Thor's Outdoors!: Selamat Detang! Welcome! (to the Jungle)

Selamat Detang! Welcome! (to the Jungle) - Dec 20-25

Since I last wrote, I completed my bicycle tour by flying with my bike to the US and cycling from Boston through New York City to Washington DC. I'll have to catch up and write about that some day, but now I'm on the other side of the world visiting my father in the jungles of northern Borneo!

After a long trip over the Pacific via Hong Kong and Singapore, I arrived to the coastal town of Bintulu in the state of Sarawak. Bintulu is growing like crazy, having not long ago been a small fishing village but now expanding because of increased logging, oil & gas exploration, and the building of a new industrial park fed with cheap electricity from the 2400 MW Bakun hydroelectric power plant soon to be completed. More on that power plant in a bit. My father and his wife picked me up at the airport and after a night in Bintulu eating at a Filipino restaurant we headed out into the jungle the next day. My father works at the Bakun power plant mentioned earlier, and lives at the adjoined township about a 3 hour drive from Bintulu along a small highway that used to be an old loggers track. The road goes past lots of oil palm plantations, evidence of deforestation, but fortunately because of the hills in this area being so steep much of the forest has been preserved.

Arriving to Bintulu

Driving into the jungle

Fruit stand along the road, with a can for payment

The first few days in Sarawak are spent adjusting to the time difference, and exploring the local area. I'd wanted to just hike straight into the jungle and hopefully climb to one of the nearby hilltops for a spectacular view, but was advised never to go alone. There are plenty of snakes around and you wouldn't want to be alone in case of getting lost or if anything else were to happen. I did go on some shorter excursions with my father though, down to the boat ramp by the reservoir and up to some smaller hilltops. At the boat ramp we saw several groups of people loading and unloading goods from boats into pickup trucks, and also passengers getting onto boats for transfer into smaller villages in the jungle. The road from the coast ends at the Bakun dam, so the only practical way to get into the interior is by boat along rivers or in this case on the reservoir. It was fascinating watching hunters unload meat onto the dock, and others loading boxes and barrels into the boats to bring home.

Local hunters unloading their catch

The Balui river, downstream of Bakun

My younger sister arrived on Julafton (Christmas eve) so we went to get her from the airport in Bintulu, and on the way home I saw my first hornbills! Unfortunately they were quite far away so I couldn't quite make out which kind they were, but I was excited to see them since the Rhinoceros hornbill is the state bird of Sarawak. My sister had with her plenty of treats from Sweden, including herring, knäckebröd, and of course a box of Paradis chocolate! So our Christmas dinner was an interesting combo of local Malay food with some Swedish highlights, making for a strange but tasty Julbord. The next day we went on a longer excursion and hike mostly along a small dirt track leading straight into the jungle. We saw all kinds of strange and fascinating plants, including orchids, pitcher plants, and giant mengaris trees. I saw another hornbill, this time definitely an oriental pied hornbill. It was great being with family again, definitely bringing back memories of being a kid growing up on construction sites like this one in differing fascinating countries. It was also exciting being in the forests of Borneo, but really we were just warming up as the next day we were set to head east to Sabah to climb the legendary Mt. Kinabalu, and search for Proboscis monkeys!