Places I've Been

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Batu Puteh - Cultural day and home stay

I arrived in the village of Batu Puteh for a day of culture and to spend the night with one of the villagers and their family. I didn't take a picture of the home where I stayed, but it looked quite similar to these.

While in the village, I played with a bunch of kids, plus played volleyball with older kids and some younger adults. It was quite fun.

I also got a cooking lesson on how to make my favorite dessert - Puteri Mandi cakes (they were out of the usual green food coloring, so we made them pink instead).

I'm glad I made a bunch of them - because then I could eat a bunch of them!

After the cooking lesson, local residents put on a cultural show and introduced me to various songs and traditional dances.

They even let me play the gongs! Bang that gong! :-)

I also got to visit caves that contain coffins - both the middle cave and the high cave, Agop Sawat.

Naturally, getting there meant climbing more stairs - just when my legs had finally recovered from Mt. Kinabalu!

Spider on coffin

There were lots of bats in the cave.

Coffins were decorated with the heads of different animals.

Wild Man of Borneo

No trip to Borneo would be complete without a visit to the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary. Here the orangutans are "wild" but there are feeding platforms where they are fed 2x/day, so it creates a zoo-like feeling.

But, since this is really the only chance to see the orangutans in the "wild" I guess it will have to do.

There were other monkeys (macaques) at the sanctuary too. They also came out at feeding time, but were much bolder around people, chasing them off the boardwalks.

It was exciting and kind of scary at the same time.

I also took the trip outside of Sepilok to visit the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary. This seemed less "professional" although they had designated feeding stations too.

I actually enjoyed watching the proboscis monkeys more than the orangutans - but maybe that's because they didn't just eat then disappear again.

I also took a side trip to the Rainforest Discovery Center, which was within walking distance from the Sepilok B&B where I stayed.

There were catwalks throughout the canopy. I saw a few squirrels, some birds, but mostly plants.

Kinarut

As my trip was winding down, I decided to head to the beach town of Kinarut. Unfortunately, it was raining while I was there and didn't get to enjoy the beach all that much.

Plus, I wasn't too keen on swimming with the jellyfish!

However, I did make the day of a few local girls when I stopped to buy some of their desserts. I guess tourists usually don't buy food at the end of a driveway!

But I did..... and all of them were delicious. How could I resist at 3 desserts/1 RM; or approx 67 cents for the whole thing!

Snorkeling and Palau Sapi

After leaving Kinarut, I headed back to Kota Kinabalu and booked a snorkeling day trip to the nearby island of Palau Sapi in the marine national park. At first, the snorkeling was a bit awful, since the boat dropped us in the middle of a bunch of jellyfish and we were getting stung every 30 seconds.

Everyone got back on the boat complaining, so they took us to a different spot, where the snorkeling was much more comfortable.

We ate lunch on the island. This monitor tried to sneak some BBQ!
After lunch, we had another hour in the water, and then a thunderstorm rolled in so we gunned it back to shore just as it started pouring.