Through A Friend's Eye - Continuation

In my previous post, my friend Dr Benjamin had sent some of his diary pages and pictures of his stay in Bario to me. He has sent more this time! These are some of his favorite posts (which were about his first day and last few days in Bario) along with more pictures.

Here's the one about his first time coming to Bario:

"Day 1: Plane Ride, Arrival and Climate

I arrived in this hidden world, flying in a tiny twin propeller plane. It’s unerring to be able to look past the pilot, past the cockpit and out of the front window as you take off. It’s more unerring still to see the mile after mile of untouched, uninhabited, thick mountainous jungle fall by below, leaving nothing but the overwhelming sense of isolation and the rush of excitement that accompanies it as you make your way to your destination.

Unlike the jets I’m used to this, plane flies low between the clouds rather than above them… and then they part to reveal an oasis of land, a plain of green grass and scattered huts and long houses, a flat basin hidden in the midst’s & mists of the Borneo hills and mountains, Bario.

The airport’s nothing more than a landing strip and people mill about here and there with no sense of the strict security I’m used to. It seems that the morning plane is a bit of an event here. People gather in the airport’s little café to see who’s arriving.

The plane flies almost straight back to Miri again and while I wait for my luggage to be wheeled out to me I watch the departing. Here’s a warning: be careful of how much you eat while you’re here. 

The food is good here what with the famous Bario rice, the mainstay and freshly caught Civet Cat, Wild Boar and Bucking Deer making occasional appearances on the menu as well as a great variety of freshly picked exotic fruits. When they charge you for flight weight they don’t only weigh your luggage, they put you on the scales too!

Well, the plane flight here is an early one so it left me with the larger part of the day to see where I will be staying. It’s all 4x4’s or motorbikes here, although the one main road has recently been improved, any others are little more than dirt tracks. I get a lift on a 4x4 and head to what will be my home for the following weeks.

Gerawat’s family consists of his wife Janet, daughter Nicole and her 3 children; Dom, Victoria and Victor. They all welcome me with smiles and food soon after and I quickly feel very at home. Traditionally, the Kelabit people live as a community in a long house with many compartments each housing a family. Gerawat’s is slightly removed, originally it was planned to be the start of a longhouse, but these plans changed and a road now runs between it and the rest.

I’m staying in a quaint wooden structure with a corrugated metal roof. There are plenty of gaps here and there and about a foot clearance between where the wall ends and the roof begins, but since there is such a pleasant climate here it only adds to the charm. Unlike our western brick and concrete boxes in which we store away our lives, this house feels more like an extension of the trees and plants around it; nature feels like something we have to step outside and find, it permeates the walls and grows around you.

I mentioned the Bario climate and it really does deserve a bit more than just a passing mention. Despite perching almost at the very peak of the earth’s equator, Bario’s altitude cushions it from the sometimes oppressive heat of most of the rest of Malaysia. 

Imagine a warm English summers day and you have Bario all year round. Sure, there are periods where it rains a little more or where the sun barely gets hidden all day long, but, either way, the daytime temperature tends to settle around 30 degrees Celsius and seldom strays much more than a couple of degrees from this until the sun dips and the temperature follows it and cools nicely to somewhere around the late teens.

I fill the first day with a trip to the recently built hydro-electric power generator up in the hills and a meeting with Famy, the local doctor, a guy in his early 30s who informs me that people here are far too healthy for his job to be particularly interesting. The hydro-power provides the Bario longhouse community where I stay (Bario Asal) with electricity, meaning lights when the sun goes down and, best of all, Premier League football games late in the evening on weekends!"

Hmm... I will never understand men's fixation with football. I really don't and I don't think I could begin to either. But I suppose everybody is entitled to their own opinions. The following ones are about Dr Ben's last few days in Bario:

"Day 25: Bugs and Stars

Do you know where pictures of paradise have the edge over the real thing? It’s their lack of bugs. I know how the guys in the movie ‘Starship Troopers’ felt; this place is infested with bugs. Some are huge, as big as your thumb, defying the very laws of physics as their thin wings propel their bulbous bodies through the air…. And directly into my forehead!

 

After it hits me, it lays on its back, traumatized and unable to get up. I felt rather like doing the same. Instead, I stood watching it a while, contemplating whether or not to crush it. 

In the end I decided to reserve my bug killing skills for mosquitoes, which are far smaller and quieter, unfortunately for me. 

 This place literally swarms with them at times, add to this the presence of horseflies and you can end up very itchy. 

Today is a particularly itchy day…even with a toxic mix of lotions, pills and potions to try to ease the itching and prevent the bites.

There’s also your standard black fly to add to the itchiness and their constant buzz and on off landing masking the mosquitos presence. You get used to it sooner or later though… apparently.

Well, let’s buzz away from the cigar-sized bugs with eyes legs and other bits poking out, and from their various friends, and move onto a reason TO be here.
 

 

I don’t think I’ve ever really seen the Milky Way before. I have now though. I’ve always been a little bit miffed with people who are interested in astronomy; it’s always seemed to me, like the sky itself, to be a sparse and barren science. 

Not tonight though, tonight the sky shone. Bario is often cloudy through the night, but when it’s clear like this it’s absolutely stunning. 

I’ve never before seen so many stars and seen them so bright. You haven’t seen stars till you’ve seen Bario stars, like a backlit canopy with holes punched in it. I guess it’s partly being so far away from any ambient ground light sources. 

 

I tried taking a picture but my camera doesn’t have the settings to allow it to take in small amounts of light for a stationary picture over a long period in the way needed for this sort of picture. My friend suggests using the flash. I attempt to explain how we would have to wait between ten to a few million years for the light from the flash to bounce back to us from the distant stars and galaxies and eventually give up."

 

Well, that's no surprise to me. The bugs here are really big and mostly harmless, fortunately. I bet you can't find these types of bugs in the suburbs or the cities. Let's not forget the stars too! When I was living in Kuala Lumpur a couple of years ago, there were some nights when I'd wished I could see the stars like I once did back at my hometown, not the lights and cloudy night skies of the city.
 
My kids sometimes used to stay up a little past their bedtime to count the stars outside their windows...until I come into their bedrooms and check up on them.
 
Anyway, this is the last diary post that Dr Ben shared with me:

"Day 27: The Jungle Supermarket

I put on my walking boots (or in my case, my grip-less black trainers) and head out for some trekking. I’m going alone to Pa Lung An. The original plan was to walk there with the local doctor, but he’s ill (ironic, huh?) and I’m told that the route is one that, although it runs through 5 hours of jungle, is one that I can’t get lost on. 

Ha! I’m an expert at getting lost and this direct path that I “can’t help but follow” forks on a number of occasions. I’ve walked for 4-and-a-half hours and taken my best guess at a number of these forks and now it’s approaching dark.

I’ve passed a deserted jungle hut and just as I’m beginning to think about giving up on reaching Pa Lung An, accepting that I’ve taken a wrong turn and bedding down in the jungle hut, the trees part and, as they do, Pa Lung An appears between them.

My feet are aching and I pull off my socks to find one has changed from white to claret. It takes me a moment to register its blood, I’ve felt no sharp pain… but that’s leeches for you. Boy, do they leave a lot of your blood behind.

Batu Tirung Lodge though is very welcoming. It’s quiet, no other visitors around, actually that’s often the same in Bario, this bit of the world is still relatively undiscovered and you won’t need any advance bookings of rooms here.

The owner of the lodge has coined the phrase jungle supermarket. By this, they mean that if they need anything; food, supplies, anything, they head out to the jungle and find it. Just as well, they have their jungle supermarket and that its always well stocked because it’s a long, long way to the real one and I’m starving. I go out to the jungle supermarket myself and catch some fish which we eat for dinner… my first time fishing!"

Well, I guess that is all Dr Ben has for me to share. I wonder if he plans to return to Bario again.