getting a nature fix in borneo

I decided on Day 1 of this spring break adventure that I definitely couldn’t live in Singapore.  By Day 4, I wasn’t sure if I would even last two weeks in the city.  So, I trolled the interwebs, found promising info on adventures to be had, booked a cheap-ish flight, got malaria meds, and by Day 6 I was in Borneo.

Malaysian Borneo, to be specific, in the province of Sarawak:

Borneo is home to some of the world’s oldest rainforest, and it is going up in smoke due to deforestation on a massive scale.   Here’s a beautiful article from Nat Geo that underscores the importance of this particular island, and describes the political and cultural backgrounds of the three countries that share Borneo (Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei).  I wanted to see it before it was gone. 

It was marvelous!  One day, I went kayaking down a river surrounded by fantastic forest.  The river itself was about as flat as a puddle and just as deep, but it was still worth it to just be outside.    The kayaking company promised “GET FREE photo CD of your kayak adventure!” which was great because I don’t have a waterproof camera, but the guides then turned into paparazzi and took thousands of awkward photos of all of us:

Here are people sniffing oregano.

Here's a kid in a cave.

Here's a really nice Danish guy eating his lunch.

See what I mean?  And every picture seemed to have some person in a bright orange life vest in it, so eventually I asked if I could borrow one of the cameras so I could at least take a few scenery shots:

The river that we paddled down.

The waterfall that we frolicked in.

The guides did take some beautiful scenery photos as well:

And here are a few of the less-awkward paparazzi shots:

In the afternoon, it started raining as if someone had turned on a warm shower faucet, so we paddled about 6K in the fabulously drenching, refreshing rain.

Here's me, in the river as deep as a ditch!

***

The next day, I went to Bako National Park, about an hour bus ride + ½ hour boat ride outside of the city where I’d been staying.  Bako was where I truly got my nature fix.  It had everything I wanted to see:

Flora!

Fauna!

See the bearded pigs by the side of the trail?

Merryweather!

I always thought that "Fauna" got the short shrift in fairy names...

It was amazing to breathe clean air, listen to the incredible cacophony of bugs (there’s one that sounds exactly like a chain saw), and be by myself in the woods.  By myself, that is, until a troop of Boy Scouts came galloping past.  Boy Scouts.  Seriously—what kind of Boy Scouts go to Borneo?  I asked one of the kids where his troop was from, and his elucidating answer was, “America.” 

“Well, yeah,” I said, “But whereabouts?”

“All over.  Just America.  We’re the Boy Scouts of America,” this brilliant 10-year-old told me.

I gave up and talked to one of the troop leaders.  It turned out they were from the American School in Singapore, which made the choice of destinations a bit more sensible.

But anyways, you guys, back to Bako. It was amazing.  Day 1 involved hikes up, down, and all around, and frolicking with animals like the bearded pig

This is what a good picture of a pig looks like.

and the proboscis monkey

Gonzo!  These monkeys moseyed around the park HQ, eating leaves and minding their own business, but never pausing long enough for me to get a decent photo.

and the long-tailed macaques

These little buggers knew what time meals were served at the park's cafeteria, and they would come scampering out of the woods.  They perched on the railings before hopping up on the tables and grabbing food off your plate even as you were bringing a forkful to your mouth.  I watched several people get into tug-of-wars with the monkeys over dinner plates, and the monkeys usually won.

Day 2 was wonderful, and included getting up at 5:30 with the first light in the sky, hiking alone through the jungle (apart from the pigs, monkeys, and innumerable bugs and birds), picnic breakfasting on a deserted beach, and booking it back to the park HQ before catching a boat to town, and then a bus to the airport to head back to Singapore.

I feel happily satiated in greenery, at least for now.

singapore: multicultural megalopolis—wait a second, is that more dim sum?

The food. The heat. The oppressive mass of the city. The swirling mix of languages: a thousand varieties of English, Chinese, Malay, Tamil, and countless others. The cleanliness & orderliness. The endless parade of shopping malls. All of this is what Singapore is known for, and no, they don’t actually cane people for chewing gum. Or jaywalking, for that matter; I was shocked to find that in the rule-loving and law-abiding Singapore, everyone jaywalks. In everything else, though, Singapore lives up to its reputation.

Why come to Singapore?

REASON #1:

My cousin lives here.  I like my cousin quite a bit, although I don’t know her that well, so I figured this was a perfect excuse to spend some time with her.

She lives in this swanky condo building called “the Sail” right smack dab in the middle of the Central Business District, or CBD—the downtowniest of downtown Singapore—which makes a great home base:

“The Sail” is the one in the middle, facing out towards Singapore’s marina.

  

View from my cousin’s window.  Past the fleeting bit of nature that rested on her window, you’ll see they’re building the next high-demand high-rise: if you can read the numbers on the yellow gates, or the red numbers on the white signs, you’ll see 58…59… and on up.  My cousin lives on the 51^st floor of her building, and we’re barely looking at the other buildings’ midriffs. 

REASON #2:

I wanted to see if I could picture myself living and working here in the future, teaching English.  After 5 days here, I’m not sure I would be up for it—the sheer enormity of the city is overwhelming, and the relentless heat (both temperature and humidity hover around 90, and the heat index soars upwards of 108ºF) is oppressive.  Plus, English is the official lingua franca—all Singaporeans learn English in school, as well as Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil (many people speak many other languages at home, but they are not taken into account by government policies, so people only have the option of becoming literate in English and one of the three official “mother tongues”).  The English spoken on the streets isn’t American or British English—it’s Singaporean English, or Singlish—and it sounds nothing like what I’d probably be required to teach from a textbook.  If I were teaching English, it would be in a private academy to Thais or Malays who come to Singapore specifically to learn English.  While I could teach reading and writing easily enough (written English looks basically the same the world over), I feel I would be doing my students a disservice by having them listen to me, when the English they would be hearing all around them is a world apart from American English.  In conclusion, I don’t think I’ll be looking for a job in Singapore.

REASON #3:

THE FOOD, you guys, THE FOOD.  I cannot emphasize how MUCH I LOVE TO EAT HERE.  (I love to eat everywhere, but when I walk around every corner and dim sum practically jumps into my lap, I know I’m in heaven.)

As every travel blog will tell you, Singapore is “food-obsessed,” which is completely true.  You can find delicious food around every corner, ranging from $4 soups to $$$ haute cuisine.  I’ve been playing around at the low end of the scale, of course, where the options seem to be endless.

Best of all are the hawker centers: because Singapore loves to be straight-laced, all of the “food hawker” stands were pushed into indoor centers, where they no longer hawk at you, but still serve fantastic street food.  Apparently, Singaporeans of all stripes eat all their meals at hawker centers, where the food is cheap, delicious, and sought-after.  There’s even a local guidebook to the best hawker stands: the Makansutra.  Hawker centers are fun: you wander around until you find a stand that serves something that tickles your fancy (or just hop in the longest line; Singaporeans hone in on the ones with famously delicious dishes), claim an unoccupied seat at a (sometimes shared) table, and dig in to the inevitably spicy food while sweating profusely—none of them are air conditioned.

The Lau Pa Sat hawker center near my cousin’s place.  This is where I remembered that trusty rule from traveling in SE Asia: always carry toilet paper with you.  In Thailand, you need it because otherwise they will charge you for one measly square of TP before going into the public restrooms.  Here, however, you need it because the food is so spicy that your nose will be running into your soup, and hawker stands don’t provide napkins. 

  

The Newton hawker center during the mid-afternoon lull (the centers are open 24/7, but most people aren’t on the foodie-tourist schedule of eating 4 or 5 meals a day, stopping to chow down whenever something looks tasty…like me. *cough*). I had the one of the tastiest meals of my life at the Newton hawker center, although it's a dish available everywhere: chilli crab. 

 

Here’s a lovely picture from the internetz of chilli crab, which the Makansutra describes as: “THE national seafood dish in Singapore. Aromatic, spicy, and succulent, the addictive sauce is made with eggs, tomato and chilli paste. The Palm Beach Seafood Restaurant folks created this dish by the East Coast beachside to stimulate the jaded palates of customers in the 1950s.” 

There are a few “national dishes” of Singapore, but there is such a mix of cultures that you can get anything your heart desires here: McDonald’s (they even deliver), dim sum, fancy French and Italian food, fishball soup, lattes, lassi…anything, really, from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, India, China, Japan, Korea, Europe and America. I haven’t seen a big representation of African, South American, or Middle Eastern food, but, after all, I’ve only been here for 5 days.

I’ve eaten everything I can possibly get my hands on, and I’ve only had one truly disgusting thing: an ice kachang, which I was told by a friend who’d been an expat in Singapore for several years was a “must-try.”  Here’s a picture:

It’s a drink, supposedly, although it looks more like George’s Marvelous Medicine: shaved ice, syrupy goop, black beans, corn, and green gelatin worms.  The Makansutra says it’s “Singapore’s favorite dessert!” and I say their taste buds must have been fried by their love for chillis to be able to stomach the stuff. 

And… I’ve just spent the past 600 words talking only about food.  You can see where my priorities are.   I really have done other things in Singapore besides eat, but I’ll tell you about them later.  It’s afternoon-snack time!