Borneo 2008

Laurence was invited as External Examiner at the Medical School of the University of Malaysia in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah, Borneo, from 9 to 16 May 2008

8 May 2008
We left Rolle by train for Zurich in time to get flight SQ345 of Singapore Airlines at midday. After less than an hour in the excellent lounge overlooking the field at Kloten, we left on time. The 12-hour flight in an almost brand new Boeing 777 was smooth, comfortable, and arrived on time at 6am the next day.

9 May 2008
We had a couple of hours to wait in the superb terminal at Changi for the two-hour Silkair Airbus flight to Kota Kinabalu, where our driver was waiting at 11h. A short drive to the Hyatt hotel in KK and we were ready to relax a bit. The room was on the eighth floor with a remarkable view out across the South China Sea to the islands just off shore. As you can see, the weather this first week was cloudy and rainy, unusually "monsoon-like" for this time of year, we were told.

However, we got a message that our hosts would meet us in the lobby that afternoon. We were duly whisked away unexpectedly to visit the campus:

and then to dinner at the Golf Club.

Very nice, but we were glad to be let off the hook and get to bed back at the hotel, only to be woken by a violent noise and the room vibrating sometime before midnight. We were just above the hotel's Pub where some rock group was in action. OK, it only lasted until 2 am, so we could not grumble, I suppose.

10 May 2008

Being Saturday, a colleague, Peter Barling, offered to show us around a bit. So we went first to the impressive Buddhist temple of the city.





























Then to the fine Museum, where we learned a lot about local ethnies and history, as well as finding a hang-glider that a German enthusiast had used to jump off the nearby Mount Kinabalu (over 4000m high) some years ago.

We also saw our first local villages in the kampung style, built on piles over inlets of the sea.

We still had time to explore the area around our hotel. We were very close to the port where the fishing boats came and went throughout the day and we spent the last few hours of daylight wandering around this very animated quarter.

This is also the point of embarcation for the numerous high-speed ferries that take people from and to the Island of Pulau Gaya, opposite the harbour, from dawn to dusk. Each boat loaded around 20 passengers and sped them on their way home to their kampungs on stilts.

Just a short walk further along the harbour's edge is the fish market, with its evening feast of grilled fish produced at dozens of hawker stalls for the hundreds of customers flocking to enjoy the smells and tastes!

As we were almost ready to decide which fish to buy, an enormous black cloud appeared on the horizon, and the first drops of rain spattered down.

Obviously time to head for the hotel. The rain here is warm, but very wet. In a few seconds you are completely soaked. In fact we just got to the shelter of the nearby buildings before the downpour really started, and got "home" only moderately wet.

Back at the hotel for a quiet night, we discovered the same din as the night before, so I went down to the pub to enquire. The whole building was trembling, and as I went inside (where there was almost no one!) my ears began to hurt. I had to discuss the matter with the people who ran the place on the pavement outside, in order to be heard. I had the impression that they do not (cannot) actually talk while on the job. They reassured me that it would not go on longer than 2am as before. When I pointed out that the noise was apparently being made for a minimum of customers, the response was that people did not really come before midnight anyway. So why the noise? Who knows? When I asked if it was like this all week, they reassured me that no, during the week it stopped at 1am. Thoughtful of them. So a word with the front desk seemed in order, and the duty manager was very understanding. He called the Food and Beverage manager, who was the top dog that night, and he immediately suggested we change rooms. In the meantime he telephoned the pub and miraculously the decibels were reduced at a stroke! He took me to see the room he suggested: a superb suite on the 14th floor with even better sea views than our present room. So we decided they would move us next day.

11 May 2008

Sunday
Peter again suggested an outing, this time to the Tunku Abdel Rahman National Park, which consists of a group of small islands just off shore. So we started out early to get to the port of Jesselton, which was the old name of Kota Kinabalu. It was a major port of the former British North Borneo, that is now Sabah, and was destroyed at the end of the Second World War at the time of its liberation from the Japanese, before being rebuilt. We just missed the first boat, so took the next at 8h15, for which there were only ourselves and two other passengers. The weather was dry but threatening, with stormy winds. As the boatman only had two speeds, stop and full throttle, the ride was bumpy to say the least. Fortunately our lifejackets kept us a bit dry. In 20 minutes we reached the first of the three island we were to visit. The islands are protected, but still available for limited tourism. When we left some four hours later there were many local tourists enjoying the sea breeze and the beaches. Very few of them seemed to want to trek across the islands through the dense jungle, as we did. There were good prepared tracks so it was not much of a risk, although we would have hesitated to take any sidetracks off into the jungle. As it was, we saw four gigantic monitor lizards and a couple of suspicious-looking yellow snakes, in addition to various insects, including mosquitoes. Of course the plant life was plentiful, typical of the tropical rain forest, and the cicadas and birds made a fabulous noise, better than the rock stars of the previous night.

So, back to the hotel and to check out our new rooms. The staff had moved our bags, but not the clothes from the cupboards, so that had to be sorted out. Meanwhile we enjoyed the fabulous view over the sea and the islands. But what was that strange noise? The main ventitilation fans for the air conditioning were right below our windows, although 5 floors lower, and that other, intermittent whirr turned out to be a service lift shaft that ran between our bedroom and sitting room! We did not dare complain any more, and in any case the rooms were great, nothing that earplugs at night would not solve. And what was more we had access to the club, a superb bar overlooking the sea where we could enjoy "happy hour", and well as breakfast and excellent suppers.

13 May 2008

After the first two days of exams, our colleague Perumal suggested we might visit the Lok Kawi Zoological Park at the end of the afternoon. This park serves a double purpose of introducing visitors to several local wild species, and also to breed these animals, some of which are threatened as their jungle habitat gets smaller by the day. For us it was a way to meet some of the animals we hoped to see later in the wild in our proposed visit to the north-east coast the following weekend.
We soon heard the distinctive whooping calls of the gibbons, and saw them swinging through the treetops. It reminded us of our experience several years earlier when we were working in Singapore and spent a weekend in a hut in the forest near Johor Bahru on the Malaysian mainland: we were woken at dawn by the calls of the gibbons and saw and heard them crashing through the trees very close by.
Even more dramatic, for this was the first time we had seen them at close range, were the proboscis monkeys, the hall mark primates (together with the orang utans) of the remote jungles further east in Borneo. They are quite remarkable: the dominant male with his huge nose and smart white underpants, and the females of his harem with their pretty upturned nose, not to mention their very young baby, already with its distinctive nose. Hierarchy here is rigid: we were there when the keeper gave then their supper. The alpha male, his wife and their baby feasted calmly and undisturbed while the other females and younger males looked on from a distance.
There were of course a few orangs, but we were to see much more of them in the less civilised surroundings of the forest a few days later. A surprise was to see the local Malayan tigers, now a real rarity, and the Borneo pygmy elephants. The sun bears were a delight and the playful otters were to be seen wherever there was water.