Kota Kinabalu

 Sabah

Leeches, leeches, leeches the slippery little succubus’s bent on depriving me of every last drop of my precious life blood.  If there is one negative memory (and probably the only one) that I have from my last jaunt in Malaysia it’s the abundance of leeches kicking about in the rainforests and my encounters with the little bloodsuckers; but we’ll get back to them.

So after what seemed like a lifetime in the air I finally arrived back on Malaysian soil but this time in Sabah and its capital Kota Kinabalu or KK as the locals call it.  The original plan was for me to kick around in KK for 3 to 4 days to acquaint myself with the project I would be working on before heading down to site in Tawau to start construction; but fate it seemed had other plans. I had only been there for just over 3 days when news came that the project was having teething problems on site namely that the only truck they had for delivering materials to site was stolen (outside the police station no less) and no materials could be delivered onsite; so construction was put on hold until a new truck could be acquired.  Welcome to Sabah, take a seat and we’ll be right with you!!!.......So it seemed I would be spending longer than expected in KK, which in some cases turned out to be a blessing as it allowed me more time to get my head around the project and what was required of me.

ArkiTrek & S.A.F.E

For the architecturally minded out there and those interested (or both) here is a little background info on the Safe Organisation and the project.  For those I haven’t already regaled my tail to Arkitrek is a company that was set up about 4 years ago by Ian Hall an old university colleague/friend of mine.  The companies underline goal being to educate the local masses and eventually government on the importance of conservation and how to aid in the conservation of Borneo’s rainforest through sustainable architecture.  His aim; to use the extensive experience he has gained over the years working for various voluntary organisations like Raleigh and his own architectural experience in Asia to highlight the merits of reusing natural materials, engaging local communities for labour and traditional building methods and reducing carbon footprints by sourcing locally.  A task that I am slowly discovering is not an easy one given how much money is being made in this part of the world by the rainforests number one killer “Palm Oil”. 

The client S.A.F.E (STABILITY OF ALTERED FOREST ECOSYSTEMS) are a conservation group undertaking research in Borneo’s rainforest and their present site is located 3 hours from Tawau on the east coast of Sabah adjacent to the Maliau Basin (also known as Borneo’s lost world) and Dunam Valley.  These two areas of primary rainforest are still relatively untouched and house a diverse and unique range of Flora, Fauna and wildlife but are in danger of disappearing due to their close proximity to the vast and ever expanding palm oil fields.  Arkitrek were initially commissioned (on a limited budget) to provide them with a master plan for the research site and eventually full construction of the buildings.  My brief was to help develop the design and then manage the construction of a research laboratory and potentially (time allowing) an adjacent library building aimed at housing the documented research information compiled by the researchers.   The main purpose of the library was to give the local community access to knowledge that highlights the importance of the rainforest to them, the world in general and the animals that live in it, like the hairy ginger ape.  Check out their websites for more information.

Kicking it in KK

So anyway I resided myself to my situation and set about the task of getting to know my new surroundings, the office, my new colleagues, the locals and acclimatising to the crazy humidity.  The office which is in the heart of KK is quite surreal in itself as it has a rainforest as a backdrop which at first I thought was cool as hell until it rained that is.  My room was affectively in the office so I could see bush outside the back window and the first time the rains came so did the frogs.  I came back from eating dinner one evening and was about to hit the hay when I heard what sounded like a heard of deer being butchered outside my window.  This continued all night and needless to say I didn’t sleep a wink.  It wasn’t until the morning that i found out from my colleagues that the angelic noise that I had kept me awake all night was that off the local resident frogs who liked to celebrate the coming of the rains with glorious song.................It rains a lot in KK.  

         Those loud green buggers aside one of the advantages of living in the office was my journey time to my desk went froM 1 hour to 10 mins 8 of which was spent in the shower (and getting dressed of course........).  The dress code was quite a change too as shorts and flip flops were not frowned upon and the only time I put on long trousers was when I’d had enough of the mozzi’s nipping at my calves.  Quite a difference from London life, although I still managed to remain in London mode for quite a while as I was always the first in (obviously) and the last out (The walk home through the kitchen was quite sketchy) and I barely left my desk in between. I would spend most of the day working and then hit the streets at night to check out the local haunts and watering holes. Of course as is tradition on these excursions I received the mandatory baptism of fire of a night out by one of the Arkitrek interns who took me out with two of her friends from the local village.  

It was a Monday but the guys had just been paid and were clearly in the mood to spend money.  So we started off by circumnavigated the central bars one by one before ending up in a dubious nightclub called the black hole or something along those lines which turned out to be a karaoke bar with questionable clientele.  It was quite a surreal experience walking into the place (this being my 4^th day in KK) after being told that it was often quite normal for a place like this to be half occupied with family groups (including kids) singing karaoke (an extremely popular pass time in this part of the world) and the other half by old men being accosted by scantily clad young ladies and both groups being completely oblivious of the other.  Try getting you head around that after a few beers, cocktails and rice wine.  However on this particular day the place was virtually empty so the 4 of us had the mikes pretty much to ourselves and the ladies of the night kept their distance due to our loan western female body guard.  The locals that were there did however seem to be quite amused (and possibly a bit scared) at the sight of the 4 of us blasting out “sweet child o mine” as well as many other classics and were reluctant to deprive us of the mikes.   I get the feeling they got more than they were expecting that night and didn’t quite know how to take it.  

The hangover after that night was enough to keep me off the sauce for a quite some time instead I spent more time culturally acquainting myself with the city and its surroundings.  As a city KK is like any other city, big, bustling and money hungry.  It was heavily bombed during world war two by the allies so unlike allot of the other cities in Malaysia it has no colonial architecture, no china town or little India.  Instead it is a mish-mash of glitzy super malls, banks and restaurants and rundown local eateries, hotels and hostels.  The nicest and most cultural part of town is the night market which is an array of hawker stalls on the waterfront selling a huge selection of freshly caught seafood cooked for you as sit and watch the chaos around you unfold.  For me KK’s beauty lay not in town but in its surroundings and one of the advantages of rooting yourself somewhere for some time is that you get to know the locals who know how to get off the beaten track.  I’ve been lucky enough to meet some cool people while kicking it in KK like the various interns and volunteers within the office and a few outside one of whom happens to be a tour guide with his own company Sticky Rice Tours.  Subsequently I have been invited to various reckies, excursions and the odd leaving do as well as a thanks giving dinner during my stay here, enough to keep me busy while waiting for this damn truck.

“Kampong Kiau” – Village Life

On my second weekend in KK I was invited to a leaving do of one of the “Safe” project managers who was heading back to OZ and had decided she would have her do at two separate venues instead of one, as you do.  The first was at a local village or “Kampong” at the base of mount Kinabalu an old haunt she worked at when she first came to Borneo; the second, at a jungle camp up near the Pourri Spring (north of KK) which was owned by a friend of hers who also ran a tour company.  The two experiences ended up being very different but both enjoyable and gave me an insight of what life in the “Kampongs” here were truly like, which was fun but at the same time somewhat disturbing. 

When I left the UK it was in a blaze of leaving do’s and one of the things I promised myself I would do was to go on a complete detox and give my body some downtime to recover from the London experience or at least my version of it.  I was surprisingly succeeding in this task and on the writing of this particular section of my blog there had only been two occasions when this had gone awry; the karaoke night and Friday night at the Kampong.  I really shouldn’t have been too surprised as this was the same Kampong that Izzy (the intern from the karaoke night) worked and her two cohorts lived.   The location of the Kampong was stunning but it was something I would only discover in the morning as when we finally arrived at the place it was too dark to see anything and with limited electricity, we had to use head torches to find our way around.  The local chieftain who knew Sarah greeted us when we arrived and took us in as his guests.   Up until that point we didn’t really know what the sleeping arrangements were going to be, in fact there was mention on the way of crashing in the local church!!!.........Indeed.  Anyway this wasn’t the case in the end so once we’d dropped our gear of we settled in and set about getting to know the locals. 

Before arriving at the village I had been told by various people I’d met about the level of drinking that went on in the kampongs (especially of the Rice wine) but I didn’t really believe it and thought maybe it was just over zealous exaggeration on there part, but I was soon to be proved wrong.  When we arrived we turned up with 5 crates of beer (24 cans in one crate (which I assumed was for two nights) and added it to 3 crates that were already there, bearing in mind there was only about 15 of us in total.  Is was also plainly obvious that these guys had already been drinking pretty much all day, so if you put these factors together as you can imagine it turned out to be quite a flavoursome night.  If there is one thing I have learned about this part of the world is that they know how to party and Karaoke is King.  As the night progressed and the cans emptied the guitar came out and so did the Karaoke machine with its banging sound system.  There is barely electricity in most of these villages but everyone seems to have a karaoke machine with top of the range speaker systems and satellite TV.........go figure!!. 

As the kareoke kicked in so did the renditions, ballads, solos and collaborations, mostly by the locals as it was like second nature to them, we contributed when we could and the whole thing was choreographed by the chief who was in his element.  As you can imagine I was a bit of a novelty so while all this was going on I was receiving continual interviews about my past, present and future and what basketball team I played for amongst other things.......... as well as receiving the obligatory probing of the afro.   But it wasn’t until I started dancing that things really came to a head, which for some was a little too much and they had to be taken outside for air.  Clearly there’d never seen a man of my stature pulling out such moves and may never again...........:).  

Anyway our host was clearly relishing the occasion and regaled us with stories about his past, the people he had guided up mount Kinabalu (most of the villagers were guides) and how long he had been doing it for, which surprisingly I took in even with major language barrier.  But as the night went on the crates began to take their toll and I think it was about the time that the bigman decided he would straddle Sarah while trying to slip me the tongue (much to the embarrassment of his wife and sons who eventually dragged him off us) that it was decided that maybe bed was the best option for him at that point.  But he wasn’t going down easy (clearly having the time of his life) as it took 3 attempts over half an hour before he eventually hit the sack.  It wasn’t long after, that I hit a wall big enough to floor an elephant and decided it was time to call it quits.  There wasn’t much left of the 8 crates and when I left and I thought to myself, good night, quite heavy but manageable and only 4 in the morning, so not quite as bad as everyone had made out.  However 4 hours later (but what felt like 10mins to me) I was awoken by the bigman to come down and have breakfast which is the last thing I wanted to do at that hour.  But I was a guest in his house, so I dragged my sorry hung-over ass, downstairs into the kitchen where breakfast was waiting.  Sarah and Ryan were already there drinking tea and the 4^th member of our Posey and the youngest Simon was a lot worse and still out for the count.  I was given a bowl of noodles and a cup of tea by the chiefs wife which went down surprisingly well considering, my stomach only turned when one of the chiefs sons came into the kitchen carrying a crate of beer, from which all proceeded to take a can (except Sarah as she had the excuse of driving) and crack open.  Finally I understood what everyone was talking about and could see why a girl of Izzy’s stature could drink to level that she does and still maintain the level of composure that she does.  This is the point that diplomatic relations broke down, well at least in my head and the survival instincts kicked in; so I gracefully declined the offer, made my excuses and crawled back to bed.  Three hours later I came back down after prolonging the decent back into the kitchen for as much as I could and low and behold they were still in there, two crates of beer had been consumed and the bigman was out cold on the kitchen floor.  We had to leave soon after to head to the next venue and even though I had only known these guys for one night it was pretty difficult saying good.   As we left it was now that I began to see the beauty of this Kampong, why these guys loved it so much and experience the regret of not having more time to experience the place during the day.  The village is situated at the base of Mount Kinabalu on a series of terraces overlooking the valley below and each terrace housed a homestead with a small narrow connecting path.  The chief’s house as you would expect was on one of the higher terraces with amazing views of the rest of the village and beyond.  I could also now see why on the previous night it took us 20mins to walk to it from the parking area, a path clearly not to be attempted in the state we were in at the end of the night.

            Although my experience at the Kampong were enjoyable and amusing to say the least, the hospitality first rate and to have met a character like Cerping (the Chief) and his family; in the cold light of day the level of drinking I experienced that night, which i was told was daily, often started early and continued throughout the day, was apparently the social norm.  Alcoholism it seems is quite rife in the local communities here, a problem that most people who visit may see and experience it on a short term basis but are generally not directly affected by it.  This it seemed was not the case for Arkitrek interns.   As I previously mentioned, as part of its overall philosophy one of Arkitrek’s major goals is to engage local communities and involving them in projects that directly affect.  They achieve this predominately by employing local labourers, tradesmen and contractors from these communities for their construction projects which are subsequently managed by the Interns.   The problems arise when after there has been agreement with community elders and Arkitrek the interns take over on site and often encounter problems “motivating” the locals to work and this is mainly because most are too inebriated and are incapable of working.  Now I have had my fair share of experiences with contractors and “motivating” them to undertake work they’re getting paid for without making a huge issue out of it was about as bad as it got; but this was a whole different ball game and one that I was not looking forward to playing.   

I have to say though that if you factor in the remote nature of some the sites and of course the language barriers this is quite a baptism of fire into the world of contract management for these interns (most of whom have only just completed their part one) and in most cases they have been dealing with this situation extremely well.    However the overall problem of alcoholism faced by the local Duson community and many other indigenous tribes still remains and it’s quite saddening to hear that families as welcoming as Ce-Ping’s deal with this everyday of their lives with no real help in combating it.  This, I’ve discovered is mainly because these indigenous communities feel they have been forgotten by the government, which is something that is becoming more and more evident the longer I stay here and the more people I meet.   There is clearly a huge divide between Malaysian Borneo and Mainland Malaysia which is not apparent on the mainland and many would probably not admit.  However regardless of all the politics this is still a very beautiful part of the country and I for one intend to return and experience Kampong Kiau and its people in a more sober light.

 Lupa Masa Jungle Camp

          Sarah’s second leaving do deep in the Sabah rainforest was a more sedate chilled out affair, which was the only thing it could physically be for some.  For most of the day it involved lazing around the river before retiring to the balcony for Durian and Rum (yes Rum it’s a party) whilst waiting for the masses to arrive.   Durian, as you may be wondering is one of the many random Malaysian fruits I’m discovering over here (the two funny things Sarah is holding), which I’ve been told is part of the Jack fruit family.  It’s green, spiky and has a pungent smell which has been likened to rotting garbage (by those that don’t like it) with a segmented fleshy inside and is very much an acquired taste a bit like marmite is.  It’s very much a love/hate situation when it comes to this fruit as it has quite a distinctive taste and of course smell.  For me I’m yet to be convinced as to which way to go and so the jury is still out on that, although apparently I’ve been told it takes time to acquire the taste.  So there you have it, Durian you either love or hate it..................... 

      So anyway where was I?! Oh yeah after the previous night’s shenanigans the camp was turning out to be exactly what the doctor ordered.  Very chilled, in a beautiful setting deep in the rainforest and overlooking a river with crystal clear waters perfect for cooling down in the midday sun.  

    The building itself was a simple timber structure which acted more as a shelter than a dwelling but it was perfect for our purposes. There was no one else around that weekend as well so we had the whole place to ourselves and given that most of the office turned up, it was also a good opportunity to get to know the colleagues I hadn’t met yet. It would have almost been a perfect setting but for one thing.............the damn leeches.  Now the last night I had encountered these little critters was when I was on mainland Malaysia 10 years ago and I’d pretty much forgotten how annoying they were!!! Well that feeling was to rear its ugly head again and with it the paranoia.  I had already managed to pull off a few on the 40 min walk into the camp but it wasn’t until the rest of the group arrived and the personal leech experience stories started coming out that my paranoia went into overdrive.  The stories were interesting and varied, some of which were quite funny, others sent a chill down my spine but everyone seem to have one.  However out of all of the stories I heard only one brought tears to my eyes and put the fear of god in me at it came from an intern I was due to work with on the Safe project.  The poor guy had woken up on site one morning experiencing the sort of pain no guy ever wants to experience at any point in his life let alone first thing in morning and in a slight state of panic he preceded to perform a thorough examination of the offending area.  On doing so he found, much to his shock, that one of these little blood suckers had basically manoeuvred its way into his undercarriage and set up shop in his (how can I put this eloquently)............JAPS EYE!!!! That’s right his urinary canal and all he could see was half its body sticking out.  Now as you can imagine this didn’t go down too well.  Now in a full state of panic he proceeded to run out of the sleeping quarters screaming like a mad man, as you would in his situation, crying for help.  He was eventually calmed down (once they caught him) long enough for someone to persuade him that all he had to do was to pull it out and that fire was not required to facilitate the task.  “Welcome to the Jungle”

Peace of mind firmly out of the window I spent the rest of the night administrating random checks (to myself) every time I got up until the rum kicked in and all rational thought and paranoia disappeared for the evening.   I eventually chilled out and managed to enjoy the rest of the party and even managed to get some uninterrupted sleep.  It wasn’t until the next day however after a dip in the river that the paranoia came back with avenges.  On performing another random full body search to my horror I found that one of the little buggers had suffixed itself on my right “person” and was hanging there like some sort of stalactite.  You’d think be safe in the river, but no apparently they swim too, either that or it based jumped from nearby rock.  Regardless of how it got there once I had pried the little bugger three things happened after that; the random checks became less random and more frequent, I never trekked in trousers again and went about trying to invest in some leech socks and finally all the loose fitting boxers I owned were relegated to the “city wear” section of my backpack.  To date the incident has not been repeated even on the following weekend when we went to a location with a greater density of leeches in a far smaller area.  I got the feeling this was only the beginning of my experiences with these critters as most of my time out here (once I get on site) will be spent on their turf........Yippee!!  However even with that unpleasant experience it wasn’t enough to ruin my time at the jungle camp, which again reminded me why I had loved Malaysia so much the first time I was here those 10 years ago.  

 

Best Laid Plans

      Just as I was beginning to think I would never leave KK news came in that a new truck had been secured and all systems were go and so I started to make preparations to leave.  That was a mistake!! No sooner had I packed my leech pants then I was told there had been a change of plan and I would not be going to the “Safe” project site, well at least not yet.  The reason, another project had come into the office and Arkitrek after a period of searching could not find anyone suitably experienced to take on the project on site amongst there interns so asked me to cover until they could or until the end of the first phase.  Initially I was reluctant as it meant leaving Sabah and the Safe project which I had put so much time into.  It took a bit of persuasion and research before I agreed and this was predominantly because the project construction period was short enough that I could squeeze both projects in.   It also meant I could now explore Sarawak (which I never planned to) and get to see another part of this amazing island that is Borneo.