Things in Sandakan didn't work out exactly as planned. I splurged on a $20 hotel room (though it was really only $3 more than a room at the dirty backpacker hostel and included a free drink) and thoroughly enjoyed a hot shower and some downtime on my comfy bed. When I had gone with the family from New Zealand to arrange transport to the cave, the woman at the hostel/tour agency was really helpful so I asked if she knew anything about diving at Sipidan and she managed to convince me that she had connections with dive shops there and would get me in that week. She confirmed with me the following day that she had found me a spot. Excited and happy to have figured things out, I spent a day wandering Sandakan and headed to the Gomantong Cave system the following day. I looked into flights for hours that day as well, planning how to then get from Sabah to Indonesia to meet Russell in Bali later that month. I had things almost figured out when I headed to the caves, and would just need to go back to get the receipt from the hostel later that evening after the tour.
The Gomantong caves were incredible. I had seen them in the BBC Planet Earth DVD series and was really happy to have the opportunity to see them in person. This particular cave system is renowned for its swallows nests, which are harvested for Birds Nest Soup in China. The nests, according to the guide at the cave, are sold to the people who process them for 4000 MYR per kilo - which is essentially $1400 for a kilo of congealed bird saliva. Yummy. We got to see the birds swooping in and out of the massive open cave and walked around the grungy boardwalks to avoid the heaping mountain of bat shit produced by the millions of bats overhead. The mountain was covered in cockroaches. The cave could easily be someones worst nightmare, but was still pretty interesting and definitely beautiful, despite the animal waste.
Once through the cave tour we headed to another part of the Kinabatangan river close to the town of Sukau for a cruise through the jungles. The lighting was beautiful at sunset and we saw lots of proboscis monkeys, a monitor lizard and tons of macaques, while drifting quietly along a narrow stretch of one of the Kinibatangan's tributaries. The boat operator's driving habits were much more mellow than those of the teenage cowboys we had running the boats at jungle camp.
Back in town after a long day, I returned to the hostel to collect my receipt for diving and head to the bus terminal early the next morning to go to Sipidan. I was totally let down, however, when I was told that there was no permit and there had been some confusion somewhere - no diving for me.
I spent the rest of the evening online looking for the first flight off of Borneo seeing as NOTHING was working out and my other ideas for things to see weren't working out either.
The following morning I caught the first Air Asia flight out of Sandakan to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, during which time I somehow managed to lose my credit card in the airport. Not good. I noticed in time and resolved the problem quickly with a phone call to Visa, then consoled myself over Starbucks in KL and rested up for my morning flight to Indonesia.
Borneo had been a bust and things were certainly not headed in the right direction, but I spent the extra money to catch a flight to Yogyakarta and was looking forward to seeing Borobrodur, some culture and a bit of Java before heading to Bali for beach time and diving. It turns out that I ended up sticking with the first original plan to go overland from Java to Bali, but had some extra time to do it.
So, on to Bali to meet Russell and Juliette...
No comments:
Post a Comment