Kuching and Bako National Park

Two short flights later we were in Kuching, the the capital of the state of Sarawak. We spent a lazy day in this relatively attractive and laid back city in preparation for heading out to another national park, namely Bako. This is an hour's bus ride towards the coast followed by a rather choppy 20 minute ride in a small motor boat to the Park HQ. After wading in from the boat to the beach and registering at the Park HQ, we installed ourselves in our basic and very musty smelling lodgings.















As lunch was well over due we headed straight for the canteen and soon discovered that the food is definitely not the highlight of a trip to Bako. In fact I would go as far as saying it was disgusting. All meals were self service from a barely warm serving station, complete with flies and ants. The only thing vaguely identifiable was the rice which was sure to be the perfect breading ground for bacteria. Needless to say the concept of vegetarianism has not made it this far so Richard resorted to supplementing his diet of rice with canned soya milk. Although pretty inedible for humans, the food is attractive to the pesky local macaques who lurk around the canteen waiting for the moment to pounce on some unguarded food. We witnessed several highly entertaining raids, one where the cunning monkey snatched a handful of chips and preceded to stuff them in his mouth with a very smug grin and a second incidence were a monkey snatched Richards bowl of muesli and tipped over his head whilst trying to guzzle down the contents. We never did manage to get the bowl back.















On a more positive not there a several very lovely treks in the park. On the first day as we didn't have much time we made the short walk through the jungle to Teluk Paku beach. Like the beach at Park HQ this is another wide sweeping cove of sand with a dramatic backdrop of jungle covered cliffs. The next day we did the 4km trek to the Tajor Waterfall and beach. This takes longer than you would think as the path, although very well marked is riddled with tree routes and includes a couple of relatively steep climbs. The waterfall is decidedly average, but the beach is really quite spectacular. Unfortunately you don't get much time to enjoy it before you have to start the walk back to try and avoid the enviable afternoon downpour (which by the way we didn't).















The main highlight for me of Bako was that it provides a chance to see the rare proboscis monkeys at close quarters. They really are quite ridiculously looking creatures with long floppy noises and pot bellies. They often hang out in the trees near the back at Park HQ were we found a large male. Unfortunately though I didn't have my camera with me at the time.















After two nights at the park (and really I wouldn't recommend more given the food) we are now back in Kuching for a night before our flight to KL and are intending to enjoy some much need food.

Mulu

After Uncle Tan's, we called in at Mount Kinabalu National Park for a night – not long enough to climb the summit, but long enough to walk some trials around the base and have a good look at the peak. Unfortunately the weather was against us, so there was little evidence of a mountain through the thick fog - the only view we got was from the plane on the flight down to Tawau.


















We flew from Kota Kinabalu to Mulu National Park in Sarawak, having cleared immigration in Miri (why you need to go through immigration flying from Sabah to Sarawak – part of the same country, is beyond me). Mount Mulu is a 2376m peak, which contains the world's largest limestone cave system, and is covered by an ancient rainforest. The park itself is incredibly well laid out, with dozens of miles of wooden walkways through the forest. There are four “show” caves, then three categories of “adventure” caves.















Arriving late afternoon we headed to Deer Cave (aka the Bat Cave) to see the twilight exodus of millions of bats. I wanted to record the bat sounds, which was impossible with the din of people chattering at the observation point, so we walked closer to Deer Cave. The smell of ammonia becomes quite unbearable, and really starts to sting your eyes and burn the back of your throat (all those millions of bats do leave their mark). The path just continues into the cave, which at 174m high and 122m wide is the largest cave entrance in the world, and there is plenty of natural light even a few hundred meters in. So after half-hour of filming and photographing in the peace and solitude, we were surprised to be approached by a slightly disgruntled guide – apparently even these very safe show caves are off limited without a guide.















Early next morning we set off on our first official cave visit to the Cave of the Winds and Clearwater, the latter being part of the largest cave system in the world. We saved the 60RM on the boat and took the 80 minute walk up-and-down over 400 steps and through a small cave (Moonmilk) to meet the guide at the Cave of the Wind. Neither of these caves has the majesty of Deer Cave, but they are extremely well lit, giving a highly atmospheric effect. Of course what follows a torturous 80 minute walk out to a cave, is a torturous 80 minute walk back.














After the first of many toasted cheese sandwiches (oh the joy of vegetarianism) we joined a group for Lang and Deer Caves. Lang is similar to the Cave of the Wind, while Deer Cave was equally as breathtaking the second time. Several hundred meters in it finally gets dark, before the light from the second entrance reaches in. With all the Bat droppings, there are of course plenty of cockroaches. Fortunately they stay down in the lower levels.















For our taste of adventure caving, we signed up for the intermediate level Racer Cave (you need to show membership of a caving club for the advanced caves). Armed with helmets, headlights and two guides, we set off in a long boat – Racer is out near Clearwater, and we weren't going to start the day with another killer walk. Things didn't start too well as the first rope section was quite tough; the wall was too slippery to get any foot grip, so I ended up just haling myself up on my arms. The guide helpfully created foot holes for Kirsten by cupping his hand, and we were through the first of five rope sections. Another hour of tight squeezes, waterfalls, accents, descents, a snake and several very large spiders (really needed to be careful where you put your hand), and we'd reached the large central chamber. The only thing left to do was the entire thing in reverse.















We took the afternoon off, which proved an inspired decision, as mid-afternoon saw the start of 15 hours of torrential rain. There's plenty of other things to do in the park, including the limestone pinnacles or the summit of Mount Mulu, but these take at least three days of hard hiking. So we finished off with a very gentle canopy walk – 500m of rope bridges strung between the trees.

Kinabatangan

We said a sad goodbye to Sipadan and the turtles and boarded a Fokker 50 for the hour flight north, over endless miles of Palm Oil plantations, to Sandakan. This was to be our base for a jungle adventure with Uncle Tan's. First though we paid a visit to the Sepilok Orang-Utan Sanctuary and Rehabilitation Centre. This is a reserve of 43 sq km of primary rainforest and mangrove which was established in the 1960s to protect orang-utan from extinction. The main draw is feeding time where you get to watch the orang-utan on the feeding platform from reasonably close quarters. It is pretty addictive watching their amazingly agile acrobatics dangling from their feet and hands and swinging wildly between the trees. As you are reasonably close, it is also a good opportunity to take photos and I certainly took hundreds, a small selection of which are shown here. The heat and humidity was however pretty overwhelming and after just half an hour the sweat is pouring off you.














After a glimpse of Bornean wildlife we were ready for the real thing and pilled into the Uncle Tan's mini van along with 10 or so other backpackers to head into the jungle in a remote area of Kinabatangan. Around an hour and half later, and as the rain really started to become torrential, we transferred into small uncovered motor boats. Surprisingly, this being a rainforest and all, rain was a bit of a theme to this trip.














We arrived at the camp, after about an hour, very wet and hoping the black plastic bin liners we had used to cover our rucksacks had been effective. The camp is about 500m from the river through the jungle. Our guide recommended that we borrowed some wellies for the walk as it can get very muddy. Unfortunately for Richard there were none he could actually get his feet into – this was soon to lead to some very muddy shoes.














The accommodation at Uncle Tan's is pretty basic – wooden huts with mattresses on the floor and the essential mosquito nets. It is all set on raised wooden walk ways to protect it from the mud and frequent flooding. After a cup of tea and a briefing describing the various types of primates, birds, crocodiles and deadly inspects that can be found in the area, we set off on our first night time river safari. Unfortunately we didn't have much luck and only saw a brief glimpse of a very small croc, a couple of owls and some macaques, which a pretty ubiquitous around here.














We had much better luck the next day when our 6:30am start was rewarded with finding an Orang-utan. Whilst it was high up in the trees so we didn't get as good a view as at the sanctuary, you still feel very privileged to be seeing one in the wild. We also saw several proboscis monkeys – they are the ones with the ridiculously long noses and fat bellies.














We managed to fit in a second boat safari and two jungle treks in during the rest of the day so I won't bore you with exactly what we saw on each but the highlight was probably the night trek. In this we focused on the small stuff, my particular favourite being the frogs and a sleeping kingfisher. I was less enamoured by the tarantula which was larger than a hand. Luckily it was high up in a tree, but still you couldn't help jumping sightly every time a twig brushed you unexpectedly. Given the lack of wellies in Richard's size he had to resort to fashioning some shoe coverings out of black bin liners. As we were knee deep in the muddy swamp, he commented that it felt like we had come full circle from the start of our trip, as the experience was very much like Glastonbury, but without the live music. The frogs, however, did provide all variety of strange noises.



The journey home was accompanied by some of the loudest thunder and heaviest rain I have every experienced. We were soaked to the bone, extremely muddy and feeling pretty sick - Richard had developed the cold that I had in Sipidan, but it had turned into a deadly case of man-flu. However, this was still a great experience and we would still highly recommend this trip to anyone who doesn't mind a bit of mud and and the odd poisonous spider.

Sipadan

Since Air Malaysia cancelled our direct flight from Manila to Kota Kinabalu, we had to go via Kuala Lumpur – the equivalent of going from London to Madrid via Athens. We overnighted in a functional hostel before taking the early flight across Sabah (north east Borneo) to Tawau. There was too much cloud cover to see the jungle from the plane, but when we descended into Tawau, we could see the rain forest was completely replaced by neat rows of Palm Oil plantations as far as the horizon (and presumably beyond). Also the hour long drive to Semporna (for the boat to Mabul) was entirely through plantation. Environmental groups are concerned about the destruction of wildlife habitation and loss of biodiversity, but Malaysia is the world's largest exporter of Palm Oil, so there are huge economic interests.















The oceanic island of Sipadan, sitting on top of a 600m limestone stack, is generally regarded as one of the world's top dive sites. After three days without diving, we were chomping on the regulator to get back in the water.

Sipadan itself no longer has any resorts on it, and the island is controlled by the Malaysian navy, complete with green speed boats and automatic weapons. I imagine the heavy military presences is party to do with the kidnap of 21 staff and guests from a Sipadan resort, by a Filipino islamist group in 2000. We stayed at Borneo Divers on nearby Mabul – a good midrange option. Other options include a converted oil rig which is parked about 200m off shore in front of Borneo Divers, and huts on stilts out from the beach. Given the limited permits for Sipadan (120 daily), our place managed to get enough for everyone to dive Sipadan everyday.















The diving schedule was 2 dives in the morning around Sipadan, then a afternoon dive somewhere around Mabul or Kapalai. After registering on Sipadan we started our first dive. As soon a we hit the water there was a turtle swimming round us. The turtles round here are quite used to divers, so don't swim off if you get too near, but rather just get on with their own thing (which is mainly sleeping). The sheer amount of marine life is staggering – on the second dive there was nowhere to look that you couldn't see turtles.





























So this brings me on to my first rant: We had 11 divers in the group (the dive master, camera man, and 9 guests), but normally people space themselves out, so it doesn't feel too crowded. Not this time – between inexperienced divers not being able to control their buoyancy (or their fins), and plain selfish ones who'd cut you up to get a shot, or swim in front of everyone else's shot for their own me-in-front-of-shark/turtle shot, the whole thing was rather stressful (I felt more relax in the pitch black inside a wreck in Coron). The worst offender I will call the Russian.















The boat group changed a bit for the second day, but still had the Russia, who insisted on completely ignoring the dive master and swimming off in random directions. When with the group, he assaulted several turtles – tried to pull one off a rock, knocked on the back of another's shell, and finally kicked one in the face – I've never seen someone getting so many underwater bollockings (and completely ignore them).















The second day was relatively cold, and the driving rain on the boat back to Mabul made the 20 minute journey seem like a hour. This didn't do anything to improve Kirsten's stinking cold so unfortunately she had to bow out of the afternoon dive – a muck dive beneath Seaventures' oil rig. Muck dives are so called because you look for critters that live around the relatively low visibility sandy bottom. My fish identification is pretty awful, but I think there was a crocodile fish, a stonefish, a Lionfish, a couple of Moray Eels, and a tiny sea horse (although I'm not convinced about this last one, frankly it could have been anything). I also did a sunset dive, and finally saw Mandarin fish. I think the problem is that I've been looking for something, well fish sized, when in fact they are about 1cm long.















Day three was back to warm sunny weather and a small group (including the Russian). This gave excellent light for photography, and the sea life was very cooperative with six turtles sitting below the boat on the second dive and the school of thousands of barracuda showing up bang on time at the end of the first dive.

We hired a camera for the second a third day; an ancient 3 megapixle Canon, but given the plethora of marine life, you'd have to be an imbecile to not come back with good photos. Anyway, I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Final Thoughts

The Philippines seems to get missed off many people's South East Asia itinerary, possibly because it's considered sleazy and somewhat dangerous. On the sleazy front, the stereotype is largely true, and in Manila especially, you can't swing a cat without hitting a sweaty, overweight, middle-aged white bloke, with his young Filipino girlfriend on his arm. Mindanao in the south east of the archipelago has some political violence, and tourists are warned off the region. However, the rest of the country is perfectly safe.

The Makati area of Manila is where the higher end hotels are, along with the humongous Green Belt mall, with its two cinemas, and masses of shops, bars and restaurants - a sanitised, air-conditioned, city-within-a-city. It's where the expats and the monied locals hang out. Having been to other parts of Manila, you see why.

Pretty much everyone we came across spoke fairly good English, and the TV channels are either in English or a mix of English and Tagalog (Filipino), often in the same sentence. Because of this, travel is easy, if not always comfortable – the roads in the areas we visited (Cordillera and Palawan) seem to be in a permanent state of “under construction”. Airfares are cheap, but almost all flights are in and out of Manila (so you may need two flights to get from A to B), and check baggage has a pitiful allowance of 10kg, meaning we had to hand over an extra 15 quid for each flight. Getting a boat is notoriously unreliable, partly because of their insistence on using outriggers, which sink in a light breeze.

All this means you need to not try and fit too much in, and keep a loose schedule. The Ifugao Rice Terraces were well worth the torturous bus journey; and the wreck diving in Coron is amongst the best in the world. We missed out Boracay, which is a pity, but I'll certainly want to dive Coron again, so we can pop in then (plus, it's not far to Palau...)

Coron

After supposed engine failure on one boat, and the next day's being stuck in Coron due to a typhoon warning, we finally made it out of El Nido on an overnight ferry/cargo ship. This was a relativity small wooden cargo ship, with the upper deck given over to passengers, and the lower deck carrying mainly live fish. Basically you grabbed a marine bed from the pile in the centre, and made yourself comfortable – by the time we set sail at midnight, you could barely get some dental floss between the beds. I had to close the wooden shutters at 3am, because the rain was driving in, and you had to be careful when going to toilet not to fall into the cargo hold. That said, I had a pretty good night's sleep; better than a lot of the trains, and certainly better than the overnight bus to Banaue.















We arrived at Sea Divers (our lodgings and dive operator), minutes too late to wreck dive that day, so we relaxed and had some breakfast. The bangka (outrigger) we were meant to get, the Jessabelle, was parked at the end of Sea Divers pier in Coron, and going nowhere. Frankly, after looking at it (it's a big canoe with outriggers), I wouldn't want to spend 7 minutes on it in open sea, let alone 7 hours to cross from El Nido to Coron. A similar boat sunk on Friday killing 11 people (www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8005382) .















After heavy losses in Manila Bay, the Japanese pulled the remaining imperial fleet back to Coron Bay, where it was duly sunk on 24th September 1944 by US task force 38. Their loss was the dive community's gain, with half a dozen wrecks easily accessible in less than 40m of water.

Keen to get right into the wrecks, but not die, we enrolled on specialist wreck diving and Nitrox (enriched air) courses. Dive one was the Kogyo Maru, a cargo ship lying on its starboard side at 36m. We played around in the large cargo bays, but didn't do a full penetration. The second dive was the Morazan Maru (AKA Olympia Maru), which also lies on its starboard. Here we swam into the cavernous boiler room, before moving through the ship to the bow, squeezing through sideways doors and up vertical corridors – it's easy to see how you could get fatally lost inside.

We had 3 more dives on the second day: the Irako, the Akitsushima and the Okikawa Maru (AKA Taiei Maru), all of which involved swimming head first through tight holes into dark rooms, and marking our way along inside. The Taiei has its bow broken and pointing up at 45 degrees, so there's a cathedral like quality as you enter this section with the shafted of light coming through.


We finished by swimming up the propeller shaft, from the rudder to the engine room and out. After we'd all surfaced, we were a diver down – his buddy swore he'd seen him on the mooring line. After 10 minutes of staring at the horizon, with his mate looking slightly worried, he was spotted some 200m from the boat, having lost the mooring lie and been taken by the current. His mate opened a beer, relived at not having to explain that one to his family.















Sorry, no wreck photos as I didn't bring the marine housing and they don't rent any cameras. It's a shame we only had 2 days rather than the 4 we'd planned, but I'm now addicted to wreck diving, so we may have to go somewhere else to cane more money.

Palawan

After a lazy morning in Manila, we headed back to the airport to catch our flight to Peurto Princesa, the largest town in Palawan, a long thin island, reaching south west almost as far as Borneo. We flew with Cebu, who seem to be the Philippines answer to Ryanair – extra charge for luggage, $5 for a pack of crisps on board and obligatory delayed departure with zero information. They did go the extra mile though by trying to get us to play party games in the middle of the flight - the first to hold up a bus ticket gets a prize etc, although this was really thinly disguised advertising for their tacky range of merchandise.


We landed in the pouring rain (rather a theme of Palawan), unfortunately not being able to see any of the tropical paradise island below. We were very pleased to be handed Cebu branded golf umbrella to protect us for the walk across the runway from the plane to shed which was acting as the arrival hall. Fortunately the hotel that we had booked (Puerto Pension) were waiting for us with a mini van, as I had no idea how we were going to pile our rucksacks on a tricycle without it toppling over and everything getting drenched. (Tricycles are the Philippines answer to the tuk-tuk or rickshaw – basically a motor bike with a side car).
















The next day we were up at the crack of dawn to visit one of Palawan's biggest attractions – the world's second longest navigable subterranean river. It is about a 2 hour drive from Peurto Princesa, about half of this on unsurfaced roads, providing what our guide tried to convince us was a free massage. Once at the park entrance you transfer to a traditional wooden outrigger which takes you to the entrance of the cave. As this is where many people have lunch it is also a great place to spot some local wildlife – monkeys and some pretty impressive monitor lizards. Unfortunately this is a popular tourist attraction so there then follows quite a long wait before you get into a large canoe to be paddled into the cave. This is a pretty impressive experience, the only thing spoiling the atmosphere slightly are the other tourist boats flashing their torch lights around. The river is over 5 miles long, and navigable for 3 mile, but as it gets a bit tight (for space as well as time) the tourist boats only go to miles or so, for a trip of 45 minutes. Along the way the guide points out some truly bizarre rock formations such as the giant mushroom, the coconut, the three kings and of course the face of Jesus. The highlight however was the the incredible Sharon Stone's derriere.














We spent the evening in Peurto Princesa, which didn't appear to have much appeal for tourists and a rather limited selection of resorts, although our hotel was very pleasant decorated in traditional style with lots of natural materials.

The next day was another early start to catch the bus to El Nido, in the north of Palawan. We successfully managed to pile all our bags and ourselves on a tricycle of the 15 minute ride to the bus stop. We were told that trip to El Nido takes between 7 to 10 hours, depending on whether the bus blows a tire or not, so when we saw the rusty wreck that was our bus we were quietly horrified. I'm not sure if it made me feel better or worse when we saw 4 spare tires been loaded on. After packing bags, people and chicken in (and on top of) the bus, the driver, fat belly hanging out over his trousers and fag in mouth, headed off at break-neck speed. As we careered down the dusty, unsurfaced, potholed and windy road we held onto the bar on the back of the seat in front and tried to pretend this was an amusement park ride.















On the plus side the air-conditioning (i.e. no windows) was pretty effective especially when accompanied by a dousing of muddy water as we ploughed through the puddles. In the Philippines (as with much of South East Asia) there is an excellent choice of seating options on a bus: inside on a seat, on the roof, or clinging onto the side. Our bus wasn't full enough for the later, but no problem if you can't decide between the roof or inside – whilst hurtling down the winding roads just climb out of the open door and up the side of the bus onto the roof.















Luckily, by some miracle our tires survived the potholes and we arrived seven-and-a-half hours later in El Nido. This is a small town set on a very pretty beach and backed by spectacular limestone cliffs. We easily found a basic but pleasant room on the beach front to stay in and headed out to find Sea Dogs, a dive operator that we had read good things about on the web. To my joy this very friendly outfit also has a lovely dog called Danzin.

We spent the next 5 days split between diving and doing nothing much at all. The diving was pleasant, with loverly corral and many varieties of small fish, although I think we have been spoilt a little by Palau so struggled to get that excited. Probably the best dives were Tunnel Helicopter and South Miniloc. The first starts with a 50m long tunnel which you swim through using torches. This has a chamber about half way along which has a small opening at the top letting through light which is very pretty. The second has a large area of cabbage corral and is teaming with small fish. We also saw a large shoal of grouper – when you swim into them they circle around you which is spectacular. Other good sea life spots included a lobster, a couple of blue spotted sting ray and a black and white stripped sea snake about a meter long which I swear tried to attack me!















The dive trips also provided the opportunity to see some of the spectacular islands around El Nido, which soar out of the water with dramatic limestone cliffs and some postcard perfect white sand beaches.

El Nido itself is a pretty small and basic town. It is actually the first place we have been on our trip that doesn't have 24 hour power, although according to the locals this is largely due to officials pocketing money from flogging some of the diesel than for purely practical reasons. Power runs from 1pm to 4pm then again from around 6:30pm to 6am. You can guarantee the switch off times but the switch on is often delayed. Unfortunately when the power is off and there are no fans it is unbearably hot and much of life has to just grind to a halt.














The plan was for us to get the boat to Coron, a little further north and famed for its wreak diving, on Thursday, but apparently the engine is broken so we have to wait until Friday. Oh well, I guess there are worse places to get stuck...