We went into the Borneo jungle for a 3 day safari. Normally we don’t do “this is what we did” type postings but it was really cool so we’re going to do one now.

The Kinabatangan river runs through the east of Sabah in the Malaysian Borneo. It represents the lifeline to the rapidly disappearing jungle and rapidly disappearing wildlife. The Malaysians have discovered great money can be made from growing palm trees for palm tree oil and gladly destroy their own jungle to make a quick buck.

We signed on for a 3 day trek by boat into the jungle staying in a basic camp with the excellent Uncle Tan’s tour company. We had great luck spying wildlife. Monkey’s, orang utan, elephants, crocodiles, frog, scorpions….

Hey enough of my blathering, check out the gallery: http://www.davethegrinch.net/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=4069

More…So…..I tried it. We went all the way out to the edge of the earth, OK just to the edge of Borneo but it took a really long time to get there, so that David could dive at this amazing, super-duper dive site called Sipidan. Supposed to be one of the best sites in the world. There’s an under-water cliff and the ocean depth instantly goes from 5m (15 feet) to 600m and you can see hundreds of sea turtles and sharks and all kinds of magical, electric coral. They charge *nearly* as much for you to snorkel here as to dive so instead of doing that, and before my brain could kick in, I signed up for a “Discover Scuba” day course. I thought it would be like the Discover Flying thing David gave me for Christmas last year where I didn’t actually have to learn anything – I just held on and flew the plane for an hour. Oh no……..little did I know the terrifying things I would do before the day was out.
My instructor was a fantastically patient guy named Chey from South Africa. I owe everything to him. My stomach rose to my throat and I felt like I was going to hurl as he explained that I would have to pass 4 skills tests, underwater – sitting on the bottom, before we would be able to go for a swim. I would have to: 1. remove the thing that lets me breath from my mouth and put it back in again, underwater. 2. Remove the thing that lets me breath from my mouth, toss it behind me, find it again, and put it back in my mouth, all while underwater. 3. Pretend that my tank has run out of air, remove the thing that lets me breath from my mouth, find his back-up thing that lets you breath and put it into my mouth, while underwater and 4. clear water from my mask by tilting my head up, pulling the mask away from my face and blowing out my nose – you got it, while underwater.  Getting INTO the water was scary enough for me. I had to roll backward off the side of the boat. The panic was already setting in. Then, while holding on to a buoy line, I had to get comfortable putting my face in the water and breathing through the regulator…………………………….45 minutes later, we were still holding on to the buoy line. After many, many babysteps, several panic attacks and several anxious requests to go back up, I was finally, finally sitting with Chey on the ocean floor – a whopping 10 feet below the surface. I did successfully complete my skills tests (receiving a very sweet underwater high-five and handshake each time) and I did get my swim but I can’t say I ever really *enjoyed* what I was doing. I fought off allowing my brain to think about what I was doing all day. I would move frantically from kind of feeling peaceful to feeling trapped and certain I would die a painful death at any moment. I tried so hard to just think “oh look at the fishies! Oh, that’s a cool fish. Oh wow, look at that!” but it was work, hard work. Chey was so very kind and patient and didn’t get at all cross with me when he found out from the other dive teams that we were just a few feet from seeing a sea turtle if only I hadn’t asked, after swimming for 45 minutes, if we could be done.
Being the kind of person I am – scared of everything – I’ve had lots of chances in my life to feel the difference between before and after. Before: all the blood draining to my feet kind of fear. After: beaming smile, walking on water kind of elation. I can happily report that I reunited with David at the end of the day with that proud, excited beaming smile and I couldn’t wait to tell him all about it. I’m still not sure if diving is for me….still don’t know if I’ll go through the course. I think I need to give it another go to make up my mind, just one more time………:)

We didn’t plan to go to Malaysia. We didn’t really lend it any advance thought and didn’t have much of a look at the Malaysia section of our SE Asia guidebook. But we found ourselves a bit bored of the Thailand tourist scene, saw there was an overnight train to the Thai/Malaysian border and decided to check out what we’d heard was a beautiful and much less tourist-trampled country. Early on our arrival morning we watched out the train window as the landscape grew thicker and thicker with lush green rainforest. Upon disembarking from the train we literally walked right across the border, past child-soldiers wielding massive Russian automatic riffles which led us to wonder what exactly they felt they had to arm themselves against so fiercely. We made our way in the sweltering heat to a grotty little bus station and boarded a chug of a bus to take us to a town called Kota Bharu from where, the next morning, we would catch a ferry to magical paradise islands for a few days of relaxation after this harrowing few days of travel (directly prior to this we had stayed in the Thai town that spawned the Accidental Tourist entry and served as inspiration for my Ode to the Squat Toilet poem).

It was here in Kota Bharu that my fixation began with the headscarf. This is my first time visiting a predominantly Muslim country and Kota Bharu is a very conservative Muslim town. I was immediately transfixed by the headscarves. They intrigue me and, I have to admit, they frighten me. Well, they don’t frighten me. My ignorance frightens me. My own ignorance frightens me which is a change since most of the time it’s other people’s ignorance that frightens me. All I know about the Muslim faith and culture is what I learned during a tri-religion course I took in college where Islam had to share a tightly-packed semester with Christianity and Judaism. So, suffice it to say, my knowledge is from a book and not much is still in my little brain. Here, though, it was alive and I was in the middle of it feeling very inappropriate in my western clothes with exposed shoulders. I tried to make sense of what I saw: girls seem to be able to pick the color of their headscarf to match their outfit and I’ve since surmised that there is probably an entire world of accessory shopping that I’m not privy to. I wonder how many of these scarves the average woman has and if it’s a shopping addiction like shoes or purses. There also seems to be a certain age at which girls begin wearing them and I wonder if it’s around puberty because I saw a lot of non-scarved young girls with scarved mothers. But then I also see a lot of really young girls in school uniforms where their heads are covered so perhaps it depends on the family or how strict they practice. I also wonder if practice dictates the rest of the woman’s outfit because most women where western clothes but some where the long dresses over long skirts as well. I think it’s funny to see a girl who looks a bit tom-boyish in baggy jeans and a football jersey wearing a lacey pale-pink scarf. But there is something about not being able to see the woman’s hair that is so mysterious – I’m just obsessed with curiosities. Does she keep her head covered in her own home? David thinks perhaps not unless she has guests. For western woman, our hair is so much apart of us, our identity, how we express ourselves and our personal style. There is something hugely private, gated, about never showing the outside world what your hair looks like. I’m assuming that most women have very long hair tucked up underneath since, from what I’ve seen, most SE Asian woman keep their hair quite long. There is something sensual and intimate about there being such a huge part of one’s identity kept hidden from everyone except her immediate family and her husband.

Aside from these aesthetics, though, I can’t seem to overcome on my own the feeling that it represents a blinding difference between cultures. It’s a feeling I’ve not encountered before to this degree and I’m embarrassed about it. I’m very self-conscience that they are looking at me with disapproval because I don’t cover my head, I’m nervous to enter a Malay Muslim eatery staffed by all women because I’m afraid they won’t want to serve me. I’m so overcome wondering what they think of me and what they think I think of them. All through this journey so far I’ve not felt any hesitation in striking up a conversation with a local to learn about them and their lives but my curiosities here seem too personal to ask about, too foreign, too…….maybe I’m just scared but I can’t really say what I’m scared of. I see Muslim women and Malay Indian and Chinese women in friendly interactions all the time, young girls of all sorts giggling together so I’m sure that my paranoia is ridiculous and, if only I had the courage and could figure out a way to broach the subject tactfully, I could learn something. But, I fear that I will leave the country in 2 days time not having learned anything. Granted, our interactions with Muslim Malay women have been a bit limited to that of drugstore cashier, buffet-line server and the occasional hotel receptionist and those aren’t really conducive to meaningful conversations. However, I feel like a bit of a failure for spending over 3 weeks in their country and not learning, expanding, or overcoming my ignorance……

To close on a happy note and to bring this entry full circle, we did make it to the paradise islands. They are called the Perhentians and they are divine little islands with white sand, jungle interior and the warmest, most crystal clear water. We spent a glorious 5 days there doing a bit of snorkeling and David did some diving. We saw sea turtles and sharks and lots of gorgeous fish, had some great food and watched pirated DVDs every night. Funny that we saw Pursuit of Happiness when it’s not even been released in this country yet. Please don’t think less of me for my admissions here. This is my journal, after all.

Dave Says:
Malaysia is not exactly a melting pot of their only three cultures, rather its a jello mold into which is poured the population and out slurps a soft goo of rainbow stripes comprising 60% Malay (including a few indigenous ethnic groups), 25% Chinese and 15% Indian. Fear not, this rather laborious metaphor will make complete sense further down this posting.These three groups couldn’t be more separate although they all appear to interact quite harmoniously. So, what does this mean for the traveler’s everyday needs? Here’s the breakdown:

Accommodation: For the budget minded, there are hostels and hotels. For the most part the hostels are run by non-Muslim Malays. Beer is readily available and sometimes cheap by Malaysian standards which is normally around US prices. (However, it must be noted that your very own travelers are taking a “country off” from drinking. Cheap beer and being on constant vacation is taking its toll on waistline and liver. ) The hostels are clean and usually very friendly. Budget hotels are run by the Chinese and look absolutely grotty. We did have the pleasure of staying in one in the equally grotty town of Sandakan and it was passable for a night but I certainly wouldn’t write home about it – unless, of course, you consider this “writing home about it”. They certainly don’t believe in fooling the potential guest with the old “nice lobby but shabby rooms” scam either; the whole hotel looks quite horrible indeed.

Shopping: Now, the Chinese Malays own commerce in this country. In small towns just about every other shop has the word “trading” in its title. This is the travelers clue that one may purchase anything one might desire from these stores. Anything from toothpaste to plastic toys from the “Batman Begins” movie. Next step up from “trading” is “superstore”. Superstores are more super for the vast array of goods they sell rather than their size. Imagine the whole of Target or Asda squeezed into a midsized grocery store. Ground floor is usually food although its hard to find anything fresh and the top floor is anything from guitars to gum boots or shorts to shampoo. For our muddy jungle trip we had to purchase a pair of rubber boots or Kampung Adidas. Off we went to the local chinese superstore and had our pick from about 200 pairs. Kampug Adidas are a one piece rubber soccer boot cast from a mold of the real leather Adidas shoes. They cost 5RM ($1.50). We opted for the gum boots at a more expensive 9RM figuring the snakes and mud would have a harder time entering at mid-calf level. Anyhow, there’s nothing you can’t buy and buy for cheap at these places and they are all, without exception, Chinese.

Shopping in KL is like shopping in London or Seattle. Starbucks are everywhere as is Borders books, KFC, Burger King, Quicksilver, Top Shop, Body Shop, Guess etc etc. Note: these are NOT Chinese owned!

Food: The food stays along ethnic boundaries too. The Indians run Indian restaurants, the Chinese run Chinese restaurants leaving the Malays to the market stalls and Kopi Kedai. “Fusion” is not a word that has crept into Malaysian cuisine. Kopi Kedai actually means “coffee shop” but they are really restaurants and all look exactly the same and all serve exactly the same dishes. In fact, the lack of a printed menu just saves everyone time and money – noodles, rice, soup – all fried and all with chicken and all for about 4RM. The floors are all white tiled and the food is made in the morning and kept in a serving cart all day. Rarely are there woman patrons although its almost always woman who work there. Once you’ve had one meal from one Kopi, you, quite literally, have had them all. Even though they are coffee shops, the Malay word for coffee appears to be nescafe. Indian restaurants are so so. We had several Indian meals and they all were like eating at the Indian booth, next to the Thai booth, next to the Baskin and Robbins at the shopping mall food court. Chinese food in Malaysia is just like Chinese food anywhere in the world. Now, there is one Malay drink that crosses ethnicities: the not-so-humble ABC. This drink will now prove my opening metaphor to be not as ridiculous as you thought upon first reading. The ABC comes in a bowl and consists of a pink colored condensed milk/sugar/peanut powder liquid suspending three different colors of jello pieces, red soy beans and yellow sweetcorn. It sounds quite disgusting but each ingredient has a distinct taste and fits together in a slightly awkward but not unpleasant manner. Much like the culture that gave birth to it, one is not sure if all these things need to be in the same drink, but they are and that’s what makes the whole thing so damn interesting.

“Whatchu talkin’ about Willis”

It appears from those not in the guide book writing business or those in the tourist industry that racial tensions in Malaysia may actually be as sanitized as it was in that famed TV show. It appears as if the Malay’s control government and the government is becoming more and more conservative by the week and we all know that conservative Muslim governments are not always the best for world peace (come to that, neither are Christian conservative governments). A couple of interesting facts: if you’re a Malay Muslim you get 7% off the price of that new house you’ve always wanted courtesy of the government. The Chinese are mostly Christian and the Indians are mostly Hindu so that effectively precludes them from this state incentive by means of religion. We also heard that corruption is rife and should a non Muslim die without a will, the local cleric will come along and say he converted the deceased to Islam shortly before is death so ensuring most of his estate goes to the local mosque (which the cleric happens to run). Even more disturbingly. debate rages in parliament to apply Islamic law to everyone regardless of religion. All these things we understand to be contributing to a powder keg that may exploded at any time. Even in the land of racially integrated beverages the specter of neo-conservatism raises it’s ugly head.