Last Monday was somewhat uneventful. I tried to rearrange my classes and get a few other things in order, and that night a few of us decided to head to Holland Village to check out a bar called Walla Walla. Joanna's friend Mike said that one of his favorite local bands was playing, so a big group of us checked it out.
The bar was one of the first I've seen that looked pretty American. When I say that, I mean I didn't feel out of place because I wasn't wearing next year's fashions, but the place was relatively laid back and the drinks weren't outrageously expensive. The band did covers of college hits from the past 10 years or so, and they were actually pretty good.
The lead singer could imitate the style of almost any singer, and sounded completely American. Much to our surprise, a few songs into the first set, he started talking to the crowd in an Indian accent. He'd go back to singing, no accent, and then start talking, and sound like he was straight from Tamil province. Myself and two girls named Vicki and Shruti just watched in amazement.
The next day I started classes, and before getting to my first lecture I got lost about five times. I took the bus a few stops past where I should have, walked to the wrong cluster, then to the wrong lecture theater, and finally made it to Nation-Building in Singapore about 20 minutes late. It was a huge lecture hall, so nobody even noticed, and the Teaching Assistant was just going over the syllabus for the semester.
One of the strange things about students in Singapore is that they are extremely competitive, but don't kiss up to teachers very much. In this class and several others, the students would carry their own conversations while the professor was teaching, and no one would even pretend to whisper. But after class, when you rush straight to the library to check out a book on the syllabus, it's already gone.
The assistant then went on to show us slide after slide of statistics about Singapore. Best place to do business, best Asian country to do banking and finance, best airport in Asia, most degrees per capita in Southeast Asia, highest GDP and GDP per capita in Southeast Asia, best quality of life in Southeast Asia, etc. After all of this, there was a slide that said in huge letters: BUT...most unhappy people in Southeast Asia, and one of the most unhappy people in the world.
I admit, it definitely caught my attention, and the other students seemed intrigued as well. With that, the instructor left us hanging and told us that the class would teach us the complex realities of nation-building, and how all of those Singaporean statistics came to be.
After class, I headed to a Welcome Tea put on by the International Students Office, and was proud to be the only one in the auditorium raising my hand when they asked if anyone knew any type of African dance. (They were only asking because they wanted us to organize a show, and I'm no expert; I took Congolese Dance for a semester.) After walking around, my flip-flop broke, so I awkwardly alternated between sliding my way from place to place and going barefoot.
The next day I had class straight from Noon to 6 pm, and got lost again. Twice. Class discussions were really enjoyable, although I was pretty intimidated by how much the Singaporean students knew about American foreign policy, especially during past administrations. The best remark of the day had to come from my Confucianism and Daoism teacher, who said "For the most part, generalizations are useful, until they become useless."
After my Contemporary Issues in Singapore lecture, I headed back to the dorms for dinner with some friends. It was Ladies' Night again, but this week we decided to try Double O and skip the awkward platform dancers. We had to show up really early (around 9) to beat the rush, and sat around for a few hours trying to meet other exchange students. The upstairs of the bar was a club, with several rooms playing different kinds of music. It'll suffice to say that it was a very fun night.
The next morning was my Gender in Malay Society discussion, and everyone took pity on me for being completely clueless about the NUS academic process. Some very nice girls from the class showed me the codes for library withdrawals and copying, and promised to let me know when they were watching videos for class. I spent the rest of the day wandering around campus for a bit, hoping to save myself from further embarrassment upon getting utterly lost.
Friday morning I woke up early to get ready and pack my bags for Borneo. A group of about 20 exchange students had found really cheap flights to this area of Malaysia, and had researched some great activities and places to see. We took a bus, a subway, and an airport shuttle before finally reaching the budget terminal and our Tiger Airways flight to Kuching.
We stayed at a hostel called the Borneo B & B, which seemed more like an international collection of college students staying in an old woman's house than it did a bed and breakfast, but the place was nice. We had to take our shoes off at the door and the owner was really welcoming. Seven of us shared a room, and everyone on two floors shared a bathroom.
The interesting thing about Borneo is the view of cleanliness. Most floors are sparkling, since shoes aren't worn indoors and floors are cleaned multiple times daily. If you look inside a bathroom, however, it's an entirely different story; most of them look like they haven't seen a mop in years, and the lack of a toilet bowl over the whole in the floor has prompted a term of endearment from our group toward restrooms in Borneo: "squatters".
We ate at what seemed like a really fancy restaurant, but our meals were about 10 Ringgit ($3) per person. Whoever said that you can tell the class of a restaurant by looking at its bathroom has clearly never been to Borneo, and i'll leave the rest to your imagination. We spent the rest of the night walking around town, looking at local crafts and seeking hangout spots.
We also ran into Kira, Jill, Leo, and Doug, who had arrived a day earlier and already had amazing adventures. They had gone to a longhouse, a traditional tribal residence in Borneo, and visited the tribal chief. After some tea and lots of rice wine, he revealed that the tribe used to be headhunters, and he still had headhunting gear from his grandfather. They got to see the machete used to decapitate opponents, and the basket that their heads were collected in for a victory celebration. The also got to wear the tribe's traditional dress and jewelry, and try shooting blowdarts through a 7 foot long instrument that had a spike at the end. He sat with them and told them stories of the tribe, and they said it was an incredible experience.
The next morning we woke up bright and early to catch a city bus to Bako National Park. The park isn't accessible by road, so you have to buy your tickets and hire a motorboat to take you across a small section of the South China Sea. A lovely sign warning of crocodiles in the water greeted us on the docks, and pretty soon we were making our way out.
The water was pretty choppy, and was getting increasingly so the farther out we went. Our little motorboat was looking smaller and smaller next to the waves, and I started getting very nervous about its resistance to capsizing. Just as the waves were looking larger than the length of the boat, we saw the boat that was originally ahead of us turning back; upon looking closer, we saw that everyone inside was soaking wet. They told us that their boat had just gone under a wave.
For some reason, everyone else found this quite thrilling, and my white-knuckled grip of the side of the boat only grew more intense. The driver assured us that our boat was much bigger than theirs, and could handle much bigger waves. Besides, he reasoned, he was a very experienced boatman, and had successfully gotten through much worse than this.
He could see I was only the verge of a nervous breakdown, so he asked if we should turn around. Everyone kept replying, oh no, we're fine, let's keep going. He would ask again, and everyone would reassure him that they weren't worried. Finally, I saw a wave heading towards us that looked about twice as high as the length of our boat, and in a very loud and resolute voice, I said, "LET'S TURN AROUND."
Upon seeing the wave, nobody really contested, and so we started zipping back to shore. Once we got in calmer waters, however, I could see that they were regaining confidence. We met up with other boats who had also turned around, and our little group of daredevils decided that they wanted to give it another go. I thought I might lose consciousness.
I suggested they drop me back at the docks, but after a long conversation and what must have been some serious brainwashing, I decided to try again. This time the waves were even bigger, and I had the death grip on the side of the boat. The news report e-mailed from my mother about an Indonesian ferry sinking flashed through my head, and I started praying pretty hard. Just when I was about ready to vomit, another boat's motor broke, and everyone decided to turn around again.
I think my relief was pretty evident by the color returning to my face, and the boat drivers collectively decided that it was too dangerous to take us in high tide. We would have to wait until closer to noon, when the waves during low tide would be blocked by a mud embankment. We waited out those few hours with cards, getting-to-know-you games, and snacks we had packed in our bags.
By the time 11 rolled around, the water looked significantly better. We reached the shore of Bako with little worry on my part, and even got to see a crocodile on the way there (from a safe distance, of course). We walked along the beach, saw a few monkeys playing around in the trees overhead, and quickly set out on our hiking course. We were going through complete jungle (or as our Australian friend Lauren called it, the Bush) and made great time.
At the end of one path was a beach that looked straight out of a movie. If you've ever seen "the Beach" with Leonardo DiCaprio, it looked like that (only, sadly, it was missing Leo). We stripped down to our bathing suits and jumped in the water, rolling around in the waves like little kids and laughing ecstatically. After splashing around for a bit, we found a huge rock to climb and took some Survivor-esque photos.
Afterwards, we got back on the trail and kept going. Over the next little bit, we saw geckos, some really interesting plants and trees, and insects that looked like they were on steroids. After getting back to the base and having a quick lunch of - you guessed it - fried rice, we took a much more steady boat back and caught the city bus to town.
We spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up and relaxing until dinner, where we went to celebrate Sam's (one of our travel buddies) birthday. The restaurant was right on the river, and with the lights all around the city, the view was absolutely gorgeous. Afterwards, we walked around the area a little more, taking in the beautiful scenery and weather. We found a hole-in-the-wall bar across from our hostel that was actually a really cool place, and the tables and benches were hand carved from local trees. We chewed the fat for a bit, and called it a night at a decent hour.
The next morning was an early one yet again, but this time we went to Kubah National Park. I made the mistake of not eating early enough, and was surprised to find that before we could start the trail we had to hike up a road at a vertical distance of 900 feet. I was DYING, as was everyone, but we pushed through and finished in a little over a half hour.
Once we finally got to the trail, it didn't get any easier, with a lot of very drastic ups and downs. I presume that the term "path" was taken pretty lightly by the park ranger, but it let us see some beautiful plant and wildlife. After about an hour of intense hiking, we finally reached an enormous waterfall and several waterfalls that fell off to the side. It was absolutely gorgeous, and we immediately, though cautiously, went in the water.
The rocks were very slippery, and people were dropping like flies. At one point, Jessie turned around and saw Dena lying on her back with her hair in the water. Apparently she had fallen and hit her knee pretty badly. It wasn't until later, when she had a bump that looked like a tumor and was bigger than her kneecap, that we understood how hard she had fallen.
In the meantime, we climbed the falls and played under them, while some of the boys decided to climb all the way to the top. After some time of goofing around, we got back on the trail. Jeremy took Dena back to the park entrance so her leg could rest, and the rest of us forged ahead. After some more very intense but very beautiful hiking, we came to a lookout point with a view of a valley, three rivers, and a mountain range. It was breathtaking. I tried to take pictures, but it was cloudy, and they just couldn't capture how stunning it really was.
After recovering from the awe we all felt, we looked down to discover that our feet were covered in leeches. And I mean COVERED. Jessie had a pretty big freakout, but we eventually got them all off of us (or so Tony thought). We kept on hiking, and we were going the fastest we had gone all day. We felt pretty good about ourselves, until we turned a corner and saw that there was no more path.
Gone. It had been destroyed so much that we didn't even know in what direction to try looking for it. Apparently there had been a really bad storm recently, and some trees had been knocked over. These trees that I speak of had trunks that would take about four people holding hands to make a circle around, and about seven of them had fallen in different directions. At a certain point, we just guessed, and started crawling through brush to try and find something.
We were climbing over and under logs that were absolutely infested with bugs the size of my pinky finger, and we couldn't see more than a few feet in front of us. This was all on a pretty sharp incline, so at certain points I had to decide between risking a tumble down the hill and into brush, or risking a nasty bite and bug battle by leaning on something for support. This went on for about 100 meters, and just when I was losing all hope and breaking into hysterics, we saw a clearing.
Screaming with joy and relief, we all fought through the last little bit and came back out onto the other end of the path. At that point, we only had about 300 meters until the end of the hike altogether, so we used our excitement as energy to finish off the last little bit. Once we got back to the park headquarters, we sat down for some much needed water and snacks and met up with Jeremy and Dena, whose lump had now flattened but turned dark purple.
We still had about an hour before our cab driver, Jai, was scheduled to pick us up, so we grabbed some lunch. Guess what they were serving? FRIED RICE. We really didn't care, we were starving.
After the ride back, we walked around town a bit before noticing we were covered in mud and smelled like death. We went back to the hostel to clean up and rest, but as soon as Tony took his shoes off he saw that one of his socks was covered in blood, and a very bloated leech came crawling off of him. Jessie freaked out once more, and we helped him clean it up.
Dinner that night was delicious, and we felt we had definitely earned it. We treated ourselves to some shisha (hookah) and Tiger Beer (the local brew) before taking a leisurely stroll around town and along the riverfront. Some stands were set up with crafts and food, and we had a good time just taking everything in.
The next day we headed off to Semanggoh Rehabilitation Center to see some orangutangs that had been rescued and were now being cared for in their natural habitat. You basically just stand on a platform and they eat and swing around you. There's really nothing separating you from them, but as long as you don't have any food or drink with you (which you're not allowed to have), they maintain a safe distance. The closest they got to being aggressive was dropping a branch on the platform.
There was an alpha male, a female, and several babies all swinging around, helping each other get food and a good resting spot in the trees. The babies were adorable, and clung to their mother as she climbed, while the alpha male was enormous and had hair that dragged after him like a train. It was nice to see them all together, and they seemed pretty happy.
Back in town, I decided to try some Foot Reflexology at a place that looked like they wouldn't try any funny business on me. Some other people got full body massages, but I was curious about this in particular. It's really interesting, sometimes painful, but definitely worth the experience. I couldn't tell exactly what part of my foot was linked to which body part, but there were times when I got a vague feeling in my head or stomach, so I think it worked. In any case, Johann got offered a happy ending, so we all had a good laugh about that after he told us.
After a bit of shopping, we found a taxi and went to Kuching International Airport to catch our flight. As we were walking into the bathroom, we passed a handcuffed prisoner being escorted by police. Later on, I unknowingly walked on a red carpet and almost collided with a security team and some Asian dignitaries that apparently deserved this kind of welcome. Quite the eclectic airport, if you ask me.
Now I'm back, and ready to start another week of classes. I'm bummed I won't be able to watch the inauguration with my friends tomorrow, but at least they're broadcasting it here so I'll be able to keep up a little bit. Next weekend is Chinese New Year, so I'm also really looking forward to that!
Sorry again for the long entry, I promise I'll try harder to write more often and keep them short. Happy MLK day, everybody. I hope you made it a meaningful one.
Terimah Kasih,
Lizzy
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