Author: matt

Sagada gets the big thumbs-up! A cool, mountain retreat full of log cabins and leafy mountain outlooks, cool restaurants and bars, nice clean streets and not  man with a gun in sight! This is the entrance to my hotel, I was dying for a pee but I was denied, I had to wait until I got into the room instead. Maybe this is why the streets are cleaner?

The journey here from Banaue was an adventure in itself, I rode on the top of this jeepney, next to the guy that’s on it now

Most times you have to change jeepneys, two-thirds into the journey at Bontoc, a small commercial town. This one went directly there though, and whilst you’re free to attempt to hang on to the roof on the dangerous mountain roads, just before Bontoc they stop and make you come inside, as if you were caught buy the police riding on the top as you slowly crawl around the streets in town, the driver might get a ticket. As soon as you leave Bontoc and the road is sufficiently dangerous again, they stop and let you climb back up…. I lost count of how many partially cleared landslides across the road we passed over.

[Video removed for now – too slow to upload]

Sorry for the shaky camera work, it’s pretty hard to hold on with one hand and hold the phone with the other. This shot was also taken from the roof, a vista over yet more rice terraces

I got a beautiful log room in a hotel up on the hill above the village, they even named one of the rooms after me

But that one was crap, so I’m staying in Simon Peter across the hall 🙂 This was the rather fine view from bed this morning

Yesterday I hooked up with a Japanese girl also in my hotel and shared a guide to take us through the “cave connection”, a fairly hardcore potholing expedition, by all accounts. On the way you stop by Echo Valley where there are a load of coffins, hanging high in the rocks, a custom still carried out occasionally, the most recent been placed there in 2010 I think he said. The valley also echoes from the view point, seemingly off the trees the other side, strangely. Our guide said he couldn’t demonstrate it himself as his voice had just finished breaking, i.e. dropping in tone from his childhood squeak to a more manly tone. We asked him how old he was, he replied 24. Seemingly they develop quite late here…

Off we got to the caves, and our guide stops to light up the kerosine lantern that’s going to get us through, and changes the pair of sandals he had on to a pair of flip-flops, which are apparently “far more suitable for caving”. As soon as you’re in to Lumiang Cave, the mouth is full of dozens more hanging coffins, again all as high up as possible within the large cave mouth. They’re made of pine tree logs, hewn out and then a lid placed on, and they’re wedged in position very precariously with stones and stuff. I asked if they ever if they ever fall down, he said in 1990 there was an earthquake which knocked almost all of them down, an%d they all burst open of course. Apparently the villagers put them back up again, but they’re not 100% sure they got all the right bones back into the right coffins……

As soon as you’re in, the tight turns and squeezes begin, I’ve no photos of any of this as my camera is wrecked and I couldn’t risk taking the phone down. At several points you’re going up or down slippery vertical faces with the help of a thin rope, or on not quite vertical faces with no rope and just a few loose footholds which you’re making on slippery rock in flip-flops. The guide, meanwhile, is dancing up and down these faces with one hand, the other hand steadying the superhot gas lamp balanced on his head. In wet season you have to swim through some sections, but we weren’t treated to that.

Eventually you end up at Sumaging cave, a large system full of various formations, including a particularly impressive curtain. There’s a swimming hole at the bottom of this which I just had to try – the water was bloody freezing! I did my heroic deed for the day on the way back up to the exit from this cave. Shima decided to go for a full on uncontrolled slide down a 45 degree rock face. As she came flying past me I reached out and grabbed her and managed to stop her, without sliding down myself somehow. God knows how.

Overnighting in Banguio now, a fairly large city, but arrived late and so saw nothing apart from crowds of people, and running around attempting to find where I need to be tomorrow to get a bus to get me to Clerk airport. Goodbye Philippines, destination China tomorrow!

I spent a fairly miserable day in Manila, it has to be said. Having stayed at my favourite hotel there which was fine, I had to checkout at noon and find a way to spend my time until 10pm when the bus would leave. After the usual farting around with breakfast at about 1pm followed by some coffees, I hit the mall as you do apparently, when in Manila. This place was HUGE. The entrances are guarded with gun bearing guards and you have to pass through airport style security to get in, which keeps the beggars and viagra sellers out, but there’s not much respite within. The “respectable” stall holders and shopworkers are in your face every few seconds as you walk around, and within the mall there is a huge department store, Robertsons, which would be something along the lines of John Lewis for any UK based people that know it, even in there as I browsed for a belt, the assistants are pre-reading your every move and trying to sell you a fridge freezer as you pass a tablecloth display that you may have looked at in a glancing fashion, before showing you every possible operating function of the buckle of the belt that you may have been foolish enough to touch. That, and a virtual fist-fight with the entire staff of a bar as I had the audacity to try and buy a 34 peso beer with a 500 peso note, it’s enough to try anyone’s patience…..

Anyway, I got the bus which left at 9pm rather than 10pm as my ticket said (good job I got to the terminal early!) and have made it to Banaue. It’s a pleasantly cool mountain retreat, here is the view from my room as I type, with the sound of river rapids raging below me. You can see a few of the famous rice terraces the region is famous for.

I am amused by the space saving location of sinks. Open the window when you want to do the washing up, and make sure you don’t drop a plate as it’s about a 100 foot drop…

Some chickens await their fete as a motor unit from a ceiling fan spins a rag around over their former friends above them, to keep the flies off

Today I’ve been struggling to try and fit a square peg into a round hole in terms of timetabling my last few days in the Philippines, it really is very difficult to make last minute plans here in terms of transportation in particular. From here, one would normally do some form of trekking around the big rice terraces at Batad or thereabouts, but in my case I’m keen to check out Sagada, a backpacker mountain retreat, only about 60Km from here or something, but involves 2 jeepneys and about 4 hours to get to. From there, the hope is that I can get a day bus to Baguio a little further south, and from there another day bus which should dump you on the motorway near the other airport outside Manila that I need to get me to China. Phew! Hoping for the best.

Now I’m off to meet a few locals I met earlier who are watching some Filippino boxing legend mash all of the opposition.

I flew to Puerta Princessa in Palawan, followed by 6 hours crammed into the back of a minibus up to El Nido. I went up to the office of Tao Philippines who were running my bamboo boat the next day, to pay up and say Hi to the crew and the other poor suckers who would be travelling with me.

There were actually two boats running around together, with 12 people on each. Mine had Team Norway on board, 6 of them to be precise, a Canadian honeymoon couple, a Filippino girl long since migrated to LA and a German couple. The other one had a 6-strong Team Oz, an English couple now settled in Coogee in Sydney, a random Frenchman and a Canadian, and a couple of Swedes. Jemboy was the insane leader of my boat and Johann had the other.

As usually seems to be the way with this kind of trip, they were all a great bunch, without exception, and much sunbathing, swimming, snorkelling, eating and getting totally pissed ensued. Each night was spent in a camp on a different beach, fairly basic affairs but comfy enough really.

I decided one morning to take a swim on the way back to the boat with my daypack on, by falling out of the kayak that was shuttling us over. My phone and camera’s waterproof qualities have been put to the test, the phone passed with flying colours after being dried out in a bag of rice for 24 hours, but the camera seems to have failed the challenge. So I’m a bit short of pictures for now. I’m assuming the SD card inside the camera will be OK, but as I’ve also lost the card reader for that somewhere I can’t find out….

Anyway I hopefully can steal a few pics off other people, one of these days.

I had made no onward plan from Coron, where we have ended up, so this morning had to bite the bullet and buy a pretty expensive flight to Manila which leaves today. Then I hope to go north on Luzon up to the mountains and rice terraces and stuff, for my last few days before heading to China.

And time has passed and I am now back in Manila after a heavily delayed flight. It seems normal that they’re at least an hour late due to air traffic in Manila. It all seems a bit nuts if you ask me. In the airport I caught up with Canadian Josh who was on a later flight than me, who was having kittens as he needed to be on that flight, which can’t go after dark as there’s no lights on the runway, in time to get back to Manila, hopefully extend his visa before flying back home the next day. I wish him luck with that one! Half of Team Norway were there too, also on their way back home.

As for me, I have got a night bus booked tonight for Banaue up north where I hope to spend my final days. I’m the proud owner of charger #3 on this trip so far, will head out now and see about another SD card reader to find out whether all of my trip photos have been lost to the sea…. 🙁

More time has passed, an SD card reader has been purchased and the card from my camera still works – yay!! Here’s a few that I got on the boat trip before it drowned:

“Their” boat, from ours. Ours was smaller but cooler…. 🙂 The bow sprit on ours was a great place to sit with a beer in high seas, with your legs wrapped around the white bit to hold on

Meal time at camp 1. If you’re thinking vultures, you’re not far off it

We catch a few fish, tuna and other things, as we sail. This was our biggest, held by Capn’ Jemboy, some of these we ate within a few minutes sushi style

Some meals, usually lunch, we had on the boat, here being enjoyed by Team Norway

Camp 3, quite cosy this one was….

Our boat from Camp 3. It was on the way back to the boat in the morning after this that my gear went swimming, hence no more photos

Here I am on island bliss.

White Beach to be precise, on Boracay Island in The Visayas area, just off Panay. It was another clockwork aeroplane job to get here, with an amusing 10 Kg baggage allowance, so I had to fly with half my stuff in my hand baggage which ended up weighing about 12 Kg. I flew to Caticlan which is a small town on Panay, from the airport you can walk 5 minutes to the port to catch a “bangka”, a boat with bamboo outriggers on which wearing lifejackets is compulsory (!) which takes you over to Boracay.

The beach is beautiful, no doubt about that, it’s quite long at about 4 Km total length. There are 3 disused boat stations along the beach, station 1 being towards the north end, 2 in the middle and 3 further south. They serve no purpose today apart from as a means of identifying where a place is, they sit on a sand path just above the beach which has literally hundreds of restaurants, guesthouses and resorts along it. So a place will be described as being “200 metres north of station 2” or whatever. Slightly further inland, a parallel road runs the length of the island called Main Road which is not without irony, as it’s the only road on the island as such.

I’m staying right at station 3, in a suite which is costing 35 quid a night which is a bargain for Boracay during Holy Week. It’s run by a Swiss guy who told me the rate would be going up to nearer 45 quid tonight as the holiday sets in, but in fact he’s still only charging me the lower price. South of station 3 is the more mellow and laid back area of the beach, where all the cool kids hang out, like me, obviously. It’s lovely with many cheaper restaurants and reggae bars on the beach and stuff. I’ve just come back from one where we were treated to a nice sunset.

Further north, things get much busier, the strip is back-to-back with expensive seafood buffet restaurants like this one. Later they will set up the tables in here, and the gazebo will be guarded by a man with a gun, just the same as my hotel in Manila was. It’s an odd feeling, and not one I relish really.

Lovely though it all is, it’s not really my kind of place – most of the tourists you come across are just beach bums, the expats are even worse. A German bar just up the beach from here is very cool, but all 3 days I’ve been here, the same fat German guys sit there from around noon until closing time, with their shirts off, and seriously even in Livingston these guys would look big. Not pleasant.

I’ve been dancing around the internet half of the day, trying to work around the Holy Week annoyance. Again I have succeeded, bagging a cheap flight back to Manila tomorrow, followed by another cheap one to Puerta Princessa on Palawan in the west the day after. From El Nido I’m taking a 5 day/4 night bamboo boat through the Bacuit Archipelago with around 23 other random travellers. You sleep on beaches on remote inaccessible islands and live on seaweed and fish that you’ve caught that day and stuff. Should be interesting!

Well, I’ve been doing a good job that it does pay to plan ahead, at least a little bit…

Firstly, I flew from Brunei to KL in complete ignorance that it’s the Formula 1 race weekend there. Astonishingly, even though I landed not long after qualifying had finished and the airport is close to the circuit with the bus passing right by it, I was totally unaware of this until I had already checked into a hotel in Chinatown and somebody just mentioned it in passing in the hallway! Even when I went out for dinner, there was no noticeable impact on the local area that the race was on. It’s just as well I didn’t know to be honest, otherwise I’d have been having a personal crisis, worrying whether or not I would find a room.

A fairly long and boring flight brought me to Manila the next day, landing fairly late at 10.30pm. There are two airports in Manila, the main one is fairly close to the city and the cheapy one is 2 hours away, where I thought I was landing. As it was late and also a dodgy part of the city I’d never been to before, I decided to book ahead a room near the airport. It was only after I landed, that I found out that we came into the other airport and I stayed in town instead, losing the dosh on the other hotel. Planning blunder #2….

The prize jewel though is blunder #3, when I went for breakfast this morning, I saw several notes in restaurant windows stating that they will be closed from Weds to Sun for “Holy Week”. A few beads of sweat and some research later revealed that it’s Easter this coming weekend – I’d no idea, it really is amazing how such time-related events pass you by when travelling. The Philippines has one of its major public holidays in the days in the run up to Easter…. not ideal… After another meltdown whilst frantically scanning the internet and making a few calls, I think I’ve recovered the situation, as always seems to be the case when these things happen. I’ve got a flight for a pretty good fare tomorrow to Boceray, one of the major island beach hangouts, and have hopefully got a reservation in a pretty decent beach cabin for a not too ridiculous price for the next 4 days. Fingers crossed!

I’m not enamoured by Manila, it has to be said, what little I’ve seen of it. I’m staying downtown in Manate, one of the cheaper areas to stay wth lots of bars and stuff. I didn’t go out last night but will have a wee cruise later to see what I can find…

These are “jeepneys”, a major form of local transportation

Some of the bars have strict and very specific entry restrictions

No matter how drunk I get, I shouldn’t miss my flight tomorrow at 11.30, as my alarm clock is across the street from my hotel window, two cockerels living in these cages on the pavement

What can I find to say about Brunei? Hmmmm, this may be a short entry… I got a boat from KK to Pulau Labau, an island just off Brunei, a duty free area of Malaysia. I had to wait there for a couple of hours, just enough time for a bite to eat and a very cheap beer. Another boat brings you to the port about 25 Km outside the Brunei capital, Bandar Seri Bagawan, where myself and 4 other travellers crammed into a normal-sized car to get a ride into the capital. He dropped us for a quick walk up to a waterfall en route, and didn’t even drive off with our luggage!

I checked into a wonderful hotel, sharing the cost of the room with a Danish guy from my cab, which was good as this place has a relatively high price tag for this part of Asia, with the room being about 40 quid. Off we went for a wander to see the, errrrr, sights. There’s a mosque

and a water village, supposedly the largest in the world

 

There’s not much left of this place. You can just make out the squat toilet, still in situ on the raised section of the plinth

And, that’s about it…. Nonetheless, despite the lack of things to do, I enjoyed spending a night here, it’s different and worthy of a swift visit I think. Having lunch by my rather nice hotel pool whilst waiting to head off to the airport and KL

After a strange night in the village of Kundasang, where I seemed to be the only westerner, I got a first look at the mountain from my hotel window. Looks simple enough? The little shining objects near the top of the vegetation line are the huts at Laban Rata where I will spend the first night, at 3,273 metres above sea level. For those who need context, Ben Nevis is 1,343 metres tall.

I got a lift to the park entrance 6 km away and began the process of registration. Some people criticise the slight mayhem that goes on here, and I can see why. You go to one place to register for the hut, another to get your climbing permit, another to get your guide, another to pick up your packed lunch, another to buy water and snacks, and yet one more to stow your unneeded luggage. If you just ignore the bigger groups of people doing all this though, and get on with your own business, it’s really quite straightforward.

My guide, who speaks little English, took me by car to the Timpohon Gate where you begin the ascent at 1,866 metres. The first leg is 6 km, a fairly gruelling constant ascent on a good track with regular shelters with drinking water and real toilets! Signs at 500 metre intervals inform you of your progress, this one at almost twice the height of Ben Nevis and still another 2.5 Km to go today…

There are many porters also ascending. The first one here carries a full gas cylinder, and they’re fast!

My guide looked me up and down at the start and told me this first leg would take 5 hours, and as is normal in Borneo, the clients go in front and the guide follows behind. I made it in 3 hours, I didn’t see much of the guide as he couldn’t keep up. Once again I am feeling smug, but probably justly this time 🙂 The staff at the lodge were also amazed to see me already. I was the first of the day apart from a couple of Swedes who set off at first light with the intention of making the summit in one day, but they failed and are spending the night here too instead.

This sign is made from a rotor blade of one of the helicopters used to transport the building materials of the hut up to the mountain.

I enquired about a place on the via ferratta tomorrow but it’s fully booked. Blast.

The dorm in the hut is lovely and dinner, which comes at 4.30pm and I await now smells good too. Breakfast will be at 2.30am. Help!

Dinner has been and gone, very nice it was too. From the terrace we were treated to a lovely show as the sun set on a load of swirling rain clouds below us

So, time has passed and I didn’t get much sleep due to some inconsiderate bastards in my dorm. My guide told me we could set off at 3am instead of 2.30 as I’d been so fast the day before, which suited me fine, I can tell you. Around 50 or 60 sorry looking folk piled out the door and onto the mountain as I was coming down for my breakfast. There was only me and 3 others, also granted some sort of special dispensation to lie in (maybe their guide couldn’t be arsed?) and I duly set off at 3 with my guide, who I lost within the first two minutes I think.

It is, of course, pitch black and you wear head torches to see your way up this second section, which is much steeper and more technical than the first, even though it’s only 2.7 Km in length. You need your hands free a lot to haul yourself up steep rock faces and so on. It wasn’t long before I started overtaking other climbers, then more, then more, then all of them. Yup, despite setting off 4th from last, I reached the summit first, once again I am feeling totally smug – I thought I was old and past it but it seems there’s something left in me yet! This is the marker as I arrived up there at 4.30am

Now the problem here is that the temperature is around zero and it’s very windy, and I have to wait until 6.15am for the sun to rise. Being first up somewhat backfired… Rise it did and it performed all the usual funky stuff

If it looks as though I’m totally knackered and freezing here, it’s because I am

All that remains is to come down, you go back to the rest house at Laban Rata for a second breakfast, naturally I was there first again. On the way in you can catch a glance of where I’ve just come from

Then my guide sets us off early to return to base (guess who made it there first) which was a good thing actually as I managed to pal up with three Malay guys from KK and share a taxi back there with them which has given me plenty of time to go for an excellent and much needed massage, my legs turned to jelly around the 2 Km marker on the way back down and they are hurting bad..

One more night here and then yet another fairly early start to catch an 8am ferry to Brunei tomorrow

It’s been a few days – but I’ve been deep in the jungle, far from electricity and even farther from the internet. From Miri I flew to the semi-international airport at Mulu, with one of the most elaborate baggage reclaim systems I’ve seen

Mulu is a national park in the jungle, not really accessible by road even though it’s only a 30 minute flight from Miri on a clockwork aeroplane. It’s a limestone karst region, with some caves to lose yourself in and plenty of strenuous jungle hikes to do. My little group of four Germans and myself spent the first night in a lodge near the park headquarters, and on day one visited the nearby Deer and Lang’s caves. I’ve umpteen shots inside the caves of the various formations, none of them any good of course, but Deer cave is famous for the 2 million or so bats that live inside (there are no deer) and also for being, arguably, the largest cave system in the world.

If you’re lucky and the weather is good enough, as we were, the bats head out at dusk to hunt. The black swirl that looks a bit like the loch ness monster is one batch of bats emerging, there must’ve been 30 or 40 batches of them like this that came out

Next morning a boat takes us to Wind and Clearwater Caves, navigating through the shallowest of waters, in places you could actually see the boat going uphill slightly in the rapids

This is Sonja and Anja in Wind Cave

After this, Sonja departed back to HQ as she only stayed a night, Anja and her boyfriend were supposed to be coming on with us to trek up to Camp 5 deep in the jungle to ascend the Pinnacles, but her boyfriend was on his death bed so they stayed back at HQ instead. And then there were two…..

From the caves the boat took us further up river, then began an 8.8 Km trek through thick jungle, Kristina negotiates a rickety bridge

Our guide, Wan, follows, usually lurking in the distance somewhere, with a porter behind carrying our dinner (but no beer!!!)

There are leeches here, none of us got any on the way in, but on the way back I had about 6, deftly dealt with by Wan using a combination of insect repellent, salt and a burning cigarette. The trail brings us to camp 5

A lovely spot in the middle of nowhere, the river providing the perfect opportunity to rinse off the day’s ludicrous quantity of sweat as the next day’s group preparing to ascend the Pinnacles demonstrate

Sleeping arrangements are basic, to say the least

The next morning, a 5.45 am breakfast sets us up ready to head off at 6.30am for the Pinnacles, a grueling, steep ascent through dense jungle, starting from camp 5 at 50 metres elevation up to the top of Gunung Api at 1760 metres. This is the before shot – within about 10 minutes of this being taken, we were both drenched in sweat for the rest of the entire day

Near the summit, things start to get a bit more technical

Then before you know it, you’re there. The Pinnacles are up to 45 metres high, the whole mountain is actually made up of these, but most of them are covered with trees and vegetation

Wan and Kristina at the view point, pondering on the impending descent – twice as hard as the ascent

We all made it back down safely though, these two weary looking souls return, two hours after me (I actually have a smug look on my face as I type)

Another night at camp 5 gives us a chance to recuperate for a bit before the small matter of the 8.8 Km trek back through the jungle to the boat, which actually takes us directly to the airport. I think I can say it’s a first for me to arrive at an airport by boat!

Kristina was going in the other direction to me and went to Miri, whereas I reunited with Anja and the now recovered  Robert and flew to Kota Kinabalu where I spent a couple of nights. It’s a reasonably big city and not particularly interesting, but it was nice just to relax and get some laundry done, as everything that I took into the jungle was stinking beyond belief. The door lock on my hostel amused me

Yup, that really is locked only with a baseball bat.

Today I have transferred by bus to Kundasang, a tiny village in the foothills of Mount Kinabalu. I am at some 1588 metres elevation now and the temperature is a cool 28C or so, with my hotel hilariously having a thick duvet on the bed. Tomorrow I begin the trek to the summit of Kinabalu, the highest mountain in SE Asia at 4095 metres. Tomorrow night will be spent in the Laban Rata hut at 3272 metres, which is very high for me to be sleeping at. Even on Mont Blanc we only slept at about 2800 metres, I think. So that will be a challenging night to catch your breath I should think, not least because a failure in the generator up there means that there is no heating or hot water at the moment. Maybe I should carry this duvet up with me! The following morning we start at 2.30am to hopefully reach the summit in time for sunrise. On the way down, I may try for a place on the via ferrata which is the highest in the world. No doubt more on all this if/when I get safely back to Kota Kinabalu on Thursday.

Onward plans to work around the political troubles to the east have been made. Friday morning I will take a boat to Brunei, spend one night there and then fly to KL the next day, then to Manila in the Philippines the day after that.

I had a decent overnight coach journey through to Kuching. This coach was pure luxury, having a toilet and everything, which is unusual down here. The directions on the door were amusing, asking you to stand closer because “Big John” is not as long you think he is….

The only criticism I had for the journey, and it’s a common complaint, is that they run the aircon so hard that it’s absolutely freezing. Why oh why do they do this? The locals are all used to this, and come aboard with fleeces and blankets and everything in an attempt to keep warm.

Kuching is a very pleasant city, there’s not much to wax lyrical about apart from having some very nice food there. It has a collection of cat statues dotted around the city, including this very revered big one

Couldn’t be more naff really, could it? But two coach loads of locals stopped to have their photo taken with it whilst I was there. Of course, I had to do my usual modelling thing with many of them too

The next day I ended up flying to Miri, I had planned to bus it but the flight was so cheap it wasn’t worth spending another 16 hours on a bus with Big John. Miri is also nice, not as competitive on the food front as Kuching, but there are plenty of places to hangout, including this Irish bar celebrating Paddy’s Day on the 16th March. I hadn’t the heart to tell them it’s actually on the 17th

I had dinner in a seafood restaurant last night, next to these guys, one of whom was determined not to get his feet wet

Outside a proud man catches a rat, not sure if the photo is clear but it’s alive and kicking in that cage

Today I made an aborted attempt to get to the caves at Niah. It’s a slight pain, you catch a bus to a highway service station, and from there you have to negotiate with private car drivers who are hanging around looking for business, to drive the remaining 15Km to the national park. I was the only tourist out there and not having much luck haggling the price, so what with even more hassle to try and get back I imagined I would have, decided to abandon that. Besides, I’m flying up to Mulu tomorrow for a 4 day excursion into the caves and hiking the Pinnacles up there. It’s a fairly pricey trip, but I’ve not spent much on activities so far (apart from the drinking of beer)

I learned yesterday of the trouble that has flared up east of here, from the random strangers that I accepted a lift into town from the airport with, as you do… It’s something about some Filippinos that have invaded a town here last month, and now the governments have declared the whole eastern section of Borneo and the south of the Philippines as no-go areas, scuppering my plans to go to Semporna and then by boat to the Philippines. I can still go to Mount Kinabalu, which I will do after Mulu, but then I think I’m forced to fly back to KL and then on to Manila from there. Muchly annoying…

I flew onto Borneo yesterday, arriving at the town of Pontianak in Kilmantan district relatively hassle free. It’s a pretty boring town to be honest, I’ve only seen two Westerners so far, one bored looking business traveller I think, in a posh hotel bar and another bloke walking down the street with a “I really don’t know where I am..” expression etched across his face. The main attribute of note that the town has is that it’s bang on the equator, OK so it’s tourist tacky I suppose but I had to get the shot. My right leg is in the southern hemisphere whilst my left is in the northern.

The monument to mark it, behind me, has been there since 1928. It is, perhaps, surprisingly difficult to get easy access to a place to do this really. Much of the equator is in water, it misses the mainland of Asia altogether, passing just below Singapore, and is far north of Australia. It passes through South America, through Ecuador of course and then remote areas of Brazil. It passes through central Africa, from memory through countries like Congo, Uganda and Senegal, none of which you’re likely to end up in too often. Then it passes through some Indonesian islands, through the middle of Sumatra but not near major cities, then Borneo of course and a few other minor ones.

I tried to get a reading of exactly zero on the GPS but after ages of wandering around, looking like a tourist trying to get a reading of zero on his GPS, I had to settle for one of 0.00001 N and another of -0.00001 S. You can average them out, I suppose…

The number that matters is the first half of “Location”, the second half being the longitude.

It’s a short ferry ride and a long, sweaty walk from town to get to the marker. It’s not even that it’s overly hot, not more than mid 30’s I should think, but the sun is so close to being directly above you that it prevents the normal technique of shade by walking close to buildings or trees, as unless you can get right under something then they don’t help. You can see the very short shadow that this pole on the left casts, we’re fairly close to the equinox near the end of this month which means the sun would be exactly overhead at noon, and means that Europe will soon be getting its “summer”.

In fact, I took this photo at 1pm instead of noon as I muddled up the complicated timezones that this area has, and this photo looks West so most of this short shadow is caused by the setting sun anyway. On the road I passed a variety of shops, these three within 10 feet of each other. I’m not sure what they’re selling, but I decided against parting with GBP1.70 to lug around 3 kilos of the stuff to find out.

I also had to stop several times to have my photo taken with locals, shop keepers and garage mechanics were literally downing tools to come out and have group photos with me in the middle. I suppose they see so few Westerners, and even fewer people of my kind of height.

One other weird feature of this town is an obsession with sweet treats, bakeries and cake shops are in abundance like this one.

Even the coffee shop I am in has given me a free doughnut with my coffee. Most unusual to find this kind of stuff in Asia.

There seems an extraordinarily wide selection of coaches around that make the 11 hour journey each night across the land border into Malaysian Borneo and then onto Kuching, tonight I will aboard one of those and saying bye bye to Indonesia and Bintang beer for the last time on this trip.