J on the Flip Side: February 2014

All of the volunteers I worked with at the Matang Wildlife Sanctuary were invited over for dinner to Richard's house. He and his family live in a traditional Borneo longhouse, which is basically a really long building divided into dozens of family homes. It seems that everyone in the longhouse is related in some way. There is also a long covered porch, where all the kids congregate and play together. Family and friends seemed to move freely from one house to another, and the longhouse had a really chill family vibe where everyone was welcome. It kind of seemed like it was a giant community sleepover!

Our evening began with a lovely home cooked meal of traditional Bornean curries and stir fry's cooked by Richard's wife. Several of the local kids came over to the house for dinner and joined in for the feast as well. The food was delicious! After dinner, Richard's wife began passing out shots of their famous family moonshine. It was impossible to say no to this woman... she was literally chasing us around the house pouring shots down our throats! So, naturally we obliged, had many, many shots, and ended up having a dance party with all the local kids in Richard's living room. I spent the whole night either dancing with a few of the little girls who loved to be dipped upside down (over and over again!) or running around outside giving the kids piggy back rides. Things got a bit crazy when Bron broke her toe and Kerri got in a minor fender bender... but all in all what a great night!

The Matang Gang!

No more moonshine, please!!!!

I've already written a lot about Mulu in my last post, but I didn't get to tell you about our homestay yet. When I got stranded in Mulu National Park with a few of my traveling buddies, we got one night in the posh resort for free, but we decided to stay an extra night to try to go through one of the advanced caves. Unfortunately the caving didn't work out since the water level was crazy high due to the flooding, but we ended up staying at a really cool homestay in Mulu. The house was marked by an old rusty car, and no real sign to speak of, so I was glad that my friends knew where it was. Because of all the rain, we had to take off our flip flops to wade through a muddy field carrying our giant backpacks to reach the entrance of the guesthouse by the river. Our host Monica lived there with a bunch of her family members who were all really friendly, even though for the most part we couldn't speak each other's language!

Monica made us a traditional meal of jungle ferns and wild boar, just hunted by her husband that day!

Monica's father getting ready to load up a boat at the front of the homestay

The back room, complete with a child tied to the wall...

The not-tied-up older sister

She loved to play with Steve's ipad, and she kept screaming "apple, apple!"

After Mulu, I made my way to Mabul Island for some scuba diving. I stayed at Uncle Chang's. I would not recommend Uncle Chang's. They ran out of toilet paper for the whole hostel. Then they ran out of running water. While the water was still running, the toilets and showers drained directly into the ocean. The free breakfast, lunch and dinner consisted of plain rice, noodles, and fish heads. FISH HEADS!! Ugh. The diving was super disorganized, but at least my divemaster was a super cool Malaysian chick. Anyway, I became a bit of a hobo and adopted myself to another place, Scuba Junkie, on the other side of the island. I may have snuck one or two (or 3 or 4??) of their buffet dinners while no one was watching. I made some great friends at Scuba Junkie and loved hanging out there every day!

Totally agree with this quote scrawled on the wall at Uncle Chang's

The best thing about Uncle Chang's was the sunset view!

Uncle Chang's

Hung out with this guy a lot... he was cool, just unfortunate about the double chin... haha :)

Scuba Junkie's beach, so gorgeous.

The boardwalk back to my place

Mabul local life

Gorgeous local kids

My yoga pose is better than yours!

I left the island life after extending my stay for days and days, and headed to the mountains. The last thing I did in Borneo was tackling the climb at Mount Kinabalu. Mount Kinabalu is the highest mountain in Malaysia, and at 4095 m, is about half as tall as Mount Everest. Isn't that cool? I hiked up a mountain half as tall as Mount Everest?! Life accomplishment! The hike up was tough. But I was glad to have some awesome company in my guides and climbing partners, Sarah (who is a grizzly bear attack survivor!!) and Casper (a really cool, handsome, strong but silent type sailor from Denmark). We started at 9 am and hiked straight up. Straight up over giant steps. The whole way. We reached the guesthouse at the midpoint of the mountain at about 2 pm, had a buffet dinner at 4 and watched the sunset before heading to bed early. We woke up again at 2 am, had some brekkie, and started the rest of the climb. It took another 3 hours of climbing in the dark to reach the top. There wasn't too much of a sunrise because of the clouds, but man the view was impressive when it got light out. We were above the clouds on top of a jagged peak, looking down at all the other lower peaks below us. We enjoyed the view, and then began our descent. Well, nature wasn't my friend that day, and it started pouring rain as we did the last 2 k. I thought we were friends, nature, WTF?? I was totally soaked and tired at that point and just wanted to be done. But just a little while later, it cleared up by the time we finished and though I was at the point where I could barely walk anymore, I was so excited to have summited my first mountain!!