I'll Be There Dreckly: On The Road

Sibu, then Niah National Park, Malaysian Borneo

In this blog: on buses and boats with the Borneo travel gang, a quick city stop, and one of the biggest caves in the world.

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After nine months of travelling on my own - happily and willingly, but largely by circumstance rather than choice, I've managed to group up with two sometimes three other backpackers who are heading the same way as me, and over three days we've travelled up the north coast of Malaysian Borneo stopping at cities and sights on the way.

Logging barge on journey from Kuching to Sibu

Because of it's huge rivers, thick jungle and relative lack of population, Borneo doesn't have a lot of roads, so it turned out the best way to take the journey from Kuching to Sibu, was along the coast by boat - a four hour journey vs eight hours by bus. The other guys had left the day before so I headed off alone on the local bus to the ferry port, grouping with three other travellers to find the port amongst a maze of industrial estates once the bus had dumped us in the middle of nowhere. The journey was really interesting, albeit a bit uncomfortable - on the outside deck it was so noisy I could feel my eardrums rupturing, but inside the aircon was turned down so low that early signs of frostbite were visible. The solution I decided was to spend whole journey flipping between the two, thus only being part cold and part deaf, the best of both worlds. The scenery was fantastic though - leaving Kuching and heading up the estuary, going out to see for a couple hours then back inland up another huge, and I mean really huge river, lined by jungle, small villages and over a hundred sawmills along the way, whilst passing huge barges of trees being towed downstream. Deforestation is a big concern in Borneo - the oldest rainforest in the world, and it's very clear they're flat out working at it.

We reached Sibu - a commercial city about fifty miles inland from the sea which was pleasant enough, if not a little short on anything interesting to see or do. With Max who I'd met in Kuching, and Alan, a Dutch guy we'd met earlier that day, we got a little lost looking for a guesthouse, by chance bumping into Canadian Rene and Belgium Christophe on the street by chance who led us to the place they were staying at. The rest of the day was spent sometimes as a group, sometimes apart, having a look around. The biggest market in Malaysia was interesting, particularly seeing the way they sell chickens - live,p but wrapped up in newspaper and string. I had a look in the Sibu Heritage Centre, learning more about the British colonial days and the huge numbers of Chinese immigrants who now dominate. I stopped at a beautiful seven story Chinese pagoda nearby on the riverbank, where I bumped into Dutch Alan again and we climbed it to see the view. He was a bearded guy, slightly older than me, who told me of how he'd visited every county bar three in the Asian continent, and lived in Calcutta, India for six years doing social work on the streets - an very interesting and nice guy, if not a tiny weeny bit of a travel snob with it occasionally. We all met up again that evening and walked to the town's night market, where under a bustle of blue gazebos people sold everything and anything. The food section was what we were interested in, and I took a pick and mix of Pork Bao (steamed Chinese buns), Malaysian thick noodles, and some meat on a stick- chicken, baby squid and an unidentifiable meat as sometimes happens in Asia.
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Live chickens in market, Sibu

Chinese pagoda, Sibu

Night market, Sibu

Half a day in Sibu was enough and the next morning with Canadian Rene and Belgium Christophe, we took a bus five hours north-east which with it's comfy seats and air-con was a total contrast to my experiences in India. Rene and I talked travelling and decided to travel together for next few weeks round Borneo. Christophe slept. Deforestation of ancient forest, both legal and illegal but controversial nonetheless was quite visible out the window. We passed many longhouses, kind-of the Malaysian version of British terraced housing, and many freshly built big empty property developments en-route - over speculation perhaps, or just people putting all their oil and gas money somewhere safe. Most of the journey though, the scenery consisted of nothing but

Jungle

Palm oil plantation

Jungle

Palm oil plantation

River

Swamp

Longhouse

Jungle

Palm oil plantation

Jungle

Palm oil plantation

We hopped off at a little service station in the middle of nowhere, and made the short journey to Batu Niah via my first experience of hitc, a slightly odd little untouristy town outside the gates of Niah National Park. It had a bit of a frontier outpost feel to it, being full of drab concrete buildings and pick-up trucks thanks to being based around logging and palm oil we assumed. We shared a two bed room between three in the only hotel in town, with Rene on a bed, Christophe volunteering to sleep on a rock hard bed base, and me on a mattress on the floor - the things you do as a backpacker to save a few quid sometimes! We went for a wander, laughing at all the fake bottles of spirits in the supermarket, before buying a £3 random bottle of a Chinese spirit to try later which turned out to be a bit like rum. Rene spotted a basketball court, and we watched some locals playing for a few minutes before before they invited us to join in for a mess about, speaking a little bit of English between them. All of us were rusty as can be but it was a good fun nonetheless.

Me making friends with the locals, Niah Batu

Playing basketball with the locals, Niah Batu

The next morning we walked a couple of miles to the park office then took a boat across the river into the main area. Niah National Park. The park is based around a huge limestone outcrop which sits in the middle of an otherwise flat area, and people visit to see it's network of caves within as well as some prehistoric rock graffiti, and excavations of the oldest evidence of human settlement in south-east Asia - about 40,000 year old.

We walked along a raised wooden pathway through the jungle, passing over swamps, seeing a variety of small and very different looking insects. An excitable Malaysian girl stopped and chatted to us, later inviting us to meet up for drinks in Miri in a couple of days (which we forgot) - that would never have happened in India I thought. After half an hour we reached Traders Cave - a huge overhang set into the hill, sported by huge natural pillars, looking like a piece of cutting edge modern architecture, except as natural as can be.

A little further up the valley we entered The Great Cave - one of the largest caves in the world, with a 250m wide by 60m high entrance. My jaw dropped, it was bigger than anything I'd ever seen - I reckon you could park five jumbo jets in there, with space for a small stadium beside. The scale was just beyond what my mind could process, truly awesome. Within the spcave were various wooden poles which went from the ground right long way up to the roof, which locals precariously climb to collect the nests of Swiftlets for Birds Nest soup. Believe it or not, this expensive Chinese delicacy contains actual birds nest - the saliva of the swiftlets dissolves to give it it's flavour.

We spent a couple more hours exploring further into the networks of huge cave passages, walking on wooden boardwalks, sometimes lit by other entrances and sometimes requiring torchlight. It sometimes felt like the whole mountain above was just a hollow shell, such was the scale of it all. After sheltering from yet another huge downpour, and seeing some ancient rock paintings which really didn't do anything for me despite their significance, we were on the road again heading for the city of Miri.