Next Stop: Unknown

It’s pronounced Purr-hen-tee-ans… And actually, there are several islands… but two are the most famous: Pulau Besar, and Pulau Kecil.  We had been trying to find accommodation for quite a while before heading there… in fact, 3 weeks before we decided to try out the islands, we started looking into lodging.  EVERY place we contacted was full.  WTF?  As backpackers, we’ve been able to find a cheap bed most anyplace… why was this one being so difficult?  Well, it turns out that August is prime season… all the locals are on vacation, plus all the tourists… crap… but, it’s also the best time to be there. 

So, the good with the bad.  We eventually found a place to stay called Coral View on the big island.  After trying at least 20 places, we made the reservation without hesitation.  We didn’t want to arrive and have no place to stay.  Tripadvisor put Coral View as #3 on their list… so it couldn’t be terrible… wrong.

First, the boat ride… on showing up at the jetty, we waited until there were enough people to fill a boat… which was about 12.  It was a long boat, and had two 200hp motors on the back.  (They have two boats, the slow boat, and the fast boat.  The slow boat takes about 90 minutes… the fast boat about 30 minutes.)  When they started handing out life jackets, I kind of thought it humorous… but the driver said the ride was pretty bumpy today.  So, I obliged him and put it on.  About 2 minutes later, I was pretty happy for it.  Turns out that 3 foot waves at 50kph send a small boat like ours pretty much every direction, mostly up, and down… very quickly.  We were bouncing around so hard, my teeth where about to fall out from clenching them so tightly.  Jenn loved it of course… It was pretty funny watching the older folks with their families try to stay calm and in the boat.  It was a bit like a roller coaster, except probably more dangerous. 

Upon getting to the big island (besar means big, which we later found out while ordering food), we were dropped off at a newly built jetty and told to walk around the point to find our lodging.  We found it no problem, and the place was swimming with people.  While we were in line to check in, 3 other couples were turned away because there were no rooms available.  Thank goodness we had our reservation.  When the lady took my information, she looked at the room list, and I was afraid she would tell us they didn’t have space.  But, fortunately, she handed someone a set of keys and he led us to our room.  It was terrible.  It was dank, and small, and had two old twin beds, and a smelly moldy bathroom.  We set our stuff down, and quickly decided to smile our way into an upgrade.  A little bit of begging later, we were moved into a less smelly, but still dank room… but with AC!

Miserable accommodation shock behind us, we set off to the beach for the first time. We’d just stepped foot on sand when Jenn screamed. I saw her swinging her arms madly out of the corner of my eye, and then gesturing wildly towards a cat sized furry animal with a pointy snout. A Flying Lemur has miscalculated the physics of leaping from one tree to the next, and had landed smack dab on Jenn’s face! Once she recovered she immediately started babbling about the need for a rabies shot and seeking sympathy for her tender noggin (and ego). It never bruised up, but that sucker really smacked her – she had a sore face for three days! To be truthful, the Flying Lemur looked a little dazed too.

Well, the rooms sucked and you had to be constantly on the look out for strange flying creatures – but we were there for the diving after all. And the diving was great! Not quite as great as Pulau Weh, but definitely snazzy. We saw a three legged turtle for crying out loud! And big reef sharks, bamboo sharks, nudibranches, schools of squid, schools of barracuda, a well preserved shipwreck with an air pocket at 15 meters, and all the usual like clown fish, angel fish, stone fish, etc….

To anyone who is considering the Perhentians, we found Kecil Island to have better food, better beaches, better accommodations (at least from the outside and a price perspective) and a younger crowd. Oh, and if you recently got married at the Perhentian Island Resort, it was the dive masters at Coral View that stole all of the liquor at your wedding reception.

  Lucas, trying to stick his head into a coral tube.

  The ‘Big Red Tomato’ – a feisty little fish lived here. It had pecked out the eyes of many neighboring fish!

  Not quite big enough to be a swim through…

Just one example of the amount of fish crusin’ the Perhentian Islands.

And us, goofing off in the blue.

So we have one more adventure in Mulu National Park that we forgot to write about – our crazy spelunking in Racer Cave! Now this is not your typical don a flashlight and walk 50 meters along a concrete walkway into a cave. This involved climbing ropes, sliding down mudslides, jumping over underwater pools, squeezing through small passages and watching out for cave snakes (Racer Snakes – hence the cave’s name), giant cave crickets, and of course… bats!

The whole journey took about three hours to complete and by the end of it we were energized but unbelievably filthy. It just make me want to get out there and do more spelunking!

Check out the size of this cricket! Our friend Ryan is holding him up by one of his antennae. Totally crazy stuff huh?!? I can’t believe they can find enough food in the cave to get this big, freakin’ monsters!

Here’s the cave’s namesake – a Racer Snake! They hang out in a crevice near a cave exit area and dangle themselves down through the passage as the bats are moving through. The original fast food joint!

Millions (?) of years ago this cave was formed by saltwater currents. And here’s a fossilized seashell to prove it. To us it kind of looked like one of the guides just super glued a shell up there, but we’ll take their word for it!

One of the many slick rock ways we hand to climb hand over fist. Doesn’t Lucas look pleased with himself? Ha!

This particular stalagmite had a perfect frame shape cut out of it. Makes a great photo spot! Now who do you think enjoyed climbing through the dirty cave more, Lucas or Jenn… the proof is in the smile.

At the end of the cave there were two small freshwater pools, one right on top of each other. Supposedly if you wash your face with the water you become unbelievably beautiful. No one tested our guide on his folklore though. Beauty is only skin deep anyway, yeah.

Spelunking, anyone? No, I’m not offering up ice cream from The Spaghetti Factory. Cave exploration, complete with headlamps and lots of mud is what we’ve been up to these last four days, and it’s absolutely fabulous fun!

Mulu National Park is located deep in the heart of Borneo and is only accessible by a prop airplane (our transportation of choice!) or a three day journey along the mythical headhunter trail. Who am I kidding, the Headhunter trail is really our transportation of choice – but we didn’t know that route was feasible until we got there. Bummer!

Mulu is famous for having the longest underground cave system in the world. It’s something like 167 km from mouth to tail;  though our guide assured us that they’ll discover it’s actually longer once they have the manpower to explore all of the tributaries. If the park contained just one monster cave there would have been enough to draw us to Mulu, but the park also has smaller adventure caves to explore (think underground rock climbing), an amazing thirty minute bat exodus occurring nightly and their crown jewel – the Pinnacles!

Surprisingly enough, this rough and dirty park has a four star resort (now remember, four stars in Borneo is not the same as in the states!). But since we’re planning everything last minute, that of course was booked. So we ended up at a super convenient home stay with a local family where we met some great travel buddies. Did I mention it was only $3 a night and has its own river swimming spot? Score!

Lucas taking photos in one of the Show Caves at Mulu National Park.

Water dripping from a stalactite to a stalagmite in one of the show caves. Over time these slow drips have made amazing formations!

Abraham Lincoln’s profile. Crazy huh? The Chinese on our tour didn’t really get why this particular cave formation was so cool, which made it even cooler.

Oh so beautiful reflecting pond at Mulu National Park.

Us just before we check out Clearwater Cave – the longest cave in the world! We only saw about 600m of it though…

This river runs through Clear Water Cave. I SO wanted to swim in it. For $10 you can do an adventure caving experience where you schlep through the river and then climb out one of the smaller cave exits. There is also an underwater exit that requires scuba gear and special permits… National Geographic here we come!

KL = Kuala Lumpur, Kinda Loud, Kinda Lousy…

Lonely Planet failed us in KL. Three night ‘sleeping’ above a nightclub did not make us the happiest campers, hence fewer photos than were taken than one might anticipate. Well, except for in the orchid garden. You know how Lucas gets around orchids! Chuckle.

Kuala Lumpur’s National Orchid Garden (Free on Saturday’s!) was a wonderful pastoral retreat in the middle of the city. Surprisingly the best variety of flowers was to be found in the orchid gift shop, rather than the grounds.

These are the same orchids as we had at our wedding!

Jenn’s favorite orchid

Kind of a cliché photograph, but it was the first time I’d ever seen a burgundy dragonfly.

Lucas chillin’ at one of the fountains in the Orchid Garden. Well not chillin’ exactly as it was near 90 degrees.

Ha! Have you ever seen a palm tree this short!!

We stayed in the Bukit Bintang neighborhood of  Kuala Lumpur – home to all night dance clubs (much to our dismay) and some of the best street food around (much to our delight!).

This neighborhood hot spot pumps a gentle mist of water into the air to keep their diners cool. Lucas had a local noodle dish, and I had squid… I think it was squid anyway

Lychees, Mangosteens and Rambutans… Lucas’ three loves!

272 steps to the top of the Batu Caves, a Hindu shrine to this gilded prince with a very, very ridiculously long name. The spear he holds is magical and allows him to vanquish those of impure hearts. It was given to him by his mother, quite the present, eh? Once a year a festival is held here that attracts the faithful from around the world. They come walking on shoes of nails, or covered with piercings dangling coconuts. The video we watched about the festival didn’t quite explain how pain worked into the symbolism. But, I had to close my eyes so often at the displays that maybe I just missed it. I wouldn’t be a very good Hindi.

I love all of the pastel colored statues that adorned this, and all Hindi, temples. The cows with big charcoal outlined, dewy eyes. The women with huge nipples, legs of a lions and tail of a peacock. The gods with four heads, or several extra sets of arms. They are so much more imaginative then any sculptures in the Western world.

This monkey is blind in his left eye!

Probably the most photographed building in KL… but we tried to find an interesting perspective!

How’s this for an interesting perspective?

We decided it was time to explore mainland Malaysia.  So, we consulted our lonely planet guidebook and came up with a rough sketch of how we’d navigate this beautiful country.  After meditating on it for a few hours, we decided there was no easy way to do it!  There didn’t seem to be any good bus routes to all of the places we wanted to go.  Our list included: Cameron Highlands, Taman Negara jungle, Kuala Lumpur and some diving/beach bumming on some islands in the northeast.  We’d heard some recommendations for the highlands, so we decided to make that our first stop… convenient since it was also the closest. 

It was only 200 km away, but the bus ride was a six hour trek along murderously windy roads, sprinkled with waterfalls and seaward vistas. Cameron Highlands must be the breadbasket of Malaysia – I’d never seen such huge industrialesque gardens. The strawberry fields went for kms, then the spice plantations, then the sugar cane, then strange fruit that looked like eggplant but grew from trees. And the temperature – wonderful! It was somewhere in the low 60s with a gentle breeze and little variation in between the heat of the day and the cool of the night.

We checked into a place called Father’s guesthouse, which was up on a hilltop, just a 2 minute walk from the city.  It was already dark by the time we got settled, but we were both starving, so we ventured down into the city.  Actually, it’s more a small town than a city, but the buildings were rather large, multi-hundred room buildings/condos.  The style was somewhat Bavarian as well, which gave the place an odd feel.  To Jenn’s delight, there was even a Starbucks!  We had heard about something called a “steamboat dinner” reading some of the tourist flyers on the way up… but we hadn’t seen a river big enough to float a bathtub anywhere along the way.  Turns out the steamboat dinner is actually a cross between fondue and Chinese hot pot.  For 30RM (about $9 USD) you get a big pot filled with two types of soup, and a large plate of seafood and vegetables to fill it.  We ordered it, and then needed to waiter to explain to us the proper method of eating it!  (I don’t think we got it right, but it was yummy). 

We spent one day in the Highlands trekking along paths in various states of upkeep. At one point I was slightly worried our path would just disappear in the middle of the jungle. We can out ok in the end though (despite running out of steam and taking a taxi home from the trailhead) and were able to see a ton of the countryside.

Robinson’s waterfall – supposedly just a 15 minute hike from the town, but it turned into a 2 hour adventure, almost brush cutting through the jungle and ending up 6km out of town!

This was a very small plantation, at least compared to some of the massive ones we saw, that went for acres and acres. 

Taking a breather on a quaint footbridge