Borneo Blog

I’ve been following several blogs written by tourists and visitors, relating their experience in Borneo, particularly in Sabah, the state where I come from.

One such blogs is “100 Days of SoliDude” run by this Erik Page guy. I think he is an American engineer based in Thailand.

Two-week adventure in Borneo

He recently had a two-week adventure in Borneo, spending most of the time in Sabah.

While in the Malaysian state on Borneo island, and he explored many places, several of which I myself — a Borneo guy — have never been to. He had climbed Mt Kinabalu, dived in Sipadan, gone off the beaten tourist track in Sandakan, met the proboscis monkey, and gone stone age in Long Pasia jungle.

I like his style of writing, although he misspelled Kota Kinabalu as Kota Kinabula.

An experienced driver — with six years of diving experience no less — he initially appeared to be skeptical about Sipadan being one of the world’s premier diving destinations.

Let’s see what my six years of diving has to say about that, he wrote; I can’t recall the exact quote though.

Spellbinding Sipadan

Then he went to Sipadan and came back to report that he might stop diving forever after this. Quote:

“I ended up doing 14 dives overall there! Saw sharks, turtles, barracuda, sea snakes, morey eels, cuddlefish, and a billion other things. It really was an amazing place.

“I think I need to stop diving forever now because I’m pretty sure everything else will be a let down.” [Source]

Way to go Erik, hope you’ve had the adventure you were looking for in Borneo; and hope you don’t mind me quoting your blog here.

As for the diving, well, you can always come back to Sipadan.

[Pix by Kota Kinabalu City Hall] Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of Sabah, is AirAsia’s most popular destination. The city by the sea beat 56 other destinations serviced by AirAsia, Asia’s biggest budget carrier. Kuching and Langkawi came second and third respectively, according to a survey conducted by the airline.

The airline’s inflight magazine, “Travel 3Sixty”, says the other seven most popular destinations in its top 10 list are Bangkok, Jakarta, Macau, Bali, Kota Baharu, Shenzen and Phuket.

The magazine based its findings on the number of passengers flying to each destination per month.

But the magazine should get its facts right

One complain though. The next time the magazine wants to publish articles about Sabah and Sarawak — the two Malaysian Bornean states — it could use some double-checking of facts to avoid making glaring factual errors.

Take for instance in the column about Kuching being the second most popular destination. Why did the writer urge tourists to visit the 56Okm Kinabatangan River Wildlife Sanctuary in that column?

First of all, no Kinabatangan river in Sarawak, let alone in Kuching.

And the 560km Kinabatangan River Wildlife Sanctuary is non-existent.

The sanctuary is located in the lower Kinabatangan area or also known as the Kinabatangan floodplain or in Malay, the Dataran banjir Kinabatangan, which is 27,000 hectares in size, not 560km long.

Kamurang jangan main-main, nanti itu Bung Moktar Radin kasi tunjuk dia punya sleigh of hands baru kamurang tau.

I’m a RSS subscriber of several tour and travel forums and often times I come across questions such as where to visit in Borneo, when is the best time to visit Borneo, how to go to certain places in Borneo as well as cheap flights to Borneo.

Recently, a member of the AardvarkTravel.net Travel Forum, for instance, posted the question, “Where to visit in Borneo?“.

I wish I had the time to compile a report on all the must-visit places in Borneo — covering Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei and Kalimantan — but I’m too busy with work.

Even if I do have the time after coming back from office, my mind would already be so tired up and bordering on fatigue that any possibility of engaging in productive research and writing is as good as none.

But I still harbour the hope of being able to come up with the report one day. If you have the time though, you might want to suggest the places through the comment section.

If it has been easy to resolve, Sabah’s illegal immigrant problems would have been resolved by now.

If the political will has been strong to resolve the issue, we won’t be cancered by the problem.

But what was once an easy problem to tackle, has become so difficult to overcome because of a number of reasons. Here are the 12 reasons for the worsening illegal immigrants problem in Sabah:

#01. The tidak apa attitude among the powers-that-be in the past to resolve the problem;

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The Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree travel forum has a discussion thread about whether it is possible to go from Borneo to Singapore by boat.

The answer is yes, you can go to Singapore from Borneo by boat according to one participant, but not directly as there is no boat service connecting the two islands.

So the key is to find Batam in Indonesia from Borneo. Once there, it’s just a matter of a short one hour of comfortable boat ride to Singapore’s Harbour Front ferry terminal.

If you are heading north either to Kudat or Kota Marudu, from Kota Kinabalu, the state capital of Sabah, Malaysia’s Borneo, you will pass by Langkon at one point of your journey, or to be exact, somewhere on the 125th km of the road.

Kacang Kudat on sale by the roadside stalls

Langkon — old folks in my village still call it Langkum — is located around the intersection of Kota Kinabalu, Kudat and Kota Marudu.

About 1km from the T-junction, you will find a row of wooden stall by the roadside, selling various local produce, including what is popularly known as Kacang Kudat or the Kudat Ground Nut.

[Picture: the ground nuts being dried up in the sun prior to being fry-grilled]

Kacang Kudat is prepared in the unique traditional method perfected since time immemorial.

But hey, you don’t have to go all the way to Langkon to get the aromatic grilled nuts. You can prepare them all by yourself because I’m going to teach you how to do it.

The method is a cross between frying and grilling, minus the use of cooking oil. Sounds complicated but it really is very simple. It’s just a matter of pouring in 3kg of sand onto a wok, heat it up while stirring it at the same time to distribute the heat evenly.

Then add 1kg of dry ground nuts (with their shell intact) and stir the mixture inside the wok.

After some minutes, you are done. Scoop the nut out of the wok, break open the shell and you can now enjoy the sweet, aromatic grilled nuts.

When The Washington Post writer Glenn Kessler went to Borneo with his wife and children, nature awaited them. He says:

“When my wife and I thought about bringing our three children closer to nature by taking them deep into the jungles of Borneo, we didn’t realize how close we’d actually get.”

Read the exciting story and enjoy his crisp writing as well in the article titled “Hanging out in Borneo on a family vacation“.

KUDAT (Sabah): “Country Roads”, a song by the late John Denver comes to mind as the car makes a tight swerve along the left curve of a double two-way hillside road up Kampung Kelawat in Kota Belud on the way to Kudat from the state capital.

Going downhill soon after, the road narrowed to a single two-way lane and when it reaches the valley, a whole new landscape suddenly opens up as the road approaches freshly planted paddy fields.

[Hundreds of white egrets hover around a tractor as a padi field in Pandasan, Kota Belud is being prepared for the next planting season]

“Country roads take me home…,” sings Denver in the song but this country road of Sabah will not be taking people to West Virginia, Blue Ridge mountains or Shenandoah river as the song suggests.

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