Kept a journal of my trip to Kuching, happy reading.

DAY ONE: Monday, 22/12/08

Arrived at the Kuching Airport (I forgot the real name) at about 8 PM, local time – same as Singapore time anyway, and took a one hour plus taxi cab to the Damai Puri Resort.

I think going overseas usually is wasted on me, because ironically it just makes me appreciate Singapore more. Singapore is kind of my idea of the best place to live because every thing is so compact. You can’t expect anything else from an island city, where space is a most valuable commodity, but I love everything being so near and convenient. An hour’s trip just to get to a hotel? Don’t like much.

But anyway, the hotel is newly renovated and the room is nice, so I’ll stop griping and get to bed. End journal for Day One.


DAY TWO: Tuesday, 23/12/08

The day started with a late breakfast and a trip to the Sarawak Cultural Village. Memories of Malaysian Montage sprang immediately to mind when we walked around the place looking at the different types of houses that the Malaysians used to live in. I also happened to have been in the Sarawak group for MM.

After a brief respite at the hotel, we went on a wildlife spotting cruise.

Wildlife observing has never been one of my fortes: I possess neither the patience nor persistence to keep hunting down the jumping monkeys or silent ground critters with my eyes. Nor do I fancy keeping my eyes trained on a certain spot for ten minutes just to catch a glimpse of a nondescript monkey… which I can’t even take a photo of.

I do like taking photos, though, but as all our “birdwatching” involved distances out of the range of my 3x zoom digital camera, I ended up directing my lens to the even more distant but large clouds. Clouds overseas never fail to amaze me with their endless variations of arrangements.

So anyway, our guide took us on a motorboat down to the mouth of the river and began hunting for the various animals which we were expected to se-

OKAY OH MY GOSH I WAS JUST WATCHING BBC NEWS WHILE TYPING THIS AND SINGAPORE GOT FEATURED IN A SHORT NEWSFLASH ON…

… 100 people stuck in the Singapore Flyer due to power failure.

Okay. Of all the weirdest things to get on BBC news for, this is perhaps the most embarrassing. Must be a slow news day at the BBC headquarters -.-.

Where was I?

Ah yes. So after spotting some dolphins (actually just the patch of their backs where their dorsal fins and blowholes are) and after that some proboscis monkeys which refused to come close for a good photo, we went to see some fireflies. Fireflies are probably how the Christmas tree designers got the idea for the twinkling lights; a bush infested with fireflies is about as beautiful as a Christmas tree can get.

Unfortunately, while fireflies are harmless and magical to look at, they come with a whole load of mosquitoes as well. Thankfully I have thick skin. And probably sour blood as well – none of those flitting irritants came to bite me.

At just about this time, the sky was reaching a shade of deep blue, nearly black, and we were in a small branch off a river, about 45 minutes from our jetty. The sky and sea were already trying to blend into one shade of black, and being in such a rural and deserted area, there were no building lights in sight. To get back to the jetty, we had to cross the river delta, or the mouth of the river, which in this case was a wide expanse of sea that I saw on the way there.

A few minutes into the journey, and the first vestiges of lightning lit the sky, and as far as I could see the sea became a vast plain of dark. A few flashes later, and I realized we were very far out from land – and at this kind of distance in this kind of lighting, a mile is as good as a meter.

How to describe it? Imagine land, in the black foggy distance, near enough to be visible but far enough to offer little comfort. Imagine sea, in all directions, a black floor reaching to the horizon, uniform and perfectly smooth. And imagine a little boat, seating capacity eight people, speeding across the unchanging landscape, a little bubble of safety with only a short railing to divide the inside from the outside.

Add the wind howling in your ears and the waves spraying water into your eyes. Don’t forget that the landscape is nearly pitch black, and the land, sea, and sky have all melded into a gradient of darkness. Think of the kilometres of sea separating you from safety, and think about how puny your boat is compared to the primal might of the ocean. Feel the tightness of the lousy life jacket which doesn’t even fit.

Oh, did I mention that there are crocodiles in the water as well?

So I freaked out somewhere here, but what to do?

The only solace offered was the steady hum of the motor, strong and continuous. The boat was moving quite fast, and I tried not to think of the nigh invisible rocks or islands (it’s so dark that you can’t even see the islands!) which might be anywhere. Occasionally, the winking on of a light from the mainland would give some comfort, but otherwise, the distances at this time were impossible to gauge. Specks of light don’t get bigger, or smaller, as you close in on them – we might have been speeding over the surf or absolutely motionless for all I could have judged if not for the wind.

Maybe I was just making a big deal out of nothing, or maybe it’s my ever present vivid imagination exaggerating things, but it was a time of quiet contemplation of the vastness of it all, and how small and pathetic our bubble of safety was.

(this has cliché stamped all over it but whatever)

Anyway, it was to my immense relief when the twenty lights of the bridge over the jetty appeared round the river bend. But before the boatman let us off he pointed to us with his torch a crocodile.

Actually, just its eyes, red in the reflective glare of the torch beam. But knowing that the river is full of them doesn’t help matters much. Had dinner at a seafood restaurant with very cheap prices.

Anyway, that’s my little adventure for the day. End journal for Day Two.


DAY THREE: Wednesday, 24/12/08

BBC followed up on the Singapore Flyer incident on the morning news. Apparently no one died, though it took 6 hours for everyone to be extricated. Two people were hospitalized… not sure why, but when I get back to Singapore I’ll check it up.

Anyway, today’s a beach-slack day, so after breakfast we went down to the beach in swimming attire. Beach was quite free, save a few kids building sandcastles and a couple throwing Frisbees.

The Chinese idiom 人在江湖，身不由己 took on a new meaning for me today. Literally translated, it means: people in the river (martial art world), cannot act of their own volition. In this case it’s a sea, not a river, but still.

I’ve taken a new view of the sea today. It’s currently a rather neutral gray, but the calm surface belies the raw strength of the waves. We sat on the beach where the waves break, and each wave contains enough force to push people around. Merely sitting down on the beach is difficult when each wave can move one back two or three meters. And if you go slightly further into the sea, it becomes impossible to stand up without falling down or stumbling as each brown mass of surf breaks over you.

And it never stops. We went to the beach at about 11 AM, when the tide was rising, and I could have sat there to enjoy the waves for ages upon ages. With goggles, you can starfloat in the water for as long as you want, and let the waves carry you where they will.

I guess in Singapore it’s hard to experience the power of the sea when our beaches are artificial, and not very nice. And always very crowded.

After spending about two hours there, making fingers and toes all wrinkled, we went back up to the room to relax a while before embarking on our next activity.

One thing you don’t notice while sitting happily in the beach is the amount of sand that gets… everywhere. You don’t feel it, and only notice when you enter the shower -.-.

And they say that seawater is good for pimples… in fact it is, something I discovered in the mirror back in the room. Must be similar to saline solution or something.

Went down to the city for a spin of shopping and dinner. Wasn’t terribly interesting, and eventually didn’t buy anything worth mentioning. Had KFC for dinner. There’s a rather novel dish at the KFC over here, literally, chicken rice (rice + KFC chicken).

Merry Christmas Day Eve! End journal for Day Three.


DAY FOUR: Thursday, 25/12/08

Today wasn’t exactly the way I had planned to spend Christmas Day.

I mean, not many Singaporeans would spend their festive spirit away in a mangrove a few tens of miles from civilization, trekking through the jungle for an hour or so just to see a beach on the other side… then walking right back again.

Oh, and that’s not all. To even get to the starting point of the trek, which is on a mangrove/beach kind of place, you have to take a half an hour motorboat ride from a jetty which is connected to the main road (in Sarawak there’s only one road connecting most places), which is located about 45 minutes from the hotel.

So, having to wake up at about 7:30 AM in the morning was already the earliest I’ve had to do so in a long, long time. Ate breakfast and got on the bus (actually an eight-seater minivan), then was transported to the jetty. Following which, we got on the small motorboat (smaller than the one we took on Tuesday) and set off.

About halfway there, to put it simply, we got stuck. Running aground on a sandspit or a beach isn’t that bad, because you can simply get off and push it the boat to deeper water, but running straight over a mud flat is the worst, because the motor gets clogged with mud, and you can’t get off because (according to the guide) the mud there was akin to quicksand.

For two-and-a-half hours we were stuck, forced to wait for the tide to come in so as to raise the boat over the level of the mud. Thank goodness I brought a couple of books to read, because other than getting a nice tan sunburnt and producing large amounts of Vitamin E, there was nothing else to do.

Besides taking more photos of the sea and sky, of course.

Occasionally the boatman made a little progress as he lowered the motor into the mud and turned it on, as the chocolate looking mud started churning and splattering mud on everyone. Not sure why people pay so much for mud baths and mud skin treatment; one capsize would have given seven people a free mud soak.

After finally reaching the trek starting point at about noon, running extremely late (at this point we were supposed to be RETURNING from the hike) we set off. Although the trek was allegedly only 800 meters, making a nice 1.6 km run there and back if only the horizontal aspect was considered, every step was a change in elevation, and the occasional wooden steps and railings only appeared at completely impassable terrain.

Anyway, it took about an hour and a half to go there and back, and besides some proboscis monkeys at the very start of the walk, not a single wildlife did we see.

Oh, of course there was plenty of insect life. I have some bites to attest to that.

The final part of the trek involved a barefoot walk over a mangrove, and I must say that reflexology walks are better. You know mangrove have roots which stick vertically upwards (not sure what its called, forgot all my Geog)? Well, they are as turgid as they look -.-, making walking over them a rather spiky affair.

And (having inherited my mum’s pale skin) I came off with a mild sunburn on the forearms and neck and face. My arms from hand to elbow are currently a different shade of brown as compared to my upper arms.

After having some lunch and a toilet break back at the jetty, we set off… not back to the comfortable refuge of our hotel but to a gift shop on a half an hour long detour (which makes an hour there and back, not counting shopping time) at the behest of the bus driver.

Upon finally reaching back at the hotel (about 4:30 PM), we went for some buffeting in the waves and the pool too cool off. THANKFULLY, the really heavy rain only came at this point. Getting roasted in the sun for two-and-a-half-hours is one thing, but getting roasted AND frozen is another. And trekking in the jungle with rain to accentuate the slipperiness of the rocks and roots and leaves is no joke.

Christmas Day calls for Christmas dinner, and today also being my mum’s birthday (yes, Christmas!), we decided to take the buffet dinner. I ate what, ten minute beef steaks, seven potato patties, five lamb pieces, one turkey wing, chocolate desserts and whathaveyou.

Currently having a stomach ache for eating too much. End journal for Day Four.


DAY FIVE: Friday, 26/12/08

Owww my back is burning hard from the sunburn.

Went down back to the beach again, this time venturing about ten meters deeper into the ocean. That’s the only way to catch the big waves… by being there when they break. I’m no Geog student, but I do know that the greatest force exists when the wave crest forms, and the foam and roar materialize, not before, when the wave travels along the sea and after, when the wave travels along the beach.

That point was about chest high for me, and so we spent about an hour and a half riding the waves, going under them, slamming against them… when I dived straight against a rather big wave it was like getting slapped.

Cooled down in the pool after that. I never really thought I liked swimming much, and I don’t pursue it actively, but it’s nice to slack in starfloat position for a hour or so.

Packed up the room, and napped till about 5:30 PM. Taxi to airport, plane to Singapore, taxi back home, nothing else much to say. End journal for Day Five.

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