Mes amis! I have returned to technological society from another peaceful foray into off-the-grid living. Much has shifted in my mindset since I wrote my last post, and I have returned from five weeks of vacation (Chinese New Year: 新年快乐) with a relaxed and optimistic mindset.
As per my usual laziness and my routine risk of exploding with thought-peristalsis upon returning from vacations, I will be composing this post and the next (about the Philippines) mostly from excerpts from my [new, leather-bound] journal--thanks Mom and Papa. Prior to quoting myself (i.e. "tooting my own horn"), here is an adjusted itinerary from my original plan:
01/07-09: Kuala Lumpur
01/09-13: Kuching and Batang Lemanak (Sarawak, Borneo)
01/13-16: Bintulu and Similajau National Park (Sarawak, Borneo)
01/16-18: Niah National Park (Sarawak, Borneo)
01/18-20: Miri, Kota Kinabalu (Sarawak and Sabah, Borneo)
01/20- 23: Pulau Mabul (Sabah, Borneo)
01/23-26: Semporna, Kota Kinabalu (Sabah, Borneo)
01/26-27: Manila (Philippines)
01/27-01/31: Sabang, Roxas (Philippines)
01/31-02/05: Borocay (Philippines)
02/05-07: Roxas--Capiz (Philippines)
02/07-12: Masbate, Donsol, Legazpi, Manila (Philippines)
I read eight books and saw way too many low-grade movies during that time. Here are some more thoughts.
01/07:
With my head in my hand, I still don't feel the relief of vacation. Something inside me balks as though I would wake-up tomorrow to be back at the start of today--like a Groundhog Day loop of surreal zeal and distanced hesitation.
*
I'm starting this year, this trip, and this journal as an exhausted version of myself. I'm tired of planning this holiday...of the isolation and alienation I experience at school...of planning my "next step" with only one application submitted for next year...of social stress. The vibrations from vehicular motion lure me into slumber
01/08:
My excitement over being accepted to teach university-level English in 2011-2012 nullifies my recent caution and exhaustion. Great way to start vacation.
*
We stroll the streets of Chinatown and Little India in Kuala Lumpur, but we are hardly impressed with the dingy streets and the temples that are redundancies of our daily environs in China. The call to prayer at Sri Mahamariamman Temple does pull us in to hear the unique snake-charmer horn and tabla drumming. Neither of us know enough about Eastern religion to understand what the colorful statues of deities depict.
01/09:
Every hostel has its assholes: turning on the lights long after roommates have gone to sleep, loudly zipping bags, repeated entering and exiting, etc. ad nauseum.
*
Mountain peaks rise above low-lying clouds as we take-off from Kuala Lumpur--bound for Kuching.
*
After schwarma and Turkish coffee, we lounge for the siesta.
*
The muezzin's call to prayer provides soundtrack for our freshly fished dinner at a hawker stall. I kick myself for not asking the price before we begin eating (rookie mistake); we end up paying. Bindi (our Swedish hostel manager who moved to Borneo to open a business with her Iban boyfriend who inked her shoulders) is surprised and apologizes unnecessarily.
01/10:
We wait for the monsoon season's sporadic downpours to break by playing rummy. Our plans to go to Bako National Park (to see proboscis monkeys and rafflesia flowers) are foiled by the moody weather.
*
The kayak company for Kuching Wetlands has changed their phone number, so we continue to lazily play rummy until lunch.
I want to do more, but heat, warm ginger tea, humidity, and a night of sleep on a thin mattress over hard boards all conspire to sedate me. I realize I must cede to vacation mentality: It's ok to be lazy. This is my vacation. I recall lazy (and sweltering) afternoons in Athens--after diving--and I try to appease my inner Papa trying to "go-do."
*
I weigh the pro's and con's of accepting the offer to teach at a university next year as opposed to staying with [my current program] or applying to other positions. The conclusion becomes obvious given a vast increase in salary, similar benefits, and the guaranteed new environment and elevated student level.
*
I haven't taken that long of a nap just on a whim in a while. Sure planes and cars have provided for leaning slumber, but it's been so long since I passed-out midday to let a fan circulate stuffy air over my body barely covered by a blanket--that slow process of waking-up with a mildewy layer of sweat and a heaviness that inspires a need for rest after such an exhausting nap. The kind of nap that inspires run-on sentences that feel like lucidly written odes--or incomplete sentences that drip-drop like dreamy poetry.
A lite mist barely qualifies as a drizzle. I admire shop-keepers chaining-up their stores: It's past 5 pm, and the church bells coordinate with the dinner bells. A man's dolly sounds like horse shoes on pavement. Narrow lane (Jalan China) sided by two and three story buildings--all linked, all steel and brick roofed, all with wooden shudders with a few panes missing. The shops on the first floor; the homes, the second. A Shell sign from at least the early '90's.
01/11:
As somewhat predicted, the tour company miscomunicates with us. Our trip to the longhouse is canceled.
*
Both of us are eager to get out of this sleepy town--or at least to do something active. We get lunch and tea at Winnie's Cafe, and we watch the monsoon rains shift fickley from pour to drizzle with the rhythm of our rummy hands. We get a Magnum bar, and I beat Ryan to 1000 points.
*
The brown sugar in the Iban-made pot has clumped in the humidity of an equatorial rainy season. I quietly reflect and write while drinking an Americano from Black Bean Coffee Co, a fair trade "mom-and-pop" shop that also conducts tea ceremonies to the soundtrack of soothing sape solos. Across the street, the red brick (painted crimson) and heavily dragoned, multicolor roof of Hong San Temple plays backdrop to the drizzly scene.
*
I fear the loneliness of pressing the restart button for next year. That is, I fear what I will face in the foreign isolation and without the friends and comforts I have found this year. But as the sape and the coffee grinder sonorate and as I have this beautiful bounty of time to write without interruption, I remember that I enjoy facing the "new" alone. I love carving my niche while I dedicate myself to few but meaningful relationships. I love escaping to a cup of coffee (or tea), a book, a guitar, a blank page, my camera, a place for thoughts, a people-watching post, my studies. I remember London, Sevilla, Granada, Greece, Namibian afternoons with Goeters and the baboinkies.
I know I am and will be fine. This year's traumas will pass--just as last year's did.
01/12:
Lush rainforest, cicadas and detailed bird calls, vines of unedible fruits, small waterfalls, trash and boats washed into trees from the torrential pours and high waters of monsoon season, eroded rock faces, sinky sand, bat caves, and a school bus of waving kids as we kayak down Batang Lemanak.
01/13:
As I don my raincoat for warmth on the over-air-conditioned bus set for a nine-hour haul to Bintulu, I reconcile the differences between how I wanted this trip to go and how it is going. I completely underestimated how disruptive rainy season would be, but all these changes in plans and itinerary adjustments are par for the course of backpacking. Endless and dense jungle creeps out from the road and up surrounding peaks. Fog acts like jungle vines on mountain escarpments. Some farms with brightly colored wood panels. Vineyards for pepper plants and cacti with tire halves--the latter apparently grows dragon fruit.
01/14:
A quiet gazebo allows for the wind in my ears and the breaking tide to be heard. No horns, no blaring music, no crying babies, no shop keepers shouting out deals. Nothing but the peaceful sounds of an isolated beach: Similajau. Across a river mouth, a rope bridge leads to thick rainforest that follows its own shore line to a peninsular precipice with just one palm tree paying tribute to the serenity that can be achieved in solitude.
As we walk past the drift wood and keep our eyes searching for estuarine crocodiles, we play with fast crabs.
A cool breeze quiets my thoughts.
*
Metaphor in crashing tide? Maybe somewhere.
*
A small table top and stool positioned underneath an oscillating fan provide the next surface for me to elucidate on nothing. I've lost sight (again) of why I bother documenting this wooden room in a ghostly jungle lodge--where the only other visitors float by at the end of narrow hallways before disappearing for another two hours. Am I finding catharsis in detailing how I spend minutes-on-end distracting myself from my body odor that pervades despite having just showered and my headache that nags despite the liters of water I drink? Or am I still believing that a gem will show itself if I keep describing the sea shore's pines bending to the wind? Ryan enters the room and sighs at me and my directionless writing. Do I write to maintain a steady piece of my identity? Do I write to complement a projected ego or superego? Or do I write to maintain a skill and/or an art? Or maybe I write because it is now a habit that brings me comfort and inspires introspection.
01/15:
Another instance of wanting to recount too much for my weary eyes and lethargic thoughts. Brought on by a long day of hiking in the rainforest with little-to-no-chance to write in breaks between rain showers:
-lush jungle
-soggy path with leaves, mud, fallen trees
-broken bridges and croc hunting
-giant squirrels
-sharp palms
-red rivers
-drenched in sweat and rain
-silently drifting on an isolated beach until we lose sight of one another, until we are alone
-hermit crabs, drift wood, and a croc waddling into the jungle
-tracking monitor lizards
01/17:
By the time we reach the forecave of Batu Niah, we're drenched. We casually walk about the mossy and muddy limestone floors as we try to figure out how best to photograph the partly lit natural formations. I'm too much of an amateur to figure out how to overcome whatever setting is keeping my camera from snapping photos in the caves. Scaffolds reach to the cave ceiling--in the proper season, local tribesmen harvest swiftlet spit and nests for crafts and bird's nest soup.
*
Ryan has forgotten his flashlight, so he is close on my heels as I slide down damp walkways into pitch black depths that emit squeeks, splashes, drops, scuttles, and screaches. Though my light is weak, I can see the ground is coated in guano--black gold to the Ibans. By Ryan's encouragement, I shine my light on the cave ceiling; hundreds of glistening eyes and a few more screeches terrify us. We walk-on, following my weak headlamp's light in the pitch black.
*
Past a mangrove swamp, we find the Painted Cave with a 40,000-year-old painting.
*
Hundreds of snails, slugs, centipedes, and spiders of varying sizes, shapes, and colors emerge.
*
During the rainy season, one must take advantage of sunny days in one of two ways: tourism or travel. During the rain, both are subject to delay and/or cancelation.
01/20:
After 45 minutes on a speed boat, we approach an island that looks like a shade of paradise: villages of thatch built on stilts in the water, sun bathers on white sand, lines of bungalows break into the palm woods. Laughing children pose for pictures as snot dribbles down their noses. Clear, calm shallows and a slight breeze. Time slows. Thoughts relax. A native child runs crying through a paradise of over-tanned sun bathers.
*
I do laundry in the sink and snorkel the house reef. A turtle (my size) swims to the shallows for dinner. Four snorkelers lay chase. I return to our bungalow. Shirtless existence.
01/22:
The sun rises over a palm village. Fuscias, peaches, and other vista-worthy colors greet the full moon--which is haloed in a tangerine glow that makes it shine its brightest now, just before it starts to wane. Fishing boats and bungalows with a rising, choppy tide.
*
Sipadan. Volcanic island with quiet, white beaches. Half the island is protected for turtle nesting. More sharks and turtles (the size of VW bugs) than I could count, a vortex of schooling jacks, a school of bumper-head parrot fish. Hammocks. Sea turtles swimming into the blue makes me feel like I'm flying.
01/23:
A school of jelly fish leave me with a few stings before lunch on a beach with monkeys. I watch two local children spear fish in the low tide.
*
Books, Music, Movies, T.V.: The Life and Strange, Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The Art of War by Sunzi. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. "Aqueous Transmission" by Incubus, "Got to Get You Into My Life" by The Beatles, "Octopus's Garden" by The Beatles, "Blood Bank" by Bon Iver.
Happy Lantern Festival : Check out the Gold Panda video for "Marriage."
01/07-09: Kuala Lumpur
01/09-13: Kuching and Batang Lemanak (Sarawak, Borneo)
01/13-16: Bintulu and Similajau National Park (Sarawak, Borneo)
01/16-18: Niah National Park (Sarawak, Borneo)
01/18-20: Miri, Kota Kinabalu (Sarawak and Sabah, Borneo)
01/20- 23: Pulau Mabul (Sabah, Borneo)
01/23-26: Semporna, Kota Kinabalu (Sabah, Borneo)
01/26-27: Manila (Philippines)
01/27-01/31: Sabang, Roxas (Philippines)
01/31-02/05: Borocay (Philippines)
02/05-07: Roxas--Capiz (Philippines)
02/07-12: Masbate, Donsol, Legazpi, Manila (Philippines)
I read eight books and saw way too many low-grade movies during that time. Here are some more thoughts.
01/07:
With my head in my hand, I still don't feel the relief of vacation. Something inside me balks as though I would wake-up tomorrow to be back at the start of today--like a Groundhog Day loop of surreal zeal and distanced hesitation.
*
I'm starting this year, this trip, and this journal as an exhausted version of myself. I'm tired of planning this holiday...of the isolation and alienation I experience at school...of planning my "next step" with only one application submitted for next year...of social stress. The vibrations from vehicular motion lure me into slumber
01/08:
My excitement over being accepted to teach university-level English in 2011-2012 nullifies my recent caution and exhaustion. Great way to start vacation.
*
We stroll the streets of Chinatown and Little India in Kuala Lumpur, but we are hardly impressed with the dingy streets and the temples that are redundancies of our daily environs in China. The call to prayer at Sri Mahamariamman Temple does pull us in to hear the unique snake-charmer horn and tabla drumming. Neither of us know enough about Eastern religion to understand what the colorful statues of deities depict.
01/09:
Every hostel has its assholes: turning on the lights long after roommates have gone to sleep, loudly zipping bags, repeated entering and exiting, etc. ad nauseum.
*
Mountain peaks rise above low-lying clouds as we take-off from Kuala Lumpur--bound for Kuching.
*
After schwarma and Turkish coffee, we lounge for the siesta.
*
The muezzin's call to prayer provides soundtrack for our freshly fished dinner at a hawker stall. I kick myself for not asking the price before we begin eating (rookie mistake); we end up paying. Bindi (our Swedish hostel manager who moved to Borneo to open a business with her Iban boyfriend who inked her shoulders) is surprised and apologizes unnecessarily.
01/10:
We wait for the monsoon season's sporadic downpours to break by playing rummy. Our plans to go to Bako National Park (to see proboscis monkeys and rafflesia flowers) are foiled by the moody weather.
*
The kayak company for Kuching Wetlands has changed their phone number, so we continue to lazily play rummy until lunch.
I want to do more, but heat, warm ginger tea, humidity, and a night of sleep on a thin mattress over hard boards all conspire to sedate me. I realize I must cede to vacation mentality: It's ok to be lazy. This is my vacation. I recall lazy (and sweltering) afternoons in Athens--after diving--and I try to appease my inner Papa trying to "go-do."
*
I weigh the pro's and con's of accepting the offer to teach at a university next year as opposed to staying with [my current program] or applying to other positions. The conclusion becomes obvious given a vast increase in salary, similar benefits, and the guaranteed new environment and elevated student level.
*
I haven't taken that long of a nap just on a whim in a while. Sure planes and cars have provided for leaning slumber, but it's been so long since I passed-out midday to let a fan circulate stuffy air over my body barely covered by a blanket--that slow process of waking-up with a mildewy layer of sweat and a heaviness that inspires a need for rest after such an exhausting nap. The kind of nap that inspires run-on sentences that feel like lucidly written odes--or incomplete sentences that drip-drop like dreamy poetry.
A lite mist barely qualifies as a drizzle. I admire shop-keepers chaining-up their stores: It's past 5 pm, and the church bells coordinate with the dinner bells. A man's dolly sounds like horse shoes on pavement. Narrow lane (Jalan China) sided by two and three story buildings--all linked, all steel and brick roofed, all with wooden shudders with a few panes missing. The shops on the first floor; the homes, the second. A Shell sign from at least the early '90's.
01/11:
As somewhat predicted, the tour company miscomunicates with us. Our trip to the longhouse is canceled.
*
Both of us are eager to get out of this sleepy town--or at least to do something active. We get lunch and tea at Winnie's Cafe, and we watch the monsoon rains shift fickley from pour to drizzle with the rhythm of our rummy hands. We get a Magnum bar, and I beat Ryan to 1000 points.
*
The brown sugar in the Iban-made pot has clumped in the humidity of an equatorial rainy season. I quietly reflect and write while drinking an Americano from Black Bean Coffee Co, a fair trade "mom-and-pop" shop that also conducts tea ceremonies to the soundtrack of soothing sape solos. Across the street, the red brick (painted crimson) and heavily dragoned, multicolor roof of Hong San Temple plays backdrop to the drizzly scene.
*
I fear the loneliness of pressing the restart button for next year. That is, I fear what I will face in the foreign isolation and without the friends and comforts I have found this year. But as the sape and the coffee grinder sonorate and as I have this beautiful bounty of time to write without interruption, I remember that I enjoy facing the "new" alone. I love carving my niche while I dedicate myself to few but meaningful relationships. I love escaping to a cup of coffee (or tea), a book, a guitar, a blank page, my camera, a place for thoughts, a people-watching post, my studies. I remember London, Sevilla, Granada, Greece, Namibian afternoons with Goeters and the baboinkies.
I know I am and will be fine. This year's traumas will pass--just as last year's did.
 |
| Rainy season casualties |
Lush rainforest, cicadas and detailed bird calls, vines of unedible fruits, small waterfalls, trash and boats washed into trees from the torrential pours and high waters of monsoon season, eroded rock faces, sinky sand, bat caves, and a school bus of waving kids as we kayak down Batang Lemanak.
01/13:
As I don my raincoat for warmth on the over-air-conditioned bus set for a nine-hour haul to Bintulu, I reconcile the differences between how I wanted this trip to go and how it is going. I completely underestimated how disruptive rainy season would be, but all these changes in plans and itinerary adjustments are par for the course of backpacking. Endless and dense jungle creeps out from the road and up surrounding peaks. Fog acts like jungle vines on mountain escarpments. Some farms with brightly colored wood panels. Vineyards for pepper plants and cacti with tire halves--the latter apparently grows dragon fruit.
01/14:
A quiet gazebo allows for the wind in my ears and the breaking tide to be heard. No horns, no blaring music, no crying babies, no shop keepers shouting out deals. Nothing but the peaceful sounds of an isolated beach: Similajau. Across a river mouth, a rope bridge leads to thick rainforest that follows its own shore line to a peninsular precipice with just one palm tree paying tribute to the serenity that can be achieved in solitude.
As we walk past the drift wood and keep our eyes searching for estuarine crocodiles, we play with fast crabs.
A cool breeze quiets my thoughts.
*
 |
| Similajau |
*
A small table top and stool positioned underneath an oscillating fan provide the next surface for me to elucidate on nothing. I've lost sight (again) of why I bother documenting this wooden room in a ghostly jungle lodge--where the only other visitors float by at the end of narrow hallways before disappearing for another two hours. Am I finding catharsis in detailing how I spend minutes-on-end distracting myself from my body odor that pervades despite having just showered and my headache that nags despite the liters of water I drink? Or am I still believing that a gem will show itself if I keep describing the sea shore's pines bending to the wind? Ryan enters the room and sighs at me and my directionless writing. Do I write to maintain a steady piece of my identity? Do I write to complement a projected ego or superego? Or do I write to maintain a skill and/or an art? Or maybe I write because it is now a habit that brings me comfort and inspires introspection.
01/15:
 |
| The crossing at Km 3 can be a bit tricky |
-lush jungle
-soggy path with leaves, mud, fallen trees
-broken bridges and croc hunting
-giant squirrels
-sharp palms
-red rivers
-drenched in sweat and rain
-silently drifting on an isolated beach until we lose sight of one another, until we are alone
-hermit crabs, drift wood, and a croc waddling into the jungle
-tracking monitor lizards
01/17:
By the time we reach the forecave of Batu Niah, we're drenched. We casually walk about the mossy and muddy limestone floors as we try to figure out how best to photograph the partly lit natural formations. I'm too much of an amateur to figure out how to overcome whatever setting is keeping my camera from snapping photos in the caves. Scaffolds reach to the cave ceiling--in the proper season, local tribesmen harvest swiftlet spit and nests for crafts and bird's nest soup.
*
Ryan has forgotten his flashlight, so he is close on my heels as I slide down damp walkways into pitch black depths that emit squeeks, splashes, drops, scuttles, and screaches. Though my light is weak, I can see the ground is coated in guano--black gold to the Ibans. By Ryan's encouragement, I shine my light on the cave ceiling; hundreds of glistening eyes and a few more screeches terrify us. We walk-on, following my weak headlamp's light in the pitch black.
*
Past a mangrove swamp, we find the Painted Cave with a 40,000-year-old painting.
*
Hundreds of snails, slugs, centipedes, and spiders of varying sizes, shapes, and colors emerge.
*
During the rainy season, one must take advantage of sunny days in one of two ways: tourism or travel. During the rain, both are subject to delay and/or cancelation.
 |
| Jungle friend |
After 45 minutes on a speed boat, we approach an island that looks like a shade of paradise: villages of thatch built on stilts in the water, sun bathers on white sand, lines of bungalows break into the palm woods. Laughing children pose for pictures as snot dribbles down their noses. Clear, calm shallows and a slight breeze. Time slows. Thoughts relax. A native child runs crying through a paradise of over-tanned sun bathers.
*
I do laundry in the sink and snorkel the house reef. A turtle (my size) swims to the shallows for dinner. Four snorkelers lay chase. I return to our bungalow. Shirtless existence.
01/22:
The sun rises over a palm village. Fuscias, peaches, and other vista-worthy colors greet the full moon--which is haloed in a tangerine glow that makes it shine its brightest now, just before it starts to wane. Fishing boats and bungalows with a rising, choppy tide.
*
Sipadan. Volcanic island with quiet, white beaches. Half the island is protected for turtle nesting. More sharks and turtles (the size of VW bugs) than I could count, a vortex of schooling jacks, a school of bumper-head parrot fish. Hammocks. Sea turtles swimming into the blue makes me feel like I'm flying.
01/23:
A school of jelly fish leave me with a few stings before lunch on a beach with monkeys. I watch two local children spear fish in the low tide.
*
 |
| Actual photo of a patronus I conjured |
Happy Lantern Festival : Check out the Gold Panda video for "Marriage."
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