, Chinese New Year a lot more seriously as a holiday than the Chinese do. For the Chinese it is really another retail opportunity to sell to all those people on holiday. What shops, restaurants and bars that were open in the town seemed to be largely Chinese run, even though the proportion of Chinese is lower in Sarawak than on the peninsula.

By the end of the second day my sole achievement was to establish myself as the regular opponent at Pool for Phillip, the owner of a local bar, so it was time for the Jungle again.

The highlight of this particular Park (Taman Negara Niah) is – caves! Yes, they did seem to figure prominently on this trip. I was doing an overnight stop so was in no hurry to get started as it was raining. The guidebook also recommends being at the caves at dusk when the bats go out and the swiftlets come in. These little swifts nest in the caves and it is their spit that gives bird’s nest soup its flavour. So I decided to check in before setting off.

The guidebook and the tourist office in Miri had both said I should book, so I had. There were separate registers for locals and foreigners. I was the first foreigner for 3 months. I was put in a chalet with four en-suite rooms, each with 4 beds. There was a large comfortable lounge area, fridge and cooking facilities. Not bad for 40 Ringgits (8 Euro). The receptionist insisted that I leave the key at reception every time I left, in case there was a sudden rush. There wasn’t, but I did have to share my living area with a cat who wandered in and out; naturally this set me wondering about the easy access for snakes. I kept the bedroom door firmly shut.

To get into the Park and start walking you have to get across a river that is about 10 metres wide. A simple rope bridge you would think. Oh no – a ferry, yes a ferry for 10 metres. Swimming was not a realistic option (and one that was reinforced when I saw another swimming snake later) so I had to be back by 7.30 to get the last ferry. My plans changed rapidly when I got on the plank walkway. This was well built and maintained, comfortably wide but goes up and down quite a bit and was slippery, very slippery. Ideas of blundering back in the dark by myself along that path were rapidly changed. It is a pleasant enough walk to three caves and I was in no hurry, unlike all the people rushing back who were doing this as a day trip.

The first cave is not much but for the second one you are warned that you will need a torch. I had a torch and there were plenty of people around so I declined the services of a guide (with huge torch) and in I went. It does get quite dark fairly quickly despite the cave having a huge mouth and the route being straight through. This is because you go down lots of steps. It is coming up the other side that I saw the men collecting swiftlet spit! They are at the top of very long poles – perhaps forty metres high, clambering around in the nests. When I say poles I mean there were two men, each up their own pole, one of whom one had got off his pole to clamber around in the cave roof. I imagine that they find it difficult to get life insurance. After that, you soon see the “exit” a hundred metres or so in front of you and you are thinking that was OK but nothing special when you notice that the path drops away to your right and there are people coming up out of the ground, so down you go. You are walking on bare rocks and wooden slats – sometimes raised, all damp of course from the dripping rocks and water walked from the rains with a thin layer of bat shit in places to add a little spice. It soon gets dark – very dark. Where have all the people gone? At one point I turned my torch off and yes, it was completely black. On with the torch and hurry on, I am only looking at the path and not at anything else – this is definitely not a place to be dropping your torch. For what seemed like about twenty minutes I hurried on completely on my own until light appeared and I was glad to get out. I am not really afraid of the dark but I am slightly claustrophobic and I was very relieved.

The last cave – only a few minutes walk further - is supposed to be the highlight because it has some very early cave paintings. Frankly these look like few grubby brown marks that you would notice if they were not fenced off!

There was another shower so I wasn’t hurrying. After half an hour, there was only me and a group that had already reached there when I arrived. I didn’t think there was another way back, apart from the one I had come. When this concept was confirmed by the group, I rapidly decided that I was not going back after them and set off! I timed the completely dark bit going back – 6 minutes - and I spent the whole time saying to myself “Don’t drop the torch. Don’t drop the torch” (I had already changed batteries in the third cave.) Again, I saw nobody else.

The food was very poor and no beer was to be had so what is one to do after dinner? On the wildlife front, Malaysia is famous for two things Orang Utans and fireflies. I had already decided that the Orangs could probably live without yet another tourist staring at them from 40 or 50 metres away so it had to be the fireflies. I have seen these in various parts of the world but never seen them in big numbers and on this trip I had seen just one. Wander away from Park HQ at night and it soon gets pretty dark. The first thing I see is glow-worms, quite a few, but then start seeing the odd firefly then more. I got up to about 20 in my field of vision (for those that don’t know about fireflies, you cannot be sure because they only light up intermittently). This is hardly enough to get Sir David and a film crew out but I was satisfied.

Some of the more interesting walks in the Park were closed so I was left with a walk to a “longhouse” village for the following morning. This, the longhouse, not the morning, is the traditional way of living in this area that has largely fallen into disuse. There was a junction in the path on the way and I chose left and quickly came to a filthy modern looking ugly village. So I turned round and headed up this “path” which was made up of a couple of longitudinal boards about two metres long attached right at the end to supports a metre or so off the ground. Naturally, the locals don’t weigh 85 kilos so bouncing along these slippery boards was quite interesting. After a kilometre I came to a better bath going left and right with some women selling beads, necklaces etc. After enquiring I realised that I was back on the path from yesterday talking to the women from whom I had bought a job lot of cheap presents for my female friends in China. About turn and back to the village – it really was poor, ugly and non-descript.

Another quiet night in Miri and I was off to Bruneii. How to get there? Taxi, naturally. Communal taxis run twice a day.

The reason for going to Bruneii (apart from country collecting - No. 49) is that I have some friends who live there. They have been there five years and I have been in China most of the last 3 ½ but we had failed to meet. Lou works as a teacher for Shell, which means that she gets a good expatriate house. Mike is an environmental trainer for a local company and they have a daughter, Lucy, who, though not yet 2 at the time, could converse with one very effectively. They also have a Philippino maid (who got my T-shirts far cleaner than I ever do) who is a grandmother and ten years younger than me!

Bruneii is stricter on alcohol than Malaysia – you cannot buy it. Lou can, however, buy wine and spirits through Shell and beer is brought over the border so I settled down to five days of swimming, swigging beer, and reading – just what I needed. It was weekdays and I went nowhere except to see Lou and Mike at work and a few restaurants – excellent. I was fed up with my rucksack and my own company and thoroughly glad to work on my back and my tan. They have a different lifestyle than I do. Their friends are mostly expatriates, mine are almost all Chinese. They work harder than I do and I congratulated them on getting a house with a pool. Wrong, Mike had put it in. They have only been there two years and I said that they were lucky to have come to a house with a nice garden. Wrong, Mike had done it. I knew better than to comment on the conversion of part of the carport to a bar, complete with dartboard and glitter ball. My only useful activity whilst I was there was to help Mike erect the pole-dancing pole. They have a very nice lifestyle.

That was it. When I got back to Guangzhou it was 9 degrees so the site of a sun-tanned gweilo walking down the street in shorts and flip-flops attracted quite a bit of attention.

Did I enjoy the trip? Not really. Better than sitting around at home, of course but there were few really good points – the jungle was the highlight, at least until I got to Bruneii. So what was wrong?

The food was poor. The towns and cities were largely of little interest. There is considerable racism. The Chinese dominate economically but the Malays politically and the government has been very active since the formation of Malaysia promoting Malay rights. (Singapore was kicked out soon after the formation of the country for the Chinese interfering in mainland politics.)

However I think that the real reason is that all three countries have a vaguely British feel about them. There are several possible reasons:

The prevalence of English. Everybody speaks some and it is the language of instruction at most higher levels of education and training. I am just not used to this any more.

Everybody drives on the correct side of the road. I am used to driving (or being driven) on the wrong side of the road. Of course those of you that have been to China or India know that traffic rules are subjects for entertainment rather than obedience so this caused another shock – the standard of driving is not bad at all.

The sheer number of tourists and white settlers. I walk the streets of Guangzhou at the weekend and expect to see nobody who is not Chinese. There are white faces everywhere in these countries; you are rarely out of site of white people for more than a few minutes. I know I was going to tourist spots but even Shanghai does not have this level of people of European origin.

Will I go back?
Singapore - No.
Malaysia – Only as part of a trip to Bruneii
Bruneii – Yes, with my dirtiest T-Shirts.